Account Manager @ Kurogo | Creating Industry Leaders through Personal Branding

I eat, sleep and breathe FMCG brands and pop culture.

And if I’m not doom-scrolling into the latest trend rabbit holes, I’m talking about it on LinkedIn.

The rest of the week, I’m an Account Manager specialising in driving strategic outcomes for clients through data-led insights and delivering high-impact marketing strategies.

To craft banging brand strategy, I:
👉🏻 Research (i.e. stalk) my clients and their industries until I know them better than they know themselves
👉🏻 Keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening in their field
👉🏻 Genuinely root for them and their business 

That’s the mix I use for my clients, and so far I’ve achieved some pretty insane results across 20+ CEOs and Founders including:

- An inquiry from Dragon’s Den
- £700k angel investment directly attributed to LinkedIn 
- Features in podcasts, panels, publications

Ultimately, people buy from people.

Not dry, faceless brands.

Alessia Doyle

Today marks 3 years at Kurogo.

(Or 1,097 days of building CEO and Founders’ brands and leading strategy to be precise.☝🏻)

In numbers, it looks like this:

→ 37 client campaigns led
→ 2,634 posts published
→ 19 million impressions (!!)
→ 257,155 reactions

Yep, counted them all myself.

But it’s not just been all about the numbers (as much as I do love my spreadsheets).

In that time, I’ve also:

Attended 6 team socials 
Worked every role on the delivery team
Supported 7 clients at special in-person events
Secured a client as a lead sponsor of the Olivier Awards
Directed campaign video shoots from our London Studio
Built a client personal brand that led to a £750k in investment
Remotely worked from Bristol, London, Milan, Barcelona, Zadar and Cape Town

But by far, the best bits have been the clients I’ve worked with (4 of which have returned to work with me which means more than any impression count ever could!!) and my incredible teammates.

It’s been a huge 3 years of many highlights, wins and learnings at Kurogo - Personal Branding Agency. 

Very excited for whatever the next 1,097 days bring. 🪩

Serious about brand strategy. Not that serious about myself x | Brand, Partnerships & Culture | Live, laugh, love branding

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“Personal branding is cringe.”
Only until it works.

For one of my clients, it ended up bringing in £750,000 of their £1.5m investment raise.

No paid ads or big PR splash.

Just showing up consistently with a clear story about what they were building and why it mattered.

Behind the scenes it was pretty simple:

→ I led the positioning and brand campaign direction
→ Irene wrote the posts, translating the business’ wins into content
→ Ilaria handled engagement, keeping conversations going with the right people

A few months in, investors started appearing in the comments and DMs.

Some just curious.
Some asking questions.
And some eventually wiring money.

It wasn’t overnight, and it wasn’t flashy. But it worked.

Personal branding gets a bad rep because people picture buzzwords and vain hustle bros. 

In reality, it’s just making your work visible to the people who might care.

Sometimes that leads to a like.
Sometimes it leads to £750k.

Ecstatic client not pictured, so here’s me the moment I got the news instead. 

(Secretly manifesting that my own personal brand also leads me to a jackpot x)

Jake Summerhayes

Working with founders and business Leaders to craft powerful and authentic personal brands. 

Why? Because reputation matters. 

- 82% of customers trust a company when their senior management members are active on social media

- Brand messages are shared 24x more on personal accounts compared to company accounts

- Customers are willing to pay 13.5x more for elite industry experts

Yet only 1% of LinkedIn's 700 million users share weekly content. 

Our mission at Kurogo is to solve that.

Kurogo is derived from the Japanese ‘Kuroko’ referring to the black clad stagehands in traditional Japanese theatre.

The convention of wearing black implying the invisibility of the wearer on stage. 

We are your Kurogo. 

Directing, driving and delivering your personal brand from the background. 

Giving you the spotlight to excel in what you do best.

Head Of Client Services

I routinely ask our team members to fuck off.

When they:

- Open client chats while on holiday
- Message me when they’re off
- Refuse to step away while being ill
- Go far beyond the scope when unnecessary
- Don’t take enough breaks
- Log on to do some “quick work” on weekends

I’ve far from mastered work-life balance, but I don’t buy into the hustle culture nonsense for one second.

Client Services Director @ Kurogo | We create thought leaders through Personal Branding

"How do I get a job at Kurogo"?

We’re adding a new team member almost every month right now, and I get asked this question every week.

Here’s what you must believe to thrive at Kurogo 👇🏻

- Radical responsibility
If you say you will do something, you do it.
No blaming, no excuses, no “busy week mate”.
You own your work, your learning, and your tasks.
So you gotta pull your weight.

- Constant improvement
You look at your work and ask where you can push more.
You ask for feedback. You take it on the chin.
You give feedback with care.
You care about getting better every week.

- Client obsession
Clients are the lifeblood.
You think about them before you think about yourself.
You go beyond the scope when it is right.
You are more ambitious for their brand than they are.

- Equality
Titles aren't the most impressive thing to us.
Age does not matter.
Great ideas can come from any voice on the call.
You treat everyone with respect.
Above all, you are kind in a hard industry.

- Pride in the basics
You meet deadlines.
You keep your promises.
You communicate clearly and often.
You deliver work accurately the first time.
You take pride in things most people are lazy about.

At Kurogo, the people we hire are the foundation of our success.

I can say with utmost certainty right now that every person on the team is one of the best at what they do. 

Honestly, what more can you want as a leader?

Across the 40 accounts we currently handle, we’ve published 4124 posts in the past year.

Across all the posts, these 8 types of content do the best:

1. Mindset & Motivation
14,588 avg impressions.

2. Client Success Story
13,357 avg impressions.

3. Personal Milestones
12,707 avg impressions.

4. Career Before & After
12,398 avg impressions.

5. Data-Backed Insight
10,359 avg impressions.

6. Vulnerable Moments
10,311 avg impressions.

7. Day-in-the-Life
9,975 avg impressions.

8. Personal Hot Take
8,767 avg impressions.

By leveraging these types of content, we've managed 32,744,118 impressions across these accounts over the last 12 months.

So this shit works 🤷🏻‍♂️

Post through personal profile = good 👍
Post only through company profile = waste 👎
Don’t post anything ever = bad 👎👎

Optimise your profile and post = good 👍
Not optimise your profile and post = waste 👎
Not optimise your profile and no post = bad 👎👎

Post well written, formatted content to help people = good 👍
Post unoptimised random content to help people = waste 👎
Post motivational quotes with no value = bad 👎👎

Connect with targeted people and network = good 👍
Connect with random people and no talk = waste 👎
Connect with everyone and pitch = f*cking 👎👎

--

Download our full guide to personal branding (see comments) = good 👍

More than half of our hires over the past year have discovered the company through one team member’s personal brand.

And this lad isn’t even a part of our senior team.

Now imagine how much top talent you can attract if everyone from your leadership team were building their personal brands.

If you want the best people to join your business, don’t sleep on EGC (employee-generated content).

The true cost of not building a personal brand is that:

Reputation compounds, but so does silence.

The market doesn’t reward hidden operators.

It rewards visible thinkers.

You don’t need to be an influencer.
You just need to be findable.

Because when recruiters, founders, or investors look you up and see nothing…

You’ve already lost half the battle.

📷 - me when Sam G. Winsbury asks me to post more InDuStRy InSiGhTs

When your content is so dangerously good, LinkedIn decides to keep it a secret.

No nonsense guide to marketing speak:

Let’s A/B test it = I don’t have a fucking clues so let's do both
Included free = You’re paying for this, but let’s pretend you’re not
Black Friday Discount = Based on an inflated price
High in protein = Will taste like shit or make you shit yourself
Natural/Organic = Tastes like shit, but makes you feel morally superior
We’re no bullsh*t = We’re the same as everyone else, but we swear

What have I missed?

“I don’t want to be one of those LinkedIn people.” Fair.

But the issue is… 

You’re already being judged.

By:

- Prospective hires.
- Agencies pitching you.
- Founders considering you.
- Recruiters building lists.

And if the only thing they see is:
“Head of Marketing at X” (company name, not platform)

You look like everyone else.

Your thinking is your edge.
But if you never publish it, it has zero market value.

I’m not saying go the random selfies and hustle posts route.

But in 2026, documented perspective matters more than ever, because:

If you don’t shape your narrative, someone else will (usually poorly).

So with that in mind, what impression do you get of me from this work setup?

This is who you’re talking to when you say you’re ‘taking it in-house’ btw

We’re a team of 21 people in 3 continents.

These 5 tools stop us from going insane having meetings all day ⬇️

1. Slack: every time I have to use Teams I almost cry
2. Loom: NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS A 60 MINS MEETING
3. Fathom: so that I don’t have to rely on my brain to remember stuff
4. Notion: makes complicated shit easier, also makes everything look good
5. Canva: makes creativity easy for artistically challenged people 🙋🏻‍♂️

Right here's the truth with LinkedIn content:

Your first two lines decide everything. Fuck them up and your post is invisible.

You can spend an hour on a post.
Pour your soul into it.
Share your best framework.

But if the hook is weak, nobody sees it.
You are shouting into the void.

I like big views.
I love leads more.

We use a simple way to write posts that both grow and sell:

1️⃣ First: find the right angle

Same idea.
Two options:

- “5 tips to write content”
- “How I pulled 100,000 views from one post”

One is homework.
One is clicks 💷

Good angles:

- Create curiosity
- Feel unexpected
- Go against the crowd
- Sound a bit extreme

“Good and bad” dies.
“Best and worst” wins.

2️⃣ Channel your inner psycho editor

You only get one or two lines before the reader has to click “see more”.
Miss that and nothing else matters.

Two ways our elite writing team writes hooks:

- Cliffhangers for stories
- Promising value for how-to posts

Then we stack the posts with:

→ Personal proof
→ Clear payoff
→ Numbers
→ Key pain points of one clear person we're speaking to

“I got 187,392 views with this hook framework. Here is how you steal it.”

That gets clicks from the right people.

3️⃣ Deliver or get called clickbait

Once they click, we owe them.
We keep the body:

- Stupid simple (grade 8 level)
- Full of white space
- Built around a clear process or framework

High perceived value + low effort to read = holy grail.

Your hook wins attention.
Your post's body earns trust.
Both together build authority 🤝🏻

I'm in a generous mood today, so here are 228 of our best hooks:

https://lnkd.in/e5fX5YKT

P.S.

Join our waitlist for free personal branding workshops (no pitches ever, I promise)

https://lnkd.in/exVYf5Pc

As a kid, I’d watch people on TV and think:

“You’re a doughnut. Who let you on camera?”

What I realise today though, is that this was the OG personal branding.

You were handed visibility and opportunities that others didn’t get because you had the skills, sure, but also a strong brand.

Personal branding isn’t new.
We just gave it a name.

What’s changed is not the concept.
It’s access.

PR used to be for the top 5-10%.
Now, reputation building is democratised because social media exists.

Personal branding isn’t a trend.
It’s a core distribution channel that can’t be ignored anymore.

Leaders are forced to be visible, whether they like it or not, so you might as well control the narrative.

—

We’ve built 350+ personal brands. Join the waitlist to learn all our personal branding knowledge for free (no pitches I promise) 👊🏻

https://lnkd.in/exVYf5Pc

It does my head in how many marketing execs think the problem is still demand gen.

When what they really have is a visibility problem.

If you’re hitting pipeline targets, running paid, got the CRM dialled in.

But no one knows who you are or what you do…

I hate to break it to you mate 😶

When budgets tighten, attention shifts.
Boards don’t double down on anonymous operators.

They double down on visible leaders.

The uncomfortable truth:

If your CEO is invisible, and you’re invisible, your company feels invisible.

Company pages don’t build authority. People do.

And yet most marketing leaders still treat personal branding like a side quest.

Here’s what actually happens when leadership shows up consistently:

✅ Sales cycles shorten.
✅ Inbound quality improves.
✅ Recruitment gets easier.
✅Pricing pressure drops.
✅ Category authority compounds.

This isn’t about ego.

It’s about risk and reputation management (which I know a thing or two about)

Reputation is insurance.

Ignore it now, pay for it later - upto you.

POV: You’re my Gemini notetaker after another successful client call

Leaders then: Build the company 

Leaders now: Represent the company

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The Battle

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