Founder & CEO @ Mint & Lemon 🍋 | Building personal brands for startups founders and CEOs | Speaker | Startup Advisor

Hi, I’m Elisabetta 🙋🏻‍♀️ My journey has been defined by resilience, self-belief, and a commitment to continuous learning. From navigating language barriers to building and leading teams in successful startups, I’ve proven that determination and grit can take you anywhere.

I’m passionate about personal branding and the power it has to transform careers and open doors. LinkedIn has been a game-changer for me, and I believe it can do the same for you.

Here’s what we can help you achieve:

- Attract inbound sales
- Spark investor interest
- Attract and keep top talent
- Land speaking gigs and podcast invites
- Expand your network and business opportunities

Ready to take your personal brand to the next level?

✋🏼 Book a call here to work with us: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/linkedinpersonalbrandstrategy

✋🏼 Want only a one-off LinkedIn power session? Book a call here: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/1-1-linkedin-power-session

✋🏼 Brand Partnerships - Work with me on an influencer campaign: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/30-minute-meeting-clone

Elisabetta Torretti

For International Women’s Day I've been asked to 👇🏼

- Speak on a panel for FREE
- Join a podcast that was “free for me”… but required two promotional posts
- Be featured in a magazine for £500
- Share my experience as a woman in business… for “visibility”

Funny how that works. The same week we talk about:
• the gender pay gap
• supporting women
• empowering female founders
Women are still expected to work for exposure.

Let’s call it what it is: 
Unpaid labour wrapped in a nice pink ribbon.

Ladies, start saying NO.
No free panels.
No “visibility opportunities.”
No discounted expertise because it’s International Women’s Day.

Equality doesn’t start with hashtags, it starts with paying women properly.

2012: Got a Master's in Law
2013: Started working in fashion
2014: Started working in fintech

2015: Worked for 2.5 years as a product manager
2017: Started my career in sales as an SDR
2019: Account Executive

2020: Head of Sales
2023: Head of Sales and Customer Success
2024: Build my Personal Branding agency

Careers are not linear paths, and if someone is trying to blame you for switching industries or positions, tell them politely to f* off. 

This is your superpower.
(It was for sure mine ✌🏼)

Instant red flags in a LinkedIn tagline 🚩

- 7-figure founder
- Forbes-featured
- ex (name of big companies)
- Top 1% smt (according to who?!)
- building in stealth (is this such a secret project no one can know about?!)
- DM me ‘SCALE’
- thought leader

Anything to add to the list?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I built a personal brand out of desperation
(and that's what you shouldn't do..)

In 2020 I had ZERO sales budget and desperately needed to build a pipeline and sell, so I thought ..

Q: "where are all my prospects?"
A: "LinkedIn"

Q: "is the platform free?"
A: "yep"

Q: "can I post FREE ads there?"
A: "kind of.."

So I started putting out posts and envisioning them as a sort of "subliminal ads"
(yep, basically FREE ads)

People laughed (I didn't care)
Prospects saw them (I DID care)
Prospects liked them and talked about them in sales calls
Prospects became clients

And it worked 🤷🏻‍♀️

So yeah I built my personal brand out of desperation, but you shouldn't..
Because it's 2026 and building a personal brand it's no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.

Don't wait to build it till you NEED it.
Build it now
Use it later

You're welcome 🫡

PS: funny how some of my previous clients, bosses, ex-colleagues also eventually became clients of Mint & Lemon 🍋
.. you never know in life :)

Mint & Lemon

Everyone says they want a job.
But honestly?
Some people don’t.

I’ve run a recruitment agency.
I’ve hired for my own teams.
I’ve reviewed thousands of CVs.
Over 6 years.
And this is what I keep seeing 👇🏼

-> I ask for a portfolio.
They never send it 🤦🏻‍♀️

-> I interview someone for a LinkedIn ghostwriter role.
They have:
– An empty profile
– Two connections
– No photo
Nothing..

-> I ask what they know about the company.
Silence, no clue about what we do

-> I hire for creative roles.
I receive a 7-page Word CV.
Really BAD formatting.
Grammar mistakes.
Zero effort.

-> Some people don’t even reply when I ask:
“Do you want to move forward with the interview?”

And then they say they “can’t get hired”.
If you can’t:
– Send a simple email
– Spend 10 minutes understanding the company
– Show up professionally for the role you applied for
– Do anything basic required to get hired 🤷🏻‍♀️
I won’t hire you.
Ever.
(and not only me)

You don’t need to go above and beyond.
You don’t need to work for free.
You don’t need to beg.
But you do need to do the bare minimum.

No one is serving you a job on a silver plate.
If you’re not hungry, it shows.
And hiring managers and recruiters see it immediately.

PS: This is NOT the majority of people looking for jobs.
I’ve met and hired incredible humans throughout my career.
This doesn’t take anything away from those fantastic hires 👌🏼

IWD is coming.. but let's cut the fluffy BS and let's push the WOMEN of LinkedIn.
10 women you should follow NOW 👇🏼

1. Jessie Schofer - THE HR queen 👸🏼
2. Jingjin Liu - women empowerment at its best ⬆️
3. Mariya Valeva - your Finance queen☝🏼
4. Oana Leonte - your IP lady 👌🏼
5. Alya Annabi - empowering women 24/7 💜
6. Laura Wyer - Your FMCG go-to-recruiter 💁🏻‍♀️
7. Yasmeen De Piante - oh hello fellow Italian 🇮🇹
8. Carina Cunha - Advisor, Investor and much more 🟢
9. Shali Rana Reed - 100% Unfiltered content (and I LOVE IT) 👏🏼
10. Lea 🌈 Turner - I just love how your content is so raw and authentic ☺️

Anyone I should add to the list? 👇🏼

Once upon a time, I used to train for looks.

But looks do not equal healthy.
(After spending 10 years in my 20s battling eating disorders I can assure you that..)

There is no business, there is no friends or family or vacations or promotions or parties or partners or anything..
..if you CAN’T take care lf yourself for the long run.

So I stopped measuring success based on the looks and focused on the inside.

1. What is my blood test saying?
2. How am I feeling?
3. How clear my mind is?
4. How strong I am?
5. How well do I sleep?
6. What nutritious food do I eat?
7. How present am I for myself?
8. How present am I for my family and partner?
9. How good am I for my business, for my team and for my client?

Those are my KPIs, and that’s what I am training for.

What are you training for?

WTH is happening?!

followers followers followers

Guys, are we loosing track of what's really LinkedIn about?

Who cares about the vanity metrics 🤦🏻‍♀️
FOCUS on 👇🏼
real connections
quality of content

STOP chasing followers.

And guess what?! You want to grow fast with all the 7 toxic leaders cheatsheets? Good luck with that..

This is YOUR brand, this is YOUR reputation, 
don't dilute it.

Everyone thinks a personal brand is “optional.”

My darling… wake up. It’s 2026.
It’s not optional anymore.

You must build your personal brand if you’re:

-> An early-stage founder.
Because you are the brand. You’re the salesperson, the fundraiser, the recruiter, the face of the vision. In the early days, people don’t buy the product. They buy you.

-> A CEO.
This is reputation management, PR on steroids. And if you’re not actively shaping the narrative around you and your company, someone else will. Silence is no longer neutral. It’s invisible.

-> In sales.
Your conversion rate changes dramatically when people know who you are before the first message lands. Trust built in public makes cold outreach warmer, faster, and far more effective.

-> A candidate.
The market is tough. Standing out isn’t about tweaking your CV anymore. It’s about showing your thinking, your expertise, your voice, consistently.

These are the 4 main reasons people come to Mint & Lemon.
But something has shifted in the last year.
We’re now working with far more CEOs from large multinationals.

Why?
Because they understand that controlling the narrative is power. 

The days of relying on a single polished PR feature are over. Leaders are becoming public figures in their own right, and LinkedIn is actively rewarding that,  more visibility, more influence, more Top Voice badges, more reach.

The platform is evolving.

The real question is simple: do you want to fall behind, or do you want to ride the wave?
Your personal brand is your number one tool.
Stop underestimating it.

Every International Women’s Day we hear the same conversation.
“Women should start more tech companies.”

More women in tech.
More female founders.
More women building companies.

But nobody talks about the real barrier.
Building was never accessible to most women.

For years the path looked like this:
Learn to code.
Find a developer.
Raise money.

Then maybe… you can build something.
So millions of ideas never left the notebook.

I’ve heard it so many times:
“I have this idea… but I’m not technical.”
That sentence has buried more ideas than failure ever did.

But something interesting happened this International Women’s Day.
Thousands of women around the world opened their laptops
and built real apps in a single day.
Using Lovable.
For FREE.

No coding background.
No dev team.
No gatekeepers.
Just ideas finally becoming products.

Because when the barrier disappears…
the builders appear.

And suddenly the next founder might not be a developer.
She might just be someone who finally had the chance to try.

If you’ve been sitting on an idea for months - maybe even years -
Build it → lovable.dev

#LovablePartner #ad

Lovable

So.. I've been working pretty hard on a secret project lately..


It's called: Project ELISABETTA 💁🏻‍♀️

Yep.. I figured out I want to better myself,  but no project on yourself can start without better HEALTH.

So I've been working hard on fixing 👇🏼

my sleep consistency
my sleep amount
my Vo2 MAX
my cardio
my food time
my food quality
my heart health
my weight training

(still working on screen time and stress levels, but we'll get there..)

I realised if there is no "project ELISABETTA", everything falls apart:
my business
my relationships
my family
myself

So, what's holding you back from making YOU your own Number 1 project?

PS: it's a work in progress and yes I still f*ck up here and there, but I bounce back every single time ✌🏼😉

"Fake it till you make it"

Lot of people will hate on this, but it has been one of my mantras for so many years (and it really worked lol)

I talked about this and much more during the lovely chat I had last week with Jeremy Bennett: from linkedIn inbounds, to personal branding, to how NOT to build a content strategy based on "the 7 toxic leaders" type of clickbait posts 🤦🏻‍♀️

Watch the episode below 👇🏻

And thank you so much again Jeremy for the wonderful chat :)

I interview LinkedIn’s top 1% every weekday, 7am EST | Featured in Forbes | 10M views | 100K followers | 2 world designations | 3 books | Featured in 3 documentaries | Keynote Speaker | Spoken live to tens of thousands

POV: you stop caring about impressions..
and suddenly, your impressions take off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

it's no secret I started to not look at my impressions (since a while now)
(yep there was a time I was checking how posts would perform every 30 mins.. NOT recommended)

I stopped (and my mental health thanked me.. dah!)
but then the other day, my data-brain asked, "ok let's now go back again and check those stats.."
(I know I know, I shouldn't have done it..)

But guess what?
Took off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ok now enough, I promise I won't look at those for at least another month 😅

Anyway, moral of the story: focus on the business, NOT on your linkedIn stats
Your business (and your mental health) will thank you 🫡

PS: and drink some good espresso 😆

Looking for some good in-person communities/ 
events in London 🇬🇧

Any suggestions? 👇🏻

Interested in:
- Entrepreneurship
- Startup space
- Female founders

Open to:
- Investor circles
- Intimate dinners/events
- Wellness x ambition spaces
- Smart, curious people building interesting things

Where should I be showing up?

It was 11:47pm.

And I was doing something extremely important..

Resizing text boxes 🫠

Not changing the strategy.
Not improving the narrative.
Just manually transferring my own thoughts into slides like it’s 2014 and I’m an unpaid intern.

Because obviously that’s the workflow, right?

Think in Claude.
Then leave.
Then rebuild everything in a slide tool.
Then spend 37 minutes nudging alignment.

Peak performance 🚀

The annoying part?
The thinking was done.
The structure was solid.
The argument was sharp.

But the slides hadn’t “caught up.”

So recently, I didn’t leave.

I stayed in Claude.
Used Gamma right there in the conversation.
The deck just… appeared.

Then I changed the angle.
Refined the story.
Tightened the structure.
And the presentation updated with it 😍

No exporting.
No copy-paste gymnastics.
No “FINAL_v9_THIS_ONE_FOR_REAL.pptx.” 🤡

Just thinking → turning into slides → refining.
In one flow.

The surprising part wasn’t “wow AI.”
It was realising how long I’ve accepted unnecessary friction as normal.

Anyway.
If you enjoy rebuilding the same deck at midnight, carry on.

If not, Claude + Gamma together is a much saner way to work ✨
https://lnkd.in/e2SkwUvq

PS: Thanks Gamma for taking my creative thinking to the next level 🙏🏻😍

#ad

Gamma

Gamma x Claude

I love automation.
So much.
Which is why I obviously check it 14 times a day 😅

You know.. Just to make sure it’s… automating.

Because nothing says “I trust my systems” like manually reviewing the thing that’s meant to run without you 🙃

For the longest time, my marketing was “automated”.
Which actually meant:
• I built it
• I monitored it
• I tweaked it
• I double-checked it
• I low-key emotionally supported it

Very autonomous. Obviously.

The problem wasn’t the strategy.
The problem was that I was still the safety net.

If something dipped, I spotted it.
If something broke, I fixed it.
If something underperformed, I spiralled.

At some point I realised:
This isn’t automation.

It’s delegation with trust issues.
(BIG ones)

That’s where ActiveCampaign hit differently.

Because Active Intelligence isn’t just “if this then that.”
It learns from behaviour.
It adjusts.
It optimises timing.
It flags what actually needs attention.
That’s Autonomous Marketing.

Not:
 “Set it live and panic quietly.”
But:
 “Set it live and let it adapt.”

The biggest shift? 
I stopped being the emotional support human for my campaigns.

They run.
They optimise.
They tell me when something matters.
And my brain is free to do actual thinking.

If you’re still babysitting your “automations”…
(Respectfully) that’s not automation.

Try ActiveCampaign and see what happens when the system grows up -> https://lnkd.in/ed5fXQej

#Ad #ActiveCampaignPartner #OutOfTheWeeds #AutonomousMarketing

ActiveCampaign

Last week was Mint & Lemon 🍋 2nd birthday.

2 years ago this started as a one-woman show.
Just me.
An idea.
And honestly… a lot of figuring things out as I went.

We had not one, but two pivots.
Today Mint & Lemon is not only a personal branding agency, but a full social media agency, with personal branding still at the core of everything we do.

Somewhere along the way… 
that one-woman show became a team of 6.

That part still blows my mind a little.
Because honestly, the journey hasn’t been pretty.

Not only the pivots.
But a lot of stress.
A lot of moments where I thought: what the hell am I doing?
And I definitely had to deal with a lot of sh*t along the way.
People trying to take advantage of you because you’re small.
People thinking they can push you around.
People assuming you won’t say anything.

One thing I learned quickly:
If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody will do it for you.

Looking back, these 2 years taught me more than any job ever could.
Messy.
Hard.
Stressful.
But also incredibly rewarding.

I’m deeply grateful for the team we’ve built and for the clients who trusted us along the way.

Two years in.
And it still feels like we’re just getting started.

Happy birthday Mint & Lemon 🍋 🎂 💜

PS: Of course I'm cheering with a cup of tea 🫖 💁🏻‍♀️

Simon Sharp

Revenue leadership and Go To Market specialist in Cybersecurity SAAS

I’ve spent 20 years helping cybersecurity and SaaS companies backed by private equity and venture capital grow from ambitious ideas into multi-million-dollar businesses.
My journey spans founding and leading my own companies to senior roles in scale-ups and post-IPO vendors. Along the way, I’ve closed landmark enterprise deals, built global sales teams, and learned what it takes to scale in competitive markets.

I began in sales leadership for cybersecurity start-ups, many with roots in Tel Aviv and HQs in the US. Leading teams across EMEA, the US, and APAC taught me to blend cultures, build resilience, and put customers at the centre of everything. My approach is shaped by frameworks like Winning by Design and Force Management, but what sets teams apart is inspiring people, creating clarity, and executing together.
Defining moments include:

Closing the first £10M EMEA deal for Pindrop Security with a Tier 1 UK bank

Being recognised as a top sales performer at RSA Security three years running

Scaling multiple SaaS businesses from seed to Series C with ARR growth above 30% and NRR of 120%+

What drives me most is building lasting businesses. I thrive on turning early-stage energy into structured growth – creating playbooks, winning major clients, and building teams that feel supported and inspired. People I’ve worked with describe me as fair, driven, and passionate, with values rooted in integrity, teamwork, and a growth mindset.

Today, I combine my love of cybersecurity, SaaS, and AI through RockSec360 and Verto. I care deeply about applying AI to strengthen defences, address skills shortages, and create efficiency where the industry often falls short.

Key achievements include:

Scaling four SaaS companies from Series A–C to $60M ARR

Delivering 120%+ NRR

Closing a £10M Tier 1 banking deal for Pindrop Security

4x Presidents Club winner and Salesperson of the Year (370% quota attainment)

Founder of RiskXchange, RockSec360, and Roar Neon

Building and reshaping GTM teams across US, EMEA, and APAC

Expanding international markets for four scale-ups via direct and channel sales

Frequent speaker at industry events on GTM strategy and cybersecurity

I’m known for helping PE-backed SaaS and cybersecurity companies scale into multi-million-dollar businesses with execution that is sharp, customer-focused, and built on integrity. 

Open to connecting with like-minded leaders, founders, and investors: simon.sharp@live.co.uk | +44 7876 596015


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