Sam G. Winsbury

We Create Thought Leaders Through Personal Branding | 150+ Personal Brands Built | Founder & CEO Kurogo

-- DM for Speaking Enquiries --

We turn entrepreneurs into credible thought leaders through personal branding so they can scale their businesses, unlock untapped opportunities and outlast their competition.

If you’re anything like our clients, you’re an expert in your field. One of the best.

But you just don’t seem to have the reputation you deserve.

You want to be the go-to authority in your industry and become an opportunity magnet.

That way you could…

- Generate inbound leads consistently
- Win clients and customers with ease
- Attract media features
- Attract top talent
- Speak on stage

The list is endless.

We help our clients do just that through the power of personal branding, by:

1. Giving them clarity on their brand and positioning them as industry leaders.
2. Blowing up their social profiles and landing them high-profile media features.
3. Helping them convert their new-found reputation into meaningful opportunities and ROI

And having built 300+ personal brands, we’ve got quite good at it, achieving results like these in the process:

🚀 Jack generated 2.5M views and 6 figures in revenue in 90 days with us 
🚀 Joe and Olly generated millions of views and saw a record month
🚀 Guy added 5 figures of pipeline value in a matter of months
🚀 Shan Grew 24,000 followers and landed $200,000 in sales
🚀 Olie added £50K of inbound revenue to his pipeline
🚀 Sue generated over 8.3 million views in 4 months
🚀 Jemma increased her views by 51,347%
🚀 James became an Amazon Best Seller 
🚀 Tom generated 5M views in 3 months 
🚀 Anna doubled her followers in 1 year
🚀 Debbie generated 11M Views

Your reputation is your biggest asset. Take control of it! 

If you want to see how we could help you build your personal brand, shoot me a dm saying ‘Personal Brand’

If you're not quite ready yet, I post daily content on here showing you how to do it yourself.

Founder

Pret A Manger CEO Pano Christou's journey is incredible.

2000: Assistant Manager
2019: Became CEO

In a world that pushes you to start a new job every 6 months or build a 6 figure business in 3, it’s nice to see there's still a case for working your way up in one place.

Personal Brand Advisor To Leading Entrepreneurs & Execs | 350+ Brands Built | Speaker | Sky, Entrepreneur, Insider | Founder & CEO Kurogo

2020

- Struggling freelancer
- Constantly ignored
- Insecure

2021

- Started taking LinkedIn seriously
- Began building my personal brand
- Started signing more clients

2022

- Hired team members
- Signed loads of clients
- Was the ‘kid with potential’

2024

- Grew rather fast
- Got rather stressed
- Increased my prices

2026

- Run quite a good personal brand agency
- Helped 350+ people build their brands
- Happiest I’ve ever been

What changed? 

1. 6 years of trial and error 
2. Huge focus on authority over everything
3. Realising everything you want is the other side of reach and reputation

More people trusting you as an expert will never not be useful.

So start sharing your ideas/opinions/expertise online.

For 15 years, the growth playbook was “send & spend”.

Run ads → generate leads → sales grinds → numbers game → maths works.

And to be fair… it did work when buying was simple and linear.

2005 buying: see ad → click → buy.

But 2026 buying is not linear.

2026 buying: see you → ignore you → see you again → ask a friend → google you → check your LinkedIn → read comments → watch a video → forget → come back 3 weeks later → then enquire.

It’s not a funnel anymore. It’s a squiggly line.

Inside the chaos, only one thing matters:

Trust.

Because when buyers have unlimited choice and unlimited information, they don’t pick the “best” option on paper.

They pick the option that feels safest.
The one they trust most.

Here’s the truth:

If you still rely on “cheap leads + pushy sales” to do the heavy lifting,
you’re betting against how modern buyers behave.

They do the work before they ever speak to you:

- searching your name
- checking your LinkedIn
- looking for social proof
- scanning for authority
- testing if you’re credible

So if your marketing is only designed for volume

but not designed to create trust…
you’re just paying to enter the messy middle 
(where you’re judged, compared, and forgotten)

That’s why trust-based marketing is winning.

And the best way to collapse the timeline for trust? 

Personal brand.

- 89.4% are more likely to trust a company if a senior leader is seen as an expert
- 98.2% say leadership expertise affects purchasing decisions
- 85.9% would pay at least 2x more to work with a leader in their space

The top 1% in every industry are exploiting this.

Over the last few years, I’ve even used it to:

- help 350+ execs build their brands
- generate 100M+ views
- drive £10M+ in pipeline

And I’ve seen the same patterns again and again.

There are 5 trends the top 1% of industry leaders are using to dominate 2026.

I’m breaking all of them down in a new live training:

“The 2026 Personal Brand Playbook: How To Build A $1M Personal Brand.”

If you want your reputation to do more of the heavy lifting…

Join the live training here: https://lnkd.in/e6ZKYnmB

Ps. Everyone who attends will get our FULL LinkedIn Profile Optimisation Blueprint for free (usually £79)

For years, 'having a great product' was enough.

Your work would do the talking... That world is closing. Fast.

Here is what the data says:

→ 90% of executives think people trust them
→ 30% of customers actually do

Pwc call it 'The Trust Gap'.

That gap is where deals are won and lost.

Best way to close it? Personal branding.

When I look at the 350+ brands we have built, the ones who win treat personal branding as a tool, not an ego trip.

They follow a simple flow:

1️⃣ Position

You become “THE person for X”, not “Another option”.

→ Clear proof
→ Clear promise
→ Clear point of view

2️⃣ Amplify

You show up where your buyers already spend time.

→ Content that speaks to their pain
→ Opinion, frameworks, predictions
→ It acts like a 24/7 salesperson

3️⃣ Convert

You turn attention into pipeline.

→ Clear, low friction next steps
→ Nurturing focus, not chasing
→ Ecosystems, not funnels

We are in the reputation economy.

So today I'm breaking down the 5 trends that will separate the top 1% of leaders from everyone else in 2026:

→ The rise of the executive personal brand
→ The shift from posting to positioning
→ Fame vs authority
→ Ecosystem-driven growth
→ How AI will make or break your reputation

If you want your face to be the one people trust in 2026, now is the time to build it.

Join us for our workshop later where I have nothing to pitch to you:

https://lnkd.in/e6ZKYnmB

View company: Kurogo - Personal Branding Agency

In this session, Sam Winsbury (Founder of Kurogo) will walk through the 5 Trends That Will Separate the Top 1% of Thought Leaders From Everyone Else in 2026:

✅ The rise of the executive personal brand (and why people trust individuals far more than companies

✅ Why positioning beats posting (and how authority compounds)

✅ Why fame ≠ authority (and how ‘smaller’ brands are winning higher-value deals)

✅ The “ecosystem” strategy replacing funnels (how modern consumers really ‘buy before they pay’)

✅ How to use AI without damaging your reputation

Plus everyone who attends will get 3 exclusive bonuses:

🎁 Bonus 1: Our Complete Guide To Building A Personal Brand in 2026
🎁 Bonus 2: Our Profile Optimisation Checklist For Free (Worth £79)
🎁 Bonus 3: A Free 30 Day Trial To The Thought Leader’s Academy (Worth £97)

This session is designed for:

- Founders, CEOs, and marketing teams
- Consultants, coaches, and professional services
- Anyone whose business depends on trust, credibility, and reputation

If you feel like:

- opportunities are harder to come by
- sales cycles are getting longer
- competition feels louder but not better
- or you’re being overlooked despite having a great offer

This session will give you the roadmap to dominating your industry in 2026. 

🗓️ 5th February 2026
⏰ 18.00 GMT / 12.00 CST

View event: How To Build A $1M Personal Brand In 2026: 5 Trends You Must Know

How To Build A $1M Personal Brand In 2026: 5 Trends You Must Know

LinkedIn Top Voice 2024 | Building LinkedIn (content+outreach) engines that make founders visible, credible & booked, every week | Ghostwriter | Personal Branding Strategist

Let’s make your LinkedIn a flex, and your most profitable GTM channel. 

Drop a line, and we’ll build something worth talking about. 

Best part, it shouldn't take more than 30 mins/week.

Reach out via DMs or connectdiksha99@gmail.com! 

Diksha Burnwal

You think you got Opus 4.6 and now you can replace, exchange, return your writer. Hold my kombucha.  

Sure you can prompt a few things and make Claude or Chatgpt spit long paragraphs that have the resemblance of a linkedin post and then you see, wow it performed decently. 

And start typing, "I replaced my ghostwriting team with Claude." Good for you, but you don’t just hire a writer to write. 

You hire them to understand: 

- Your business
- Your way of speaking, pacing, sentence structures
- The right anecdotes that can build or break your brand 
- The pattern recognition 
- The storytelling that makes your customers remember you

Offlate writers are being treated as "just writers” especially by founders and C-suites. They think let’s replace them. 

On the other hand there are tech giants, and the biggest companies out there paying hundreds of thousands to find their Chief Storytelling Officer and surprise surprise they aren’t looking for Chatgpt 10.0 or Claude Opus IDK. 

They’re hiring writers, writers who know what they’re doing. And the value they bring to the table. 

Also kombucha because I hate beer. You get the drift right?

Hi I am Diksha, I've been the founder's favorite ghostwriter for over 5 years now. And I thought 2026 is my year until January happened... 

If I were to describe my January in a word it was, INSUFFERABLE. 

Why you ask? 

Okay let's start with the night of 14th when I had an acute stomach ache, and just like that I had to undergo a surgery for gallstones in less than a week. 

During this week, I popped painkillers 3 times a day, completed my deliverables, informed all the clients, and pipeline about my situation and went into the procedure.  

It will be exactly 1 month to my surgery this week. And I wasn't able to get myself to writing this post...  

But during the time of rest I understood so much about my body and life in general. So, at the risk of being that person who shares a lesson... i think this is important so I might as well be pigeonholed lol. 

-  Never ignore the signs of your body. My condition was severe because I didn't bother to get a checkup when I was having minor symptoms 6 months ago. The surgery was a whole lot worse because of that :) 

- Very few things matter in life, your people, your work, the water intake (trust me), and a clean diet. 

- Testing times like this will show you who your real friends, well wishers, are. And the vice versa. 

- Pain is not a bad thing. My doctor said it's your body's way of telling you something's bugging me get it out. It sucks for people who can't know what's wrong with their bodies at the right time.

- You can't outrun a bad diet. No matter how hard you try. 

- Start changing your mindset towards rest. It's not "unprodcutive" it's literally helping your body, mind, relax and do better. 

- I also caught up to some reading. It's been fun. Completed 2 books. 

That's all for today. I know I've been MIA for quite a bit and I have a lot to catch up on. 

Would love to hear how your first month of the year went. 

PS: You know I'm doing okay when I got a matcha in my hand.

I have been on a mission to regain my attention span. And here's everything that I have been doing-

Fox context: I wouldn't call myself an addict, but when you work in the social media space and you are chronically online it just makes the matter a whole lot worse. So... 

1. Reading fiction and in general reading more. It's been 2 weeks now and I already see a higher clarity and more intentional writing. You consume rich, you create rich. Simple. 

2. Putting my phone on grayscale. So, I'm not the kid in the candy store looking at colorful candies. 

3. Stopped consuming short form content. Better for impluse control and getting out of the cycle of receiving cheap dopamine hits. I am focusing more on reading substack articles, YT videos, and more. 

4. Keeping my phone away while I'm working. It gets 10X easy when you don't have a distracting af device at an arms length. 

BONUS: Started watching Ghibli movies, they're so pretty and doesn't overstimulate your brain. 

The whole reason why I'm running this experiment is to make more time and energy to do things I always wanted to instead of being on autopilot. 

And eventually being able to truly live analog. 

I'm curious what do you do to protect your attention span? And what has actually worked? Let's talk in the comments.

If I wasn’t worried about hurting your feelings, here’s the personal branding advice I’d actually give you:

10. If someone can’t tell what you do and who you serve in the first 3 seconds of viewing your profile, you’re losing leads.

9. Your banner is prime real estate. Use it to signal authority, with a clear value prop, a result, or social proof. 

 8. “Founder | Dreamer | Innovator” tells me nothing. “Helping D2C brands 3x retention via lifecycle emails” tells me everything.

7. Your ‘About’ section isn’t for you. It’s for the reader. Write like you’re answering: Why should someone trust me, follow me, or reach out?

6. One post a month won’t move the needle. If you’re serious about inbound and oppurtunities, show up at least twice a week, with intention. 

5. People don’t buy from the loudest voice. They buy from the clearest one. Show your thinking, your process, your results.

4. Thoughtful comments build visibility and reputation faster than cold DMs. Most people ignore this. You shouldn’t.

3. You don’t need to go “viral.” You need the right 100 people to trust you. 

2. Even a simple text post can convert. If it sounds like you, and carries a point of view. 

1. LinkedIn is a leadership channel. If you're not shaping perception here, someone else will do it for you, with less context and more assumptions. 

There you go! Peace out :)

No alternative text description for this image

I have been a writer for the last half a decade of my life. And as a service provider, you have to make peace with these 8 things. 

TW: they might stink a lil. 

1. Happy clients leave all the time. It’s not on you. 

2. If your mechanism is to doubt your own skillset even after considerable proof you have a self esteem issue there. Fix it. 

3. If you do not speak up, you’ll be taken for granted by your clients. 

4. Learn to overcommunicate. You're not being too much.  

5. Saying no to bad-fit clients is how you make room for the right ones. 

6. Your rate is not up for debate.

7. Nobody is coming to organize your business for you. The admin is part of the job.

8. The client who haggles the most will also be the hardest to please. 

That’s all <3 

Stay hydrated.

I’m gonna get a lot of hate for saying this, but every creator out there is a little bit of a narcissist.

Honestly, you kind of have to be.

You have to believe that what’s happening in your life is worth paying attention to. That the small, ordinary things you experience carry meaning that deserves to be said out loud.

Most people don’t think like that. They live, move on, forget.

Creators pause. They replay things in their head, trying to understand what it says about them, about the world, about the work they do.
And no that’s not arrogance, that’s awareness.

But awareness looks a lot like self-obsession if you don’t know how to use it.

So, if you’re someone who wants to post online but doesn’t know what to say, you don’t need a new content strategy. You just need to start noticing your own day differently. 

Here’s what I mean: 

(1) You’re a founder. Your product glitched. You sat with your team, found the bug that’s been hiding in plain sight, and fixed it. That’s a post about leadership and problem-solving.

(2) You’re a coach. A client finally had that breakthrough you’ve been working toward. Write about what shifted, that’s a post about transformation.

(3) You’re a service provider. A client ghosted you, and you figured out what red flag you missed early on. That’s a post about boundaries and systems.

(4) You’re a marketer. You launched a campaign that tanked. That’s a post about feedback loops and creative judgment.

(5) You had a hard day managing your team. That’s a post about people, emotions, and trust.

(6) You read something that challenged what you believed. That’s a post about growth.

The ideas aren’t hiding in some fancy framework. They’re sitting in the middle of your own day, waiting for you to notice them.

So yes, maybe every creator is a little bit of a narcissist. But the good ones turn that self-focus into something useful for others.

And that’s what separates a post from a reflection, it starts with you, but it doesn’t end there. 

Thoughts??

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Diksha Burnwal

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDiksha Burnwal's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Diksha Burnwal

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);}Sam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDiksha Burnwal's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance