LinkedIn Growth Engine

Helping business owners build a predictable lead engine from LinkedIn.

Owner

Longevity Life

Helping people live measurably longer, healthier lives. Our mission is to add 1B healthy years to humanity.

Founder & CEO

Founder OS

Helping founders grow their business to $5M/year through community, accountability, mentorship and proven systems.  

DM me to get started.

Founder Success Coach

KarmaCheck

Head of Customer Success

Blueshift

Head of Customer Success, EMEA (2019 to 2021)

Director, Customer Success

Mixpanel

Enterprise Onboarding Lead

Optimizely

Onboarding Specialist

Nanigans

Account Director

Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC)

Supported the development of AIC's Education Outreach Program

Educator / Mentor

Follow for daily Insights to live a longer, healthier life

Over the past decade, I’ve scaled three companies from $1M to $10M+. 

I'm on a mission to help business owners scale their businesses and change lives in the process.

Specifically, I help accomplished founders build a personal brand and predictable path to revenue from LinkedIn. 

My portfolio:

→ Founder & CEO of LinkedIn Growth Engine, community and coaching for 75+ entrepreneurs. 
→ Founder & CEO of Longevity Life, helping high-performers extend their health span.
→ I coach entrepreneurs how to grow their visibility and monetize their business on LinkedIn
→ I run longevity retreats 2X/year in LA, Bali and Sedona. 

My results:

→ 25K+ person audience across LinkedIn and X
→ 75 person highly vetted paid community
→ 1M content impressions annually 
→ 80%+ margins
→ 0 ads

I think about this daily.

Life’s work. Ikigai.

It’s not always obvious. Finding the intersection of what you love, what you’re great at, what the world needs, and what pays the bills - some people spend a lifetime searching.

For me, the biggest shift was reflecting on:

1. My formative life experiences

2. My human nature / human design

3. Past work experiences and what parts were energizing vs. draining

4. How I spend my time outside of work

As Harley Finkelstein shared: 

"A good hack to find your Ikigai is to find where your personal mission has a strong overlap with your professional mission. For me, it was entrepreneurship"

If you’re exploring this for yourself, my friend Vishwath Mohan created a custom Chat GPT to help you find & refine your Ikigai through conversation.

So much more helpful than staring at a blank page trying to figure out your life's purpose ;)

Check it out in the first comment 👇

Rohan Karunakaran

Helping CEOs turn LinkedIn into their #1 growth channel

How to be more emotionally intelligent

(without trying so hard):

These insights come from Joe Hudson, executive coach to some of the world’s top leaders.

Here are a few of my favorite:

1. If you’re scared of feeling an emotion, you’re already in it.

2. Constantly trying to make sense of your emotions prevents you from hearing their wisdom.

3. You can’t give or receive love fully if you’re constantly calculating what could go wrong.

4. We often abandon ourselves in an attempt to prevent other people from abandoning us.

5. You can’t be accepted for who you are if you’re not showing up as who you are.

6. There is no perfect. No finish line. Just the next experiment. Just play.

Perfection is the enemy of creation.

7. If you can’t say “no” easily, you can’t be trusted.

8. 
• If it feels scary to say, it's important 
• If it feels scary to say, NOT saying it will hurt your connection 
• If it feels scary to say, NOT saying it prioritizes their imagined reaction over your truth.

9. Willpower is needed if it’s a desire from the head. 

Willpower is not needed if it’s a desire from the heart.

10. Unconditional love isn't people - pleasing or caretaking. It's the capacity to hold space for others' choices while honoring your own truth.

11.  Judging others for showing off is often an indication that we’re struggling with our own desire to be seen.

12.  People don’t want you to be perfect.  What they want is to feel connected to you.

Which of these hit home for you the most? Drop the number in the comments - I'm curious what resonates.

Don't wait until you're an "expert" to share what you're learning.

By the time you get really good at something, it can be surprisingly hard to explain how you do what you do where it just "clicks" for someone who's a beginner. 

Expert advice often assumes a level of proficiency and comes across as overwhelming or too abstract for beginners to apply.

But there's this sweet spot when you're early in your learning journey where you've figured out a few crucial things that could really help people who are just a few steps behind you.

As Oppenheimer famously said, “The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.” 

By sharing what you’re discovering - even before you feel fully qualified - you not only help others get started, but you deepen your own understanding in the process.

Even though you won't feel qualified to give advice yet, you're actually in one of the most valuable positions to help others who are trying to get started.

Rippling just sued Deel for corporate espionage.

The story is wild:

• A planted spy
• A bathroom escape
• A corporate honeypot trap

Who knew B2B HR tech news could feel like a thriller? But here we are…

The allegations:

Deel allegedly embedded a spy inside Rippling, who accessed confidential data 23 times DAILY for months - stealing sales leads, pricing details, and competitive intelligence.

Rippling ($13.4B valuation) set a trap - a fake Slack channel mentioned only in a letter to Deel’s execs.

A few hours later, the spy allegedly searched for it - connecting the dots back to Deel’s leadership.

When served a court order, the spy locked himself in a bathroom, possibly destroyed evidence, and fled.

You can't make this stuff up.

These are just allegations - the courts will decide what actually happened.

While a fascinating news story, here’s the takeaway for founders:

Parker Conrad, Rippling’s CEO, broke the story himself - directly on X.

• Not through a PR team
 • No corporate spin
 • His own voice

The result?

• The story trended on X with over 4.3K mentions in 24 hours.
• Rippling controlled the entire news cycle from the start.

The lesson for tech CEOs:

• If you define & bring awareness to an issue, attention accrues to you
• Mainstream media simply follows & amplifies the narritive established on social media. 
• Founder-led comms is the most effective way to shape public opinion

The courts will decide the legal outcome.

But in the court of public opinion?

A founder willing to own the story is already winning.

Tech CEOs - if your business faced a crisis tomorrow, how would you handle it?

I just spent 90 minutes with a SaaS founder doing $1M ARR.

One question kept coming up: "How can I build predictable pipeline in 2025?"

We discussed the 6 key trends that are defining 2025:

1. Modern B2B Playbook

• Cold outreach and ads are seeing diminishing ROI
• B2B products are becoming commoditized faster than ever
• Your real marketing moat? A founder-led brand, differentiated storytelling, and trusted distribution

Budget your content strategy like your AWS or Stripe bill - it's not a campaign, it's infrastructure

2. Trust is the new currency

• Buyers are skeptical – we’re in a trust recession
• Valuable, authentic content builds trust
• Trust today creates demand tomorrow

3. Focus on the long game 

• Most target the 5% ready to buy now 
• The real gold for predictable pipeline? The other 95%
• The "10x Content Marketer" will drive higher ROI than the "10x Engineer"

Plan accordingly - "Testing content" for 3 months never works. You have to go all-in. And when you do, it works.

Bottom line: Winners in 2025 will pair great product and customer experience with trust built through consistent, valuable content. 

Part 2 drops Thursday - 3 more trends you can’t miss. What’s shifting in your world? Share below.

I've helped over 40 B2B SaaS founders turn LinkedIn into their #1 lead source.

Here’s the exact playbook:

Most founders & CEOs struggle with lead gen because they rely on channels with diminishing returns:

• Cold outreach gets ignored
• Ad costs are skyrocketing
• SEO traffic keeps dropping

The solution? A 3-stage organic content funnel:

• Rented Audience (Attract)
• Owned Audience (Retain)
• Monetized Audience (Monetize)

How It Works:

Rented Audience (Attract):

• Pick ONE platform (LinkedIn for B2B)
• Solve ONE problem (Operational Excellence through RevOps)
• Focus on ONE customer avatar (VP Sales)

The 3-Post Formula for LinkedIn Growth:
• Pain Post – Call out a specific struggle your ideal customer faces
• Framework Post – Teach a simple, actionable solution (like this post!)
• Proof Post – Share results from yourself or a client

👉 Repeat this cycle weekly to build authority and attract inbound leads

Owned Audience (Nurture)
• Build a high-converting landing page
• Use lead magnets to drive signups
• Email weekly with valuable insights

Compete on generosity.

I didn’t fully grasp the power of this until we installed this system with over 40+ SaaS founders doing $1M+ ARR.

Results in 90 days:
• 9 qualified leads
• $95K in new pipeline
• 28% shorter sales cycle

The best part? Just 2-3 hours per week to maintain.

• This isn’t magic - it’s systems
• People buy from people they know, like & trust
• Your audience is your most valuable asset

Following me for more practical frameworks to grow your brand and business on LinkedIn.

PS: What's the biggest challenge you face with your content strategy? Drop a comment below 👇

Helping CEOs and tech leaders build authority and generate leads with organic content | Founder & CEO

GTM & Ops leaders - if you're looking for guidance on all things RevOps and operational excellence w/ Salesforce & Hubspot - make 🌱 Kathryn Castle your first call. 

Their client testimonials speak for themselves:

Helping SaaS leaders drive operational excellence with Salesforce and HubSpot | Founder & CEO, Candybox.

Proud Candybox moment! 😊

Our friend Kayvan Dastgheib-Beheshti was kind enough to shout us out on the Digital Route podcast.

Kay shared how Candybox helped his team roll out CPQ in three months - as host Behdad Banian notes, a pretty tight turnaround.

What factors enabled this project to succeed? 

1️⃣ Having the right team in place

In this case, this meant both internal and external resources devoted more or less full-time to the project in order to hit the aggressive deadlines, as well as experienced leadership.

2️⃣ Ruthless prioritisation & full stakeholder buy-in

Having a fully bought-in team meant no time was wasted making difficult decisions. In this case, Kay was able to institute a "blackout period", pausing other changes in Salesforce, until the project was completed. This would not have been possible without leadership alignment.

3️⃣ Mutual alignment on the vision

Due to our prior working relationship, little time was wasted aligning with Candybox on the vision of what Kay wanted to achieve. This enabled us to move much faster. 

It's always a pleasure to be able to partner with individuals such as Kay, and it's gratifying to hear how our work helped his team deliver results that impressed their board.

This is the kind of partnership we always aim for at Candybox: 
✨ Strong understanding of key business outcomes
✨ Full context around technical requirements
✨ Mutual understanding of the desired working style
✨ Stakeholder alignment across all teams 

Considering a big CRM project - such as implementing CPQ - but unsure where to start? Drop a comment or DM me - happy to share what we've seen work (and what doesn't).

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The most perspective-shifting book I’ve read this year:

"When everything changes, change everything"

This book hit different. 

The biggest shift? Realizing that change isn’t just happening to me - it’s happening for me, through me, and as me.

How I used to see change:
• Something to manage
• Something that either worked in my favor or didn’t
• Something I needed to control

But this book showed me that how I experience change has way more to do with my my chosen perspective than the event itself. 

9 core ideas that shifted my perspective:

1. Change your decision to “go it alone”

• We’re not meant to navigate change in isolation
• When I connect with others and a higher power, I find support, meaning, and even enjoyment in change.

2. Change your choice of emotions*
• Fear, anger, frustration - these don’t have to be the default responses
• I get to choose how I feel instead of letting circumstances dictate it

3. Change the story you're telling myself
• Most limitations? made up
• We're making it all up. why not make up something better?

4. Question what I call "truth"
• Many of the “truths” I hold are just deeply ingrained beliefs.
• If it's keeping me stuck, I'll drop it
• Truth should be fluid, evolving, and aligned with growth.

5. Change your idea about change itself
• Change isn’t a threat - it’s purposeful and part of life’s rhythm
• Tied to a larger process of evolution or awakening
• Instead of resisting it, I can flow with it

7. Change your idea about future changes
• Worrying about the future is just trying to control it in advance.
• Instead, I can choose to meet the unknown with curiosity, anticipation and trust

8. Change your idea about yourself
I am not just my roles, achievements, or past experiences.
identity isn’t fixed—it’s fluid and expansive.
who I was isn’t who I have to be.

9. change your way of responding to change
act with intention rather than reaction.
this means creating a new way of being in the moment, aligned with my deepest values.
in that gap between stimulus and response? that’s where my power and freedom is

I’m still integrating these shifts, but already, I feel myself moving through uncertainty with less resistance and more trust.
if you're navigating a big transition, this book might change the way you see everything.
would love to hear—how do you experience change? have you ever had a perspective shift that helped you move through it differently?

Taplio

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