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

Where companies go to get noticed | Co-Founder and Managing Director at noticed. |

Morgan Ratcliffe

In the last 3 years, 99% of our clients have come from LinkedIn.

Just one platform.

Which is strange, because most businesses I speak to still rely on referrals, website traffic, or paid ads to grow.

And when those slow down, pipeline slows with them.

We realised early on that LinkedIn isn’t just a place to post content.

It’s a place where your buyers already spend time.

So instead of waiting to be discovered, we built a system around showing up consistently, starting conversations intentionally, and giving people clear ways to move closer to working with us.

That’s what turned LinkedIn from “a marketing channel” into our main growth engine.

The takeaway?

You don’t need more channels.

You need one channel you actually treat like a system.

That’s when it starts producing clients, not just impressions.

5 ways to acquire clients on LinkedIn ⤵

We’ve signed clients all over the world through LinkedIn.

Not because we “posted consistently.”
Not because we chased engagement.

Because we built a system.

For a long time, we treated LinkedIn like most companies do, somewhere to share updates and hope the right people saw them.

It felt productive.
It wasn’t predictable.

The shift came when we stopped viewing LinkedIn as a content platform and started treating it like infrastructure for demand.

One clear ICP.
Content engineered to create familiarity.
Outbound to start conversations.
Assets to convert interest.
Paid to accelerate what already worked.

No randomness. No guessing.

Just a structured path from attention → conversation → client.

Most companies are still approaching LinkedIn tactically.

Post here. Run an ad there. Try a bit of outreach.

But LinkedIn only becomes commercially valuable when it’s architected as a system, not used as a channel.

That’s when it stops being “marketing.”

And starts behaving like pipeline.

OLD VS NEW LINKEDIN

3 years ago my younger brother and I started noticed.

2 years ago we hired our first team members. 
1 year ago we made Insider 42 under 42. 

This year we're trying to hit (just shy of) £2,000,000 in revenue.

It's been a wild ride. 

Ups, downs, lefts, rights, you name it, we've experienced it. 

But over the years, the thing it's allowed me to realise is that building a business is the ultimate test of who you are as a person. 

It requires you to: 

1. Believe in yourself.
2. Show up every day. 
3. Innovate and problem solve.  
4. Have real deliverables to hit. 
5. Learn and improve constantly. 
6. Hold real and heavy responsibility. 

And not only that, you have to be willing to sit down and do that every day over a 10-15 year time span. 

People say "It's a marathon, not a sprint". 

But I disagree. 

It's more like a full Ironman where you have to be able to swim, bike and run, apart from you're swimming in the ocean with sharks, then you have to build the bike while you're riding it, and the marathon is actually a run with no shoes and it goes on for an unspecified amount of time. 

But god damn it's fun. 

Anyway, if that sounds fun, then welcome to entrepreneurship. 

May the odds be ever in your favour ✌🏻

Lessons from scaling an agency ⤵

We’ve used LinkedIn as our main sales channel for nearly 4 years. 

How to run successful LinkedIn …

And the biggest mistake I see B2B companies make is surprisingly simple.

They work hard to get attention…

…but give that attention nowhere meaningful to go.

Early on, we fell into the same trap.

Content was landing.
Views were climbing.
People were noticing us.

But pipeline wasn’t moving at the same pace.

The shift came when we understood this:

👉 Attention is only valuable when it’s captured and redirected.

Once someone notices you, your job is not to impress them.

Your job is to guide them.

Not to 10 different pages.
Not to your generic website.

To one clear destination.

For us, that meant building assets worth exchanging an email for.

Industry reports.
Playbooks.
Assessments.

Things that made a buyer think,
“Useful… I want that.”

When you do this well, three things happen:

You build trust faster.
You stand out from competitors.
You become front-of-mind when timing is right. 

How to run successful LinkedIn …

Most LinkedIn strategies fail because they stop at visibility.

But visibility alone doesn’t create clients.

Direction does.

If you’re generating attention right now, ask yourself one question:

Where am I sending it?

Because the companies winning on LinkedIn aren’t just being seen.

They’re deliberately turning attention into ecosystem.

How to run successful marketing campaigns on linkedin 

In your career (and life) people won't believe in you. 

"You can't do ironman as your first triathlon"
↳ Finished in 13:48:00

"You can't build a business with your background" 
↳ Hit £1,000,000 in revenue in just 3 years. 

And at every turn, there will be people who speak their doubts to you both out loud, and behind your back. 

Over the years I've learned that when people do this, all they're doing is projecting how they feel onto you. 

They don't think they could finish. 
They don't think they could put in the work. 
They don't think that they can do great things. 

And even the thought of you attempting forces them to put you down in order to make themselves feel better about their own situation. 

But many of the people I've met who have achieved great things have nothing "Special". 

The real ability they all share is the fact they can block out the noise, take action and continue to do it year after year. 

The takeaway is that you can do pretty much anything you want in life. 

- Build a business. 
- Finish an ironman. 
- Learn a new language. 
- Grow a Youtube or LinkedIn account. 

Because the gap between where you are and where you need to be isn't as big as you might think. 

And success often lies in your ability to block out the noise ✌🏻

Here's what happened ⤵

Everyone likes to shout about wins on LinkedIn, but what about one of our biggest failure?

Here’s our worst performing LinkedIn campaign and what I’d change if I had the chance to do it again ⤵

We built a free assessment to help businesses “find their perfect lead magnet.”

The idea was strong.
The feedback was great.

Over 500 people completed it, and we booked 4 sales calls off the back of it. 

But here’s the part that matters:

It was one of our lowest converters from attention to pipeline. 

And the reason was painfully obvious in hindsight.

We didn’t launch it.
We just posted it.

No build-up.
No anticipation.
No real distribution strategy.

Just dropped it into the feed and hoped the right people would find it.

They didn’t. At least not enough of them.

If I had the chance to run it again, I wouldn’t touch the asset.

I’d change how we took it to market.

First, I’d create teaser content to build curiosity before the release.
Because when something launches into silence, it rarely travels far.

Second, I’d directly target 100–200 people within our ICP and start conversations with them.

Not pitch it, offer it as something genuinely useful.

Third, I’d embed it into outbound and email so it didn’t rely on organic reach alone.

Good campaigns need inbound and outbound.

And finally, I’d treat it as evergreen, not a one-week push.
The best assets compound when they’re repeatedly put in front of new buyers.

Big lesson from this one:

Hope is not a distribution strategy.

Most campaigns don’t fail because the idea is bad.

They fail because no one knows they exist.

Anyway, there's an honest one for you. 

But I often find the campaigns that miss usually teach you the biggest lessons.

Our Lowest Converting LinkedIn Campaign ➡️

For about 10 years, people used LinkedIn like a corporate facebook.

Polished updates.
Safe messaging.
Occasional sales pushes.

And yeah, it looks professional... but it gets no engagement, and generates no pipeline. 

The shift for us came when we put in place a system on LinkedIn, combining: 

1. Content tailored to our ICP.
2. Outreach used after intent signals. 
3. Sales assets to drive inbound contacts. 

And emails to scale the approach and drive even more traffic. 

Instead of asking, “What should we post this week?”

We started asking, 

“How does LinkedIn move someone closer to becoming a client?”

"How can we drive more intent signals for outbound?" 

"How can we create content that drives more traffic?"

That changed everything.

Content became about visibility & community. 
Outreach became about conversations, not pitches.
Campaigns were built to give value first, then guide people somewhere useful.

Once those pieces connected, LinkedIn stopped feeling random.

It became predictable.

Most companies don’t have a LinkedIn problem.

They just haven’t built a system that turns attention into action yet.

For 3 years, LinkedIn has been our main client acquisition channel.

Not because we post a lot.
Not because we “grew an audience”.
Because we built a system around it.

Most companies treat LinkedIn like a visibility channel.

The ones signing clients treat it like infrastructure.

Here’s the system we keep coming back to:

1. Define one ICP clearly
Not “founders” or “marketers”. One role, one problem, one buying context.

2. Create content that signals relevance
Not generic advice, just things that make your ICP think “this is for me”.

3. Start conversations intentionally
Use outreach to speak to people already showing signals, not random cold pitches.

4. Give attention somewhere to go
A guide, report, audit, webinar, something useful that moves them closer to working with you.

5. Scale what already works
Only once conversations and conversions exist do ads make sense.

That’s it.

No hacks.
No growth tricks.
Just a clear path from attention → conversation → client.

Most LinkedIn strategies fail because they stop at step two.

The money sits in steps three to five.

I think a lot of people on LinkedIn are doing the right things… just in the wrong order.

We see companies running ads straight to their website and wondering why nobody clicks.

Posting content they personally find interesting, but their audience doesn’t really engage with.

Or sharing something useful but not giving people anywhere obvious to go next.

We did the same early on.

It felt like we were “active” on LinkedIn, but it didn’t feel joined up.

What changed for us was realising LinkedIn works best when the pieces connect.

Content should make the right people feel like you understand their world.
Ads should amplify what’s already proven to resonate.
And every post or campaign should point somewhere intentional, not just vaguely “to the website”.

It sounds simple, but once you start thinking of LinkedIn as one connected journey rather than separate tactics, the platform becomes a lot clearer.

Most people don’t need to do more on LinkedIn.

They just need the things they’re already doing to work together a bit better.

We've been cleaning up recently with our Linkedin outreach system for clients all over the world. 

Content to engage prospects. 
LinkedIn outreach to target buyers. 
Email outreach to scale the approach. 

It's led to meetings booked with brands like Blue Origin, Caterpillar, Ford and a ton of others. 

I truly believe we're one of the best in the world at generating new business on LinkedIn right now. 

We're swamped at the moment, but if you want to use the platform to grow in 2026, apply to work with us in the link below: 

https://lnkd.in/e9JWDNfV

✌🏻

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Morgan Ratcliffe

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Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMorgan Ratcliffe's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Morgan Ratcliffe

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 ScoreMorgan Ratcliffe's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance