How Shoaib Ahmed built a £300k+/yr Personal Branding Business in 3 years

Simran Bellani, 3rd November, 2024

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Shoaib Ahmed is one of the most trusted LinkedIn growth experts and a personal branding agency owner of the UK, doing £30k+ MRR today.

He has 45k+ LinkedIn followers, served 120+ clients, and delivered 197M+ content views, £5.2M revenue, and 300+ PR opportunities for his clients.

That's not all.

He also won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2023 and is the strategic advisor to a budding B2B startup Limelight.

However, that was not what he had aimed for when he started posting on LinkedIn in 2019.

How Shoaib Ahmed went from a Geography student to a LinkedIn Growth Expert? Here's the backstory.

Shoaib studied BA in Geography from Durham University.

In his placement year, he got an opportunity to work for a budding startup called Rate My Placement as a marketing assistant.

Working in marketing there for 13 months and learning from experienced marketers sparked his interest in marketing.

He was quite active in extracurricular activities at the University too like heading an Everyday politics section for the editorial, managing a music event of 750 people, and so on. He also hosted webinars for his company as a marketing assistant.

And the best part? He documented all of these activities and learnings on LinkedIn.

This helped him grow his network and cemented his personal brand as a likable, warm, and eager-to-help professional.

Very early in his LinkedIn journey, in 2020, he also collaborated with career experts in his network to create a career development guide for students and fresh graduates who were in the same boat as him i.e. pandemic-led uncertainty in the job search.

After his first viral post (featuring his friend’s cat on his laptop, yes) he started to gain more engagement. He used this opportunity to share his knowledge of marketing to build credibility.

Eventually, the dream job offers came in. But he had developed a liking for a more free and flexible working lifestyle. So he chose to work for a personal branding agency Kurugo under Sam Winsbury as a 3-people team.

When his DMs started flooding with inquiries for LinkedIn ghostwriting and personal brand building, he decided to start his own personal branding agency Yello Hippo (which wasn’t the actual plan).

And the rest is history.

Content Pillars

Grouping all his recurring post topics led me to these 4 content pillars:

a) Writing Tips

b) Personal branding Tips

c) Entrepreneurship

d) Remote work

Later I found one post in which he stated his content pillars to be - Leadership, personal development, flexible work, entrepreneurship, and career development.

His USPs:

• Shoaib is highly opinionated and doesn’t shy away from letting it seep into his posts.
• He deeply cares about issues like racism, Diversity & Inclusion, employment disparity, and equal opportunities and brings unique perspectives that people relate with and love to read about.
• He is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant in the UK and he is not afraid to talk about all the challenges he faced in his growing years.
• Same way, he does not hold back from appreciating those who genuinely help him or are considerate and respectful.
• If you were able to guess by now, it's the stories he tells that are unique to his life, that no one can replicate that make him stand out.

Monetization Method & Income Streams

In 2023, his agency made £262k in revenue. In 2024, he expects to make £400k+ in revenue.

Income streams:

1. Personal branding services
2. Ghostwriting services
3. Bespoke 1-on-1 coaching
4. Team masterclasses
5. Public speaking
6. Brand deals

Growth Flywheel

Shoaib Ahmed’s growth flywheel is really simple.

It consists of his business website, active LinkedIn account, and a video podcast.

His LinkedIn profile has a linktree linking to all the important assets that makes it clear that his main source of income is his personal branding agency.

Most of his business comes from LinkedIn DMs and website inquiries.

His 2-step strategy:

Step #1: Post mind-blowing content that ICP wants to learn more of.

Step #2: Make them take a specific action – Either download a cheat sheet (any resource) or make them visit his profile where the link to his website and podcast episodes are.

Turn these viewers into paying clients.

He could have leveraged X (previously Twitter) but he hasn’t yet like many others in this business.

It's tough to focus on multiple platforms when you have a business to run.

And that he has been doing pretty neatly.

Smart Strategies:

Even in the beginning, Shoaib was smart to leverage his network to create content.

• To create valuable content, he asked his network what topics they cared about and reached out to the experts in his network to answer them - A smart way to garner engagement.
• What was Shoaib talking about in 2019?
  • Extra-curricular activities he had done that showcase his work-readiness like being the lead editor – recruiting co-editors, editing a column for his university, event managing a music festival, and helping students as an elected academic course representative.
  • His achievements and awards won as a placement student in his first employment.
  • Certifications completed in content marketing and social media marketing
  • Tips to grow on LinkedIn and Instagram.
  • Content Ideas for Students and fresh graduates seeking employment.
  • Expert advice curated by reaching out to experts in his network in the relevant field.
  • Dropping a 50-pager “Your Guide to LinkedIn(ing)” in 2019 and announcing it via video – far ahead of his time, to be honest.
  • Promoting the guide quite a few times by showcasing the reviews received.

His awareness content strategy:

• Pick universal topics that would be relevant to 99% of the readers
• Do not niche down and alienate your readers and potential prospects
• His audience is students as well as CEOs, so this makes sense for him but you decide based on your audience
• Now from these universal themes, pick topics that most of your audience will be interested in
• Make it around a human experience or emotion
• Don’t forget to make the hook compelling
• Make the post aspirational (a good transformation story does that easily)

His Hook strategy:

His data from having written thousands of posts says, only 2 types of hooks work the best. And both should tease more - Either a story, an outcome, or an explanation:

• An emotive personal story (include 'I' & a number)
• Share a provocative statement (present opinion as fact)

Refer to this ​post​ if you want to see examples of these hooks in action.

Here are some more screenshots of hooks to get a picture of how he uses his hook strategy on LinkedIn.

My observations:

1) None of his top 25 liked posts of all time were about “writing tips” or educational posts. They were all about entrepreneurship, the perks of remote work, his business goals, revenue, life transformations, and shoutouts to good work done by some global brands.

2) Posts with the highest comments had lead magnets packed with value or a highly opinionated post.

3) Posts with the highest number of reposts followed the same pattern as the posts with the highest likes i.e. personal branding and writing tips aka educational posts.

How can You use some of these strategies to grow on LinkedIn

#1 - M-A-P Framework to get unstuck and build a strong personal brand 📝

M - Mission (what is your big picture goal?)
→ This guides your thinking & strategy.
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A - Authenticity (what's your unique angle? values?)
→ This helps you stay true to yourself.
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P - Pillars (what do you want to be known for?)
→ This determines your content topics.
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Sit down. Ask those questions. Write your answers.

#2 - Center your content around "Real Impact" as an outcome 🎯

If you choose universal themes to write on, on LinkedIn, make sure that -

- You have a unique angle to it
- You share your own experience with regard to the topic
- The aim of the post is to create a tangible impact in reader's life

#3 - Stay consistent 🏋️

Goes without saying, but I am reiterating it to cement the importance of staying committed to your goal.

You have to post a minimum of 3x a week. It does not have to be 5x or 7x.

Go for 5x or 7x if you want to see faster results.

#4 - Always reply to comments and DMs 🗨️💬🗨️💬

Again, this has to go without saying, and yet here I am.

Because a lot of people still post and ghost.

Shoaib always makes a point to reply to all comments on his posts and his DMs.

I once got a response DM from him 3 weeks after I asked something. But I got one, that's important.

And for context, he does not know me personally. I am just one of his audience members.

If you are an entrepreneur and came here to learn how to build a personal brand like Shoaib Ahmed, I hope you found this newsletter valuable.
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#5 - Don't be scared to show up as your real self 👏👏👏

When we say we need to be authentic, it means our unfiltered opinions and takes on topics have to come out in our posts.

It looks easy, but when you actually sit down to write, you are going to edit your thoughts to fit in on LinkedIn.

It's my personal experience, so take it from me.

Shoaib said in a podcast "No Bulls*it Talks with Sabrina Chevannes" that he urges his clients to not care about negative people and just share their real versions to create a meaningful personal brand and attract the right audience."

That's the deep dive.

How was it? Helpful?

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💚Tell me the part that most resonated with you by replying to the email.
💚 I hope you have enough ideas to begin your LinkedIn growth journey with a bang.

That’s the whole point of this newsletter – giving you a head start on LinkedIn with the entire LinkedIn analysis of the creator on one page.
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💚 Share it with someone who would benefit from this deep dive.

Sincerely yours,
Simran Bellani

💚 PS – If you want to start sharing your career experiences on LinkedIn but –

1. You don’t have time
2. You are not sure “What to write”
3. You think, “I have nothing special to share” but in your heart you know it will benefit your business or next career move

then send me an email at simranbellani.work@gmail.com with the subject line - “WRITING ON LINKEDIN”.

I will come back to you with a meeting request to take it further.
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