27:25Lara Acosta · Talking Head
page 3 proves how to beat LinkedIn
A 27-minute takedown of the old LinkedIn playbook, backed by the platform's own engineering research paper.
June 6thThe argument in one line.
A profitable LinkedIn brand comes from four sequential moves: a market-tested niche, visible proof instead of cold outreach, a repeatable post-writing formula, and a one-to-many offer that replaces one-to-one client work.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A coach, consultant, or service provider trying to build an audience and get clients from LinkedIn without a large existing following.
- Someone who already has a marketable skill but hasn't figured out how to position it as a specific, sellable niche.
- A creator posting content with no conversion system who wants to turn engagement into an email list and paying clients.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for platform-agnostic growth tactics; this is LinkedIn-specific.
- You want sentence-level copywriting instruction; the frameworks here are strategic, not line-by-line writing lessons.
The full version, fast.
Lara Acosta breaks down the system she says took her from an unemployed 2022 graduate to $2.5 million in LinkedIn-driven revenue. The core argument: growth follows four sequential moves. First, find a niche using her SMPV framework, where a skill you already have meets a problem a paying market is actively searching for. Second, build proof publicly by documenting what you're learning instead of cold-pitching strangers. Third, write posts using her SLAY structure, story, lesson, actionable advice, a callback to the reader, so each post converts attention into comments and an email list. Finally, once demand outpaces your one-to-one capacity, repackage the same expertise into a one-to-many program to scale past yourself.
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00:00 – 00:55
01 · Hook: the credentials and the promise
Stacks Forbes 30 Under 30 and millionaire-by-26 claims, then reverses into "I'm literally just a girl" before promising the playbook that follows.
00:56 – 02:26
02 · Beating imposter syndrome to post your first viral update
Admits she almost quit three months into posting, then describes her first viral post: admitting she wasn't an expert instead of pretending to be one.
02:27 – 04:40
03 · Finding your niche: the SMPV framework
Introduces the SMPV framework (Scale, Market, Problem, Value) for finding a niche, plus using Perplexity to mine Reddit threads for market-validated problems.
04:41 – 05:23
04 · Writing a one-line pitch and headline
Combines outcome, method, specialty, and past clients into a single headline formula so strangers immediately understand what you do.
05:24 – 08:19
05 · Proof over cold outreach: building in public
Explains why cold emailing 20-30 strangers a day fails and how documenting her learning process publicly built trust and visibility instead.
08:19 – 09:08
06 · Sponsor: HubSpot's LinkedIn Success Database
Ad read for HubSpot's swipe file of 50 decoded viral LinkedIn posts.
09:09 – 11:55
07 · Writing viral posts: the SLAY framework
Breaks a real post into Story, Lesson, Actionable advice, and a callback to You, then explains optimizing every post for how the reader feels after finishing it.
11:55 – 14:02
08 · From followers to a paying email list
Followers don't automatically become clients; pairs lead magnets and a DM funnel to move engaged commenters onto an email list that drives 70-80% of her revenue.
14:02 – 16:01
09 · Scaling past yourself: agency to academy
Her ghostwriting agency hit a time ceiling at six figures; repackaging one-to-one work into a one-to-many program built a $2.5M business, and she closes with a pitch for her AI writing tool Clio.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The fastest way to beat imposter syndrome on LinkedIn is to publicly admit you're still learning instead of pretending to be an expert.
- A content niche forms where a skill you already have meets a problem a paying market is actively searching for, not from picking a trendy topic.
- Headlines that state outcome, method, credential, and past clients in one line convert better than vague bios because strangers don't have to guess what you do.
- Cold outreach fails on LinkedIn because strangers get hundreds of identical pitches a day and can't tell you apart from the rest.
- Documenting what you're learning in public builds more trust than claiming expertise, because the process itself can't be copied.
- A post that gets likes and comments doesn't automatically produce clients; engagement and client acquisition are two separate funnels.
- An email list converts better than social followers because it isn't subject to a platform's algorithm.
- The SLAY structure, story, lesson, actionable advice, a callback to the reader, works because a unique personal story can't be copied the way generic advice can.
- Reverse-engineering why a post went viral and sharing the breakdown publicly builds more authority than celebrating the win alone.
- A business plateaus not from lack of demand but from a one-to-one delivery model that can't scale past the founder's hours.
- Turning a one-to-one service into a one-to-many program lets the same expertise serve ten to twenty clients for the same time investment.
- Roughly 70 to 80 percent of this creator's revenue comes from her email list, not from direct social media engagement.
Four sequential moves built a $2.5M LinkedIn business
THE GROWTH SEQUENCE
A documented niche, visible proof instead of cold outreach, a repeatable post structure, and a one-to-many pivot are the four moves that turned an unemployed graduate into a multi-million-dollar LinkedIn business.
02Beating imposter syndrome to post your first viral update
- Posting as a visible beginner, not a fake expert, produced her first viral post; admitting she was still learning outperformed pretending to have authority.
- Waiting for permission or perfect timing is a myth successful people ignore, they act before they feel qualified.
03Finding your niche: the SMPV framework
- A sellable niche sits at the intersection of a skill you already have and a problem a paying market is actively searching for, not a trending topic.
- Searching Reddit threads for a target market's complaints, then feeding them to an AI research tool, surfaces real, market-validated problems in under ten seconds.
04Writing a one-line pitch and headline
- A headline that states outcome, method, credential, and past clients in one line removes the guesswork that keeps strangers from hiring you.
05Proof over cold outreach: building in public
- Cold-emailing 20 to 30 strangers a day fails because everyone receiving it gets hundreds of identical pitches and has no way to tell you apart.
- Publicly documenting what you're learning, rather than claiming finished expertise, builds trust because the process itself can't be copied by a competitor.
- Reverse-engineering why a specific post went viral and sharing that breakdown builds more authority than simply celebrating the win.
07Writing viral posts: the SLAY framework
- Opening a post with a personal story works because even if ten people lived the same experience, no one can narrate it exactly the way you did.
- Structuring advice as a short listicle inside a post keeps it scannable instead of reading like a dense paragraph nobody finishes.
- Every post should be optimized for the feeling a reader has after finishing it, not just for the information it delivers.
- Ending a post by asking the reader a direct question drives organic replies because people naturally respond to being asked something.
08From followers to a paying email list
- Likes and comments on a post are a separate funnel from paying clients; plenty of people who praise your content end up buying from a competitor.
- A lead magnet tied to a popular post, exchanged through comments and DMs, moves engaged strangers off the platform and onto an owned email list.
- Roughly 70 to 80 percent of this creator's revenue comes from her email list rather than direct engagement on LinkedIn.
09Scaling past yourself: agency to academy
- A service business plateaus when demand outpaces the founder's available hours, not when demand runs out.
- Converting a one-to-one client service into a one-to-many program lets the same expertise serve ten to twenty people for the same time investment.
- Using your own results as an ongoing case study keeps your proof current without needing new client permission every time you want to make a claim.
Terms worth knowing.
- SMPV framework
- A niche-finding framework: Scale (the skill you have), Market (who already has money and wants it), Problem (what that market complains about), and Value (the pitch you build from the first three).
- SLAY framework
- A post-writing structure: Story (a personal, uncopyable opener), Lesson (the feel-good takeaway), Actionable advice (a scannable listicle), and You (a closing question that calls back to the reader).
- DM funnel
- A sequence where a post's call-to-action moves an engaged commenter into direct messages to exchange a free resource for their contact info or email address.
- Building in public
- Publicly documenting your process, wins, and failures as you learn a skill or grow a business, instead of only presenting a finished, expert version of yourself.
- One Line Pitch
- A headline formula that combines the outcome you deliver, your method or service, your specialty or credential, and who you've worked with into a single sentence.
- Lead magnet
- A free resource, like a summary or template, offered in exchange for a reader's email address or engagement, used to move a social media audience onto an owned list.
Things they pointed at.
04:16toolPerplexity
15:38productClio
Lines you could clip.
00:23
“I'm literally just a girl.”
02:05
“the most successful people don't wait for permission, they literally just do the thing anyway”
12:24
“followers don't necessarily always pay you, but having a list does”
14:50
“I took everything that I'd been doing one-to-one for clients and turned it into something one-to-many”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
hi i'm lara costa and i am the number one female creator on linkedin i've had people say that i'm an ivy league nepo baby with a trust fund and a rich dad because in two years i became a millionaire by 26 and then made the list of 430 by 28. and also the same people who used to hate on me and call me cringe are now asking me for advice or for work but I'm literally just a girl.
A girl who was depressed, broke and overweight and then beat all of it by 24. The reason why that even happened was because I stopped playing small and stopped caring about what other people thought of me and I just started showing up like the main character in my industry on LinkedIn. And in the next few minutes, I'm going to do my best to try and show you how to do the same.
So I'm about to show you the playbook I use to go from being broke and unemployed to becoming the girl of my dreams. Let's get into it.
becoming the main character of your industry starts with a choice but nobody wants to make that choice because they have imposter syndrome and look i get it for the longest time i thought that i needed to have years of experience to post on linkedin i thought that i needed to act like an expert so i almost quit three months into posting because i felt like a failure my feed was bombarded with people announcing how well they were doing i was rejected from every single job i applied for but then just when i was about to quit posting on LinkedIn, I posted a photo of myself pretending to work at a cafe and I said, I literally said in that post that I wasn't an expert, I was just learning.
and that was my first viral post on linkedin after that day my life completely changed i got brand deals access to mentors and six figures in revenue literally within 12 months of me posting in there and it was all because i was brave enough to put myself there even though i thought that i was embarrassing and cringy i didn't wait for everything to be perfect i took control of my life and showed up for every single day for four years and i see so many people not go after the things that they want because they think that they are not qualified enough or that the timing is wrong or that they feel cringe but listen the most successful people don't wait for permission they literally just do the thing anyway and nobody stops them ever so what you might be thinking next is okay how do i become that girl on linkedin someone that the industry actually knows well first things first is your niche for me back in 2022 i didn't know what to do with my life i just had gotten my master's degree i didn't have a job i was still living with my parents and i honestly felt really lost and depressed but then i watched this video by gary v where he said that linkedin would be the next big thing online and i had nothing to do so i made a new account and i still didn't know what to post though i even bought a few courses
And a lot of them were useless but one thing wasn't and that was a Facebook group which was my first taste at what communities really were. I saw a lot of people complaining about not getting any views or spending hours trying content out and it was all because they didn't really have a niche or idea on how to write content online.
I didn't really understand that main concept back then the way that I do now but I noticed it over and over again without even knowing what to do with it and it took years of trial and error for me to actually break down why that kept on happening to people over and over again. And then after a few years, that led me to creating my own framework called the SMPV that I teach every single day to people that I work with.
Okay, so let me break it down. SMPV. The S stands for scale, the M stands for market, the P stands for problem and the V stands for value.
So here's how it works. I want you to take a pen and paper and write down every skill you have. Then list them and ask yourself who already has money and is actively looking for this.
And then go on LinkedIn or Reddit and make a spreadsheet of the problems that you see people have. All you need to do is type the skill you're good at. Let's say it's increasing revenue for tech businesses and it will highlight the exact problems people have based on extensive research, especially if you...
it on Reddit. You can go on perplexity, go, hey, based on all of the Reddit threads in the tech industry, tell me what people are complaining about and what they want to fix. Honestly, that is a game changer for yourself.
And it's literally done in less than 10 seconds. Then finally, you put it all together into a one line pitch using this formula. So you're going to think outcome for market, the outcome that you just looked on Reddit.
and for the market that you're trying to sell then you're going to add the method or the service with the specific approach that you're going to be using and then you're going to add a speciality or a credential and you're going to add the people that you've worked with or the people that you've helped And then that is going to become your first optimized headline for your LinkedIn.
So people know exactly how you can help them instead of making them guess by having a vague headline on your LinkedIn. Once you have that though, you need to edit your LinkedIn profile so that people know exactly what you do. And I'm telling you to do that fast because even when I have the perfect headline and even after I found my niche, nobody hired me.
I mean, just because you do something like this, it doesn't mean that leads just come. out of nowhere. Nobody knew I existed still.
And even if they did, why would they hire me? I had to ask myself that very tough question. And then that's when I realized that the second thing that I needed to do to grow my LinkedIn was proof.
When you start just as a beginner, it can feel like everyone hates you because you keep on getting rejected. I know. But the truth is no one hates you.
They just don't know. who you are, because yet you don't have any proof. You're not showing it if you have it.
You need to be able to show people, all of these strangers on LinkedIn, that you are able to do the thing that you're saying that you can do. And that is a proof bot. That's why after I defined my niche and who I was in my headline using the SMPB framework that I just showed you, I had to go and get proof or make it incredibly visible on my LinkedIn.
But I didn't do it in the most conventional way because most people think that the fastest way to get experience is to send cold emails to 20 to 30 strangers a day, offer work for free and hope someone replies one day without. Maybe we'll catch up later or give me a call and they never reply. But the problem with all of that is that no one knows who you are still.
and even if they do they probably get hundreds of emails just like that every single day that's why i didn't do cold outreach mostly because i was scared of getting rejected i'm not gonna lie but also because i knew that so i started building in public and what i mean by that i wasn't showing my behind the scenes like taking screenshots of like what i was doing a selfie here at a cafe like i did at the start it wasn't that i was learning as i went i was letting a framework learning how to get my first client learning this learning that and i was talking about it publicly on linkedin it was like public documentation but also trying to be helpful so i just went viral on linkedin for the first time here's exactly how i did it even if i just did it once i would just break down exactly how i did it people like that it was honest it was novel and it was my own personal perspective on what happened for me based on all other marketing strategies that i had followed but also what worked for me personally with that no one could take away the how i did it away from me even if i wasn't an expert i was building expertise and that's what mattered the most and up until this day i still use myself as my biggest case study because what i did for myself i could a hundred percent do
for someone else and on top of that part of my building in public strategy is that every time one of my posts goes viral or i do something cool i just don't celebrate it i reverse engineered why something works and i share it publicly i just landed my first public speaking deal here's exactly how i did it i just went viral on linkedin talking about this topic that no one goes viral talking about here's how i did it i just got a client doing this really weird thing on email here's how i did it that's how you build in public and you become the most useful person in the room while also becoming the best known person for that room in that niche i've just shown you a few visual examples of every post and angle that you could use and even formats.
But my friends at HubSpot have compiled over 50 proven and viral posts on LinkedIn and broken down exactly what made them work. They've taken the most viral posts from entrepreneurs and creators across different industries and broken down exactly why it worked. This swipe file has the exact post so you can see how it's formatted and written and they even tell you what niche they are in so you now know what would be more relevant for your audience.
If you're sitting there thinking, I don't know what my educational post looks like, Lara, for my niche. And as a founder or creator, I don't really know which one suits me. This database shows you 50 real posts across every single format I just described.
So if you want it, link is in the description and thank you to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. Okay, but then the writing for these posts. has to be different it can't just be you documenting the thing having a big paragraph on that and not really telling people what you're going to be speaking about because you're going to lose them even though the piece that you think that you're sharing may be the most valuable thing that someone could read today you need to learn how to structure these posts well now if i was starting all over again trying to grow on linkedin and i didn't want to use any ai to just try and teach myself how to write fast i would use the slave framework that i created so the s stands for story the l stands for lesson the a stands for actionable advice and the y stands for you let's look at one of my latest linkedin posts to understand how this works the first line of this post is i landed a one -to -one meeting with the linkedin team which is the story the hook works because no one can copy that story no one and even if they did they wouldn't say in the same way that i did
So even if 10 people had the exact same experience, they would all be narrated differently because they could have taken something else out of it. My thing was that I've always wanted a one -to -one meeting with the LinkedIn team. So that's what I led with.
It's the only way you can stand out from everyone else on LinkedIn by telling your unique side of the story that really mattered to you. Then the next few lines lead with actionable advice. for my audience.
So I have put it in a listicle there so that it's easy to follow and it doesn't read like a textbook. Then after that listicle where I'm giving actionable advice, then I end the post with a quick feel -good lesson. that the reader can take away from my post that to me was don't be scared to shoot your shots you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take that feels good to read it feels funny people can recognize that quote sometimes or maybe just makes them feel inspired and that's the whole idea because you load them with a story but then you give them a lot of tactical information and then at the end all you want to do and what i'm optimizing for at all times is trying to optimize for the feeling that someone gets after they finish reading my content.
So that is, I learned a lot, I also get your story, but I felt good reading that and I feel inspired or I want to do something with all of this information. That is the main goal of my content at all times on LinkedIn. And just the last one thing, I end every single one of my posts with something which is you.
So I always call back to you. How do you feel? What are you going to do next?
If you landed a call with the LinkedIn team, what would you say? This drives engagement because you're bringing in community, interaction. It's almost like engagement farming, but in a way that is actually organic and not manufactured because these people are naturally going to reply to your question and they're going to start conversation in your own comment section.
And that's the point. And so that is the magic of my slave framework. And this is essentially how I managed to go viral on LinkedIn every single time.
But let me tell you something, just because I have hundreds of people liking my content and maybe a few thousand followers, it doesn't mean that any of them wanted to be customers. So on my posts, I was getting a lot of comments saying, oh my God, you changed the way that I feel. My strategy now has changed and anything.
But that didn't mean that they then ended up becoming clients. I then found out a few times that these people that were commenting on my post, oh my God, this is so useful. They actually ended up working with my competitors.
But instead of getting angry and pissed off and complaining about that, I've realized that followers don't necessarily always pay you, but having a list does. So when you know that you have all this attention, but you don't have a system underneath it to turn it into money, that's a problem.
So for me, what it looked like is that I started posting a lead magnet to send them to my email list so they could subscribe that and I could potentially consistently sell to them at all times without looking spammy on my LinkedIn. Here's what it looked like for my business.
So this post was to build a waitlist for a new product launch, right? And then here's another example on how I did it. If you look at the call to action, the lead magnet is a one -page summary of that podcast.
When people go and comment on my post, they go through my comments through the DM funnel where I trade the one -page summary for engaged comments. And then once I exchange that free thing, for their comment it then starts a conversation or a thread with people that are sort of warm leads because they're clearly interested in something that i have to say then i can then start a buying conversation to later pitch them an offer when it feels relevant or they could just ask me if i have a newsletter i could give it to them and then they could consistently read my content straight into their inbox which then potentially turns them into clients oh and by the way 70 to 80 of my revenue comes from my email list so that is a super hack that i wish i knew when i started so until then we now have a good structure to understand how to position yourself on linkedin now we also learned how to write viral content now we also also learned how to turn those people that are engaged with you
into potential customers for now or for the future through a list, an email list, through lead magnets. But then a problem that I ended up coming to when I had my agency, my ghostwriting agency, is that I was getting more leads that I could serve. So the business was doing well.
I was doing 100k a year with the agency and it was amazing. I was still at university. It was the best thing that I could have imagined.
But the problem was I felt like I was and I knew this. It was a struggle because I couldn't really scale the agency without hiring more and I was still at university, so that was a problem. But I also wasn't going to quit my university degree to try and scale this business.
So as a result, because I had a validated concept, people were buying the agency services. I was doing good work. I had testimonials.
I took everything that I'd been doing one -to -one for clients and turned it into something one -to -many. That exact service I used to deliver to a single client became a program that I could deliver to 10, 20 people at once for less of my time for the exact same amount. which was a life changer for me and that's how my second business literally academy was born and that's how i ended up making 2 .5 million dollars of linkedin alone now you've learned how i went from zero and being invisible and a nobody to becoming a well -known name in my industry and also making millions of dollars through linkedin but one thing that i know is that none of this works if you try and do everything by yourself that was literally one of the main reasons why it took me so long to scale past 1 million and that's also why me and my best friend Jake built Clio.
Because Clio helps turn ideas into LinkedIn posts that still sound like yourself, but without the time and effort that you're currently spending every single day trying to write the perfect LinkedIn post. That time should be focused on you working on your business rather than just in your content. So I'm going to put a link down in the description so you can try it out.
So go check out Clio. Hope you like it and I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Lara Acosta opens by stacking credentials, Forbes 30 Under 30, a seven-figure LinkedIn business, before reversing into "I'm literally just a girl" who almost quit three months into posting. What follows is the four-part system she says took her from broke and unemployed to $2.5 million: a niche framework, a proof strategy that skips cold outreach, a post-writing formula, and the pivot that let her stop trading time for money.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:26acronym
SMPV framework
- Scale
- Market
- Problem
- Value
A niche-finding framework: list your skills (Scale), identify who already has money and wants it (Market), find the specific problem that market complains about (Problem), then package it as value.
Steal forany personal-brand positioning exercise
04:41list
One Line Pitch formula
- Outcome for market
- Method / Service
- Speciality / Credential
- People you've worked with
A headline formula combining outcome, method, credential, and past clients into one sentence.
Steal fora LinkedIn bio or landing page subhead
09:39acronym
SLAY framework
- Story
- Lesson
- Actionable Advice
- You
A four-part post structure: open with a personal story no one can copy, deliver actionable advice as a listicle, close with a feel-good lesson, then call back to the reader with a question.
Steal forany content-marketing post template
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
15:35product
“So I'm going to put a link down in the description so you can try it out. So go check out Clio.”
Low-pressure plug for her own AI writing tool folded into the final business-pivot story rather than a hard sell.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
