Sam G. Winsbury

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

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
🚀 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 

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 yoursel

Founder

On paper, I look self made: 

- Started Kurogo at 20
- Entirely bootstrapped 
- No loan from mum and dad

 But in reality: 

- Parents never questioned me
- Mentors helped when they didn’t have to
- Friends liked my posts before anyone cared
- My first clients took a chance on a kid with no portfolio
- Teammates believed in the vision when it was just an idea

Every “self-made” story has invisible scaffolding: support, belief, opportunity.

Ps. Who's supported you recently?

300+ Personal Brands Built | Sky, Entrepreneur, Insider | Founder & CEO Kurogo | We Create Thought Leaders Through Personal Branding

Career advice to 18 year olds:

- Work for free to build your network
- Work for someone you admire
- Upskill in your spare time
- Do the apprenticeship
- Learn on the job

Just don’t think you need more knowledge to get started.

Ps. I speak to a lot of very rich people and they admire initiative. Show some.

7 ‘unscalable’ things I did to get from 0 → 1M revenue:

(I still do some of these today)

1. Took proposals at 3am 
2. Worked for free for my first clients
3. Wrote for and managed 20+ clients alone
4. Tailored every project to overdeliver for clients
5. Sent 100s of personalised looms to connections 
6. Shadowed an entrepreneur around London for free
7. Travelled to clients offices to deliver free in person trainings

If you’re just getting started:

Don’t worry about ‘systems’, ‘efficiency’ or ‘balance’
Worry about signing clients, delighting them and gathering xp. 

You can do the fancy stuff later. 

My approach:

Do what no one else will until you have the ability to do what no one else can. 

-- 

With me? Hit repost. You might just help a first-time entrepreneur.

PS. You ever done any of these?

2015: you won by being the best.
Today: you win by being the authority

You can have a great product…

But if no one knows you
If no one sees you as an expert
If no one trusts you

You’ll never get the credit you deserve.

(And there’s no nobility in being your industry’s ‘best kept secret’ btw)

So of course, ensure your product is good.
But please, ensure your presence is too.

How?

Leverage your senior team.

1. Pick your key profiles
2. Position them as industry experts
3. Optimise their profiles
4. Publish consistent thought leadership
5. Align content with wider marketing pushes

Within 1 month: momentum

After 3 months: recognition

Get to 6 months: authority, pipeline, leverage

Your senior team are your no. 1 marketing channel.

Get the exec personal brand blueprint here: https://lnkd.in/e_uXTgUK

Ps. Prediction: SLT will become the most effective marketing channel in 2026

2015: Few channels, trusting consumers, little competition

2025: Many channels, sceptical consumers, lots of competition

The same tired company campaigns that worked in 2015 don’t cut it now.

Consumers see through it.

Instead, they want to consume content from your people instead.

So turn your senior leaders into brand advocates:

1. Build personal positioning strategies that complement company messaging
2. Update their profiles (no more CV profiles!)
3. Publish content weekly (trends, opinions, predictions, stories)

3 steps and you’re ahead of 90% of your competitors.

Each one will reach, engage and build trust with 100,000s of people per month.

(Or you can stick to the 15 likes you’re getting on the company page)

Want to turn your senior team into brand advocates?

Here’s how: https://lnkd.in/e_uXTgUK

Ps. Hubspot nailing it. Anyone else you’ve seen doing this well?

I keep having to remind myself: 

- This is where I dreamt of being 5 years ago
- This is where I should enjoy the journey most 

But that’s tough to balance with ambition. 

So I’m reading this note daily.

(maybe) controversial advice to grads: 

Take the lower salary if the job will teach you more. 

A job that pays £2,000 less now but teaches you 10x more is worth an extra £200,000 over the next 10 years.

Thirdfort

I help legal and property firms cut onboarding time from weeks to minutes and halve their admin burden while protecting against fraud and fines.

Thirdfort protects life’s big transactions so businesses and their clients can move fearlessly. Thirdfort’s platform combines KYC, AML and Source of Funds for beautifully secure verification. 

Powered by Open Banking and transaction-specific data, Thirdfort rapidly informs professionals of any risks associated with verifying their individual and corporate clients.

Thirdfort is trusted by more than 1000 regulated businesses, law firms and estate agents to make their compliance a competitive advantage.

Account Executive

Zane Powell Health Transformations

Built and scaled a hybrid coaching business that has supported 60+ clients to date through personalised training, nutrition, and lifestyle change programmes.

- Built a repeatable lead gen engine (outbound, content marketing & referrals).
- Designed & delivered a flagship transformation product for senior professionals.
- Coached senior professionals 1:1 across fitness, nutrition, stress & accountability.
- Created a scalable client onboarding and roadmap to ensure a high ROI.
- Managed clients across the full lifecycle: onboarding, service delivery & retention.

*Note: After being impacted by a company-wide redundancy from my corporate job, I decided to pursue a lifelong goal and start my own health coaching company.

Sysdig

Part of the first mid-market Team on the ground in EMEA, driving new business. *Note: Role ended due to company-wide mid-market team redundancy*

- Built the Nordics GTM Playbook: Outbound Strategy & Sales Process Best Practices.
- Built and executed strategic territory plans to drive pipeline and quota attainment.
- Developed and nurtured client champions to drive multi-threaded, complex deals.
- Orchestrated an ecosystem (marketing, engineering, partners) to win complex deals.
- MEDDPICC used to qualify, forecast, and close opportunities.

I joined Sysdig when they were a Series F company and had raised a total of $744 million. Sysdig helps cloud-native organisations secure their cloud environments, containers and kubernetes.

Ardoq

Part of the first team in UK&I driving new business within mid-market and enterprise accounts. 

Helped to build the UK&I GTM Playbook: Outbound Strategy, Enterprise Strategy, Sales Process Best Practices, Customer Personas.

Full sales cycle ownership from prospecting through to close and post-sale handoff.

Orchestrated an ecosystem (marketing, engineering, partners) to win complex deals.

I joined Ardoq when they were a Series D company and had raised a total of $159 million. Ardoq's Enterprise Change SaaS Platform helps organisations drive large-scale change to improve business performance.

Gartner

Responsible for a portfolio of 7 Universities across the UK/Benelux worth over $1 million.

- Owned the post-sale lifecycle: onboarding, adoption, QBRs, upsells & retention. 
- Developed and executed strategic account plans to drive adoption, ROI & renewals. 
- Led customer onboarding and training to accelerate time-to-value and adoption.
- Provide accurate, regular client management reports to ensure value realisation.
- Develop strong relationships (C-level, champions) to drive adoption & expansion.

Gartner helps executives and IT leaders make effective IT and business decisions.

Enterprise Account Manager

Cisco

I am responsible for early-stage pipeline and supporting a mid-market AE with their accounts.

Junior Account Manager

I undertook sales and technical training, before working on multiple business accounts across varying business sectors, such as insurance, finance, automotive and public sector.

Achievements 
•	Each week I was assigned a different customer account. The task was to create and deliver a 40-minute sales presentation to the account manager, highlighting potential areas where Cisco could add value: I greatly improved my business-specific research skills and my ability to deliver professional sales presentation.

•	I worked with technology products spanning cyber security, computer networking, collaboration, data centres, and IoT analytics: I have developed a wide foundational knowledge around the world’s latest technology.

•	Delivered a presentation to the Head of IT at the National History Museum, in London, on the various ways Cisco could help the museum with their digital journey: the IT manger really liked the Chatbot solution I proposed and decided to discuss the idea further with the rest of his team.

Global Sales Intern

UniJobApp

I created and successfully secured funding for my own start-up business; UniJobApp is a student and graduate recruitment app.

Achievements & Skills
•	Working closely with external business analysts/designers that are developing our app: this has greatly increased my knowledge in technology development, from moqqup stage to back-end development.
•	Successfully securing £40,000 of private investment: the process of seeking investment really helped to refine my rhetorical skill.
•	Successfully growing our social media following to over 6,000 followers: I learned to develop and implement successful social media campaigns.

Co-Founder

JacTravel

I worked within the newly formed MICE department at a global travel company, where I organised corporate meetings/conferences/incentives groups.

Achievements & Skills
•	Took charge of any MICE-related social media news: I used my social media skills to kick-start their marketing campaign.
•	Attended client meetings with managerial-level employees from top hotels: I took the opportunity to test my soft skills in a high-level environment.
•	Participated, and shared ideas, in the strategic planning of the new department: great insight into how global companies plan their operations.

Business Development Intern

Lynn Herbert and Co (Solicitors)

I worked voluntarily for a small legal firm, assisting the lawyers with their work.

Achievements & Skills
•	I developed key administrative skills: typing letters, answering phones and booking meetings.
•	Completed research for real legal cases: I further enhanced my researching skills.
•	Instructed an Advocate on behalf of the firm at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow.

Legal Intern/Part-time Legal PA

I help legal and properties firms cut onboarding time from weeks to minutes and halve their admin burden while protecting against fraud and fines.

Thirdfort is a leading provider of digital ID, KYC, automated AML, Source of Funds and KYB verification for legal and property businesses. 

If you’re interested in how technology can help streamline onboarding, mitigate risk and improve client experience, let’s connect.

Zane Powell

Great summary from Thirdfort on what the 18 November ACSP deadline really means for ID verification 👇

Make compliance your competitive advantage | Digital ID, automated AML, and Source of Funds checks in one platform

Still have some uncertainty around the 18 November ACSP deadline? 🙋‍♂️ 

We had so many great questions during our recent ACSP webinar that we couldn't get to them all. It’s clear there’s still some confusion around the new rules.

Our AML expert, Harriet Holmes, has answered your top questions in our latest blog. 

Find the full Q&A in the comments 👇

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Zane Powell

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreZane Powell's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Sam G. Winsbury

Zane Powell

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 ScoreZane Powell's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreSam G. Winsbury's LinkedIn Performance