Jake Summerhayes

Kurogo

Head Of Client Services

We work with CEOs and Founders to build powerful 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

As your personal brand manager, I oversee the planning and delivery of your personal brand strategy. From initial ideation through to full development in-line with your goals.

If this sounds like something you want to jump on board with, or even just have some general questions and curiosities about personal branding shoot me a DM. I'm always about for a chat 😊.

Personal Brand Manager

ReputationDefender

We believe that everyone has the right to be empowered online—whether that means controlling the spread of your personal information or the way you are portrayed to others. Our aim is to make sure people find quality, truthful information about our clients at the top of their search results.

I oversee the development of the online reputation management campaigns for my client base and as such I am the primary point of contact between themselves and the business. Day-to-day this includes regular reporting, search results monitoring as well as analysis of potential reputational threats and opportunities.

In this digital age the importance of a positive online presence is a necessity across industries and professions as such our client base is incredibly diverse. We work with private individuals, SME's, directors, multinational corporations and everything in between.

Account Manager

Uber

Bicycle Courier

L'Arche Internationale

L'arche supports those with learning disabilities, and their loved ones, to live in ways that allow them to be as independent as possible, while providing high-quality, person-centred, individually tailored care and support.

My primary aim as a Care Support Worker was to create a home for our service user and in doing so enable them to maximise their independence. Specific day to day task included:
• Supporting individuals in their leisure, social, practical, physical and spiritual needs
• Providing personal care with dignity and respect including supporting people with complex health and physical needs both in daily life and end of life care
• Helping people with physical needs including some aspects of moving and handling

Care Support Worker

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.

I’ll save you this morning’s LinkedIn scroll. Here’s what’s happening today:

– AI comment x1,802
– Infographic that is literally impossible to read
– 4 mirror selfies for a post on ‘authentic’ branding
– Personal branding is pretty important, it seems
– Someone’s worried about AI taking their job
– Someone else has automated their entire life with AI
– Hustle culture is… good? Bad? No one really knows
– The algorithm has changed… again, according to one study.
– Another AI comment
– Old man hates Gen Z
– Another company posted a job without a salary
– More culture stuff (A LOT more)
– Someone turned their morning coffee into a 7-step storytelling framework

Oooh another AI comment.

That’s all for now.

Ps. What’s your LinkedIn pet peeve?

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

POV: You spontaneously video call your social media manager

Checking your next post after going 'viral'
109 Impressions
0 Likes
0 Comments
0 Reposts

I once spent 3 years trying to onboard a client who paid £6k but ghosted. 

In that time…

I moved house twice
We hired 3 different salespeople
I onboarded and ran 150+ other client campaigns
The entire company was bought, sold and restructured

I never did manage to get in touch with them.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder where they are.

If there’s a client management lesson here, I don’t know what it is.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories

Then a friend shows me that their account reach dropped 80% overnight, and then they started getting the option to boost their posts. Makes you wonder…

Genuine career advice:

Be easy to work with.

“You're right — thanks for catching that. Let me correct myself.”
“Thanks — want me to rewrite the whole thing with the right info?”
“Let me give you a corrected version that actually matches what you asked.”
“Good call — let me update my reasoning.”
“You’re absolutely right. I oversimplified that earlier.”
“Here’s the updated version — this is bulletproof”

What a week. 

Items taken offline: 8
Bases: Touched
Ducks: Aligned
Needle: Moved
Loops: Closed
Numbers: Run
Value: Added

Can’t wait to do it all again.

Good morning LinkedIn. 

Logging in for a productive week of touching base, circling back, getting our ducks in a row, blue sky thinking and moving the needle. 

Let’s have a good one 🫡

453 videos. 453 ideas. 453 attempts.

That’s 5 YEARS of constant trial and error.

Most people post 5 times and give up.
Almost nobody lasts until 453.

They think success should come in 30 days.
They tell themselves, “the algorithm is against me.”
They think if they don’t go viral in a month, it’s not meant for them.

If you’re not seeing the results you’d like, here’s my advice:

See every post like a rep in the gym. 

A single rep won’t make you ripped.

But every rep does make you better.

You just only notice it after 6 monts.

Remember:

→ Your first post won’t be your best post.
→ Your first 100 won’t be either.
→ But somewhere between 101 and 453, everything changes.

You’ve got this.

♻️ Like this? Repost it to remind someone to keep going.

--

I'm Jake 👋 I head up client services at Kurogo - Personal Branding Agency

I post about building your reputation and the realities of working in marketing.

LinkedIn ‘Experts’:

- Comment on 20 posts a day.
- Post selfies to “build connection.”
- Spend 3 hours engaging before posting.
- Be chronically on LinkedIn for 8+ hrs per day.
- Use productivity carousels as inspiration (steal them).

Me: 

- Fuck that.

Here’s the 6-step blueprint to follow instead:

1) Position yourself as an expert in your industry.
↳ Define what you want to be known for, the market won’t do it for you.

2) Engage with the right people, not just anyone.
↳ Quality > quantity. Especially when it comes to engaging.

3) Create a repeatable posting cadence.
↳ So you don’t have to spend more than 5 mins for an idea.

4) Post only 3 types of content inside clear pillars.
↳ Growth → To get seen by new people.
↳ Authority → To build trust & authority.
↳ Conversion → To generate opportunities.

5) Turn your lived experience into content.
↳ If anyone else could’ve written it, don’t post it.

6) Make your profile an inbound sales page.
↳ Your profile is your digital real estate.
↳ If optimised, it’ll sell before you even speak.

You don’t have to take every guru’s word as gospel.
Otherwise we’d all be full-time linkedinfluencers.
You just have to do the right things consistently.

Focus on what actually moves the needle.

Everything else is just fluff.

ps. What’s the worst LinkedIn Influencer take you’ve heard?

—

Find this useful?

💾 Save it to come back to later
♻️ Repost it to help your network

People do not buy from strangers. 

They buy from people they trust.

And trust starts (or ends) at your profile.

I have seen world-class founders lose deals because their profile looked like it was built in 2017 and left to rot.

The reality:

→ A blurry photo ruins credibility
→ A cluttered banner confuses your message
→ A headline with no value prop or proof gets ignored
→ A featured section with random links does nothing for you

Your profile is not a CV. 

It is the first “yes” or “no” in your buyer’s head.

Here is my simple framework to audit your profile today:

1️⃣ Promise: Does your headline show what you deliver, for whom, and why you?
2️⃣ Proof: Do you show numbers, case studies, or clear wins? (If not, why should anyone believe you?)
3️⃣ Packaging: Is your story clear, your experience relevant, and your next step obvious?

If your profile fails any of these, you are leaking leads daily.

The best personal brands I’ve built did not start with fancy content. They started with a profile that did the selling for them-before a single DM was sent.

Check your profile right now. If you were a prospect, would you trust you?

If not, fix it before you post again.

ps. Want the exact checklist we use to optimise profiles? 

1600 people already viewed it, but this is your last chance to join them for free. 

https://lnkd.in/eQUeqAc5

Next week, this won’t be free…

Seeing a lot of waffle about this…

So how we ACTUALLY build personal brands for CEOs ↓

(realised I’ve been doing this for 6 years...)

🗓️ Week 1: Kick Off
- Turn sales notes into delivery brief
- Brief all team members involved
- Interview client
- Research competitors
- Set up internal systems

This is all about setting us up for success.
We use G-Suite, Notion and Fathom.

🗓️ Week 2: Positioning Strategy
Take everything in week 1 to create a strategy.
- Build the client's positioning
- Map out their target audience
- Identify key industry & company events
- Define their pitch & promise
- Tone analysis and refinement
- This is the key to true authority

We run the client through this in a deck.

🗓️ Week 3: Content Strategy
- Now we translate Positioning into Content.
- Define content pillars & subtopics
- Agree content cadence and strategy
- Build content calendar and tagging system
- Create 20-30 ideas under each pillar
- Draft 2 weeks of posts to review

Pro tip: Your content should:
A. Reflect your positioning
B. Nurture strangers into opportunities
Stick to that and you’ll win.

🗓️ Week 4: Content Roll Out
- Final feedback and approval
- Explain the content calendar to the client
- Review first 2 weeks of drafts together
- Probe client around remaining ideas
- Book in bi-weekly content calls

Getting feedback on these first 2 weeks is key
Saves us wrifrom ting in the wrong tone later on

🗓️ Week 5-17:
- Amplify their ideas to 100,000s of people
- Usually we start with LinkedIn
- Sometimes we might go cross-channel
- Or even include some PR/podcasting
- But most people should just nail LinkedIn first
- Clients average 130,000 impressions/month (2025 data)

NB: Performance varies depending on a number of factors.

🗓️ Week 18:
- Review the first 3 months.
- Analyse raw data on performance
- Assess performance by topic and type
- Cross-reference against campaign goals
- Also check against platform trends
- Update strategy accordingly

By this point we have enough data to draw conclusions.
We take signals before this point but not big strategy changes.
🔂 Repeat Monthly

🗓️ Quarterly:
Campaign reviews, considering:
- Do we need new conversion systems?
- Is it the right time to launch lead magnets?
- Should we introduce other channels/PR?

About 30 SOPs, a lot of circling back and 6 base-touches in between that.

But I’ve got character limits, and you’ve got stuff to do.

Hope this helps ✌️

Ps. I think waffles are better than pancakes.
--
I'm Jake 👋 I head up client services at Kurogo - Personal Branding Agency

I post about building your reputation and the realities of working in 
marketing.

If you like that stuff, give us a follow. If you don’t, we’ll probably never speak again.

I’m 29. I’ve spent 10 years managing clients.

Here’s what I wish I knew in 2016: 

- happy clients leave all the time
- the customer is not always right
- clients pay you to have an opinion
- traffic light your clients every week
- being a yes-man ruins your authority
- confront any negative sentiment head on
- every great campaign needs uncomfortable convos

Most people spend years chasing client happiness. I chased it too. Then learned that clarity, honesty, and authority are the real keys to retention.

If you build your reputation on being a “yes” person, you become replaceable.

If you build it on clarity and leadership, you become essential.

Ps. I once chased a client for 4 years who paid £6K to start and then ghosted us. Wild.

It’s crazy that you can turn the internet into career insurance… 

How? By using the Personal Brand Advantage:

→ Top talent wants to work for you
→ Opportunities at your fingertips
→ Attracting a high-value network
→ Strangers are receptive to you
→ Ability to charge higher fees
→ Increased conversion rates
→ Events want you to speak
→ Your industry values you
→ Immediate credibility

A strong reputation is an unfair advantage.

Should probably build yours intentionally… Try this:

1. Understand how you need to be positioned
2. Publish content that reflects your expertise
3. Associate with industry leaders
4. Appear in the media
5. Create a digital footprint of ‘proof’

Want 40+ pages of this personal brand sauce? 

We put it all in our ultimate guide to personal branding. 

It’s literally free, like £0…

Hit repost and I'll share it with you ♻️

In light of the UK budget being announced today I will be staying away from LinkedIn for the next 24 hours.

To those that stay, good luck 🙏

Adbetter

We turn ad spend into revenue for businesses with consultative sales processes.

Our model: Pay per qualified lead. If they don't meet your criteria, you don't pay.

What that actually means:
- Property investment companies get qualified investors, not tyre-kickers
- Medical practices get patients who show up, not no-shows  
- Financial advisors get prospects with real money to invest
- Mortgage brokers get qualified applicants, not time-wasters

Recent highlights:
- One client sold £125M worth of real estate from our leads
- 1400% increase in lead volumes while reducing costs by 16%
- 5.8x ROI achieved for cosmetic surgery within 4 months

Industries where we consistently deliver:
Property & Real Estate | Financial Services | Mortgages | Healthcare & Aesthetics | Professional Services | Home Services

🏆 Winner - Best PPC Campaign | 2024 UK Search Awards

Director & Founder

Planit LGPM

Responsible for the strategy, implementation & delivery of a number of multi-channel direct response campaigns across a variety of verticals and geos: UK / DACH / SE / NL / CZ / HU. Channel & platform experience includes:

- Paid Search (PPC - Google Ads / Bing)
- Paid Social (Facebook / Instagram / Linkedin / Twitter)
- Programmatic Display (Choozle / TTD / Google Ads)
- In-App Display (Appsflyer / Firebase / Adjust / Branch / Tune / Kochava)
- Native (Outbrain / Taboola / Yahoo Gemini)
- Affiliate (Impact Radius / Webgains / Awin)
- CRO & Landing Pages - (Unbounce / Instapage)
- Technical Integrations (Google Tag Manager / Shopify / Woocommerce)
- Reporting (Google Analytics / Google Data Studio / Funnel / Supermetrics)

Head Of Paid Media

Developed best-practice processes & strategy for multiple media buying platforms according to client objectives & KPIs - spanning ecommerce customer acquisition, lead generation & content amplification.

Paid Media Manager

Source Insurance Ltd

Policy Administrator

The Fred Hollows Foundation

Fundraiser

Sanderson Recruitment plc

Recruitment Consultant

Most businesses are hemorrhaging money on "leads" that never buy anything.

I've seen companies spend £50k+ per month and get maybe 2-3 actual customers.

Here's the thing everyone gets wrong:

More leads ≠ More sales

What you actually need are qualified prospects who are ready to buy.

That's what we do at Adbetter.

We don't just drive traffic. We deliver prospects who convert.

How?
→ Every lead goes through 10+ qualification checkpoints
→ Phone verification (because fake numbers waste your time)
→ Multi-step forms that filter out time-wasters
→ Only pay for leads that meet your exact criteria

Results speak louder than promises:
→ One property client sold £125M worth of real estate to our leads
→ 1400% increase in lead volumes while reducing cost-per-lead by 16%
→ 5.8x ROI achieved for cosmetic surgery within 4 months
→ 467% increase in sales volume with 83% lower cost-per-sale

Here's what I've learned after helping clients generate hundreds of millions in revenue from leads we've delivered:

Most agencies optimise for vanity metrics. We optimise for revenue.

Most agencies want to get paid whether they generate quality leads or not. We have skin in the game.

Most agencies deliver leads that look good on paper but never pick up the phone.

The difference?

We only get paid when you get genuine, qualified prospects.

No fluff. No fake numbers. No "leads" that ghost your sales team.

Currently building: Something that's going to solve the biggest problem in lead generation - the broken feedback loop between your ads and your sales team.

Think: Smart forms that qualify prospects → Rich lead data for your sales team → Custom reporting that tracks every lead → Feeding quality signals back to ad platforms so they get smarter.

Can't say much yet, but if you're tired of ad platforms optimising for junk leads, watch this space!

P.S. If you're spending money on ads and not getting the quality of leads you need, message me. I'll tell you exactly what's going wrong (for free).

Tom Richards

£5 leads sound great on paper.

Until you try to call them. 📞

This is the trap of Meta Lead Forms.

Agencies love them because they can report insane volumes of leads to clients.

"Look! We got you 1,000 leads this week!"

But the client’s sales team is tearing their hair out.

Why?

Because Meta Lead Forms are too easy.

The platform auto-fills the user's name, email, and phone number from their profile.

The user taps 'Next', 'Submit', and keeps scrolling.

It’s frictionless. It’s fast.

And it produces leads with the memory of a goldfish.

(We’ve literally heard people say "I never signed up for this" five minutes after signing up).

If you’re running a newsletter? Fine. Use lead forms.

But if you’re looking for qualified appointments or high-ticket sales?

You need a proper funnel.

You need a user to: 

👉🏻 Read your offer 
👉🏻 Answer qualifying questions 
👉🏻 Manually type their details

Yes, you will get fewer leads.

But the ones you do get will actually pick up the phone.

Stop optimising for vanity metrics. Start optimising for revenue.

Stop wasting money on leads that don’t convert | Founder @ Adbetter | Building lead gen software that makes your ads smarter

If you think your ads aren't working, run this audit.

It removes the emotion and looks purely at the cash flow.

Because at the end of the day, if the outcome isn't income, what are we doing?

Here is the 3-step check:

Step 1: What is a new client worth to you over 12 months? Be honest. Don't use your "best case" scenario. Use the average.

Step 2: Check your sales data. If you get 10 qualified leads, how many turn into signed contracts? (If you don't track this, start today).

Step 3: Look at your ad account. What is your Cost Per Qualified Lead?

Now, crunch the numbers.

If it costs £100 to get a lead, and you close 1 in 10... It costs you £1,000 to buy a customer.

Is your average customer worth significantly more than £1,000?

If yes 👉 Your ads are working. Scale them.

If no 👉 You have a funnel problem, not an ad problem.

It sounds simple.

But you'd be amazed how many businesses spend thousands a month without doing this basic sum.

Stop guessing based on clicks. Start calculating based on revenue.

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Tom Richards

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The Battle

Jake Summerhayes

Tom Richards

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jake Summerhayes's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJake Summerhayes's LinkedIn Performance