World’s No 1 LinkedIn Creator: I’ll 10x Your Reach in 92 Minutes | Lara Acosta

21:15And 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 audiences, and then have a sales post every single week. Now, that is the actionable advice. People can literally take that and implement it immediately. The 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 why people save and why 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.

22:17We ask them a question. We let them engage with their 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 Sleigh framework. The reason why the lesson in 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.

22:53The reason why this happens - Yes, the bullet points, all the stuff.

22:57Lara Acosta:Yeah, what's going on there? Yeah. The reason why this happens in theory is, I call it the TikTokification 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 in an F shape.

23:28That'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 vengeable and immediately applicable.

24:02So 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 a share 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.

24:33Follow that person. So we are optimizing for all angles. We're optimizing for likes. We're optimizing for variety. 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?

25:02They'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.

25:12Lara Acosta: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.

25:49You're not like paying for distribution. You are simply getting the user to comment on that answer. That's it.

25:56Lara Acosta:So that would be like asking them to like it or comment? No, no, no, 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 time, 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, 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.

26:33Brand equity is then diluted if you're 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 by 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.

27:13I 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 paybook 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.

27:56That 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.

28:17Lara Acosta: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.

28:52do 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 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 new ones within every single step.

29:22Right. 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 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 read in their time when they're bored in the beach and they're scrolling on email. And they're like, oh, I've got this resource I want to read on Saturday after I drop my kids from home.

29:51at 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.

30:00Lara Acosta:How do I plan my content and then 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. Like, 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 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.

30:36Then I know my SMPB. So I know the problems in the market that I'm solving. So I have all of that. Then 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 fix. None of them don't fit that SMPB framework.

31:15And 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.

31:44The 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't 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 they are they are they have consistently done it for so many 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 hook that is so overly done everybody talks about x but nobody talks about y yeah or 99 % of people have this problem.

32:37But 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.

32:47Lara Acosta: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 my notes app because I'm always on the go. And I'll go on to 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.

33:25That'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 on to Clio or use ChatGPT, 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.

33:58let's say it's like this is the unbeatable framework to sell on LinkedIn that's a 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 video any air 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.

34:30And 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 here, but what we know works.

34:56Lara Acosta:Would you have a format for each post that you're trying to work towards? So like when I look at yours, there's some are photos, some are videos, some people do cheat sheets, comparisons. How do you think about that? How important is that on LinkedIn? The format? Yeah. And is 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.

35:41It 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 infographic status for you.

36:16The 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 by 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.

36:47But 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. So 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.

37:41This 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 to find that out and to find what works through repetition and iteration the only thing the only thing that can prove what what what format is the winning format for you is testing for three weeks straight.

38:36Do an infographic on one thing. Maybe you liked it. Maybe you found a Claude, ChatGPT 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

39:08Lara Acosta: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.

39:39And 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.

40:13Lara Acosta: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 get, 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.

40:41So 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

41:08Lara Acosta:interesting because my natural question would be for you what do you do do you 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, you know, 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.

41:50how are you going to expect to people to 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 with emotion so i do all the comments myself at the start i used to comment 8 to 12 hours a day because i didn't have anything to do so that's because i was a student 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.

42:24That 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, 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 post and I'm like, I love this Stephen. I actually burnt out in early 2023 and the best thing that I could do was actually focus on my sleep routine and do this and do that. A VA doesn't know that. AI generated comment doesn't know that.

43:04I know that. Then a client or someone watching, they're like, I actually really liked this girl. I liked 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?

43:37The comment section. If you take control of the comment section yourself, you're actually going to get, I cannot apply over 10s 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. Like people are like that. 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 like long and it's heartfelt to someone that, let's say, they just retired their parents. I'm like, that's my goal.

44:10You'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 post 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?

44:45Lara Acosta:Like replying to a load of comments or just every week? Yeah. Every day. The days that I don't post a 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. That'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. Like I've had mentors. I have people that tell me to scale myself out of business. I've read the books, all of these things.

45:14Like, you know, you can automate, systematize, outsource, et cetera. 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 stopped doing that myself. I'm not saying that everybody should do that. But if you have the chance, you should do it. Because positioning again in 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 is there's also negative ROI. They're hiring all these people.

45:48They'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.

45:54Lara Acosta: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 got a found any like optimal way of working there? Because this is, this is the number one thing that I see with people who are founders. Like there's a founder who's been on this podcast, Ben Branson. He's like incredibly successful. And he's like, I need someone to manage my LinkedIn and my Instagram.

46:32Lara Acosta: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 any anything that works? It depends on the founder and depends on how much time you have and depends how involved you want to be.

47:08End 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 they found that 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?

47:42For 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 so 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 um cold building all of these things otherwise

48:26Lara Acosta:what is the point yeah makes sense and resonates i've definitely outsourced it at various times and then seen yeah all the engagement tanks so what do you do now trying to have the right balance between like help um and doing it myself but i it tends to vary depending on like what's going on in the business and like how operationally involved i am and also if we're um at that stage where we've got like 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.

49:13If 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.

49:35Lara Acosta: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 was 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.

50:12I 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't 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 post 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 360 brew, LinkedIn has over-optimized their kind of like algorithm to just rely on a single algorithm that is ranking everything all at once.

50:56So 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 scale 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.

51:33When you give the algorithm a single source of like SEO expert helping B2B businesses scale through blogs and articles using AI and XYZ, 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 in 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?

52:15Most people say founder of Literally Academy. No one knows what Literally Academy is. Not even I forget that it's called Literally Academy.

52:22Lara Acosta:It's cool. It's a program. So unless you're Stephen Barlett and you're CEO of social chain, that's fine because it's Stephen Barlett. We all know social chain. If you are Timo Amu, X 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.

53:00Like 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 that 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 to us 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.

53:34That'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.

54:06I 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? How do we use psychology to push or message or 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.

54:41If 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. So 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.

55:05Lara Acosta: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 single 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 future. No one's going to look at that. I'm going to go to my future. That's so insane that people still think that.

55:43So 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 singular 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. I would say building personal brands for business owners in 2026 helped thousands of people.

56:12You can see the logos there. I don't say, go to my profile to read more. No, people are going to do that automatically. 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

56:27Lara Acosta:can't click and then the free actions are they in my they're in my featured section do i get like free free places you get many okay 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 go in viral i'm gonna put in my feature section because it's like social proof again no so like people are gonna see us like they're gonna see the first line of that viral post they're gonna see their likes obviously yes it doesn't mean anything to them yeah 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 a portfolio then that is the answer that they're looking for for them to make a buying decision or like to even follow you?

57:13Lara Acosta:I feel like I've got the content down. I feel like I got my profile optimized. So now would I come on to monetization? Yeah, if you want. Yeah. 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.

57:52And 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 parcel 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 a post. It's very rare. It's very rare.

58:24They 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, right? 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, right? 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-Eleven rule, seven different channels, 11 different places of content, something else.

59:01So 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.

59:12Lara Acosta: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, this 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? What is important to like check the vibes?

59:48Lara Acosta: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.

1:00:23How 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 and work with me. So that's on a weekly newsletter.

1:00:58Sometimes I write, You know, 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.

1:01:31Or like I funneled them somewhere else. Like I funneled them to a YouTube video, et cetera. 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 launched 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 and the best and the best yeah 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 revelations 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 have five tips to grow your podcast because you already did that they like you they're gonna want to see what you have to say next and would you have any like standard sequences

1:02:52Lara Acosta: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 okay i'm giving all i'm giving all the way away for free sure when you set up your email list and you have a lead magnet say 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 and you're done like it is not gonna convert you shouldn't do it if you can't put in the time yeah 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.

1:03:25I 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.

1:03:31Lara Acosta:Yeah. 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.

1:04:08So 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, like from, from you, 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. These two posts went viral and they were educating on the problem of getting guests, like how to get a good guest.

1:04:47I 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 leave 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.

1:05:25They don't know Callum. Who the fuck is Callum?

1:05:28Lara Acosta: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 me 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 but 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 is.

1:06:06So 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 the problem for someone else or even for yourself. So then it's an educational email and like, this person didn't think that they needed a podcast, but in reality, they actually did it. They needed it because that's what they were very charismatic.

1:06:43They 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 tell, you show them the before, you show them the after. That's building credibility and positioning. Like now you're not just column with a free resource. Now you're column 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.

1:07:15Thank 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 called 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 leads someone to a solution and then you can promote yourself

1:07:34Lara Acosta: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 most your number one product or service is your um coaching academy yeah so how would 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.

1:08:10You 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, Literature Academy or The Known Club, which are my two programs. Again, I run the launch model, which I rinse and repeat every three months.

1:08:45And 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 abroad interest. Then I tell them how and why LinkedIn is important. Then in 2026, Harry didn't have any followers.

1:09:27Today 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.

1:10:00Maybe 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 100K in less than a year. And then I tell them, like, he started building his Basel brand. I give them the examples, like, Alistical, same Slay framework. And then at the end, P.S., in like a week's time, I'm launching this, join the waitlist 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.

1:10:37So then that's the first week. Then the second week is I announced 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.

1:11:14I just launched this program. Here's exactly the problem that it fixes. And you talk about the program is like the program is six weeks, blah, blah, blah. So this problem has this thing, it sounds like 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, 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.

1:11:47So within the fast 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 Fia from zero to 60k in a week using LinkedIn. Then the second line is she joined my program, which is live now. I mean, parenthesis, I'm just writing it in my head. And then she learned how to do this. She learned how to do this.

1:12:21You learn 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.

1:12:46Lara Acosta: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, I'll start teasing it like February 1st, I am launching X. Join the waitlist here 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.

1:13:20The 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.

1:13:56Rinse 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. So 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.

1:14:40Lara Acosta: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 join 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...

1:15:12Lara Acosta:Yeah, it's a cohort program. Six weeks. Six weeks. No, four weeks now. Four weeks. We trimmed it to four weeks. It was easier. It's very intense. Yeah. So four weeks, like my first one was eight weeks. It was intense. Yeah, it's really 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.

1:15:45So 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 what's the price point on those

1:16:13Lara Acosta:uh that's three thousand dollars for four weeks and then we have an ascension model where it's like you get one-to-one mentorship with me for like three months for like i don't know it depends like 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.

1:16:45I 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, etc., 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?

1:17:16Or 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 I'm 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. then 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?

1:17:44That is where I love, like in the trenches.

1:17:48Lara Acosta: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 life call a month. So that is for my IFP 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.

1:18:29Like 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 like this one call and that gets us the results. At one point, we had a great cohort. But we weren't, everybody loved it. They go, it's the best program ever, Laura. And I'm like, okay, let's see your results.

1:19:05Oh 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 their whole strategy figured out before they even start.

1:19:41No, 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. 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 our dictator sometimes

1:20:04Lara Acosta: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's the only way with literally academy how How would you, where would that offer sit?

1:20:53Lara Acosta: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 um engagement so that is for literature 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.

1:21:49So we know that they have the problem that we know that they have the offer. Because Literate 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

1:22:19Lara Acosta: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 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 it because i don't really over optimize for scale i over-optimize for what I want to do, which is the cohorts, right?

1:23:12Then I could potentially run out to Leechle Academy if I want to. We haven't started that yet. We might do, but yeah, that's how I would scale Leechle Academy. When we launched Leechle 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.

1:23:37Lara Acosta:Let's talk about the other opportunities here that you, and products and services that you offer. So you have like this SaaS as well. Yeah, clear. So how does that fit into this? And then there's Nutonic 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.

1:24:14So 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 there's the software.

1:24:50And 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. So it's like a mechanism. So one complements the other. And so ideally, most of our customers, most of my customers, they bought Literal 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 like we've, I've multiplied my scale and leverage by remaining in the same lane. Because I'm not promoting different things.

1:25:24I'm promoting one. I'm promoting one solution through one scale and then it like multiplies itself by having different things that serve that same audience

1:25:32Lara Acosta:what else is there here? do you get many like brand deals? do you get like 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 So Gamma, HubSpot, 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?

1:26:12Yes, 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'd like maybe start talking about manscaped even if the paycheck is nice i'm not gonna take it because my audience won't buy because it doesn't it's not there's no audience content fed there's no audience brand fed so it doesn't matter and then if i do that let's say they offer me twenty thousand dollars those twenty thousand dollars won't be worth anything if i've ruined my reputation by being that person that's that talks about the thing that gives it like people know people are smart so i rather not ruin my reputation for this big paycheck because not ruining it can give me a bigger paycheck in the long term yeah and this is why i don't really recommend people to go to the 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 um for a time like i go in phases where like i'll promote tools etc that resonate with me but sometimes i say 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.

1:27:27Even 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 and it can be lost in seconds.

1:27:58Lara Acosta: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 formats 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.

1:28:48At 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. Like we interviewed me and Jake to on like how like the fundamentals on how to create viral content that gets leads.

1:29:28Both of us have built 100 % inbound businesses through content. We are the only people that have done that. And so when we notice 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 format for content for you because it's based on you.

1:30:01It knows you, it writes like you, but it doesn't, 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 PeeW is built for that. And for me, it's been the most meaningful project that I've done. I love the education business, but this has been a completely different game. From building an AI tool that actually works to seeing the returns on our users. so we are seeing CEOs that had been posting consistently for 30 days and then they saw 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's that has been so it's giving 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.

1:31:01So Clio is the only tool that I would use for LinkedIn.

1:31:04Lara Acosta: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 column. Type column when you go to Clio.so and you'll get our free month. Incredible. This has been so good, Lara. It's an absolutely insane playbook. Thanks so much for dropping all this game for free because 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 thenownclub.com. You can get in if you have time, if like we haven't closed doors, or you can go to my YouTube, Lara Costa, LinkedIn, Lara Costa, Instagram, Lara Costa.

1:31:43I post memes there.

1:31:45Lara Acosta: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