World's No 1 LinkedIn Creator: I'll 10x Your Reach in 92 Minutes
A 92-minute interview where Lara Acosta hands over the full LinkedIn playbook she sells for thousands: SMPV, 4-3-2-1, SLAY, the email launch model, and why she still writes every comment herself.
Posted
3 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
14.1K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
LinkedIn growth comes from one skill aimed at a paying market, posted four times a week across three pillars for two audiences, then monetised through email rather than sales posts.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A consultant, coach, or founder who posts on LinkedIn regularly but is stuck around 2,000 followers and 50 likes with no leads to show for it.
A service business owner who wants inbound clients from content and hates sales calls.
A creator with a decent following who has never built an email list and does not know what to send once people join.
Someone about to launch a course or cohort who wants a concrete week-by-week launch sequence for LinkedIn and email.
A busy executive tempted to outsource comments and posts to a VA or AI tool.
SKIP IF…
You want brand deals and sponsorships rather than clients. The guest argues against the creator route for business owners.
You post on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube only. The formatting and algorithm advice is LinkedIn-specific.
You are looking for growth hacks, engagement pods, or automation. The whole system is built on doing the unscalable parts by hand.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Most people fail on LinkedIn because they are consistent but consistently bad, posting about lifestyle, hobbies, and other people's news instead of one monetisable skill. The fix starts with SMPV: name your skill, the market that pays for it, the burning problem you solve, and the value your content delivers. Then run 4-3-2-1: four posts a week across educate, storytell, and sell, written for both your ideal client and your ideal follower, with one lead magnet post a week that moves readers to email. Write posts with SLAY (story, lesson, action, you), format them to be skimmed, and ask a question instead of asking for likes. Build goodwill for three months, then sell hard for two weeks with a waitlist and up to twenty emails. Keep the comments and the writing yourself, because that is where trust and community actually get built.
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Ninety seconds of the guest's best lines cut together: storytelling beats education, consistently bad, you are not the niche, ideal follower persona. Host frames the episode as the paid playbook given free.
01:32 – 09:15
02 · SMPV: skill, market, problem, value
Why most people are not growing. Pick one skill, name the market that pays, name the burning problem, and let the value be what those three create. Podcasting worked as the live example. Includes a ChatGPT prompt to map your own SMPV in an hour.
09:15 – 13:05
03 · The 4-3-2-1 system
Four posts a week, three pillars (educate, storytell, sell), two audiences (ideal client and ideal follower), one weekly sales post that is really a lead magnet. Why follower likes are social proof that brings clients. 70% of revenue comes from email.
13:05 – 19:45
04 · Educate, storytell, and the email 'one'
Broad, narrow, niche in the first three lines. Storytelling as the highest performing format across four years of algorithm shifts. Splitting educational content for warm and cold buyers. Same topic, different angles and formats. The 'one' is an email list, not sponsorships.
19:45 – 22:35
05 · SLAY: story, lesson, action, you
The guest's post structure: a relatable story, the lesson, one immediately applicable action, and a closing question. Frameworks work because they are rooted in psychology, and immediate applicability gives readers dopamine.
22:35 – 26:20
06 · Formatting for skimmers and the call to engage
The 'TikTokification' of LinkedIn: three seconds to earn the read-more click, F-shape skimming, bullets over paragraphs. Ask a question at the end of every post instead of asking for likes, follows, or reposts.
26:20 – 30:00
07 · Sell once a week and earn the right to sell
Brand equity is diluted by constant selling. Build goodwill for three months, then launch for two weeks. Why lead magnets work even when the content is already public: nobody reads every post.
30:00 – 32:55
08 · Batch ideas, not posts
The guest has never scheduled a post in three years. Plan the week's topics on Sunday, then write on the day so posts carry emotion. Template hooks ('everybody talks about X, nobody talks about Y') make everyone sound the same.
32:55 – 35:45
09 · Writing posts with AI the right way
Draft ideas in a notes app, ask an AI tool for ten hooks, pick one, then voice-note a brain dump of real lived experience and have the tool shape it into a listicle. The hook is 90% of the post.
35:45 – 39:00
10 · Content-founder fit: no winning format
Text and video, once thought the weakest formats, produced the most viral posts in 2026. Story-led and education-only co-founders both grew past 190,000 followers. Try memes, stories, and infographics for three weeks, then go all in on what fits you.
39:00 – 45:40
11 · Metrics vs vibes, AI comments, and doing it yourself
Tracking followers and impressions is a losing game; read the comments instead. AI comment tools break platform rules and fail. The guest writes every post and comment herself, blocks an hour a day for it, and argues you cannot scale quality and community.
45:40 – 49:20
12 · Outsourcing risk and the over-optimisation paradox
Sponsor read for 7X Content, then the host asks about founders who want their LinkedIn managed. A VA leaving the wrong comment can burn reputation built over years. Outsource landing pages, not the thing that compounds.
49:20 – 56:50
13 · 360Brew, your profile, and why the niche is a niche
A leaked LinkedIn paper describes one algorithm ranking everything, so a single-skill headline beats a list of titles. Featured section in three tiers: free, mid, paid. People remember one thing about you. Banner is social proof, not a call to action.
56:50 – 1:02:40
14 · Monetisation: content to email to sales
Income streams: affiliate, influencer deals, businesses, speaking. Weekly newsletter built from last week's best post, tied to current news and 'vibes'. Not every email sells. Long-form email is where vulnerability and trust get built.
1:02:40 – 1:07:35
15 · When to start email and the welcome sequence
The guest waited until 30,000 to 50,000 followers to start a list. Welcome sequence of three to five emails: origin story, case study, educational, then one sales email pointing to a booking link.
1:07:35 – 1:15:30
16 · The two-week launch
Content replaced the sales call by answering objections in advance. Week one: objection-handling stories, case studies, and a waitlist tease. Week two: announce loudly in the first line, daily case studies, testimonials. On email, two to three sends a day until doors close.
1:15:30 – 1:23:30
17 · The Known Club, Literally Academy, and forced execution
Four-week cohort at $3,000 with daily lessons and an ascension to $3,000-a-month mentoring. A $997 evergreen course for the time-rich, cash-poor. Students who skip homework lose access to the Friday call. Start before you are ready.
1:23:30 – 1:27:50
18 · The vertical vehicle and turning down brand deals
Agency, education business, and software all serve one audience at different buying stages and feed each other. Only promote tools you already use. Contracts worth $20,000 to $60,000 were declined to protect brand equity.
1:27:50 – 1:32:10
19 · Clio, the discount code, and outro
Why the guest built her own AI LinkedIn writing tool with her co-founder, a free-month code, where to find her, and a pointer to the Josh Sanders episode.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Most people are not failing on LinkedIn because they are inconsistent. They are consistent and consistently bad.
Content built around your lifestyle or hobbies confuses an audience that does not care about you yet. Build it around one monetisable skill.
Curating what Duolingo did last week borrows someone else's authority and leads nowhere.
Most creators are broke because they sell to broke audiences. Millions of views do not mean millions in the bank.
Post four times a week on LinkedIn, not daily. Written content burns you out faster than selfie videos.
Write for two audiences: the ideal client who buys, and the ideal follower whose likes bring the client to you.
Likes are social proof. People click the video with a million views over the one with a hundred, and LinkedIn works the same way.
The guest earns 70% of revenue from a 50,000-person newsletter, not from 320,000 LinkedIn followers.
Storytelling outperforms educational content because it appeals to people who do not know you yet.
Open a post broad, narrow it to a problem, then land on your niche solution in the first three lines.
Every post ends with a question, not a request for likes or follows. That is how you farm engagement ethically.
Sell once a week at most. Brand equity is diluted every time you pitch.
You earn the right to sell by giving away value people have actually applied for three months.
A lead magnet works even if you already posted everything in it. Nobody reads all your posts.
Batch your ideas on Sunday, but write each post on the day. Batched writing loses emotion and reads like a template.
There is no winning format on LinkedIn. There is a format that fits you, found by testing for three weeks straight.
AI-generated comments are against LinkedIn rules and do not work, because your ideal client reads your comments too.
You can post once or twice a day but comment a hundred times, so the comment section is where personality is built.
One clear skill in your headline tells the single LinkedIn algorithm who to show you to. Five titles confuse it.
Your banner cannot be clicked, so it should carry social proof, not a call to action.
Wait until 30,000 to 50,000 followers before starting an email list, so your message is validated before you spread it.
Content can replace the sales call if it answers every objection before the buyer ever asks.
Nobody knows you are selling something until you say it in the first line of a post.
A launch week means twenty emails, not one. It is simple, but it is not easy.
Takeaway
One skill, four posts, two audiences, one email list.
WHAT TO LEARN
Growth on LinkedIn is a positioning problem first and a content problem second, and the money comes from email, not from the feed.
02SMPV: skill, market, problem, value
Being consistent is not the goal. Consistently posting weak, unfocused content is the most common reason accounts stall.
Build every post around one skill you can talk about often and sell, never around lifestyle, hobbies, or other people's news.
Name the market that can pay and the burning problem you fix. Selling to a broke audience produces views without income.
Paste the four SMPV questions plus two lines about your business into an AI chat and spend one hour mapping the answers.
03The 4-3-2-1 system
Four posts a week is the cap for written content. Daily posting on the same topic burns out both writer and reader.
Write for two people: the client who buys and the follower who likes, because follower engagement is the social proof the client checks.
Replace scarcity sales posts with one weekly lead magnet post that collects emails. Sell the offer in email, not in the feed.
04Educate, storytell, and the email 'one'
Open educational posts broad, narrow to a problem, then land on your niche solution within three lines.
Storytelling reaches people who do not know you yet, which is why it outperforms pure education across algorithm changes.
Vary angles on the same topic: listicle, how-to, carousel, broad story, niche story. Same subject, different formats, different audiences.
05SLAY: story, lesson, action, you
Structure story posts as story, lesson, one action, then a question. Immediate applicability is what makes readers save and share.
Frameworks work because they are rooted in psychology. Understand why a format works before copying it.
06Formatting for skimmers and the call to engage
Readers skim in an F-shape after clicking read-more, so single-line bullets beat paragraphs even when the paragraph is better written.
End posts with a question, never a request for likes or follows. People follow when the value makes it obvious.
07Sell once a week and earn the right to sell
Sell no more than once a week. Every pitch spends brand equity that free value built.
Give away the playbook for three months, then launch for two weeks. Readers expect and welcome the pitch when it comes after real results.
A lead magnet condenses dozens of micro-tips into one document, and it works because nobody reads every post.
08Batch ideas, not posts
Batch the week's topics on Sunday, then write each post on the day so it carries real emotion.
Template hooks like 'everybody says X, nobody says Y' make every account sound identical. Write from a real opinion.
09Writing posts with AI the right way
Use AI for the hook options and the final shaping, but feed it a voice-note brain dump of lived experience so the substance is yours.
The hook is 90% of a post. A great body under a weak hook is never read.
10Content-founder fit: no winning format
There is no universally winning format. Text, video, memes, photos, and infographics have each gone viral for different people.
Test three or four formats for three weeks, then commit to the one you can produce well and repeatedly.
Do not copy a format that depends on a team you do not have.
11Metrics vs vibes, AI comments, and doing it yourself
Follower and impression counts are a losing game. Read the comments to judge whether a post reached the right people.
AI comment tools break platform rules and read as fake to the clients who are watching your comments.
Block an hour a day for posting or engaging. Commenting is where personality and trust are built, because you can comment a hundred times but post only twice.
12Outsourcing risk and the over-optimisation paradox
Outsourcing content and comments to the wrong person risks years of reputation for one bad comment.
Outsource what does not compound, like landing pages. Keep the thing that builds trust in your own hands.
13360Brew, your profile, and why the niche is a niche
One clear skill in the headline tells the algorithm who to show you to. A list of five titles gets you shown to nobody.
Fill the featured section with three links: a free lead magnet, a mid-tier product, and a booking link. Viral posts do not belong there.
Use the banner for social proof such as client logos or one testimonial. It cannot be clicked, so never write 'click here' on it.
Own one niche. People remember one thing about you, and once they trust you for that, they will care about the rest.
14Monetisation: content to email to sales
Build the weekly newsletter from last week's best-performing post, expanded, and tie it to whatever the market is feeling right now.
Not every email needs to sell. Long-form email is where vulnerability and trust are built, and it earns the open on the next sales email.
15When to start email and the welcome sequence
Wait until the message is validated on one platform, roughly 30,000 to 50,000 followers, before starting an email list.
Send a welcome sequence of three to five emails: origin story, case study, education, then one sales email with a booking link.
16The two-week launch
Content can replace sales calls if it answers the common objections before anyone asks.
Spend launch week one on objection-handling stories, case studies, and a waitlist tease, not on selling.
In week two, announce the offer in the first line of the post. A pitch buried at the end of a listicle is never read.
Send two or three emails a day during launch week, rotating education, story, and case study. Twenty emails in a week is the price of an outlier result.
17The Known Club, Literally Academy, and forced execution
Gate access to the next session on completed homework. Forced execution turns a well-liked program into one that produces results.
Serve time-rich, cash-poor buyers with an evergreen course and cash-rich, time-poor buyers with an intense cohort, then ascend cohort graduates to mentoring.
Start before you are ready. The complete playbook is worthless without implementation.
18The vertical vehicle and turning down brand deals
Stack businesses that serve one audience at different buying stages so each product feeds the next.
Only promote tools you already use. A large brand contract is worth less than the trust it would cost.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
SMPV
A positioning framework: Skill, Market, Problem, Value. Name the skill you sell, the market that pays for it, the burning problem it solves, and the value your content should deliver.
4-3-2-1
A weekly LinkedIn content system: four posts a week, three content pillars (educate, storytell, sell), two audiences (ideal client and ideal follower), and one sales or lead magnet post.
ICP
Ideal client persona. The person with the problem, the budget, and the intent to buy your product or service.
IFP
Ideal follower persona. Someone who will never buy from you but likes and shares your content, which pushes it in front of people who will.
SLAY
A post structure: Story, Lesson, Actionable advice, You. Open with a relatable story, extract the lesson, give one thing to do now, and close with a question to the reader.
Lead magnet
A single free resource, such as a PDF, video, or old coaching session, offered in exchange for an email address. It condenses the micro-tips from your posts into one downloadable playbook.
Launch model
Selling in short windows instead of continuously. Give free value for roughly three months, then promote one offer heavily for one to two weeks with a closing date.
Call to engage
Ending a post with a question that invites a reply, instead of a call to action asking for a like, follow, or click.
Broad, narrow, niche
A three-line opening: a hook that appeals to a wide audience, a problem that narrows to your market, then your specific solution.
Content-founder fit
The idea that the best LinkedIn format is the one the founder can produce well and repeatedly, whether text, video, memes, photos, or infographics.
360Brew
A leaked LinkedIn technical paper describing a single AI model that now ranks profiles, posts, and comments together, replacing several separate ranking systems.
Featured section
The pinned links block on a LinkedIn profile. The guest recommends three items: a free lead magnet, a mid-tier product, and a booking link.
Waitlist launch
Teasing an offer a week or more before it opens and collecting sign-ups for a waitlist, then selling to that warmed list when doors open.
Ascension offer
A higher-priced product sold only to customers who already bought a lower tier, such as one-to-one mentoring offered only to cohort graduates.
Vertical vehicle
Stacking several businesses that serve the same audience at different price points, such as an agency, a course, and a software tool, so each one feeds the next.
F-pattern reading
The way people skim a page: across the top, down the left side, then across again lower down. It is why short lines and bullets outperform paragraphs.
“The reason why most people aren't growing right now is because they're consistent. They're consistently bad.”
Contrarian inversion of the most common advice, lands in one breath→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
05:00
“Most people are selling to broke audiences. And that's why most creators are broke. They have millions of views, but they don't have millions in the bank.”
Six words, flips a cliche→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
12:20
“70% of my revenue comes from email. I have 320,000 followers on LinkedIn. I have around 50K on my newsletter. My newsletter is what brings in the revenue.”
Specific numbers that surprise→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
14:42
“Storytelling is the single most powerful format on LinkedIn right now. People say it's educational content. I disagree.”
Clear claim plus disagreement, already used as the cold open→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
27:50
“You earn the right to sell by giving free value that people have applied.”
One-line philosophy of the launch model→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
41:02
“You cannot scale quality and community. You build that.”
35:45 – 49:20steadyFormats, metrics, and engagement by hand
49:20 – 56:50denseAlgorithm and profile optimisation
56:50 – 1:15:30denseEmail, sequences, and launches
1:15:30 – 1:27:50steadyProducts, pricing, and business stack
1:27:50 – 1:32:10sparseTool pitch and outro
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
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metaphoranalogystory
Storytelling is the single most powerful format on LinkedIn right now. People say it's educational content. I disagree.
That's Lara Acosta, the fastest growing creator on LinkedIn. The reason why most people aren't growing right now is because they're consistent. They're consistently bad.
You are the niche. No, you're not. The niche is a niche.
In this episode, she reveals how to 10x your reach on LinkedIn. If you want to blow up on LinkedIn, understand this one key framework, SMPV. You've got skill, the market, the problem, value.
This is gold. This is so good. That burning problem that you fix.
is the thing that your content should be all about. What makes a standout personal brand? People won't remember five things about you.
They'll remember one. Reputation takes years to build. It takes seconds to destroy.
How to create content that drives trust, authority, and sales? A lot of people today are overly optimizing for the algorithm and they are under -optimizing for people. And that's why the hooks sound the same.
This is so underrated and no one's talking about it. The first one is your ideal client persona. Everybody knows this.
The second one is your ideal follower persona. Not for them to buy from you. It's for them to find more people that are going to buy from you.
And so much more. You asked me for the entire playbook. I charged thousands for this.
This is a personal branding masterclass. I really hope you enjoy it. And let's dive in.
How many followers have you got on LinkedIn? 320 ,000. Wow.
You're the fastest growing creator? Apparently. I'd love to use this episode for anyone watching who wants to blow up their personal brand on LinkedIn in 2026.
Are you up for giving us the playbook? Yeah. So this is the most important strategy when it comes to LinkedIn growth.
Before you do anything else, every single person watching this needs to understand this one key framework, and it's called the SMPV. So you've got skill, you've got the market, you've got the problem. and you've got value.
Those four things are the ecosystem that is going to lead you to substantial growth on LinkedIn. The reason why most people aren't growing right now is because they're consistent. They're consistently bad at it.
Consistency doesn't negate quality. So the SMPV framework allows you to understand what you should be creating content about. So we start with a skill.
Skill is exactly what you need to be creating content about. It's not about your lifestyle and it's not about your hobbies and it's not about this and that. And one day I'm posting a selfie and one day I'm posting about business.
That creates confusion in an audience that doesn't care about you yet. Before you think about authentic content, you need to think, how do I get a stranger to care about me, even if they know nothing about me, but these three seconds of my content. So your skill can be for you.
It would be like podcasting, interviewing, whatever. For me, it was copywriting, marketing, LinkedIn goes writing, right? I knew my skill.
I didn't divert from anything else. So that was a skill. So it should be a skill that they can talk about often and then they can monetize.
So then the market. So what market does your skill fit inside of? Because you can talk about marketing all you want.
You can create and curate content about what Duolingo did last week that broke the internet. That's fine. But that's not going to lead you anywhere because it is using someone else's authority.
And it's not going to work for you because everybody's doing that right now. So what is the market? The market is who is going to buy your service or product.
So then you have your skill, you have a market to serve it. Then what is the problem? So the problem that your skill solves, what is it?
You need to know it. Most people don't know what the problems are. Even to this day, I talk to high flying executives.
They don't know what their skill is and what the problem is. They've just been doing it for so long because they've relied. on past clients, on word of mouth referrals, they are no longer clear on what that problem is for someone.
That burning problem that you fix is the thing that your content should be all about. And then we go to the value. So the value is what the scale, the problem, and the market combined create as content.
So what is that? If your scale is, let's say, what's yours? Podcasting.
Podcasting. Do you sell it as a service? It's a brand.
The main reason why most people want to start a podcast is because they want more visibility. They want more clients. They want more authority, right?
Those are the main three things. So instead of saying like, I started a podcast and now I can teach others. You go like, if you want to get more authority fast, this is exactly what you need to do.
Start a podcast on YouTube. You don't need a hundred million views. You just need 10 good ones.
And then you explain why. That. Because you are solving a fundamental core problem to an audience that needs it and can pay for it.
Most people are selling to broke audiences. And that's why most creators are broke. They have millions of views, but they don't have millions in the bank.
So that is the SMPV framework. Very, very useful. Quick one.
Did you know that 85 % of you who watch the channel are not currently subscribed? So if you're enjoying this episode, I'd really appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel. It helps me secure bigger and better guests and keep improving the show for you.
If you break that down one by one, how would I map them out and make sure that I've got them nailed? With your skill, you look at what you're interested in and what you're good at. Fuck that passion stuff.
Don't follow your passion, follow your skill. That's what I always say. You have your skill very nailed down.
You have your podcasting. Okay, so that's my skill. I know how to make a podcast work.
I know how to build one. I know how to market it. Cool.
The market. Who are you marketing to right now? Brands.
Brands that need what? To build authority and trust. So these brands need authority.
So that is a market. Let's say they're brands like, I don't know, Tonic, Gymshark. They want that.
Okay, so we have the market. Big brands. That is very clear in your head, but most people aren't clear on who they even serve.
They want to provide the same service to a large audience from people that are 18 to 20 to 40. It is a different market, same scale, different market. When you focus on a single market, you are going to get outlier returns for your same effort because you have a condensed message that appeals to that person, which then comes from understanding the problem.
So the problem is I don't have time. I don't know how to do it. I don't know where to start.
It's too time consuming. So you're like, I take all of those problems away by having one hour with you every single week, teaching you exactly how to do it or doing it for you, right? Doing it for you, that takes away every single problem because you have the playbook, right?
And the content then is 80 % is educational content. So like why people need a podcast in 2026, why you should start a podcast, who needs the podcast and the returns of it. Why is it good for lead gen?
Why is it good for authority? Why is it good for personal brands? So you tie it back to the main core principles of why someone needs something rather than why you think they need it.
Oh, start a podcast because it's fun. No, start a podcast because it's going to get you more leads. At the end of the day, when it comes to LinkedIn content, and that's why I specialize in it, not Instagram, not YouTube, not TikTok, not Twitter, is because at the end of the day, the people reading are...
C -suites, they're executives, they're people that don't want fame. At the most, they want authority and they want revenue. If you ask any of your clients today, why do you want authority?
Oh, because I want more leads. So ultimately, it goes back to lead gen. Most people don't want to be famous.
Most people don't want to go viral, but they think that they need to in order to get leads, which is a paradox in itself. So the content should be problem -solving, educational, and then story -led, which is... Why should people like Callum?
There's so many people doing podcasts. Why do I go with you? Or because I'm in England or because I've already interviewed Timo Amu, Josh Sanders, all of these people, and I have the authority to teach you how to do it.
That is how you kind of like have compelling storytelling and how you use your authority to kind of work out what the best story and the best angle is. Do you advise people to have that written down so they're really clear on it? The best thing to do for anyone watching this, Go and chat GPT and put the SMPV thing onto it.
Give it two lines of what your business does and what your goal is. And you go, based on this framework, give me in full bullet points each what my skill does, like what the market is, what the problem is, and what value can I provide for an audience on LinkedIn. With that, that simple prompt can actually get you to the result that you've been waiting for, which is going to fix.
your consistently bad efforts of creating content is going to be more specific. So that's what I would do. Don't overthink it.
Just do it for one hour. And then as soon as you realize that your content calendar is going to become more clear. Interesting.
So after I've got that dialed in, can I now plan my content or come up with my content or what do I do next? After that, no, because then you need a structure. So the structure then, you have your skill market problem value.
Okay, cool. That's the problem and it's self -solved. You know how to position yourself now.
You're not just, I create content for podcasts. You are, I get leads through podcasts for B2B businesses. Clear, because you know the problem, you know the market, you know the value.
After that, if you want to blow up on LinkedIn, the main thing that you need to do is understand the 4 -3 -2 -1 framework. Four pieces of content every single week. Three content pillars, two audiences, and one single sales.
topic every single week. LinkedIn has an over -demand of people looking at you, but it has an oversupply, undersupply of people creating content. You are going to get exhausted by trying to write every single day about the same thing.
I've seen it so many times and that's why I cap it at four because written content is essentially slightly different than video content. You can churn out 10, you know, selfie style videos and that's fine. With written content, you have to write, you have to learn, you have to be concise.
So four is my cap. Then three content pillars. So educate, storytell, and sell.
So those are your three content pillars. And then the two is for the two types of audiences you're going to serve. And this is so underrated and no one's talking about it.
The first one is your ideal client persona. Everybody knows this. The second one is your ideal follower persona.
The person that is going to get you to your ideal audience. Most people on LinkedIn specifically are over -optimizing for their ICP. And that's why the hooks sound the same.
If you're a business owner and you're looking for lead gen, here's... That's boring. That's overdone.
It doesn't work. But if you create content for both audiences, the person that is aspiring to be like you or aspiring to support you because they liked your story, then when you post a post about the educational very niche about podcasting, they're going to support you. And that is going to accumulate into likes.
Likes are a metric. Likes and comments. That is a single metric that people are looking at to validate whether your content is good, right?
That's why on YouTube is the same. When you go on YouTube and you open your feed, what do you see? You see six videos.
You are more likely to click on the one that has 1 million views than the one that has 100. It is the same psychology applied onto LinkedIn, but no one is talking about this because it is so hard to explain. So the reason why you need your ideal follower to support you is not for them to buy from you, it's for them to find more people that are going to buy from you, essentially.
So that's the volume game. And then your ideal client persona. And the one is how you monetize your content.
You do a lead magnet. You don't do a shabby sales post that is like, oh, I just opened three more spots for my coaching business running out fast. It doesn't work.
That FOMO and scarcity doesn't work because it's been overplayed. So what you do is you create a valuable lead magnet. Let's say the 10 things that you need to start a podcast in 2026.
That's your lead back then. You collect the emails. You then promote your offer behind the scenes on email.
70 % of my revenue comes from email. So I know this back and forth because I've proven it works. I have 320 ,000 followers on LinkedIn.
I have around 50K on my newsletter. My newsletter is what brings in the revenue. My personal brand is what allows people to flow into that single new stream of an audience.
So we're simply funneling people that are more interested, high intent, high purchasing power, and then they want to be sold to because I've already warmed them up with my content that then selling comes easier. If we break down each of them one by one, the four, what's that? The four P's of content that you need to create every single day.
So we need the four and the three. So the three content pillars educate, storytell, and sell. So let's say you're split.
You want to be focused on becoming an authority in the podcasting space, okay? So that is your goal. There are different goals.
You either want more authority, you want more leads, or you want both. Okay? So let's say you want more authority.
So we're going to split it into 80 and 20. So let's say two or three of those posts a week are going to be educational only. But education in the format where you are providing broad, narrow, niche value.
The broad, narrow, niche strategy is what is going to allow you to have exponential returns on your content and actually go viral and get more reach. So you start with a broad hook. The single reason why most entrepreneurs are broke isn't because of not creating any content.
It's because they don't know how to do it well. Here's exactly why podcasting is the best source of authority in 2026. That.
Broad, narrow, niche. In the first three lines. We went broad with a hook so we can appeal to more people.
We went narrow with a problem so we kind of like talk about business owners. And then we go niche into podcasting. That is your niche.
But essentially what we're doing here is that we are appealing to a broad audience within a niche, like the top of the market of that niche. And then we're solving a problem. We're introducing them to our solution.
And then we can funnel them onto that because people don't realize that the majority of people scrolling on LinkedIn today aren't looking for you. They aren't looking to buy from you and they don't know you or care. So we get them to care by solving a broad problem that they know that they have and then giving our niche solution.
by providing the value that we know we have. So that's how you do the educational content. And then storytelling.
Storytelling is the single most powerful format on LinkedIn right now. People say it's educational content. I disagree.
I've seen many reports. I've seen the algorithm stuff. Storytelling by far is my highest performing format throughout my entire four years of creating content.
I've seen so many algorithm shifts. Storytelling will always win. Why?
It's broad. It appeals to the majority of people that don't know you or care about you. It's the best way to introduce yourself to an audience that has no idea of who you are.
So you introduce yourself by saying, in 2021, I was broke. I had no business and I had no luck. But then by 2026, I'm interviewing the top founders in the UK.
I never thought that this would happen. So let me tell you how. That is a story.
You start with something that feels... somewhat vulnerable that also appeals to a broad market beyond your niche. And then you introduce yourself into the picture because most people don't trust people that they don't like.
So you need to get them to like you first through storytelling. What comes next? The two is for your ICP and your IFB.
So the storytelling content is mostly for your IFB. So it's the people that are going to get inspired by your work. They're going to start liking you.
And then... The ICP content is the educational content. So how are we educating these people in many different branches, in different formats, so we can appeal to them in different angles?
Because again, we have warm buyers that know that they have a problem, that they know that they want to start a podcast, and we have cold buyers that they know they have a problem, but they don't know that they need a podcast. So that's what we're appealing to as well. So your educational content should be split into two.
Warm, people that know the problem, and people that don't know the problem and we need to introduce it to them. How would I work out those two audiences? So I know who the niche audience is.
That would be like a chief marketing officer at a big brand. But the broader audience, who would that be? It's mostly people, like in general.
If you see most big creators, they're appealing to everyone. Alex Ramosi, for example, if he talks about his relationship with Layla, he talks about his experience with burnout, his experience with mindset, that appeals to every single person on the platform at all times. So it is everyone and then no one at the same time.
So the everyone is the person that wants to get inspired by you through a productivity tip that is meant to be also a business tip. So you start with the best mindset tip that I have to become a better person, right? Start a business and then you introduce yourself as a business owner.
That to me is important. I've proven it works. I've proven it with my clients it works because it introduces you to a new audience.
And I'm repeating it so much because it's important. Most people are stuck in this hamster wheel of 2 ,000 followers and 100 likes and 50 likes, etc. They're not escaping it because they're talking about the same thing every single time in the same way.
You need to find ways to innovate the same topic with different angles. So the angle can be educational. The angle could be a storytelling.
The educational angle could be a listicle, a how -to, a carousel, an infographic. Same topic, different formats, different audiences that appeal to it, right? Storytelling, a broad storytelling post about you being broke that appeals to a broad audience.
A storytelling post about you starting a podcast and that being your business that appeals to a niche audience. But then you have the broad post that appeal to the masses. That's the one that goes viral.
Then the other one may go viral in your niche. That's also important. So again, many ways to appeal to the same person in different formats.
And is that all of them covered, boxed off now? And then we have the one. The one, okay.
The one is starting an email list. That is the sales mechanism that I use every single time. So most people think that when you build a personal brand, you just make money.
Like you post and makes money. You can only do that if you're relying on sponsorships by brands. That's the only way.
But most people can't get that because brands will only pay if you have a large following or a very engaged following. That's not most business owners. That's not most creators.
You can aspire to get that, but that's not the only way to monetize. The second and easiest way to monetize is by providing so much free value through your content and then providing a single resource of more value to them. So they give you their email and then people buy from email.
I thought emails were dead, but they're not. It is the most profitable. stream of income that I have right now like email marketing and then when you do that so content to lead magnet lead magnet to email email to promotion sequence this is gold this is so good I'm loving it I'm loving it so we'll get into your funnel and your email what do I do now do I start posting do I start making content yeah so you have your how many days you post how what topics or formats you need to use then the audiences that you need to appeal and the one so If you're looking for a simple framework to get started, you're like, okay, Laura, I have all of this information.
Like now, how the hell do I write a post? I use this late framework. So this late framework I invented.
And the way it came about was because I wanted to tell stories in an educational way. So my main theory was, I see that storytelling works. So how can I get the most revenue from this single story?
I turn it into a lesson. I am being brought in the story because I'm talking about something that is common or something that appeals to a large audience. Then how do I funnel them into wanting to work with me or wanting to learn from me?
I give a lesson and then I give actionable advice and then I end up with a you. So that's a story lesson, actionable piece of advice and a you. That is the single best storytelling format I can give you today.
Quick one. If you're enjoying this episode with Lara and want to implement some of her frameworks, I'm going to put all of them. in my next newsletter.
You can get a copy completely for free at the link in the description. So if you want to implement some of the things that Lara has talked about, get a copy for free at the link in the description. Let's say we want to write a story.
I just filmed a podcast with Lara Costa. She broke down exactly how to build a $2 million business on LinkedIn. She spoke about the reason why the algorithm is a lie.
She broke down the most compelling storytelling format on LinkedIn. And then you give all the bullet points. Bullet points is important.
And I'll get into that in a second. And then that's a lesson. And then actionable advice.
If you want to implement this, just do this one thing. Post four times a week. Have three content pillars.
Use two wordings and then have a sales post every single week. Now, that is the actionable advice. People can literally take that and implement it immediately.
Immediate applicability of your post is the most important thing because it gives people dopamine. We're thinking about psychology here. Most content creators just talk about content like it's just frameworks.
But in reality, the frameworks are rooted in psychology. But people are just regurgitating the frameworks because they work, but they don't understand why they work. When you understand that you're tapping into core psychology of people and the reason why people even scroll on social media.
and what people save and what people comment. You understand how to actually hack the game through your content. And at the end, the why is the you.
So how do we pass the button to people to comment on their content? We ask them a question. We let them engage with our content because most people reading, they read the post.
They're like, oh, this is good. Next. How do we get them engaged?
We ask them a question. What person would you like on the podcast next? What?
thing would you like to learn next? And then people will reply like, if you simply ask, you will get, but people don't ask enough. So that's the slave framework.
The reason why the lesson and the actionable piece of advice is important. When you look at LinkedIn content, what are you seeing? You're either seeing paragraphs or you're seeing single lines.
The reason why this happens. Yes, the bullet points. The bullet points.
Yeah, what's going on there? Yeah. The reason why this happens in theory is, I call it the ticktoffication of LinkedIn, where basically, You understand that you only have three seconds to make an impression.
It is easy to do it on video because you have different assets. You have a visual hook, you have a verbal hook, you have the captions, right? On LinkedIn, we don't have that.
You have the text, you have the photo. So how do we format our content to almost be as skimmable and bingeable as video content that is well -made? Well, we use visual formatting.
Visual formatting is usually from in an F -shape. That's how people read landing pages, in an F -shape. There's like a psychological study of how people read pages and they just skim them.
So the hook is the most important thing because they're going to read the whole thing. Then after they open to read more, because on LinkedIn, you click on read more and then they skim read it. And that's why paragraphs don't work anymore because it's a lot of information overload.
A person that's scrolling on LinkedIn, they're still doing it to entertain themselves, but they want to learn something. So you make it easy for them to learn. You make it vengeful and immediately applicable.
So if I go, This is the best way to grow on LinkedIn in 2026. And I give them three paragraphs that are too overwhelming to read.
They're going to skip. That's it. But if I give them a slightly formatted version of that paragraph that is in single bullet points that they can literally read and understand fast, then the point is made.
They're going to save it, share it, and comment it. Thank you so much. And ideally, they will implement it as soon as they can.
And then when they do, they're going to come back. They're going to tell their friends. They're going to be like, that is the best content strategist in the planet.
Follow that person. So we are optimizing for all angles. We're optimizing for likes.
We're optimizing for virality. We're optimizing for skimmability. And we're also optimizing for reachers and people talking about us.
When you solve a problem fast for someone, they're going to come and say thank you. And they're going to pay you back with a like, with a follow, and by kind of like talking about you. So you need to understand that the format that you use on LinkedIn is important.
It's not just there because people are using it. It's there because, again, it's backed in psychology. How are people reading today?
They're skimming. not fully reading things. They may skim once and they read the whole thing again, but they skim first to validate if the content is what they need.
And then once they validate that, they'll read the whole thing. Is there like a ranking of what's the most important thing to encourage? Like like, comment, repost.
Are there any of those that we should be optimizing for? All of them. All of them.
All of them at all times. And do you CTA for one of them at a time? I do call to engage rather than call to action.
I only do the call to action when it comes to a sales post, which is my one post a week. So that's a lead magnet. I do calls to engage for most of them so I can get that engagement back and I can get that optimal result of like a viral post.
That's how you engagement farm in an ethical way. You're not joining any pods. You're not like paying for distribution.
You are simply getting the user to comment on that answer. That's it. So that would be like asking them to like it or comment?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The call to engage is the question. Ah, the question.
The question. What podcast guest would you like next? If you ask someone to like and comment, they're not going to do it.
Or repost. If you say, follow me for more tips, they don't care. They will follow you if they want to follow you.
So make them follow you by giving so much free value that anyone else doesn't matter. With the sales post, do you do that once a week because of fatigue? Yes.
So I don't want to oversell my content. The reason why we're building personal brands is to build brand equity. Brand equity is then diluted if you are consistently selling.
That's why we funnel to email because an email is easy to sell and people are expecting to be sold to, or at least they're more receptive to it. When you're building brand equity, your point is how much value can I get for free? And then you are getting the returns.
buy and more free value through a lead magnet. And then you're funneling those people onto your email list so you can sell them and convert them. However, I run my business in a launch model, which means that I build so much free will over time, over three months, let's say, that during two weeks, I'm going to sell straight to them.
I can benefit from that and I don't have any fatigue or I feel cringe or I feel overly salesy because I've given them free value for whole three months. That when I do sell, they actually want me to. They are expecting me to because they want to work with me.
And this is what most people get wrong. They try and sell consistently because they believe that that is the way. No.
The way is you build goodwill for three months. You provide so much free value. You give the whole playbook away in different formats, in different styles, in different ways.
That at some point, when you decide to launch something or when you have an offer that you want to promote, then you have earned the right to promote yourself rather than expecting people to buy. That is a problem.
We become so selfish and so almost like we deserve it from day one. No, you earn the right to sell by giving free value that people have applied. They've already gotten results from it.
And they're like, okay, what's next? I've got the free value I implemented. I go from zero to one.
I want to get from one to 10 now. Can you help me? You're like, fuck yeah.
And with those... lead magnet posts, how would they differ from the other posts? Well, a lead magnet is basically a single problem turned into a large document, a large video, a large podcast.
A lead magnet can be a podcast. A lead magnet can be a loom video. A lead magnet can be an old coaching session that you're now able to give for free.
That is the lead magnet. It doesn't have to be anything that differs from your content. It's just in one single resource.
People love free resources. People love free stuff. So why not give it to them in a single format?
Because if you're like, oh, but I already said everything that would go into that lead magnet. Do you think that people read every single one of your posts? No, no, that is weird for us to assume that every single person reads every single one of our posts.
Some people don't even see my content. So then when I come up, he's like, here's the entire playbook to go from on LinkedIn from A to Z, download it here for free. They would rather that than go back to my post and read every single micro tip that I've given because content is broken down into micro tips.
It's not the whole playbook. Even if you try and do an entire strategy breakdown, you are missing a lot of nuance within every single step, right? Especially if you're formatting for virality, like I said, with an if shape.
You are formatting it in steps. So like step number one, get the equipment. Step number two, book the studio.
Step number three, prepare. Well, all these like, there's like a micro within the tip, there's a tip inside or like there's a full educational lesson that's not going to fit in your content. That's going to fit in the lead magnet that they're able to download.
and then reading their time when they're bored in the beach and they're scrolling on an email and they're like, oh, I've got this resource I want to read on Saturday after I drop my kids at home. So that is why lead magnets are so important and also so useful because it's all the information that you provided condensed into one document.
How do I plan my content then and come up with ideas? Would I say, look, I'm going to do three a week and I'm going to write them in a batch on Monday? Yeah.
I mean, what would you do? I don't like generalizing this because it's really hard for someone to take advice and be like, I'm going to batch because not everybody likes that. I haven't scheduled a single post of mine over three years.
So I can't say I batch my content and I can't also recommend it. I batched ideas. So I have a strategy.
So I have my four, three, two, one. Okay. So I know I have to post four times a week.
Then I have my three content pillars. Then I know my SMPB. So I know the problems in the market that I'm solving.
So I have all of that. There I go. Okay.
So Monday, I educate and I'm going to educate on LinkedIn advice. Tuesday, I storytell. I'm going to tell people that I went on this podcast.
Wednesday, I educate again and I'm going to break down an email funnel sequence that actually worked. Then Thursday, I'm going to storytell again or I'm going to educate again on why the algorithm isn't that important to care about. Everything, again, all of those three things are under the umbrella of my skill.
and the problem that I fixed. None of them don't fit that SMPB framework. And that's why I started with that because it's so important.
Otherwise, you're going to start creating your content. You're going to start batching it. You're going to start talking about your holiday in Ibiza with your friends.
Then a tip on business. Then a sales post. And then another sales post because the other one didn't work.
You have the formats. You have the content. Now it's up to you what you want to divide it into.
So batch the ideas. So let's say on a Sunday you sit down, okay, on Monday I'm going to do this, Tuesday I'm going to do this. Then on the day off, you write what feels right.
The reason why I hate batching content is because it doesn't feel real. Because you're literally batching content. You are writing, that's it.
Writing, that's it. It doesn't feel like anything. It doesn't have emotion because you're in that batching mechanism zone.
The only people that can afford to do that are the people that have been doing this for a while. Because they're good at it, they understand the frameworks, the loops, the things I have to talk about. They have consistently done it for so many years or so many months that they understand how to do it well without losing that authentic value that is lost in the batching process.
I've seen it so many times. It's the same hook, the same framework. It looks very rigid.
And that's why people don't read content because it's the same. I don't know if you've seen this, that is so overly done. Everybody talks about X, but nobody talks about Y.
Or 99 % of people have this problem, but in reality, it's just the same thing all over again. And then if you're in that mindset of like template format, template format, template format, your content is going to be the same as everyone else's. So would you write, where would you create your posts?
Would you draft them literally on LinkedIn or some in Google or? Google Docs? Yeah, Notion, I don't know.
I write everywhere. So it just depends on the day. But I usually use AI to write as well.
So I'll go, I have my ideas. I'll draft them on a notes app because I'm always on the go. And I'll go onto Clio, which is my B2B SaaS app, which is an AI content writer.
So I'll go like, I have this idea. I want to educate on this topic today and give me 10 hooks for this. And then within that, I reduce the friction of me thinking about a hook.
That's where most people get stuck in the hook pod. And that's also 90 % of the most important part of your post. Otherwise, if the hook isn't good, people are not going to read the rest.
Even if it's the best piece of content, people are not going to care because the hook wasn't good enough. So I go onto Clio or use Chachapiti, whatever anyone wants, and then give me 10 hook ideas. What I like about Clio is that it has all the pre -validated hooks that you've saved, that we've seen, that I have written, and then it creates you the best content for you.
automatically. So we have the hook and then we have the meet. So then, okay.
So I like the hook number five that Clio gave me. Let's say it's like, this is the unbeatable framework to sell on LinkedIn. That's the hook.
So I've got it. Then I'm like, okay, what is it? What is this unbeatable framework that I'm going to talk about?
So then I think about it. Okay. My framework is email.
So content to email. So then I'll voice note Clio or charge a video, any AI. And then I go and tell it my brain dump.
I brain dump the information. So it's authentic and actually useful because people just break down things and they're like, okay, step number one, start an email list. No, no.
Step number one is find the problem. Step number two is this. And that's how I did it.
And then I go, okay, can you break this down into like a listicle of five steps? Then it'll condense it for me. Then it'll write the entire post for me.
That's how I literally write my content every single time. That's why it never fails because it's following a framework, but it's also following psychology. And it's also using real theory that I use every single day.
Not something that ChatGPT can come out and say. That's a differentiator. Your real lived experience, not what we think people need to hear, but what we know works.
Would you have a format for each post that you're trying to work towards? So when I look at yours, there's summer photos, summer videos. Some people do cheat sheets, comparisons.
How do you think about that? How important is that on LinkedIn? The format?
Yeah. And it's one like more powerful than others. No, I disagree.
Like I completely disagree with that. Whoever says that there is a better style doesn't understand the platform. I had this theory where I believed that text only content and video content were the worst formats to post on LinkedIn.
Then in 2026, as the algorithm shifted, the most viral posts that I saw were text and video. It is not about the format. It is about the audience.
And this is what I called content founder fit. What content fits you? Not everyone else.
The best format is what fits you. So if you have really good advice and it can be distilled into a text post, that is fine. That's what works for you.
If you are really good on video and you understand the fundamentals of video and how to make it work on LinkedIn, then that is for you. If you are really good at storytelling, you have a lot of photos. That is for you.
If you don't have any photos and you'd rather hire an infographic designer to do your infographics, that is for you. The reality is that there is no one winning format. There is a winning format that works for you.
And you need to try them all to understand which one works. So I'd be so wrong to advise anyone to be like, yeah, video content is going to work and then don't do text content because I've been proven wrong so many times. And this is my Lyft experience.
I coach over 3 ,000 people in my communities and academies and coaching programs. And I've seen so many... deviations of the standard.
The standard used to be educational content with an infographic or storytelling content with a photo. That's what I believed. But then my clients went viral because they posted a single meme.
And that's what's getting them leads. So it depends on the founder and depends on the content and depends on the style. I would advise anyone to try all of those styles.
So like try a meme, try a story, try an infographic and see what works for you and what's actually attainable for you to do. Because people will start doing infographics because they saw Chris Donnelly doing it. And he's amazing at it, right?
But he also has a big team. And a subsection of that is a designer. It's a team.
Most people don't have that. So what do you have that you can actually produce on a large scale? Okay, you can find memes really easily.
You actually enjoy making memes or you have loads of pictures because you do a lot of conferences. Okay, use that as your advantage and don't try and copy someone else because by doing that, you're going to fail. Because what they are doing works for them because they've proven that it works for them because they've tried and tested all the things and they realized, okay, this is my angle.
This is how it works. For example, me and my co -founder, Jake Wood, We have severely different writing styles.
I am mostly story -led and he's educational only. He will never really try to do a story. It gives him the ick.
He hates talking about himself. Both work. We're both growing.
He has over 190 ,000 followers. I have 300 ,000 followers. It's not the format.
It is the person. What fits him doesn't fit me. And we discovered that when he tries to storytelling doesn't work because he doesn't like storytelling.
So if I force someone to be like, tell my stories, be more authentic, it's not going to work if you don't want to do it, if you don't have the stories and if you don't want to talk about yourself. You can be education led or you can be story led or you can try and do both. But it is up to you to find that out and to find what works through repetition and iteration.
The only thing that can prove what format is the winning format for you is testing for three weeks straight. Do an infographic on one thing. Maybe you liked it.
Maybe you found a Claude Chagibiti way of doing that. That's fine. Maybe you storytell and those stories are what's compelling to your audience.
Okay. Then we're finding different ways of testing and iterating the same thing. And then after you find that winning format, then you go all in.
That's what I did. That's what Jake did. That's what Chris is doing.
That's what Josh is doing. So all of these big creators, we started by trialing different things until we found something that worked and that worked for us. So I've taken all this advice on board.
I've posted like crazy for 30 days. How do you track metrics? Do you track weekly, monthly?
Do you track them at all? Like how do you find out what's working? What do you recommend people do?
I just look at how much engagement I'm getting. I think the metric game is such a losing game for anyone. Like I see people tracking how many followers they're getting every single week.
I see how many people they're looking at impressions. I think it's a waste of time, in my opinion, because you're going to get stuck in this metric game. You're following just the data, but you're not following the vibes.
And I think the vibes are also important. What is a vibe? What are the comments that people are leaving?
You can have a post with a thousand likes and 50 comments and all of them are AI generated, but you can have a post with a thousand likes and 50 comments and they're all like very valuable and from the heart. The conversations that you start with your posts are more important than the metric of like, this post got 50 likes or 50 comments.
It's more important to be like, this got 50 comments from really relevant people telling me why this post really matters to them rather than 50 AI comments telling me great post emoji. What is going on with the AI comments, by the way? So on LinkedIn, it is a rule that you have to engage.
Otherwise you won't get seen. Like that is just like law of averages. The more exposure you give yourself by being on people's posts, the more options you get to be seen.
You know, very busy founders, very busy people that don't have time to engage. We're like, well, how can I automate this? Like a typical, business owner would be, how do I scale myself out of this?
How do I do this? There came tools that, by the way, are not allowed on the platform of commenting. So like AI comments.
So that's like people pay a tool or like a service where they leave AI generated comments and it actually doesn't work. But these founders don't know because founders that are high executives at a C -suite level, et cetera, they don't know the difference because they're not in the market. They're not observing the type of comments that they should be leaving.
So they're like, oh, I'm going to outsource this and it's going to give me the same return. No. You cannot scale quality and community.
You build that. That's interesting because my natural question would be for you, what do you do? Do you have a team that helps you?
I mean, you've got 300 ,000 people following you. Does someone manage the account? Does someone help you with comments?
Does someone help you write? No. No?
I write all the content myself. I do all the comments myself. I do all the lead managers myself.
Like it is all me. My team helps me with, building the funnel, so the landing page, etc.
But everything is me. Some things are not worth scaling. Everybody's trying to scale themselves out of their business and then they're complaining why they're not building a community because you scaled yourself out of it.
How are you going to expect for people to care about you if you don't care about them? You don't know them. You haven't spoken to them once.
So then where is that community element built? Nowhere. People say that they want a cult community, but they're not doing what that cult leader would do, which is lead with direction, with emotion.
So I do all the comments myself. At the start, I used to comment eight to 12 hours a day because I didn't have anything to do. So that's because I was a student and I didn't have anything else.
Today, I spend like two, four hours a day still commenting, doing every single one of my comments that I can, as long as I can, because that builds trust, that builds community. That single comment that I left on someone's post will give me a lead because they saw me. They saw me giving relevant advice.
They liked me. They didn't like my VA in Pakistan writing great comments, great posts, thanks for sharing emoji or like my AI bot that engaged for me a hundred times. My ideal client is looking at my comments too.
If I write a comment on the Stephen Bartlett's post and I'm like, I love the Stephen, I actually burnt out in early 2023 and the best thing that I could do. was actually focused on my sleep routine and do this and do that. A VA doesn't know that.
AI generated comment doesn't know that. I know that. Then a client or someone watching, they're like, I actually really like this girl.
I like her content already, but now she's like more human. The reason why commenting is so important to me is because content in general is a lot of education. It's a lot of like straightforward value and a lot of personalities lost.
You build that personality in the comment section. The comment section is so important. If you go on TikTok, for example, or YouTube, where do you go and validate whether the video is good?
The comment section. If you go on a YouTube video, where do you go to validate your opinion that you already created about this person? The comment section.
If you take control of the comment section yourself, you're actually going to get, again, a lot of returns because you have control and you're being seen more times in a better way. Positioning is all about where you're being seen and how. It's not about how much, but how.
It's better to do less to get more than to do more and get less. If you see me doing an AI comment, you're going to be like, oh, lame. But if you see me doing a comment that's long and it's heartfelt to someone that, let's say, they just retired their parents, I'm like, that's my goal.
You're going to remember that more than the last post I wrote because that's going to stick with you more. And I can't really do that in the content because I'm trying to be education -led in the storytelling posts that I do. You'll see fragments of it.
But the comment section gives you an opportunity to comment on things that you aren't commenting on your content. So you can only post once on LinkedIn, maybe twice. You can comment a hundred times.
That is giving you a lot more visibility than just posting twice a day, commenting three times and hoping something works. So do you recommend doing that every day? Replying to a load of comments or just every week, yeah?
Every day. The days that I don't post, I comment. So I have an hour blocked on my calendar and that is either for posting or for engaging.
If I don't post on a Tuesday, I'm going to engage for that hour. That's blocked on my calendar. It's the most important thing.
Even four years in, I still do that. I will always do that because it's important. I've proven this theory because I've taken so many business coaching sessions.
I've had mentors. I have people that tell me to scare myself out of business. I've read the books, all of these things.
Like, you know, you can automate, systematize, outsource, etc. The times that I tried to do that, I saw my engagement drop. I saw my visibility drop.
I saw the way people saw me drop. Everything drops when I stop doing that myself. I'm not saying that everybody should do that.
But if you have the chance, you should do it. Because positioning and authority is also built there. And it's very important.
But people want to outsource it because it is a waste of time because there's no ROI. But then what they're doing today, there's also negative ROI. They're hiring all these people, they're paying for all these tools, they're not seeing the returns that they want to see.
So do the thing that doesn't scale in order to scale your business. I'm really excited to say that this episode is produced by 7X Content, my full service podcast agency. We work with incredible brands and creators on top 1 % podcasts.
So if you're thinking of starting a podcast in 2026, we'd love to hear from you. You can check us out at 7xcontent .com or apply to work with us at the link in the description. Have you found any optimal way of working there?
Because this is the number one thing that I see with people who are founders. There's a founder who's been on this podcast, Ben Branson. He's incredibly successful.
And he's like, I need someone to manage my LinkedIn and my Instagram. Callum, please help me. And I always feel a little bit like there are these people like Josh.
Sanders out there who's the person behind Chris Donnelly, or there's like a Grace Andrews who's behind Stephen Bartlett. But it is also true that these people are probably always more involved, the ones who are actually winning. Like we had Rachel Harris on the podcast and she's the same where she's like, actually, I just do it all myself.
And I've got an assistant who helps me. Have you found anything that works? It depends on the founder.
It depends on how much time you have. It depends how involved you want to be. End of day, like your personal brand is an asset and you need to take care of it.
If you outsource it to the wrong person, the wrong thing can happen. I've seen it happen with many founders where they hire a VA and then they leave comments that shouldn't be there. They comment on things that the founder wouldn't.
And so you are risking this brand equity that you're so much trying to build and you're paying so much money for to risk it for one thing happening and then ruining it all. Reputation takes years to build. It takes seconds to destroy.
So it is important to take care of that because otherwise what's all this effort done for? For you to outsource the wrong person and do the wrong thing. I love what Josh does because Josh is incredibly good at what he does because he was involved.
He cares about Chris. He's not just there for the paycheck. He's there for the journey.
He's there for the vision. Like Chris's team is insane because he has this mission that people want to follow. But we can't say that about all employees.
If you have a team that is highly invested in your success, then sure, you can outsource it. But if you don't have it yet, which is probably most people watching this, then I would rather you take the hit, do it yourself for an hour a day minimum, and then see the outlasting returns, which is in authority, community, code building, all of these things.
Otherwise, what is the point? Yeah, makes sense and resonates. I've definitely outsourced it.
various times and then seeing all the engagement tanks. So what do you do now? Trying to have the right balance between help and doing it myself.
But it tends to vary depending on what's going on in the business and how operationally involved I am. And also if we're at that stage where we've got a delivery problem or a sales problem. We are stuck in this over -optimization.
kind of like paradox where we must optimize every single part of our business to scale ourselves out of it. But the moment we try to over -optimize, we actually fail still because we are over -indexing on the wrong things. If you over -index on, let's say, I want to scale myself out of social media content, what you're going to get is content that doesn't resonate, that doesn't feel like you, that feels a little bit cringe and it doesn't relate and it doesn't resonate.
So instead, how can you outsource the other things? that are easier to outsource. So let's say, I don't know, building a landing page.
You and I can't do that. We can. We'd rather not.
So I'd rather outsource that and put my time and effort on something that I know compounds over time instead of like this thing that compounds over time that won't work and the compounding is irrelevant. In terms of LinkedIn, what else is important? Is the profile important?
Is there anything else that we've not covered? There is this very... controversial article that came out around this time last year.
It's called 360 Brew. Eight pages, super long, got removed. It was left to an archive that people found.
And I found that as well. And it indicates where the LinkedIn algorithm is going right now and why we're seeing so many dips in engagement. I read the whole thing.
I didn't get it. It was all technical advice and basically all the technology behind the LinkedIn algorithm. But the one thing that I do agree on and I can actually understand.
was the way that the algorithm is ranking our pages today. From 2021 to 2025, LinkedIn had many little algorithms that were ranking your posts in a different way, then your profile in a different way, your comments in a different way. They all had different ranking systems on how your content was perceived or like pushed out to the comments, what they were being pushed out.
Today with AI and 360brew, LinkedIn has over -optimized their kind of like algorithm to just rely on a single algorithm that is ranking everything all at once. So what does this mean?
Today, your profile is the most important thing for you. Fortunately for some, and unfortunately for others, because if you have a single topic of expertise, which is why I started with a skill, when you have a domain expertise that is singular, it is easier for the algorithm to understand who you are. But if you have many different skill sets in all in one page, the algorithm doesn't know where to put you and who to send you to.
So if you have Founder of digital marketing agency, girl dad, speaker coach, fitness pro, Ironman 3X. What is the algorithm going to do?
It gets confused. When you give the algorithm a single source of like SEO expert helping B2B businesses scale through blogs and articles using AI and X, Y, and Z, speaker and author. the algorithm knows who to send you to.
People that have marked an interest in SEO, in building, in branding, whatever it is. And so when you're indicating that in your headline and also your about section and also your feature section and your content, the algorithm has a better image of who you are because we're appealing to an algorithm. Your headline is the most important thing.
So like in eight words, how can you distill what you do without saying that you're a founder of X? Most people say founder of... Literally Academy.
No one knows what Literally Academy is. Not even I forget that it's called Literally Academy. It's cool.
It's a program. So unless you're Stephen Bartlett and you're CEO of Social Chain, that's fine because it's Stephen Bartlett. We all know Social Chain.
If you are Timo Amu, ex -Fanbytes, we all know what Fanbytes was. If you don't have that, which is the authority pre -built, then you're better off saying the problem that your business solves. And we're going back to the SMPV again.
So the problem. What is the problem? I help business owners solve this crucial problem with my content, right?
And so in your feature section, you should also have ways to find you. If you don't have an optimized feature section, you are wasting a lot of attention and money. Like you're losing, you're missing out on money here.
So your feature section should be optimized for people to go onto your landing page through a lead magnet, pay you for your coaching or your service and book. a time to actually talk about your service. So you can divide it in three.
Free, medium tier, and then paid. So free is a lead magnet, medium tier is a coaching, and then paid is like book a call with us if you want to start working with us, whatever. So those are the three.
And then your content also is a significant part of how the algorithm is ranking you. Again, back to the full three, two, one. That's why we need the content pillars.
That's why we need the scale and the problem. Because if you're creating content about your family, then you're educating and then you're giving tips. The algorithm, again, gets confused.
But it's not just about the algorithm. It's also about people. A lot of people today are overly optimizing for the algorithm and they are under -optimizing for people.
At the end of the day, the transaction is made people by people, not machine to machine. The way that the algorithm is working is also how the human brain actually works, which is we see something, we box you into something. I see you with a podcast mic.
I think that you're a podcaster or I think that you're like an authority. I boxed you into that already within three seconds. So in your content, it should be the same.
So how do we psychologically advance? Like how do we use psychology to push or message your product or brand forward by giving people cues to put us into boxes? In order to become authorities in that singular niche.
And hence why the singular niche is the most important thing. Because people won't remember five things about you. They'll remember one.
And the most important thing is your skill, what you do, what your business is. If you want to be remembered for everything, you're going to fail. You're playing a losing game.
I do not believe on this concept of you are the niche. No, you're not. The niche is a niche.
You are part of that niche. You can be the best at that niche. And then people will care about everything else that you do.
Go back to your niche. Talk about your singular niche. Become an authority on that niche.
And then people will care about every single thing, every other thing that you do. How would I map this out? Would I use the banner image to direct people into my...
Would that be one of the free CTAs? Your banner is meant to help you aid that singular line that you used in your headline. So if you say, SEO expert helping B2B businesses scale their business to millions, in your banner, you should have a similar line.
That says the same thing. So like thousands of entrepreneurs helped by using SEO and you have social proof. Not click here.
You can't click a banner or go to my feed. No one's going to look at them. Oh, I'm going to go to my feed.
That's so insane that people still think that. So use it as social proof. Use it to add the logos.
Use it to add the names. If you don't have any logos, if you don't have any photos that you can use from past clients, use a single line of someone that you gave free work to. They're like, yeah, working with Lara has been the best investment I've ever made.
That's it. That's it. It shouldn't be too saturated.
It shouldn't be too overwhelming. Please don't put your logo in there. No one knows your logo.
No one cares. People care about the return and the result that you give to your audience. And that is, I would say, building personal brands for business owners in 2026 helped thousands of people.
You can see the logos there. I don't say, go to my profile to read more. No.
People are going to do that automatically. You don't tell them what to do. You can tell them what to do on email.
Click here. And then you can actually send them to a link. You cannot click a banner.
So don't tell them click here because they can't click. And then the free actions, are they in my featured section? Do I get like free places to put links?
You get many, but ideally three because that's what is more visually compelling. After three, it gets like very saturated and people just put their viral post there. It's like, oh, I went viral.
I'm going to put it in my feature section because it's like social proof. Again, no. So like people are going to see this, like they're going to see the first line of that viral post.
They're going to see the likes, obviously, yes. It doesn't mean anything to them. When people are on your profile, they're looking for a problem to solve or they're looking for a solution.
Your viral post most likely doesn't solve that. But if you have case studies, if you have a free lead magnet, if you have, you know, look at our portfolio, then that is the answer that they're looking for them to make a buying decision or like to even follow you. I feel like I've got the content down.
I feel like I've got my profile optimized. Now, would I come on to monetization? Yeah, if you want.
So how would I, how do you monetize? How would I recommend I monetize? So I have different streams of income.
Obviously you have affiliate deals, I have influencing deals, I have the businesses and I have, that's it, that's three. And speaking as well. So how I monetize the business as a business owner is again, free content to funnel, which is email, to different landing pages.
So it could be like different lead magnets I have to an email list. an email list, then we send weekly newsletters that have more value in them. And then within our launch process, which is like for two weeks straight, I'm going to send a daily email selling the thing.
Then that's how I monetize. You can also do weekly newsletters that also have a CTA at the end. But the problem is, most creators think that when they build an email list, people will also buy.
No, you need a sequence. What is a sequence? So you built all of this goodwill.
on your personal brand on LinkedIn. Now, you need to funnel it somewhere so you can monetize it immediately. Because again, most people don't click to buy immediately after seeing your post.
It's very rare. It's very rare. They need a lot of time spent with you, which is in your content.
Then they need a reason to buy, which can be then distilled onto your emails. So you can either have your weekly newsletter that goes out, which is your post that you wrote last week distilled into a longer format. And then at the end, if you really like this, if you want to start building your podcast, like I just broke it down here, you can book a call with us and we can help you one -to -one.
The person that ends up reading that newsletter is more likely to buy because they had more time with you. That's like the 7 -11 rule, seven different channels, 11 different places of content and something else. So you need that to get someone to even subscribe to your email list.
And then they need more to then make a buying decision from you. So then you have your weekly email list and then you have your launch or like whenever you promote yourself. So do you do a weekly email to your list?
And that's like LinkedIn, just more LinkedIn stuff. How do you go on LinkedIn? So it depends on your niche again.
So if you build your niche around personal branding and you start talking about construction, it doesn't make sense. Unless you have a really good story about how a construction business built a brand, then you can flip it. Yeah.
Right. But most people just... kind of provide the same boring value, but it is important to also follow a framework.
So my weekly newsletters are always broken down into what do I feel? It is important to like check the vibes. Yeah, vibes.
Vibes and taste is so underrated today. And most founders are missing that single thing. Where's the vibe?
Like, where am I going with this? It's not just like, I'm going to educate on this and this and this and that. No, it's about how is the market feeling right now?
When the algorithm news came out, My first newsletter was like, why I think the algorithm wouldn't hurt you. And so I'm addressing that pain point that I know because I've seen it.
I am tapped into my market. I am not distanced from it. I am not just writing about, here's how to write a LinkedIn post into it.
Again, so much content about that. How do I stand out by being tapped into a problem that is current, that addresses the same problem that people always had, but I am using a new piece of content. that is novel, that not everybody's using right now, which is an algorithm shift.
Let's say there are Microsoft laid out, laid off a hundred people again. So I'm using trending news. Then I'm using my same frameworks, which are using content slay.
Then I'm writing about the news that I'm educating on the problem and educating them on the solution. And then I'm giving them ways to find me, work with me. So that's on a weekly newsletter.
Sometimes I write, you know. And last week I wrote about the power of doing the boring thing. Okay.
That is not a LinkedIn hook. But then within that email, I wrote about how important it was for me to be present on LinkedIn and doing the boring thing, which was doing the 4 -3 -2 -1 all the time. Right.
Then I took a broad topic. Then I funneled people that had that same problem or like didn't want to, that wanted to do the boring thing or like feel like they are very bored or whatever. And then I talk about how I did the boring thing.
The result that I did, how I did it, which is through LinkedIn, and then how to work with us. Or like I funneled them somewhere else. Like I funneled them to a YouTube video, etc.
Not every email needs to sell. That is important to know. Like sometimes you just want to say something.
You want to build that goodwill again. And you want people to like you. You want them to trust you.
If you're consistently selling all the time, the reader is going to feel like you're using them. People want connection today more than ever. How do you connect with them?
Through storytelling. In long form storytelling, right? If you can't do YouTube videos, which most people can't, I hate doing YouTube videos, by the way, I do it through email.
I just write a long form piece of advice. It's like, if like how I weaponize my incompetence after I launch, it went radically wrong. And I was like, look, I failed my last launch, but then I used to weaponize incompetence.
I talk about the subject and I tell them how it went. I tell them what I did. And they're like, oh, this is very useful because.
Most people have this like very high horse of like, look at me, look at me, look at me. I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best. You can be vulnerable on email a lot more than you can do on content because you have that long form, kind of like you have a lot more room for nuance and the problems and like the trials and tribulations.
And the people read it, they engage with it. They'll read that post on vulnerability. They're more likely to open the next one of like five tips to grow on LinkedIn, five tips to grow your podcast because you already did that.
They like you. They're going to want to see what you have to say next. And would you have any like standard sequences set up?
So when someone joins, do they get like a standard 30 day or? Yeah. You asked me for the entire playbook.
I charge thousands for this. I'm giving it all away for free. Sure.
When you set up your email list and you have a lead magnet, it's like people just end up there. Like then there's no point of building an email list. If you're only doing it to send lead magnets, then you're done.
Like it is not going to convert. You shouldn't do it if you can't put in the time. So.
If you start an email list, there's one thing I do want to say. It's like, I didn't start my email list until I had 30 to 50k followers. I can't remember.
And the reason for that was I needed to validate my expertise in that niche, in that topic, and how well I can write on it. Most people get distracted with the shiny object. I need to start an email list.
I need to start a YouTube channel. I need to start another YouTube channel. I need to start a blog channel.
And then your message gets diluted because you don't even understand how to say it well yet. And so I am a... Big advocate for email because it's the best way to convert.
But I'm also a very big advocate to having patience until you master your skill in a written format. Because if you do not understand your SMPD, what skill, what market, what problem, your email is going to be confusing. And then all of this effort that you're trying to redistribute across different platforms is not going to give you the returns that you're expecting it to.
So master one platform first and then move on to the next. So let's say you've mastered that first and then you moved on to email. Okay.
Now, you have your validated content from email. You have your validated content from LinkedIn, right? You've proven to yourself via the basic metrics of a like and a comment.
That post went viral. That post got me a lead. That post got me this.
That post got me this. You have that formula already built for you. You're not guessing.
You're using data. You have that data. Okay, these two posts went viral and they were educating on the...
problem of getting guests, like how to get a good guest. I see a lot of attention there. I'm going to write a long form email with that same hook and I'm going to break it down even more.
That's how you do the weekly newsletter. When people sign up to a newsletter and they get a lead magnet. Okay, cool.
You send them the free resource. How do you get them engaged? You send them onto a sequence.
It can be four emails, five emails, 10 emails, whatever you want. Okay. Ideally three, five.
The sequence is, as soon as someone subscribes, they get the free resource, right? Thank you. And then the first email after is an introduction to you.
Because most people, maybe they saw you promoting this playbook for podcasting. They don't know Callum. Who the fuck is Callum?
Yeah, who the fuck is he? Who is it? We tell them, okay?
So the first email is a welcome sequence email, which is like, hey, thank you for subscribing to this email. I really hope that you enjoyed my X, Y, and Z playbook. Let me tell you about me.
You've got them interested already because you solved a big problem for them. They are more likely to receive you because you became useful to them. Don't try to be interesting.
Try to be interested. So you became interested to them by solving a big problem. Now, when you're like, so in 2023, I was stuck in COVID and I started a podcast.
And this is how my journey started. So that is like your story, your origin story email. You're introducing them to Callum, who he is, why he loves what he does, and what's next.
So then that's the first email, a story email. The second email can be a case study email. So here's how podcasting got clients certain results in X days.
So then you introduce your story. You're likable. How do you become a problem solver?
By showing how you solve a problem for someone else or even for yourself. So then it's an educational email. This person didn't think that they needed a podcast, but in reality, they actually did it.
They needed it because they were very charismatic. They had the time. They had the studio.
So this is exactly how we built a highly profitable podcast for them without spending thousands on an agency. And you break it down and you show them the before, you show them the after. That's building credibility and positioning.
Like now you're not just calling with a free resource. Now you're calling the business owner with a really good story and also that can solve a problem. And then so you repeat that, you can do two storytelling emails, you can do two educational emails, and then maybe one sales email at the end.
So thank you so much for subscribing to this email, blah, blah, blah, blah. Thank you so much for reading the last five emails. Now, for those that are interested in working with us, here's exactly where to find us.
Then you send them to a book a call link. That's just the welcome sequence. That's just that.
The rest is the weekly emails that you're going to have to produce every single week in detail, in depth, that solve a problem, that lead someone to a solution, and then you can promote yourself that. That's amazing. People can implement that straight away.
That's gold. That's free source for you. Let's go.
And then in terms of your products, your number one product or service is your coaching academy. Yeah. So how would you then sell that?
Do you do that for like a sales call or is it something that people just sign up? So for three years, I avoided sales calls because I hated sales. So I created my content so well that the content became the sales call.
That's why problem solving content is important because you are reducing friction between them having this limiting belief or this objection. You solve it through content. The most common objections, I don't know if you're the right person.
Can I see more testimonials? Can I see similar people that you have worked with? That's holding your content.
So then you avoid the sales call because you already solved the objections. And that's why content is so important because if you aren't good at sales calls like me, If you don't have the time, if you don't want to do them, then the content solves that and also the emails.
And so the way we sell, let's say, Literally Academy or The Known Club, which are my two programs. Again, I run the launch model, which I rinse and repeat every three months. And it's important because it's like how I get the most income fast.
I create content for like three months. Goodwill building. Love Lara.
She's great. Whatever. Like great positioning, etc.
And then for two weeks, I decide, okay, I am going to start teasing the product. So what do I do? There's two weeks separated.
From Monday to Friday, I am going to start objection handling heavily. So I'll be like, one day storytelling. This is why personal branding changed my life.
So I'm tapping into a broad interest. Then I tell them how and why LinkedIn is important. Then in 2026, Harry didn't have any, any followers to that he's built a $100 ,000 business on LinkedIn.
Again, another problem solved. Can you do this for me? Yes.
Another one. Last year, I got featured in Forbes for the first time because I built my personal brand. Why am I saying that?
It's not to show off, it's to show what's possible. And I'm just also leveraging Forbes. So I'm leveraging what I have to show them that they can also have it by doing the same thing, right?
So I'm slightly tweaking my educational content. to something that I know people need to hear in order to make a buying decision. So those are like, that's the first week.
So I'm not selling anything. Maybe I'm slightly teasing. So let's say after the Harry story where I'm like, this nine to five person just went from zero to a hundred K in less than a year.
And then I tell them like, he started building his personal brand. I give them the examples, like a listicle, same slave framework. And then at the end, PS, in two, in like a week's time, I'm launching this, join the wait list here.
So I get them to a waitlist, Daniel Priestley model, waitlist to conversion. So I'm slightly teasing that I'm building up the waitlist. I'm not really selling anything.
I'm giving value, value first, value, value, value, value, problem solving, a reason, you know, storytelling, all of these things. So then that's the first week. Then the second week is I announce a thing.
Most people think that things just sell themselves. You have to tell people that you're selling something. Otherwise, they don't know.
They don't know. I've had this realization so much and it hurts me because I post so much content about the same thing. And then people are like, oh, you sell this?
And I'm like, I've spoken about this 20 times. And so when you come to that realization, you understand that you have to remind people, you need to be loud about it. You need to promote yourself because no one else will.
And so you go, I just literally just verbalizing it. I just launched this program. Here's exactly the problem that it fixes.
And you talk about the program. It's like the program is six weeks, blah, blah, blah. Solves this problem.
It has this thing. It has this thing. That's one post.
You announce the thing so people can literally see it. If you go like, here are five tips to grow your LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the end, oh, by the way, I just launched.
It doesn't work because you already lost 80 % of your audience. So they won't buy it. Even if they wanted to, they didn't read the whole thing.
Because again. We cannot just think that people are reading the whole thing. So within the first line, you need to tell them, I just launched this.
This has come. This is the best time of my life because I'm relaunching this. Within the first two lines, we need to build that awareness for this thing.
Then second day, third day, fourth day, I'm creating highly relevant educational content about, again, the case study. Here's exactly how we took fear from zero to 60K in a week using LinkedIn. Then the second line is she joined.
my program, which is live now. In parentheses, I'm just writing it in my head. And then she learned how to do this.
She learned how to do this. She learned how to do this. Here's the link again.
And then I am literally being so visceral about the thing that I'm selling. I am not shying away from it. I am not being scared.
I'm not feeling cringe because this is my time to sell. Because again, I built that goodwill. So that's what we do.
And then I rinse and repeat. Maybe I'll post a testimonial. Maybe I'll do this.
I pull in all the cards that I have. in order to get an outlier return. So that's the second week of the launch.
And on the email side, do you just go to the, do you do like one week to build up the waitlist and then the second week is hitting the waitlist? So on email, then let's say, let's say it's January 1st and then I'm going to launch something on February 1st. So I have four weeks to, again, build that momentum.
So the first email, again, typical, normal, like how to fix your productivity as a business owner. second email, blah, blah, blah. Then I'll start teasing it.
Like February 1st, I am launching X. Join the waitlist there and you get them to subscribe as well. Throughout those four weeks, you're like simply again, giving value, giving value, giving value, making yourself useful.
The week of the launch, let's say April 1st, I'm not going to send one email. I'm not going to send two. I'm going to send 20, right?
And this is what hurts most people because they cannot produce a single email. But it is what it takes in order to get an outlier return. It is simple.
It's not easy. So then let's say from February 1st to February 7th, I'm closing doors to my product on the 7th. You cannot buy it.
So I have seven days to get as many people interested as possible. So I'm going to send two to three emails a day. First email, educational.
Second email, storytelling. Third email, case study. Rinse and repeat the same.
Maybe at different times, like maybe like on the Monday, I did educational, storytelling, case study. On the Tuesday, I do storytelling, case study, case study. whatever it takes, whatever it takes.
Like what I've learned and what I had to face myself is that you have to be willing to go the extra mile in order to get the return that you want to get. If you don't run fast because you felt like you didn't want to win, then that's on you. When you know that you have full control of your outcomes through simply sending an email, then you're going to want to do it more.
That's why the launch method is what I love the most because it's a single week where I have to promote very heavily and then I go back to business like normal. Yeah. But which part of that is just to the waitlist or is it all to the main list?
So the waitlist, I use it as like an indicator that people are interested. So I don't just like segment people. I should do that, but I kind of like stop because I'd rather have the outlier return.
Most people maybe, some people maybe didn't enjoy the waitlist, but I do the waitlist hack just so I can get that way of, seeing if people are interested. Makes sense.
And also tease the launch. Join the waitlist here, join the waitlist here. Yeah, it feels good to join the waitlist.
Yeah. And your product there, that's like a cohort or it's like a... Yeah, it's our cohort program.
Six weeks. Six weeks. No, four weeks now.
Four weeks, yeah. We trimmed it to four weeks as it was easier. It's very intense.
Yeah. So four weeks, like my first one was eight weeks. It was intense.
Yeah, it's pretty heavy. Now six weeks, now four weeks. But the four weeks is like daily course every single day.
So on a Monday, you'll get me. On a Tuesday, you'll get a coach. On lead generation, on a Wednesday, you get an algorithm expert.
On a Thursday, you'll get another entrepreneur that's built a business. So you have the range of like, okay, the A to Z of LinkedIn, because it's not just content, it's not just algorithm, it's the whole funnel. So that's like my program, The Known Club, specializes on not just content, but business.
Like what is the entire framework to build a $1 million a year business? Because you cannot just do it through content. You cannot just do it through email.
You need the combination of content, emails, funnels, webinars, and all of these things combined. And I cannot just teach you one in order to get the return that you want. We need to have them all.
So that's what we do in four weeks. And what's the price point on those? That's $3 ,000 for four weeks.
And then we have an ascension model where it's like you get a one -to -one mentorship with me for like three months for like, I don't know, it depends. three thousand pounds a month no three thousand dollars a month or like you can book it for like 13k for like extended months or whatever so we have different ascension offers that allow us to make more money from the same clients that need the returns and need more one -to -one support but I don't take one -to -one clients if they're not in the program because I need them to understand the basics so I can actually coach them well I actually shied away from one -to -one coaching because it was the same boring problem like What is the best way to optimize?
I already told you that on my YouTube video. So it felt wrong for me to charge even more when the information was already there. So they need to understand the fundamentals first so they can ask me the big pain point problems that they have because your headline, your banner, et cetera, that can be solved in one YouTube video that I already have for free.
So why don't you just watch that? And then when you have a business problem of like, how do you do a funnel for your offer? Or like when you don't understand your offer.
Let me look at it and I will fix it for you. That's what makes me feel better. And that's, I think, where my time is allocated best because I actually am interested in that part rather than saying, here's how to optimize your profile.
Here's how, like, I don't want to do that. I already did that. I do that in my courses.
I do that in my content. I do that in the programs. After that, I want to get into the nitty gritty of like how to scale your business, how to position yourself as a leader.
What is the singular problem that you have that you've already tested that didn't work? That. is where I love, like in the trenches.
Is Literally Academy the four weeks? Literally Academy is the course. So you buy it for 997 and then that's like the full blueprint, like 50 videos, 120 lessons each, playbooks, templates, one live call a month.
So that is for my IFB who can't afford a higher ticket product, but they still want to learn. So that's for them. And then we have the cohorts that are for business owners and entrepreneurs or solopreneurs that want to get from A to Z fast and they have to allocate just four weeks.
And it's very intense. I called it the Olympics of LinkedIn because I'm literally shouting at everyone in order for them to win. Like I have it that every single week they have like tasks to do.
And if they didn't do the task, they cannot come to the Friday call because I only want people that did the thing. Otherwise, it's irrelevant for me to tell you anything else because your question is going to be, how do I optimize my headline? I already told you how to do that, but you didn't do it.
So I am forcing action through depriving them from this one call, and that gets us the results. At one point, we had a great cohort, but everybody loved it. They were like, it's the best program ever, Lara.
And I'm like, okay, let's see your results. Oh, no, I haven't implemented.
And I'm like, I love that you love the program, but I don't love that you didn't do anything. So how do I force execution? By literally telling them that they can't get access to this in order to get that.
And that's allowed us to like one client literally just signed a $20 ,000 deal because of that program. Same program that other people took, got this person to an outlier return because I forced action. Most people are in this analysis paralysis and overload of information.
Where they feel like they have to have the whole strategy figured out before they even start. No, start before you're ready and then do it. And then you figure it out along the way.
You can have the best playbook. You can have my entire playbook. People here, I literally just dropped the entire playbook just for you.
But if you don't implement it, then there's not going to be a return. So then forced action via me saying you cannot come to this school is giving me the best returns. And I really like feeling like a dictator sometimes.
It's cool. In that, would they have like weekly actions that they've got to complete? Yeah, so let's say...
Like a daily lesson or something like that? So we have five weeks of coaching. So like four weeks of coaching, five lessons a week.
So every Sunday, I'll go in and talk about positioning, then lead generation, then funnels, then emails, right? Whatever. Or whatever I decide that the lessons are going to be depending on the cohort.
So let's say Sunday, I did a positioning masterclass. And I told you how to position yourself. I gave you the chat GPT framework.
I gave you Clio. And I told you to write, to optimize your profile. Yeah.
That is your homework. Do what I said. Implement it.
If they don't do, if they haven't had that, then they cannot come to the next course. Forced execution. That is the only way.
With Literary Academy, how would you, where would that office sit? That's something that you're always, like it's always on? That's my evergreen now.
So we built it because I was, seeing that people wanted something that wasn't a higher ticket program. So we built the academy for them so they could come and join.
They still get time with me once a month. And I'm providing to that subsection of my audience that isn't ready to invest very heavily, but they have the resources. So we have to remember there's two types of people, people that are cash rich and time poor and people that are time rich and cash poor.
So then I'm providing. the same offer to two different types of people that need different types of like engagement so that is for literally academies for people that want to start they don't know even the basics so that's the the entire fundamentals and then the the cohort is for people that already have a validated offer is for entrepreneurs that have run like 10 to 20k businesses that want to scale through linkedin so we know that they have the problem that we know that they have the offer Because Literally Academy, for example, works for someone that just wants to start creating content and build a personal brand.
The Known Club, which is the cohort, works for business owners that already have a business and they are ready to scale it through content. So we have that validation of that offer or maybe it's not working yet, but I can look at it and be like, what is your highest paying client? What is your experience?
So it is the same offer, but divided in two different subsections of like the time and effort required for each. So how would you sell Literally Academy? Literally Academy right now just sits there.
It just sits there like on the bottom of each email or like... Not even. I don't really promote it that well anymore.
How would I even join it? You go to my LinkedIn. It's there.
Okay. You can buy it there. But you wouldn't push it?
I don't push it anymore because I'm focused on the high ticket programs. But if it was my only offer, I would promote it everywhere. Yeah.
So that's like the problem with different offers as well. And that's why I don't recommend people to start courses in community. and then have a high ticket offer because you kind of need to prioritize one unless you do a sales call and then you can like funnel people.
Okay, so if you don't have the cash for this, then you can join this, right? So that's the problem with not doing sales calls, but I don't really mind that because I don't really over optimize for scale. I over optimize for what I want to do, which is the cohorts, right?
Then I could potentially run out to the academy if I wanted. We haven't started that yet. We might do, but yeah, that's how I would scale the academy.
When we launched Litchi Academy though, the first time, I did a launch process. So like, you know, we gave a limited time offer. You can buy it for $7 .99 and then you get it forever.
Or we do like Black Friday offers, et cetera. So we also run it through the periods of like Black Friday, Christmas, New Year's, et cetera, to promote it as well. Let's talk about the other opportunities here that you, and products and services that you offer.
You have like this SaaS as well. So how does that fit into this? And then there's Newtonic as well, which is, that's an investment?
That's an investment. So like, how do they come into your business? The thing again about focusing on one skill is that I've been able to build what I called recently a vertical vehicle.
Most people start businesses in different vehicles. So they'll start a business in the agency space and then they'll move on to CPG. It doesn't work because it doesn't match.
what you built already. So what I did by accident, really, truly, is that I started an agency focusing on ghostwriting on LinkedIn. Then I started an education business focusing on LinkedIn growth and through copywriting basics.
And then I built a software that solves that exact same problem in different ways. So I'm literally distributing my products for the same audience at different buying stages. They all funnel one to another.
So if you wanted my ghostwriting but couldn't afford it, then you can take the programs. If you want something faster that just sits with you and you can buy it for $99 a month, then they're the software. And then if they buy the software, but they need more information, then they can buy the academy or they can join the program.
So they all flow into each other. It's like a mechanism. So one complements the other.
And so ideally, most of my customers, they bought literally academy, then we upsold them to the cohort. Then we give them Clio for free for 15 days or 30 days. Then they become a user because they understand how to use the tool, right?
And so that's how I've multiplied my scale and leverage by remaining in the same lane because I'm not promoting different things. I'm promoting one. I'm promoting one solution through one scale.
And then it multiplies itself by having different things that serve that same audience. What else is there here? Do you get many brand deals?
Do you get speaking engagements? What are the other things that come up from? building a personal brand.
And how should you approach them? I don't approach them, they approach me. So yeah, that's just been a benefit of like spending so much time on LinkedIn.
So I get brand deals through, I don't know, Gamma, Hotspot, Poppy AI, things that are aligned with my audience. Again, vertical. I'm not going to promote a random AI tool that has a large budget, but I've never used.
I'm not going to do that. It's still important to remain within your authentic self of like, have I actually tried this tool? Yes, I'm going to promote it.
So I only work with brands that I've used. So Poppy AI, I love that tool for YouTube. Gamma, I love that tool for presentations.
I was already using it. So the opportunity came about and I've been able to monetize me using that tool. It's seamless integration.
It's not like forced integration where I like maybe start talking about manscaped. Even if the paycheck is nice, I'm not going to take it because my audience won't buy. Because there's no audience content fit.
There's no audience brand fit. So it doesn't matter. And then if I do that, let's say they offer me $20 ,000.
Those $20 ,000 won't be worth anything if I've ruined my reputation by being that person that talks about the thing that gives it. Like people know, people are smart. So I'd rather not ruin my reputation for this big paycheck because...
not ruining it can give me a bigger paycheck in the long term. And this is why I don't really recommend people to go for the creator route when they are trying to build a business because the best integration or sponsorship that you can give yourself is your business. So for a time, I go in phases where I'll promote tools, et cetera, that resonate with me.
But sometimes I'll say no to all of them because I want to promote my business instead because I'd rather build that MRR and ARR for my business rather than for another business. Even again, If the revenue is nice, I've been given the opportunity to get $10 ,000, $20 ,000, $50 ,000, $60 ,000 contracts.
And I said, no, it was so painful because yeah, the money's nice. I fuck yeah. Like a holiday for all of my friends, private jet.
Yeah, sure. But at the expense of my brand equity, and that is my number one possession, my brand equity and how much people can trust me. Because again, Trust is built over time.
It can't be lost in seconds. What about tools to make this easier? Are there any tools that you use or recommend that people should try?
For years, I actually couldn't find one. I tried. And there were tools that were built by people who didn't even understand the platform.
It was a really quick cash grab for people to, yeah, LinkedIn writing tool. So me and my co -founder, Jake, we've been on the platform for three years. We literally spent...
hours on the platform trying to analyze what the best content formers were and then we became top number one creators on the platform he grew to 190 ,000 followers I grew to 300 ,000 followers right the tool that I use is Clio like my software and the reason why we even came up with it is because we solved our own problem like how can we stop spending so much time in content so we can focus on these businesses that came through our content At one point, when you go from creator to entrepreneur, and there's like a pivot that most people do and they don't know how to do it because you built your presence on LinkedIn via content and that has to keep going, otherwise your funnel dies.
And we had that. And we're like, all of these tools don't work because the person that created them doesn't understand content. They understand generic content, but they didn't understand the strategy.
So Clio is the number one tool I use every single time because it's built off. my brain. We interviewed me and Jake on the fundamentals on how to create viral content that gets leads.
Both of us have built 100 % inbound businesses through content. We are the only people that have done that. And so when we noticed that, it's like, okay, we have the strategies, we have the content, we have all the frameworks.
Let's just build a tool that can do that for someone else. And so that's where Clio was born, which is basically an AI chat where you go, yeah, write me 10 hooks that are proven in my niche to work. And then it goes and analyzes all the data that we filled it up with, all the strategies, all the formats.
And it creates the best piece of content for you because it's based on you. It knows you. It writes like you, but it does the work for you.
And all you have to do is fill in that 20 % extra education that the AI won't know because you haven't provided it to it. And then that's it. So Clio was built for that.
And for me, it's been the most meaningful project that I've done. Like I love the education business, but this has been a completely different game from like building an AI tool that actually works to seeing the returns on like our users. So we are seeing CEOs that have been posting consistently for 30 days and then they started using Clio and they went from five likes to 200 likes.
They went from 10 likes to a viral post for the first time. That thing. that single AI tool is building the thing that people have tried to build for years.
And that has been so, it's given me satisfaction because it's cool that we built it. Yeah, sure. But the results are insane.
Just through AI and the power of it and what we built together, me and my co -founders. So clearly the only tool that I would use for LinkedIn. And people can get that for free?
No, you have to pay a membership. But we're going to do a discount code. We can do a discount code for Callum.
Type Callum when you go to clear .so and you'll get a free month. Incredible. This has been like so good, Lara.
Thank you. It's an absolutely insane playbook. Thanks so much for dropping all this game for free.
My brain hurts. I know you normally charge a lot of money for it. If people want more, where can they find you?
You can join my next cohort, which is going to start, it's probably already started if you're watching this. So you go to thenoneclub .com. You can get in if you...
halftime if we haven't closed doors. Or you can go to my YouTube, Lara Costa, LinkedIn, Lara Costa, Instagram, Lara Costa. I post memes there.
Sick. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode with Lara, I think you're going to love my episode with Josh Sanders.
He is the absolute goat of LinkedIn. So if you want to go deeper on LinkedIn and how to grow on that platform, check out my episode with Josh Sanders next. Thanks for listening and see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The cold open is a 90-second supercut of the guest's sharpest lines: consistent people are consistently bad, you are not the niche, and the ideal follower matters as much as the ideal client. Then the host asks one question, whether she will hand over the playbook, and the rest of the episode is the answer.
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A 2.5-hour walkthrough of a book-a-call funnel for cold Facebook traffic, page by page and flow by flow, from an agency owner spending $480K a month on his own.
A 20-minute walkthrough of the exact path a stranger takes on the way to becoming a client: one comment, one profile click, one algorithm-fed post, one DM at a time.
Content creator and Creator College co-founder Jun Yuh breaks down the two-part framework, message plus studied format, he used to grow from a 200-view fashion page to $8 million across platforms, then reverse-engineers a 24.2-million-view video live before pitching his coaching program.
Jeremy Moser interviews Jeremy Haynes on turning a personal brand into a paid-ads amplifier, why the closer-skill war is unwinnable, and how to actually get richer.
A solo webcam talk arguing that email, consistent content, weekly show-ups, one topic, and small tested tweaks, not passion or a clever hook, are what actually pay the bills in a knowledge-based business.
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