Account Manager @ Kurogo | Sharing lessons from a life in Marketing

Hey, I'm Joe 👋

I post about: 

- Careers
- Marketing 
- Leadership 

Sound good?

Hit the follow button and come say hi.

Joseph Rudd

One of the most underrated career skills:

Being respectful to everyone in the room.

I was raised to treat the janitor the same as the CEO.
And it's a lesson that's carried me through my career.

It might sound simple.
But it often gets overlooked.

And yet, being polite, respectuful and empathetic of everyone else (regardless of their role or postion) goes much further than most realise.

✅ It builds trust with colleagues.
✅ It creates opportunities with mentors.
✅ It shapes your circle of people.

Because career growth is built on trust.

3 simple lessons to carry forward:

1/ Value every role.
↳ A title doesn’t define a person’s worth.
↳ Show equal respect at every level.

2/ Listen before you speak.
↳ Everyone carries a story you don’t know.
↳ Be curious about their perspective.

3/ Actively make an effort to show kindness.
↳ Small acts of respect cost nothing.
↳ But they’re remembered for years.

It's not about being perfect.
It's about making small, conscious efforts.

When you do that:

Colleagues turn into mentors.
Bosses became advocates.
Peers became friends.

Respect costs nothing.
But it can shape your whole career.

What's a small act of respect that stood out to you?
Let me know if the comments 👇🏻

Repost to encourage respect ♻️
And follow Joseph Rudd for more.

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

If I should die, make sure not to cancel the standups,
If I should die, finish off my client reports,
If I should die, activate my out of office.

Unable are the loved to die, for the value we build for shareholders is immortality.

"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?

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).

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 👍

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 🤷🏻‍♂️

Kurogo - Personal Branding Agency Branding Agency turned 5 last month, so we asked our team why they love working here, this is what they said 👇🏻❤️

We asked our team what the best part of their job is 

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.

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 🙋🏻‍♂️

“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’ve packaged the system we use to build personal brands that actually drive revenue into one  guide:

🚨 How To Become The Authority, Sign More Clients and Grow Your Business In 2026.

Growing a business in 2026 is a bit of a minefield.
What worked a few years ago doesn’t work the same anymore.

Cold outreach gets ignored.
Ads get more expensive.
Buyers take longer to decide.

And the most frustrating bit…
You’ll often see competitors who aren’t even as good doing better than you.

It’s not luck.
The market has changed.
People don’t buy like they did in 2016 anymore.

Back then, it was simple:
Ad → Click → Buy.

Now the journey is messy.

Prospects research you.
Check your profile.
Look at your content.
Ask their network.
Watch you for months before reaching out.

So when you consistently share your thinking, ideas and expertise online:

- Prospects trust you before the first call
- Sales cycles shorten
- Your content becomes a 24/7 salesperson
- Opportunities come to you instead of the other way around

That’s exactly what this guide breaks down.

Inside you’ll find:

→ The 9-step Authority Engine we use with clients
→ How to position yourself so people actually listen
→ The G-A-C content system that drives growth, trust and clients
→ How to social sell without being a LinkedIn knobhead
→ The lead capture and conversion ecosystem that turns attention into revenue

If you’re a founder or marketing leader trying to grow in 2026, this is the system that’s working right now.

To get free access:

1. Like this post
2. Comment “AUTHORITY”
3. Make sure you’re following me so I can share ✅

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.

80% of businesses fall into one of two marketing camps. Both are shite.

➡️ Camp 1: No marketing

These are the people who say:
“We just focus on doing great work. It speaks for itself.”

Lovely sentiment.
But in 2026, great work is table stakes.
There are thousands of people doing good work in every industry.
If nobody knows about yours, congratulations.
You’ve become the best-kept secret in your industry.

➡️ Camp 2: Send and spend

These are the people who say:

“Just send more emails.”
“Run more ads.”
“Book more cold calls.”

So they:

- Blast cold emails
- Hammer the phones
- Spend a fortune on ads

And yeah… they convert 0.1% of people.
Which technically works.

But the moment they stop sending or spending, the pipeline disappears overnight.

It’s basically marketing on life support.

—

What if I told you there’s a third option?

➡️ Authority Positioning

Instead of chasing attention every day,
You build a reputation that brings people to you through:

- Content
- Ideas
- Perspective
- Proof

Suddenly, prospects show up already knowing you.
Already trusting you.
Already halfway sold.

We see it every week.
Someone messages our clients saying:
“Been seeing your posts for months. Can we talk?”

That’s not magic.
That’s what happens when trust is built before the sales call.

—

If you want the full breakdown of how this works, we’ve just put it into a step-by-step system called:

💡 The Authority Engine.

It covers:

- Positioning
- Content strategy
- Profile optimisation
- Social selling
- Lead capture

Basically, it teaches you how to stop chasing leads and start attracting them.

I’m not selling you anything, just drop me a DM saying “TAE” and I’ll share free access 😊

📷 - How the team used this exact system to get these insane results for Shan Hanif

Most founders post for likes. 
Smart founders post for leads.

Here is how I think about content when we build accounts at Kurogo:

This is based on: 

→ building 350 accounts
→ Writing over 40,000 posts 
→ hundreds of millions of views)

Your content has 3 jobs, not 1:

- Growth content → pull new people into your world
- Authority content → prove you are the safe, obvious choice
- Conversion content → move buyers from “interested” to “where do I pay?”

Miss one of these and you’re wasting your time. 

Every post should look like this:

- Hook that stops the scroll
- Clear point of view
- Proof you’re not chatting nonsense
- Takeaway or CTA
- Ideally, a complementary image

Not viral cringe fluff.
Not vague “authentic” nonsense.
Not oversharing for your dopamine fix.

Just ideas/opinions from lived experience.

Hope this helps ✌️

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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