Great Influence

We work with industry-leading Founders, CEOs, Entrepreneurs & Investors across Personal Brand Strategy and Social Media & Content to make them the most influential people in business.

- Gary Neville. Founder @ Relentless Group & Sky Sports Broadcaster
- Matthew Syed. Best-Selling Author
- Jordan Brompton. Founder @ myenergi & Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022
- Julian Hearn. Founder @ Huel
- John Amaechi. Sunday Times Best-Selling Author & Founder @ APS Intelligence
- Sacha Lord. Founder @ Parklife + The Warehouse Project
- Katy Leeson. CEO @ Relentless Media
- Oliver Cookson. Founder @ Myprotein
- Natalie Wills. VP @ Booking.com
- Debbie Wosskow OBE. Founder @ Allbright
- Carrie Rose, CEO @ Rise At Seven

Founder

SocialChain

Founding Team at Social Chain.

My role began as Marketing Director and over time shifted into Personal Branding for the CEO Steven Bartlett. 

Helping tell the fascinating story of one of the UK's fastest growing companies through the eyes of it's CEO.  

Through this work, Steven became a social media influencer (0 - 1m+ follower growth across platforms) and global public speaker leading to national PR, TV & Radio for himself & Social Chain, commercial deals with Huawei & Adobe and being named as 'The Most Influential Person In The Industry' by Econsultancy.

Founding Team

Hey I’m Ash 👋🏻 

I’m the Founder at Great Influence where we work with brilliant entrepreneurs helping build their personal brand, tell their story and share their ideas to millions of people on social.

I’ve been helping entrepreneurs to do this for the last 10 years and have had the honour of leading personal brand strategy, social and content for some of the best in business including:

- Steven Bartlett. The Diary Of A CEO & Dragons Den
- Gary Neville. Founder @ Relentless Group & Sky Sports Broadcaster
- Matthew Syed. Best-Selling Author
- Jordan Brompton. Founder @ myenergi & Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022
- Julian Hearn. Founder @ Huel
- John Amaechi. Sunday Times Best-Selling Author & Founder @ APS Intelligence
- Sacha Lord. Founder @ Parklife + The Warehouse Project
- Katy Leeson. CEO @ Relentless Media
- Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu. Founder @ The Turmeric Co & Sports Broadcaster. 
- Oliver Cookson. Founder @ Myprotein
- Natalie Wills. VP @ Booking .com
- Debbie Wosskow OBE. Founder @ Allbright
- Carrie Rose. CEO @ Rise At Seven

This might be the biggest shift in brand marketing in decades. 

A new kind of role is emerging inside global companies - people becoming the brand. 

For Deloitte, Lara was the first.
They now have 250 employees working part-time doing this. 

In 12 months Lara drove 10,000 leads and $13m in marketing value for the brand. 

For years, brands have paid to reach audiences.
Now they’re realising their people already have them. 

You can spend millions on ads or you can make your people more visible.

This isn’t just a Deloitte thing, this is where brand marketing is heading.

People as extensions of the brand - building influence, trust and reach far beyond what corporate channels can.

The biggest companies in the world are already doing this and the rest won’t be far behind.

Ash Jones

Personal Brand Advisor & Founder at Great Influence.

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$1.5m a year to manage content for a CEO.

Read that again!!

2025 has been the year where companies started taking their CEOs personal brand seriously and the salaries have backed it up:

Paypal - $250k
OpenAI - $400k
Virio - $500k

These salaries are starting to reflect one clear message:

A CEOs personal brand done well is worth millions to the right company.

I’ve been in personal branding for 10 years and 2025 has been the year that i’ve seen this truly start to become one of the most important tools in large company marketing & communications.

Yesterday I spoke in front of 700 people in Amsterdam at World Employer Branding Day with one clear message:

Your leaders are the future of your employer brand!

And the data backs this up:

→ 75% of job seekers research leaders before applying 

→ 70% of an employee’s engagement is determined by their leader 

→ 64% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from a brand whose leaders they follow on social media 

My talk yesterday focused on the two ways you get your leaders to show up authentically online. 

1. Understand who they are and then give them guardrails

I have hours of conversations with leaders to understand who they actually are and what they could talk about.

Once that process is complete I give them a clear outline of how to show up online. 

2. Understand how to create content people care about

It’s so easy to get leaders to make content that nobody will care about. Asking them basic questions or using ChatGPT will result in bland content. 

Your job is to find the interesting in your leaders and make sure it’s fit for the social media platform you’re playing on. 

You can have the most interesting insights in the world but if you can’t package them up right then they end up not reaching people.

If you are able to give your leaders guardrails and create content people will actually care about, your leaders can become your greatest asset.

38 today 🎈 

If there’s one thing I have loved about my 37th year, it’s been the people I’ve met, worked with and get to call friends as a result of running this business.

I’m always left feeling inspired and full of energy whenever i’m around them. 

Great minds. Great people. Great Influences 😉 

Jeremy Jauncey Claudia Cardinali

I believe one of the most valuable career skills over the next 10 years will be personal branding - and the biggest companies in the world agree. 

Paypal, OpenAI + Meta have all been hiring for the role in recent months. 

Do you want to become one of the best in the world at personal branding? 

We’re hiring for a Head of Social + Content where you’ll become exactly that. 

Great Influence has worked with and delivered insane results for some of the biggest entrepreneurs and companies in the world.

Your job would be to deliver those results for those people and companies. 

In the last month alone we’ve had some of the biggest companies in Europe at our door.

The next decade is ours to own and we’re looking for the best people we can find to join us on our journey.

If you’re interested view the role here or drop me a DM to chat - https://lnkd.in/eiZC6_ZN

Last week I spoke in front of 700 people - the biggest audience I’ve ever stood in front of.

This week I’ve been booked to speak in front of 7,000 in 2026.

It’s taken me years to build the confidence to do that.

For most of my career, I was the one behind the scenes and someone else was in the spotlight.

But since starting my own business it’s been a role that I’ve had to play to help the business grow. 

Public speaking. Creating content. Podcasts.

None of it comes natural to me and I’ve had to learn how to do all of it. 

But it’s by far one of the best investments I’ve made for the business and for myself. 

It helps us sell easier, it helps us market ourselves easier, it helps us build relationships easier. 

I meet so many people who say they’re not confident speaking or posting and I completely get it.

The only way to get good at it is to do it badly, again and again, until one day you don’t.

But every time you do it, the fear gets a little smaller and your confidence grows a little bigger 🙏🏻

PREDICTION: The people working within brands are the future of brand marketing. 

This is taken from the talk I delivered last week in Amsterdam to over 700 brand leaders.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this debate and the role you think people play in the future of brands!

There’s something fascinating i’ve observed that occurs in EVERY SINGLE PERSON that has posted on LinkedIn.

At one point or another, they get into what I call “The Personal Brand Hole”.

Everything is going well and then all of a sudden, you’ve lost it, and you can’t seem to get it back.

You’ve ran out of ideas to post.
You think everything you say will be awful. 
You think absolutely nobody cares at all!

We’ve all been there.

Fortunately, you can get out of this self imposed state of inertia..

2025 is the year when the biggest brands in the world decided their people are their marketing. 

They've created roles for it.
They've moved budget towards it.
They're briefing their agencies on it.

The shift speaks to two simple truths:
People want to buy from people, not companies. 
People want to work for leaders, not companies. 

I'm watching incredibly smart companies get ahead of the curve and this is how they're doing it 👇

1. They're treating personal brand as business strategy

Personal brand isn't being thought of as vanity in these companies, they're strategically mapping their biggest business priorities to things their leaders can say, platform and champion for them. 

2. They're supporting leaders rather than hoping for the best

They're hiring great people to build infrastructure internally or they're hiring specialist agencies. Both send a message to their leaders that this is important and they're taking it seriously.

3. They're measuring on impact over impression

This kind of ties back to the first point in that now they're understanding what leaders can talk about that would move the needle for the company and they're measuring based on those specifics, rather than "how many likes did a post get".

One of the UK’s fastest growing startups is hiring for a Personal Branding Lead and this says everything about where marketing is heading!

Recently valued at $200m, PerfectTed is now officially Dragon’s Den’s biggest success story following Steven Bartlett's initial investment on the show and a further £1m he invested afterwards. 

And there’s one key reason they’ve blown up these past few years - Their founders.

Marisa Poster, Teddie Levenfiche and Levi Levenfiche have been everywhere this year - social, podcasts, press - driving millions of pounds worth of organic exposure for the brand. 

They’ve recognised the absolutely huge competitive advantage personal brand has given them as a startup and now they’re doubling down.

Huge kudos to Kelly Shaw and the team for being massively ahead of the curve in their marketing and understanding the power of their founders in building the brand.

If you’ve ever wanted proof that personal branding is becoming core marketing strategy, you only have to look at stories like this.

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