Ep. 133/ Year-End Business Growth Secrets: Tips from Experts in Personal Branding, LinkedIn, and Course Launching
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As we wrap up this year I wanted to reflect on some of my guests best tips to help you kick off your 2025 entrepreneurial goals. These powerhouse guests are Tori Dunlap, Jess Ekstrom, Brad Zomick, Gemma Bonham-Carter and Rachel B. Lee, who share their expertise on building a personal brand, growing your LinkedIn following, securing speaking engagements, and scaling online courses. Whether you're looking to boost your email subscriber base or fine-tune your LinkedIn strategy, this episode is your holiday gift of entrepreneurial wisdom—perfect for gearing up for 2025 and beyond. Don't forget to subscribe for more tips and join me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube for ongoing advice on becoming a thought leader!
In this episode you will learn:
How to use email marketing strategies to create a dedicated subscriber base. - 3:02
How to build meaningful connections and leverage them for growth - 6:17
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract the right audience - 7:10
How to be visible and present in your industry - 11:28
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In this episode you will learn:
How to use email marketing strategies to create a dedicated subscriber base. - 3:02
How to build meaningful connections and leverage them for growth - 6:17
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract the right audience - 7:10
How to be visible and present in your industry - 11:28
Quotes from our guest:
“The three Cs are my framework for growth on LinkedIn and the three Cs stand for content connections and commenting.” - Brad Zomich (4:48)
“Did you know that LinkedIn is a hundred percent optimized for SEO? So what that means is that when we do a great job with our profile, it's going to be the top thing that shows up on Google search." - Rachel B. Lee (7:46)
“…niche it and pitch it, which is to find a specific audience.” - Jess Ekstrom
“Be visible, create content, become a thought leader in your space.” - Gemma Bonham-Carter (12:16)
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Kim (00:01):
Happy holidays. It is the end of the year, so I am going back into the archive from this past year and bringing together a super power packed episode with best advice on growing your business. Specifically, you're going to learn about how to build your personal brand, how to grow your following on LinkedIn, how to get speaking engagements, scaling and launching a course, growing your email subscriber base, and so much more. Welcome to the Exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Do you work for yourself and want to supercharge your business while still having fun? Well, this is your go-to podcast, part MBA Part Cheer Squad. Every week I'll be joined by top business owners who share the secrets to their success. After I found myself working during childbirth true story, I quit my executive media job to bet on myself fighting the fear and imposter syndrome to eventually earn six awards and ind demand speaking career and features in Fast Company and Business Insider. Now, I'm here to celebrate all you rock stars betting on yourself, and I want to help you win. Tune in every Wednesday to hear from remarkable founders and don't miss our Solo Friday episodes, a treasure trove of video and podcasting mini masterclasses with me. Exit the Grind, enter success on your own terms. Don't forget to subscribe today and grab my free video tips at my website, kimrittberg.com.
(01:27):
Happy, happy holidays. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate every single person who listens to the show. I've gotten a lot of awesome notes from you all and I learned so much from this show. I'm super appreciative to the guests and I'm really appreciative to every single person who listens and learns with me. So on this episode, I'm going back from the past year, six months a year to bring you some really power packed advice, really distilling it down. A couple of things about building your personal brand, growing your following in LinkedIn, getting speaking engagements, scaling and launching a course, growing your email subscriber base because those are things that you need. And so some of you might be stronger in and some might be holes for you, but for me, I learned so much from these guests basically that email my assistant, I'm like, Hey, can we make a quiz?
(02:13):
Now? My guest said we should make a quiz. Let's do a quiz. But seriously, there are so much amazing knowledge on this show that I just wanted to distill it down is my holiday gift to you. And if you are interested in learning to build your brand for 2025 and beyond, make sure to connect with me. I'm on Instagram, Kim Rittberg, R-I-T-T-B-E-R-G, on LinkedIn, same thing. Kim Rittberg on YouTube, Kim Rittberg content, and I love dropping advice on how you can become a thought leader through content, messaging, video, podcast, all of that beautiful stuff. And thank you again for listening. Please drop a review and please share the show with a friend. If you enjoy the show and you learn from it, I really, really would appreciate it if you would share it with a friend. And I hope you have an amazing holiday season. And here's some advice from Tori Dunlop of her first 100 K on how to get more email subscribers.
Tori (03:02):
One, you need one, even if you don't think you need one, you need one. And especially again, if you have a bigger audience somewhere else that you don't control, start getting that audience to a place that you can control. Use that audience that you've built as the top of the funnel to convert them down the line. Second thing, steal from me. Steal from other people who you love. And again, I say steal, but really what we're talking about is watch what other people are doing. Watch what you do as a user, what makes you click on that thing? What makes you give your email, what makes you like a post, right? All of these things can inform how another user is going to behave and also what is working. I follow the people that I admire and that I like how their business is running and I watch, I watch and learn from those folks.
(03:54):
And I would say the final thing is when you're thinking about funnels, again, start small. It doesn't have to be this big robust thing. You can build that over time, but you just at least need somebody to go somewhere that again, you control and that you own and that you're giving value in exchange. You just expecting them to drop their email. It's just not going to work just in the same way that it takes usually a little bit for somebody to follow you on Instagram or to buy your book or to subscribe to your podcast, or even to not only subscribe, but then to listen to more than one episode, right? All of these things take a little bit of time and they start with trust, and you just have to start small in order to get going. Don't overthink it.
Kim (04:39):
And here's some great advice on how to grow your LinkedIn. Following first from Brad Zomick and then separately from Rachel B. Lee of standout authority.
Brad (04:48):
The three Cs are my framework for growth on LinkedIn and the three Cs stand for content connections and commenting. You can shuffle the order, whatever it makes more sense to you, but essentially, actually maybe we'll start with connections. That's probably the simplest connections are who you can connect to. And the beauty of a connection on LinkedIn is that it's two way, right? So unlike following somebody on Twitter where you're just passive leasing whatever they're saying and you can't engage with them. So when you expand your connections, you're expanding who can see your content, which leads me to the next step. Your content. The content is your ideas. My framework for LinkedIn is really for people who are trying to sell something, typically B2B, a founder with a high a CV sale, so that way they don't need to connect to a ton of people to get their ideas in front of people in a powerful way that gets 'em to want to buy something.
(05:38):
And the content is a mix of things. When you're talking about your product, it's like how to do better work around what your product does, but it's also your personality. I think what's cool about LinkedIn these days, you can be more personal. It's not just about business. I would actually spend some time going out and commenting first and computing is great because number one, you start flexing the muscle, spending time in the platform signaling algorithmically that you're engaged, right? But by commenting on people in your audience, it'll probably give you a lot of ideas on what to write about.
Kim (06:11):
What are your top tips to really, really win on LinkedIn?
Rachel (06:17):
One, how do you attract your audience? Go from completely unknown to scene? How do you engage your followers? So actually create those meaningful relationships? And then how do you convert? So how do we convert our audience, not just into clients, but into advocates without spamming or selling? And so that process that you go through is how you can succeed on LinkedIn. So if we kind of break that down, the first part is attract. And really what this is about, Kim, is about your brand. Who are you? And when I say who are you, I mean, what is it that you do? Who do you serve? Why are you here? Whether you're your own business owner or you work for somebody else, why do you care about what you're doing? So you need to understand who your audience is. You need to understand what your skills and superpowers are.
(07:10):
You need to understand what your differentiation is and what is that offer that you have. So a lot of clarity in all those pieces, right? And actually your LinkedIn profile is a key piece of that attract stage. So top tip is have a rockstar LinkedIn profile. You have to have all the components of what makes a great profile from the images. The headline is so important. Those 200 characters, your about section, your experience, your skills, every piece of that needs to be filled out. You need to be getting recommendations. All those things are absolutely essential. And you getting noticed. Fun fact. Do you know that LinkedIn is a hundred percent optimized for SEO? So what that means is, is that when we do a great job with our profile, it's going to be the top thing that shows up on Google search. The second piece, although it just hit you with a bunch of great and important tips on that engage part is posting content.
(08:04):
Now, posting content can mean a lot of things. And Kim, I won't go. You'll tell me how deep we want to go into a content conversation. The best advice I could give is at least get out there posting a piece of content that shares your knowledge, gives practical advice, feels not promotional, and is really industry value driven information. Try to post if you can once a week and very importantly like and comment and be active. That is as important as just posting comment on LinkedIn for your success. The last piece for success on LinkedIn, on that conversion, converting our audience, creating opportunities, developing those relationships that lead to opportunities is that you are reaching out to people. After all, LinkedIn is a networking platform. It's really a networking platform. It's become more of a creator platform. It's become more of this social media thing, but it wasn't made for that.
(09:06):
It was made for job seekers to connect with recruiters. And so when you have that mentality, think about it as how every day can I go and send a personalized invite to one new person I'm interested in knowing even better, could you do 20, 25 a week, even more than that? Could you do 400 a month? The maximum allowable building those connections and creating conversations. And the messaging is absolutely pivotal to showing up on LinkedIn in terms of the algorithm. It will drive profile visibility. It will drive you strong results in your search appearances and ultimately will help with the content engagement as well, which many people talk to us about.
Kim (09:51):
And this is Jess Ekstrom of Mic Drop Academy on how to get more speaking engagements.
Jess (09:57):
LinkedIn, it's really changed over the past two years where people are using it as a search engine to find speakers. And so using LinkedIn, not just to search for outbound finding meeting planners, but also optimizing your profile to show that you're a speaker, putting a speaking photo in your header, put the word speaker in your bio so you come up on the searches. But the other thing I would say too is something that in my drop workshop, we call it niche it and pitch it, which is find a specific audience. And it's really helpful to do this with associations. There's so many associations out there that are booking speakers, and then you've spoken at one and now there's 49 other states that you could speak at. So finding one association, maybe it's women in real estate of Florida, and you go there and you speak and you negotiate in your contract that on top of your speaking fee that you are also needing them to do four referral introductions to other associations. Then that's how you can also turn one gig into five spinoff opportunities. So instead of being like, I'm just going to go pitch myself to every leadership or women's event in the country, niche it and pitch it, what's one industry that you can go after and then get a lot of reps there and then branch off?
Kim (11:22):
And now here is Gemma Bonham Carter about scaling and launching a course.
Gemma (11:28):
I think that sometimes people get into courses thinking a little bit that they can almost hide behind the screen a little bit, that they can create something sort of in a vacuum and put it out there and it's going to sell. And this is one thing that we were talking about actually before you hit record, is you do need to get visible and be out there. And you were talking about your experience in video and using that as a tool. And I think that sometimes that can be a bit of a mistake in that people don't quite realize the extent to which they do need to build a brand. And this is a business. This isn't just an educational course that you're going to throw up on Udemy and expect to turn that into a full-time income. So I think that can, sometimes it's not so much a mistake as it's a learning curve for people to understand that, oh no, actually I do need to get out here.
(12:16):
Be visible, create content, become a thought leader in your space. And the people that I really work with in my programs and in my business, they're largely personal brand entrepreneurs, meaning they're building a business where they are the face of the company. It's not like a logo or faceless business. This is them. And it means that they need to bring their ideas to the table. And I think that as this marketplace evolves and shifts with AI more and more, so that is going to be continually more important, that you bring your unique voice and edge and personality and opinions and all of these things that make the way you see your industry different from other people. And you will therefore have a really aligned audience come to you to want to learn from you because of putting those ideas out there. And so I think that can just be maybe not so much a mistake as it is just a misunderstanding, or people don't realize that when they're kind of getting into that space.
Kim (13:26):
Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to exit the grind and enter success on your own terms. This is the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Don't forget to grab my free download, how to Grow Your Business with Amazing video at kimrittberg.com and linked out in the show notes. I love to hear your feedback. Make sure to submit to me what you learned from the show and how you are crushing it on your own terms. Connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Kim Rittberg, R-I-T-T-B-E-R-G. And this show is edited by Jillian Grover and produced by Henry Street Media. I'm your host and executive producer, Kim Rittberg.