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.

Helping B2B Teams win more clients in less time by growing an email list of buyers. Join my free workshop. Seats are limited, so apply now!

Most Business Leaders know how to deliver.

Very few know how to stay visible long enough for ideal clients to discover them.I help fix that.

I help B2B and recruitment leaders build an authority engine that increases visibility, drives warm conversations, and fills their pipeline with clients who already trust their expertise.

The system is simple: CLARITY → AUTHORITY → CONVERSATIONS (The CAC System)

1. Clarity - We nail your positioning, messaging, niche, and signature frameworks so buyers instantly understand your value.

2. Authority - I build your visibility tower — daily content, insights, stories, and a strategic narrative that positions you as the go-to expert in your market.

3. Conversations - Warm engagement, optimised profile touchpoints, and simple outreach loops that turn attention into booked client calls.

This creates for you.
⬆️ More visibility
⬆️ Better clients
⬆️ Consistent inbound
⬆️ Higher perceived value
⬆️ An easier sales cycle

Results my clients have got
✔️ 60k+ impressions in a single post 
✔️ Multiple warm client conversations booked within 30 days
✔️ £500k+ deal closed from visibility built using this system 
✔️ More replies, more reach, more opportunities, without constant grinding

Jonny Umoru

Here is a quick tip for every business owner who wants more monthly revenue.

Record your calls.
All of them.

Not for compliance.
Not for content.

For truth.
When you listen back, two things happen fast.

You see exactly where you’re strong.
You see exactly where you leak value.

Early 2024 forced me to dive deep into my meetings.
As I was booking them consistently.
But clients weren’t converting.

My first assumption was the obvious one.
“I must be bad on calls.”
Wrong.

The real issue was more subtle and more damaging.

I was allowing my prospects to treat the meeting like an open advice line.
Which is helpful, generous but also super unfocused.

There's no clear structure.
There's no solid boundaries.
There's no actual clear commercial direction.

Once I fixed that, conversions followed.

Same calls.
Same experience.
Different outcome.

Recording calls doesn’t just improve sales.
It improves your judgement.

And when you’re running a business, judgment is the real leverage.
More data always beats more opinions.

Client Acquisition Systems for Recruitment Directors

No alternative text description for this image

When a recruitment CEO tells me,
“I’m just lazy on LinkedIn.”

They’re usually wrong.

And it’s rarely laziness, it’s friction.

Most CEOs I speak to don’t lack opinions, insight or experience.

What they lack is a system.

They post once.
Then delivery gets busy.
Then BD takes priority.
Then a big assignment lands.
Then visibility disappears for six weeks.

Not because they don’t care.
But because it’s not embedded.

Consistency that relies on willpower will always lose to revenue pressure.

Honestly, why would you choose to be more visible over finding candidates for an active role?

That’s the real reason most leadership visibility fails.

It’s not a confidence issue.
It’s not an intelligence issue.
It’s not even a time issue.

It’s a workflow issue.

If showing up online depends on.
- Remembering to post
- Writing from scratch
- Chasing approvals
- Logging in manually

It will collapse the moment the business gets busy.
And recruitment businesses are always busy.

The firms that make it work don’t “try harder.”

They install a repeatable system
→ Capture
→ Creation
→ Approval
→ Distribution

Once it’s embedded, it runs alongside the business instead of competing with it for attention.

That’s when visibility starts compounding.
And that’s when founder dependency begins to reduce.

If you’re a CEO who knows you should be more visible, but it keeps slipping…

It’s probably not laziness.
It’s architecture.

DM “SYSTEM”, and I’ll send you the monthly capture structure we use inside 10 – 50 head recruitment firms.

Katie is a consultancy client of mine who was sitting at £10–15K per month and blaming the inconsistency in the market for unpredictable revenue.

The real issue wasn’t the market.
It was the absence of infrastructure.

Revenue depended on effort.
When outbound slowed down, so did growth.
There was no acquisition engine behind the business.

So we built one.

1️⃣ We installed a structured cold email system that put her in front of thousands of relevant prospects consistently.

2️⃣ We tightened her positioning so the right people moved forward instead of circling.

3️⃣ We implemented follow-up that didn’t rely on willpower or reminders.

And within 90 days, she generated an additional £25K in revenue from a £2K investment, with an average deal size of around £5K.

Nothing about the industry changed.

What changed was structure.

Most founders don’t have a lead problem.
They have a discipline problem disguised as a strategy problem.

When acquisition becomes infrastructure instead of effort, revenue stops being emotional and starts being predictable.

For a long time, I thought being useful was the same as being valuable.

So I made myself useful to everyone I came across.

I'd say yes.
I'd solve problems.
I'd be dependable.
I wouldn't complain.
And I wouldn't ask for anything in return.

And guess what, it worked.

My teachers liked me growing up.
My managers trusted me with a lot.
My clients relied on me for everything.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking a harder question.

If I’m not being useful… who am I?

That question used to make me uncomfortable.

Because if your identity is built on being needed, you end up exhausted the moment nobody is asking.

You start overextending, over-delivering and overthinking.

Trying to stay indispensable, which is just unsustainable.

So I decided that I would prioritise myself also.

At first, I thought people would hate me, but something amazing happened.

The more secure I became in who I was, the better my work actually got.

I set clearer boundaries.
I gave stronger opinions.
I focused less on how I came across.
And more on my conviction.

Most people build their brand around competence.
Very few build it around identity.

And if your business runs on trust, identity carries more weight than tactics ever will.

I help exec search and recruitment firms build authority that turns into client calls

A strange thing happens in a lot of recruitment agencies.
They dislike doing outreach.
But they still double down on it.

And avoid creating content completely.
On the surface, that makes no sense.

But the reasoning is actually simple.

Outreach feels closer to revenue.
Send messages → start conversations → win clients.

Content feels uncertain.
Post something → hope someone sees it.

So recruiters stick with what feels more controllable.

Even if they don’t enjoy it.

The problem is that outreach works very differently when people already recognise you.

When your market has seen your thinking before.
When your name already feels familiar.

Suddenly, replies increase.
Conversations start more easily.

Because you are no longer just another recruiter appearing in their inbox.

Content doesn’t replace outreach.
It makes outreach work far better.

That’s the part many agencies miss.

Something has quietly changed in how companies choose recruitment partners.

Ten years ago, winning a client often came down to 3 things.
• Who you knew
• Who called first
• Who had the candidate

Today, something else happens before the conversation even starts.
And that is hiring managers actually look you up.

They look at.
→ Your LinkedIn profile
→ What you talk about publicly
→ Whether you seem to understand their market
→ Whether you look credible in your niche

It is a silent evaluation.
And it happens before they reply to your message.

This is why two recruiters can send similar outreach and get completely different responses.

One looks like every other recruiter.
The other looks like someone who understands the hiring problem.

That difference matters more than many agencies realise.

Because client acquisition is no longer just about who reaches out.

It is about who looks credible when they do.

The recruitment firms that win consistently tend to have three things working together.
1️⃣ Visible expertise in their niche
2️⃣ Consistent outreach to the right companies
3️⃣ Regular insight shared with their market

When those things combine, conversations become easier to start.

Because the market already understands how you think.
And that changes how people respond.

P.S. How are you standing out as a recruiter?

One of my clients wanted more replies and more meetings from email.

I told him to focus on five things.

The next month, his replies tripled.

If you want more responses to your emails, read this carefully.

1️⃣ Accept that not everyone is ready
→ Some people will never buy, and that is fine.
→ Email is not about convincing everyone.
→ It is about finding the ones already leaning forward.

2️⃣ Make sending emails normal
→ Sending when you “feel like it” will never build momentum.
→ Sending emails should feel like brushing your teeth.
→ More volume creates more surface area for replies.

3️⃣ Stop hunting for the perfect template
→ There is no magic framework.
→ Connection principles matter more than scripts.
→ Optimise the inputs, not the ego metrics.

4️⃣ Most people obsess over meetings booked.
→ Track: Open rate, click-through rate and reply rate.
→ Positive response percentage is your North Star.
→ If the inputs improve, the outcomes follow.

5️⃣ Always send yourself a test email
→ Broken links can make you look bad.
→ Formatting errors and spelling mistakes.
→ Small mistakes quietly kill credibility.

Email is not complicated.

But it does require emotional maturity, consistency, and attention to detail.

Most people are missing at least one of those.

Most recruitment businesses focus on the company.

The logo.
The website.
The awards.
The job posts.

But clients don’t buy logos.

They buy your experience and judgement.

This is where most agencies quietly dilute their authority.

The business posts.
The page shares updates.
The reposts.

The marketing manager schedules content.

But the senior leadership team are silent.
Or just inconsistent.
Or posting randomly without alignment.

Everyone is going in different directions.
From the outside, it creates noise.
From the inside, it feels like “we’re doing marketing.”

But authority doesn’t compound at company level in recruitment.
It compounds at the individual level.

Clients don’t say.
“I chose that firm because of their banner.”

They say:
“I’ve seen what he writes.”
“I’ve followed her insights.”
“I trust how they think.”

When five leaders show up with different messages, different tones, different positioning…

You don’t get leverage.
You get fragmentation.

The firms that scale properly align leadership around one north star.

Different voices.
- Same direction.
- Same positioning.
- Same commercial narrative.

That’s when visibility turns into leverage.
And that’s when founder dependency starts to reduce.

If your brand is visible but your leaders aren’t…
You’re missing the multiplier.

DM “SYSTEM”, and I’ll send you the monthly capture structure we use inside 10 – 50 head recruitment firms.

We are constantly being told we need to post, or we need to send that email, or we need to show our face more.

And I agree with all of these.

But we need to be honest with ourselves.

The correlation between revenue in your business aligns with these three things.

If no one knows about you, then guess what?
No one buys from you.
That is not a made-up notion or a bald-faced lie.
It’s just reality.

So why are we all so resistant to it?

It’s because we know we are not as good as the people already doing it.

And that is OK.

Do you think they started off thinking they were going to be listened to?
Or did they think they were going to be ignored?
Or did they just not care about other people’s opinions?

At the end of the day, whether other people judge you or not, if no one knows about you or your business, then no one buys from you.

So you might as well do the thing and get judged for being bad at it, but have a good chance of getting more of an audience, more revenue, and more confidence.

And not let others decide your destiny and live with regret.

Instead of just feeling sorry for yourself.

Too many recruitment businesses focus on the whole instead of the individual.

Their online presence tells people more about the company and its accolades than the people actually driving the revenue.

But there’s still a problem.

What about the individuals who want to bill more?

If you don’t show up for your audience as yourself, you get forgotten.

This is something I see many recruitment directors and top billers go through.

At first, they think showing up online is pointless.

Then they realise they should be visible, but convince themselves they don’t have the time.

Then they get trapped in the cold-calling cycle.

Where the only way to grow revenue is to cold call all day, and each year the returns get smaller.

It’s time to shift the focus.

Encourage individuals to build their own authority online.

It benefits the company.
It benefits the individual.

The uncomfortable truth is this.

Many recruitment businesses don’t encourage personal brands because they’re afraid of losing control.

But if your top biller can only win because of the logo, you don’t have leverage.

You have a fragile business where revenue walks out the door the moment someone leaves.

And if your growth depends on keeping people small, you don’t have a scalable model. You have control disguised as strategy.

For years, most agency owners relied on three things.
Referrals, LinkedIn posts, and outbound.

But the game has changed.
The algorithms changed.
The buying process changed.
The attention span changed.

And the founders who keep waiting for inbound luck instead of building inbound systems are getting left behind.

Here’s what the best founders I’ve been speaking to are now doing differently:

1️⃣ They’re building assets, not chasing leads.
Every conversation starts with a lead magnet
→ Something that earns trust before asking for time.

2️⃣ They’re creating content with a funnel, not just a feeling.
Each post points somewhere: a magnet, a scorecard, or a conversation
→ Not just a like.

3️⃣ They’re automating nurture, not losing warm leads.
They’re turning every download, every click, every open
→ Into a tracked, re-engageable prospect.

4️⃣ They’re seeing marketing as a system, not a person.
Because systems scale
→ People burn out.

If you’re still relying on hope.
You’ll always be behind the ones relying on process.

This next wave of recruitment founders are marketers as much as they are recruiters and that’s exactly why they’re winning.

If you want to see what this kind of system looks like inside a recruitment agency.
DM me the word SYSTEM and I’ll send you the visual map.

A lot of recruitment founders say they want more inbound.

What they actually want is less pressure.

Less pressure to chase.
Less pressure to always be “on.”
Less pressure to be the only one bringing revenue in.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Most agencies don’t have a lead generation problem.

They have a dependency problem.

One person drives most of the new business.
One person has the strongest relationships.
One person is visible.
One person carries the commercial weight.

And when that person gets busy…

Pipeline slows.

That’s not a marketing issue.
That’s a structural issue.

I’m not interested in helping recruitment agencies “post more.”

I’m interested in helping them remove that single point of failure.

When 2–3 leaders in a firm are visible.
When outbound is structured instead of reactive.
When there’s an owned email list compounding quietly in the background.

Revenue stops feeling fragile.

You don’t notice it at first.

But the pressure drops.

And that changes how you run the business.

Most founders think they need more leads.

What they actually need is a system that doesn’t rely on them.

Take 30 days away from new business development.

No new outreach at all.

What happens to your client pipeline?
How many new hiring conversations appear next month?

From the system itself.

For many recruitment agencies, that question exposes a quiet risk.

Because their pipeline still leans heavily on the founder.

The director is still the one.
• Sending outbound
• Warming up relationships
• Posting when there’s time
• Stepping in when meetings slow down

It works.
Until delivery gets busy.

Then three things quietly happen.
1️⃣ Outreach slows
2️⃣ Visibility drops
3️⃣ New conversations dry up

Growth starts to stall again.

The agencies that stabilise their pipeline install three simple engines.

Authority
Sharing insight so the market understands how you think before you ever reach out.

Acquisition
Consistent outbound that starts new conversations every week.

Nurture
Staying visible to prospects who are not hiring today but will be soon.

Recruitment firms rarely struggle because they cannot deliver.

They struggle because their pipeline still depends on effort instead of infrastructure.

And effort eventually runs out of hours.
Whereas infrastructure doesn’t.

Most recruitment agencies are stuck in the same cycle.

Delivery → panic → outreach → new client → delivery → panic again.

I had a few conversations with recruiters this week, and the pattern is always the same.

They know they need more clients.
But they are buried with outreach and delivery.

Which gives them the illusion that they are doing the right thing.

Then the project finishes.
The pipeline dries up.
And suddenly they have to start “doing marketing” again.

That is not a business.
That is survival mode.

If you run a recruitment agency, there are only three things that actually matter.

Everything else is noise.

Outreach
I’m actually getting annoyed hearing people say they do not do outreach like it is something to be proud of. It is not. You just sound scared of rejection.

Marketing
If no one knows you exist, no one will buy from you. It does not matter how good you are at recruiting.

Delivery
If the service is poor, clients will not come back, and they will not refer you. Eventually, the business dies.

I see so many agencies only focus on one or two of these.
Then they wonder why revenue never really grows.

And most of the time, the thing being ignored is marketing.

Which is why they stay trapped in the cycle.
Delivery → panic → outreach → new client → delivery → panic again.

If you run a recruitment agency and want to fix this.
I’m offering a free trial to help you start building the marketing and distribution system that most agencies are missing.

Message me TRIAL, and I’ll send the details.

If you stopped doing BD for 60 days, what would actually happen in your business?

Not hypothetically but realistically.

If most of your highest-value assignments originate from you…

Then you don’t just have a scaling problem.
You have a revenue risk problem.

This is something I see constantly in 10 – 30 head recruitment businesses.

They’re doing strong numbers.
£150k months, £200k months, £300k months...

But scratch beneath the surface, and growth still runs through one or two people.
- The founder who can't let go of responsibility.
- The top biller who can sell ice to an eskimo.
- The rainmaker with all the great relationships.

When they’re busy, the pipeline slows.
When they’re on holiday, activity dips.
When they’re deep in delivery, visibility disappears.

And you can’t blame the market.
Because it's a structural problem embedded in the business.

Most firms rely on brute-force outbound.
And cold calling works.

But it resets to zero every week.

Authority compounds over months and years.

When senior leadership consistently shows up in their niche, conversations warm up before outreach even happens.

Mandates come in with context.

Trust builds before the first call.

Dependency reduces.

You don’t need to remove outbound activity.
You need to reduce how much your business relies on it.

And that changes the business's ceiling.

If stepping back for 60 days would slow your firm down dramatically…

That’s the real bottleneck.

DM “LEVERAGE” if you want to see how we diagnose and fix that inside founder-led recruitment firms.

If you’re a recruitment director and your marketing “isn’t working,”

It might not be your marketing team.
It might be you.

Before that triggers you, just consider this.

Have you clearly defined?
• The niche you dominate
• The type of client you avoid
• The hiring philosophy you believe in
• What makes your approach different

Or did you hire someone and say?

“Smash the phones and bring us jobs.”

Marketing can’t create clarity.
It can only amplify it.

Most recruitment agencies have a positioning problem.

So the marketing team posts generic updates.
The website sounds like everyone else.
Outbound feels cold every time.

And the director concludes.
“Marketing doesn’t work in recruitment.”

But it does.
But only when it’s built on a clear point of view and a system.

Otherwise, it’s just activity and is doomed to fail.

I looked at my email analytics this week and spotted a pattern.
I send 3 to 4 campaigns a week.

For every campaign.
→ I get around 5 replies.

For every 4 replies.
→ I book a new client meeting.

For every 2 meetings.
→ I land a new client.

That means just by emailing my list consistently, I’m booking roughly 4 meetings a week.

No ads.
No chasing.
No cold spam.

Just showing up in the inbox.

And here’s the part most agency owners miss.

Managers, directors and business leaders are still in their inbox every single day.

They might not even see your LinkedIn post.
But they will see your email.

If you’re only posting on social media and not building and emailing a list, you’re relying on rented attention.

Inbox attention is owned.
And owned attention converts.

Stop treating your lead magnet like the finish line.
It’s not.
It’s just the handshake.

What happens after someone downloads it.
Decides whether they become a client or a ghost in your list forever.

Most B2B founders lose people right here.
Because there’s no system to turn subscribers into buyers.

So here’s the exact 5-email framework I use to convert new subscribers into booked calls.

Email 1 - Delivery & Direction
➝ Deliver the magnet and tell them what’s next.
➝ Invite them to a short call if they want help implementing it.

Email 2 - Quick Win
➝ Show them a small result they can get today.
➝ Prove you know what you’re talking about.

Email 3 - Transformation
➝ Paint the before & after.
➝ Show the gap your system closes.

Email 4 - Proof
➝ Drop a short case study.
➝ Prove your system works.

Email 5 — Invitation
➝ Re-open the loop.
➝ Remind them of the results, and invite them to book a call.

That’s it. 5 emails. Zero spam.

All built around one goal.
↳ Move them from “subscriber” to “client.”

If you want me to share the exact templates I use for each step.
DM the word "WELCOME", and I’ll send them over.

Something has quietly changed in how companies choose recruitment partners.

Before replying to your message, many hiring managers check first.

They look at:
• Your LinkedIn profile
• What you talk about publicly
• Whether you understand their market
• Whether you look credible in your niche

It is a silent evaluation.

And it happens before the conversation even starts.

This is why two recruiters can send similar outreach and get completely different responses.

One looks like just another recruiter.

The other looks like someone who understands the hiring problem.

That difference matters.

Client acquisition is no longer just about who reaches out.

It is about who looks credible when they do.

This mistake slows down most agencies.

They only focus on business development when the pipeline starts to feel thin.

So the pattern looks like this.
Pipeline strong → delivery busy → outreach stops.

A few months later, the pipeline weakens again.

Then outreach restarts.
This cycle repeats in many agencies.

Not because the team lacks effort.

But because business development is still treated like an activity, not part of the operating system.

The firms with more stable pipelines do something different.

Outreach continues even when delivery is busy.
Visibility continues even when roles are being filled.
Follow-ups continue even when revenue feels comfortable.

Over time, this creates something most recruitment agencies never quite achieve.

A pipeline that keeps moving, even when the team is focused on delivery.

taplio

The Battle

Joseph Rudd

Jonny Umoru

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJoseph Rudd's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJonny Umoru's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Joseph Rudd

Jonny Umoru

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Joseph Rudd's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJonny Umoru's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJoseph Rudd's LinkedIn Performance