S2 I EP.5 - Kateesha Hembrow I Cemoh Fractional Marketing Podcast

Simon Dell (00:01)

Welcome to the CMO fractional marketing podcast, the fractional CMO podcast. I forgot what we've called it, something like that. My name is Simon Dell. I am your host. I'm also the CEO of CMO. ⁓ If you wanna find out anything about us or any of our fractional ⁓ chief marketing officers, you can go to cmo.com that's spelled C-E-M-O-H.com.

⁓ You can find me on all the social networks. You can email me at Simon at SEMO.com. I'm pretty easy to find. So, yeah, please come and reach out. If you're interested in finding out more about what we do. If you enjoy this podcast or any of the episodes of this podcast, because there are lots of other episodes of this podcast, please rate and review us on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you get your daily podcast.

fix. And that's pretty much about it today. ⁓ We are talking first, well firstly, let me welcome to the show a friend of mine. I don't know whether we're quite friends stages, but we got way back all it earlier this year. ⁓ Katisha Hembrough, is it Hembrough or Hembrow? I, I've asked Hembrough. Katisha Hembrough.

Kateesha Hembrow (01:09)

We can go with friends, we go way back.

Envo. Envo.

Simon Dell (01:23)

You are on the Gold Coast. Give us the 30 second Katisha elevator pitch.

Kateesha Hembrow (01:32)

Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for introduction. So my name is Katisha Hembrow and I'm the founder of the Be Known Academy. I'm a personal branding LinkedIn coach and I've had the honor of coaching hundreds of people across 40 different industries, helping them to do anything from growing their brand to scale their existing business, helping sales professionals to generate more leads or helping people that are

in a nine to five that is sucking the life out of them and they're wanting to escape that and launch their own business and they want to leverage their personal brand to do so.

Simon Dell (02:08)

was perfect. I didn't time it, but I suspect that was around about 30 seconds. But what we're going to talk about today, because obviously we've got a very sort of narrow focus in what we do at CIMO, is that we're going to talk about fractional chief marketing officers. So that's people that are operating as consultants or marketing strategists, but often operating under their own business, under their own brand name and those kinds of things. And about how to use LinkedIn.

Kateesha Hembrow (02:12)

you

Simon Dell (02:36)

to ⁓ grow their profile and essentially win clients or find clients. So you and I have spoken about this before ⁓ and for us, we're gonna be regurgitating a lot of the conversation we've had. look, I wanna start off by sort of asking you the question, is LinkedIn still as important today as it...

Kateesha Hembrow (02:52)

Alright, that's cool.

Simon Dell (03:05)

has been in previous years.

Kateesha Hembrow (03:08)

Yes, short answer. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm obviously a LinkedIn lady, so it's by far my favourite platform. And I did a post on this the other day and it's a little bit cheeky to say, but the reason that I love LinkedIn more, I guess, the other platforms is for a couple main reasons. One being is the decision makers are on LinkedIn. So if you want to get in front of the serious decision makers that can make calls. ⁓

that's where you want to be. And the other one is, it's where the people with the money are at. It's simply like if you want well paying clients ⁓ and clients that are just gems to work with, LinkedIn is where they're going to be.

Simon Dell (03:53)

And it's funny because everyone still jokes about LinkedIn. I saw a post the other day saying it was interesting that there isn't really a competitor for LinkedIn out there. All other sort of social networks seem to have evolved natural competitors, but LinkedIn is still sort of pretty much on its own.

Kateesha Hembrow (04:02)

Mm.

So probably the only one is

maybe X. Like sometimes people, you know, jump between X, but even then, like I personally am not on there. ⁓ I've just focused primarily on LinkedIn.

Simon Dell (04:13)

Yeah

Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, I guess, yeah, I think I've actually just recently gone back on X for the first time in maybe two or three years, just after, you know, kind of went through a sort of fair amount of turmoil and all those kinds of things. So, ⁓ but yeah, mean, look, LinkedIn, LinkedIn's super important in terms of who's on there. ⁓

There's lots of questions. I mean, there is lots of questions about how to do LinkedIn better and things like that. But, you know, when you take over a client or when you start working with a client, what sort of, what sort of state do you find them in? I mean, you, you, you, there must be some common kind of things that they're doing wrong or, or things that they're just not doing at all.

Kateesha Hembrow (04:53)

Mm-hmm.

I'm

Yeah, really good question. look, I would say that people come to me, I guess, varying levels, but I would say from a whole people are coming to me ⁓ with a LinkedIn where honestly, we need to dust the cobwebs off. ⁓ So their profile, for instance, might be very bare, not all the sections are filled out, they're missing really key components, or it's actually just not making sense what they've got on there. It's not very clear as to what it is they do and who they help.

The other thing I would say is they are most of the time too scared to actually post content and do direct outreach and message people on the platform. So I would say from a high level there, the three main problems, I guess, is their profile optimization, the lack of content or that maybe they're posting content, but they're not getting results from it. And they're not really doing much in terms of building relationships in the messages.

Simon Dell (06:02)

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. So let's start with the obvious one, the profile one. I did have to check your profile before I started this. Have you sort of lept in terms of the numbers that you've got? Because I thought we were pretty close and now you've just demolished me in numbers, Catesia, and I'm fucked.

Kateesha Hembrow (06:24)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah,

so I've gone on a bit of a journey the last six months and six months ago, if I think about, I think it was about May, April, May, roughly around there. I got a little bit complacent with my content, if I'm gonna be honest, and I was having a look at stats and I was probably paying it a little bit safe.

Simon Dell (06:46)

All right, OK.

Kateesha Hembrow (06:51)

and I'd done about 230,000 impressions. And content impressions aren't always the statistics you wanna look at, but just to give you an idea of what's happened since then. So when I saw that and I realized, okay, content's dropped off a bit, performance has dropped off a bit, and I lasered in and focused on my LinkedIn, and this has probably been the most polarizing, the loudest, the most opinionated I've been over the last three months.

My content's almost at 1.4 million impressions in the last 90 days, so I've quadrupled my number of impressions. And the last couple of months, I've been growing a couple thousand followers every month. yeah, since we've spoken, it's certainly really ramped up. ⁓

Simon Dell (07:35)

What I was gonna say, cause you have 14, 14, 14 and a half thousand followers.

Kateesha Hembrow (07:38)

⁓

Yeah, they'll easily cross over 15 by the end of the month.

Simon Dell (07:44)

I'm just about to tick over 11 and so I'm like, I feel like I'm drifting behind you now and I'm like, I'm gonna have to do something about that. very upsetting me. But okay, so getting that profile right and again, I remember when we last spoke, you were really critiquing my profile and telling me all the things that I was doing wrong and I'm probably not gonna fix them all so I don't, you know.

Kateesha Hembrow (07:47)

Yeah, we were neck and neck back then.

You gotta catch up!

.

.

Yes.

Okay.

Simon Dell (08:13)

⁓

But the profile is the first step. And again, I know people joke about this and, you know, but it really does pay dividends to get just all those little bits right, doesn't it?

Kateesha Hembrow (08:30)

To give you an idea of how important it is, so up until it was about four or five weeks ago, I've never had a website. So when I started my entrepreneurial journey years and years ago with a different business, I invested $40,000 into a website and videography and I didn't make a single sale. And then with LinkedIn over the last couple of years,

Simon Dell (08:50)

Wow. Yep.

Kateesha Hembrow (08:54)

I said I'm not making that mistake again of getting a website and I turned my profile into a website and I funneled over half a million dollars through my LinkedIn profile in revenue. Yeah, with no website up until five weeks ago. So I'm not sharing that story to glow. I'm just sharing it to show like how powerful your LinkedIn profile can be if you have it really well set up in order to bring in revenue and particularly if you're in early days of business or maybe you don't have the

the cash flow yet to throw $40,000 into a website, you can turn your free LinkedIn profile into one.

Simon Dell (09:31)

So let's also then just touch on the fact that, and again, I don't mean this to sound like a criticism when you say half a million dollars. ⁓ How have you made money? Because obviously from what I understand, there's a lot of online training and education and things like that. That's how you drive your funnel and how you drive your revenue.

Kateesha Hembrow (09:55)

Yeah, so I've got lots of different, I've got lots of different funnels. So people come in from all different places, but they primarily come through my LinkedIn profile. And yeah, I guess the revenue has come from my academy. So I coach people, ⁓ whether that be privately or in a group coaching capacity. I coach them on how to grow their brand and generate leads off the back of their LinkedIn profile as well. Yeah, and that's how my...

Simon Dell (10:16)

Yeah. So if

I'm if I'm a, if I'm a freelance, if I'm a fractional CMO and I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking for those bigger clients, those ones that might be spending, you know, six, $7,000 a month retainers, maybe, maybe more than that. Right. That's going to be a bit of a different funnel. It's not, they're not necessarily going to. So, so, okay. So how would you, how would you be converting?

Kateesha Hembrow (10:40)

They're so fun.

Simon Dell (10:46)

you know, how would you be converting somebody like that? If that was your target market, if you wanted someone on a 12 month retainer spending that kind of cash.

Kateesha Hembrow (10:56)

So you're still leveraging your LinkedIn profile as a way to funnel them in, but your sales process might look different. I mean, for me at the moment, I'm going through a bit of a transition phase where I am actually able to make sales without having to get on sales calls with people. I still get on them, but for somebody who's perhaps looking at a market where they're paying them five, 10, 20 grand a month to work with them, all it is is simply getting them onto a booked call from their LinkedIn profile.

And you could do that in a couple different ways. It could be, I used to do this, so I used to have a booking link on my LinkedIn profile. And like my clients, like my clients can invest anywhere from two grand to 20, 30 grand to work with me. So they would just book in through the link, ⁓ through a calendar link, and they book in a call, or you might perhaps send them to your inbox. You might have a call to action on your profile to say, hey, if you'd like to learn more.

either send me an email or I like to deal with it as quickly as possible and I like when people actually just message me on LinkedIn and you might just pop on there, send me a message if you'd like to learn more and then you qualify them in the inbox and then you book them on a call. Yeah.

Simon Dell (12:08)

Okay, I

have this thing in my head and we can argue this out now because I do like to get a good argument on a podcast. I love a good, I love a good, we got one, we're gonna do a podcast next week where we're just gonna argue for an hour. I'm so looking forward to that. Yeah, sadly we're gonna argue about marketing, whereas I'd rather be arguing about like, you know, politics or aliens or something like that. But anyway.

Kateesha Hembrow (12:13)

Okay. Good Mawgiewt.

Ciao!

I'll warm you up for it then.

So

funny.

Simon Dell (12:36)

My preconception, and this is a preconception, right? Maybe it's a misconception, whatever, okay? Is that the higher ticket people, the ones with the bigger budgets, the CEOs that are hiding behind a desk and a receptionist or a ⁓ VA, PA, whatever, that they're not going to book online.

through a calendly link, right? That's my debate topic. You now need to convince me otherwise.

Kateesha Hembrow (13:17)

And it could be,

and it depends on your target market as well as like how you get in front of people. with maybe the CEO of like Microsoft or BHP for instance, right? You're not gonna get a meeting with the CEO of BHP. Like he's not gonna be going and I'm gonna stay here because I'm assuming currently the CEO is a man. I'm just trying to think of back in the days when I was there, I was like, it a man or a woman? ⁓ But they, no, you're right. They're not gonna

Simon Dell (13:23)

Okay.

Kateesha Hembrow (13:46)

they're not gonna click onto your profile and they're not gonna, they're not going to book in through a gallery link. But what you do is you connect with them so they still see your content and they pop up. And you'd actually still be surprised with how responsive people are in higher roles. ignore the balloons. We've got a celebration happening here. People respond. If you break the mold and you can stand out and there's other ways to do it and I'll never forget.

There was somebody that I really admired and I wanted to work with and we'd connected on LinkedIn and they'd been seeing myself on LinkedIn. They knew who I was and I sent them a gift to their office. And it was a bit cheeky, but I sent them a gift. It was a bunch of cupcakes and I had half of the cupcakes branded with their company logo and the other half with a photo of a ghost.

And I wrote a little message on there and I said, hey, such and such, notice you're a bit of a ghost on LinkedIn, which I think is a shame because you've got an incredible story and a lot of people you can help. Would you be open to having a chat? Now this was a very, very busy man, like big company turning over tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars. That man was on the phone to me within three minutes of those cupcakes being delivered. Yeah. So.

Simon Dell (15:07)

Okay.

Kateesha Hembrow (15:07)

So it's

Simon Dell (15:08)

Yes.

Kateesha Hembrow (15:08)

not necessarily and you'd be surprised. And again, like that was just a way of me leveraging LinkedIn for them to see me to be top of mind and then pairing something else on the back end of it. But if you were just to use LinkedIn, don't be afraid to message people. But you have to think about how can you stand out from the rest because these CEOs or these people in big positions of power are getting peppered with messages.

So it's really about for me, whether it's on LinkedIn or whether it's in real life or somewhere else, how can you break the mold?

Simon Dell (15:40)

I think you've touched on the point that I would probably make to most fractional CMOs is that LinkedIn, it is for you, but it may not be for other people, right? But LinkedIn is part of a marketing strategy. You've managed to build a platform, you've managed to build a business and a very successful business on the basis of the platform itself.

Right? ⁓ And that's not, and you see a lot of other successful businesses that have built businesses based on the platform. Instagram, you know, has been the birthplace of many good e-commerce businesses. ⁓ know, LinkedIn is the birthplace of good coaching businesses and educational businesses and all those kinds of things, right? ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (16:10)

Yeah.

Simon Dell (16:31)

For some people that being a fractional CMO, LinkedIn is part of a strategy, a broader strategy. And in your case, that broader strategy included cupcakes, right? Yeah, but it's over that particular, but for other fractional CMOs that, what I'm nervous about saying is saying to them, you can have your complete success like Tisha did just using LinkedIn.

Kateesha Hembrow (16:43)

for that particular person, yeah.

Simon Dell (17:00)

My preference when I'm sort of saying to these people is that use LinkedIn as part of a broader strategy. And it might be a big part of that broader strategy, but use it as a part of a broader strategy.

Kateesha Hembrow (17:14)

And for instance, if for some reason you can't get directly to the CEO, it could be a matter of connecting with people around the CEO as well, like internally within that company. Like sometimes people are just generally very hard to get a hold of, but I also equally feel that you would be surprised of who you can get in front of when you're bold enough with your strategy.

Simon Dell (17:22)

Mm.

Yeah.

So let's say cupcakes aside, what are you saying to people that is, what do you say that you feel resonates with people if you're, if we do wanna just reach out and say, because I get them all the time, I get the, hey, can we jump on a call and stuff like this? And depending on the mood, mean, I either just delete them or tell them to.

Kateesha Hembrow (17:51)

Yeah, yeah, no way.

Simon Dell (17:59)

way yes ⁓ but what do you find resonates in those conversations that you have with people on LinkedIn?

Kateesha Hembrow (18:07)

For me, it's a couple of things. So it's a combination of like, I always preach to my clients, give yourself the warmest reason to reach out. And so what I mean by that is leverage what you can to get in front of them. Maybe they viewed your profile, maybe they engaged in your content, maybe you saw they posted a really good piece of content, but use something that will connect with them and also be human. Even though they're the CEO of BHP, they're still human.

Simon Dell (18:14)

Okay.

Kateesha Hembrow (18:34)

And where people go wrong is one, they typically just do like the hard pitch as soon as they like connect and it's just like straight into the pitch. But it's also, it's just very robotic and you can tell it's just being copied and pasted. And it's about just being human and connecting with people. And people would also be surprised at like even things like how using banter is like an amazing way to like, like.

I accidentally called somebody the wrong name in a message last week. Sometimes my LinkedIn glitches out and the inbox shuffles up and I called him the name of the person above. Anyway, I died. I was like, my goodness, this is terrible. Look, I've just called this poor man the wrong name. But I just took it in my stride and I obviously apologized. And then I made a bit of a joke about it and we've been like, bettering back and forth about it. ⁓

And then halfway through the conversation, he was like, hey, like actually I need to help with personal branding. And like a whole conversation came out of that. And it was such a beautiful reminder of, I feel we also really overthink and overcomplicate outreach to people. And it's like, just think about if they were standing there physically in front of you, like what would you say?

Simon Dell (19:49)

Yeah, my outreach, my sort of opening, you know. ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (19:55)

Actually,

how I reached out to you. Do you remember how what I said to you? I scrolled. I actually this is a really good example. I scrolled down your profile because I was looking for some more podcasts to be interviewed on and I scrolled right down the bottom and we had a mutual mate Dave. Dave's a really good mate of mine and that was one of the first things I mentioned in the message. I said something like, hey, so Dave, ⁓ you know, Dave, I'm looking for podcasts to be interviewed on. Would you have anything?

Simon Dell (20:00)

Enjoy.

⁓ David Neal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (20:26)

Yeah, David Newell,

yeah, yeah, yeah. But see what I did there? I made a connection and obviously it was 200 and this is the second time you're interviewing me.

Simon Dell (20:35)

That's an interesting look

that that's an interesting tactic because I mean with 10 10 11,000 people in my I don't know you know, I probably know point 1 % of the actual people who are connected to me, but Yeah, Neil, I think that that works when I Think that works when you see somebody who's made a comment on their profile The you know because then you know, there's actual there's an actual connection there

Kateesha Hembrow (21:04)

But I mean, for somebody to leave, like Dave left you a pretty lovely testimony. I was like, that's not going to be some random who doesn't.

Simon Dell (21:09)

Sorry, yes, that's where you saw it. Yes, of course. No, no, no, no, are.

Yeah, you're 100 % right. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, look, I mean, and I've done that in the past and reached out to people. I've had people call me the wrong name. ⁓ I'm, normally I look at that because if it's...

Kateesha Hembrow (21:14)

Yes.

Simon Dell (21:29)

If it's a formula response or it's an opening message, I'm like, well, that's kind of unforgivable, right? You should have got that one better. If it's a response to a continued conversation, they've just got my name wrong. can, I can completely understand that. There was one guy who then when I told him he'd given me, he, he, he called me the wrong name. ⁓ and, you say that banter thing, he, he would turn around and carried on calling me the wrong name. Just, ⁓ yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (21:31)

Mm.

yeah, this guy gave me new name as well. I'm

Rachel now. ⁓

Simon Dell (22:00)

You're right.

think it's that banter. think you mentioned really early on about a lot of people are scared. And I think a lot of people are scared. Look, we're all humans. We're all scared of rejection. It's a question of how do you openly start a conversation with someone in real life versus...

Kateesha Hembrow (22:12)

course.

Simon Dell (22:22)

how do you openly start a conversation with LinkedIn? And a lot of people are scared of both. At networking events, people sort of sit in a corner with their drink, hoping nobody will talk to them. It's hard. Yeah, look, you and I both have enough personality to be able to, mean, have those opening conversations.

Kateesha Hembrow (22:32)

You

Look at that.

Simon Dell (22:45)

⁓ you know, we're, we're both sort of mentally built in a certain way that we're not shy about opening a, you know, opening a conversation. ⁓ but a lot of people are scared of that, aren't they? How do you, how do you coach them to sort of get over that?

Kateesha Hembrow (22:53)

Yeah, exactly.

absolutely, and this is...

It's funny, this is a big theme ⁓ at the moment, not even just with my clients, but just with conversations I'm having with people outside around, I guess you could call it maybe that imposter syndrome feeling, right? And just like really lacking confidence. And, you know, often I have people say to me like, you you've been really brave and like courageous. And it's like, I'm still terrified to do these things, but I just show up. And often I'm actually running a master class, funny enough, tomorrow around brave branding, but.

Simon Dell (23:23)

Hmm.

Kateesha Hembrow (23:30)

People try and escape this feeling of imposter syndrome. And I actually kind of think in a way that's a very entitled mentality because to me, if you're trying to get away from imposter syndrome, it's like the reason you have it is because you're just about to do something new that you haven't done before. So you're lacking confidence because you don't have the reps. So how can you expect to feel confident? Like to me, it's actually very logical. It's like, how can you actually expect to feel confident to

Simon Dell (23:48)

Yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (24:00)

post content to go to the networking event to speak on stage when you haven't got the evidence. And for me, I guess like where I get my confidence to show up and do all those things has been has come from the back of doing the reps for years, going to the events, you know, years ago and feeling sick about meeting new people. It's posting the content and feeling uncomfortable and doing it anyway. And it's and it's a it's a choice. It's a

Simon Dell (24:06)

Hmm.

Mm.

Kateesha Hembrow (24:28)

Five second choice of bravery and courage that you have to make.

Simon Dell (24:31)

It's a quote I've used many, many times in other podcasts and conversations is that, you know, repetition breeds excellence. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe, yeah, actually it probably breeds confidence first before it breeds excellence. ⁓ Because I think for excellence, you've got to have confidence. I don't think you can't skip that, skip that step. You have to be completely confident about what you're doing. So.

Kateesha Hembrow (24:40)

And it brings confidence as well. Like, that's what confidence is.

I would say so.

Absolutely.

Simon Dell (25:01)

yeah, look, I, I a hundred percent agree with you. I think it's, ⁓ it's just doing the same thing day in, day out, getting better at it. And, and each time you post and each time you engage or each time you add somebody, you improve what you're doing by 1%. You know, and then, and over time it's a massive difference, isn't it?

Kateesha Hembrow (25:20)

absolutely. Do you know what I tell my-

I always tell my clients, particularly if they're fresh on LinkedIn, your content is gonna suck. It's gonna suck. And it's gonna suck a little more, and then you'll get better, and it's gonna suck a little less, and then you'll get good, and then you'll get great. And it's a process, and I even feel laughing about this the other week. And I said to him, I said, you guys need to embrace the suck. because it's, nobody escapes it. The cringe, like.

know, the cringey feelings and moments like that is the stepping stone to success.

Simon Dell (25:54)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, let's talk about some exact sort of tactical stuff. So number one, you've got to get your profile up to date. Photos, anyone that needs a good example, go and look at Katisha's site. It's so, I think you are so well branded as you. And for, know, from the time I've met you in the flesh and we've been on here together.

I think your branding is really well defined, but that branding needs to go through the whole profile, doesn't it?

Kateesha Hembrow (26:35)

absolutely. Yeah. And it also needs to feel authentic as well, because what I would hate is for somebody to get on a call, like a discovery call with me, for instance, and then go, like you're nothing like I thought you were from online. Like to me, like that's that's a bad thing. That's a mismatch. Not that it happens. But yeah, it's important that you're authentic. You're establishing your authority. And it's really clear around the problems you solve and who you help as well.

Simon Dell (27:02)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (27:03)

And

with a lot of, when I work with, I work with a lot of very intelligent people and often I find myself saying to them, know, like dumb it down, dumb it down. Like whether that's their content or some of the language that they use in their about section on their profile, because you just want to make sure that it's really clear to your audience what it is you do. And particularly if you're in like a technical role as well, ⁓ you just need to be really mindful of that.

Simon Dell (27:29)

Yeah, okay. you know, all the, the profile, right, getting the photo, right, the banner, right, all the, all the sections. I'm not going to go through all the sections because the section. Okay.

Kateesha Hembrow (27:40)

I've got some free training on that if anybody

is listening to this and they're feeling nervous about the state of their profile, go onto my LinkedIn profile and in the featured section, there's a guide, there's a training to show you exactly what to put in your profile.

Simon Dell (27:59)

All right, well, and we'll share that afterwards on the notes as well, because I think that'd be useful. But I don't want to go through every section because the sections are there for a reason, get them filled in properly, right? But let's talk about content, because we mentioned that a few times, and I think that's part of the fear, the imposter syndrome fear, is people are like, what do I post? Or...

Kateesha Hembrow (28:03)

show notes. Yeah cool.

No, that's cool.

get them filled out. Yeah.

Simon Dell (28:24)

you know, how do I make comments on other people's posts without seeming cheesy? ⁓ So those first two questions and probably a third question for you, is it okay to be argumentative out there? Because I mean, I know I am a lot.

Kateesha Hembrow (28:45)

can see

you from that argument.

There's nothing wrong with having like you actually need to have an opinion because you don't have an opinion you got to sound like Everybody else and you're blend in with the crowd. So I would say like having an opinion is important, but you also don't want to be part of the French but like that LinkedIn Wayne Carl who is Just you know being annoying and everyone's comments and just being like really argumentative, know what I mean? I don't want to do that, but I do I do highly encourage you to

Simon Dell (28:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (29:20)

share your opinion and be respectful about it as well. Like I've had people disagree with my content and I've actually commented back and just said like, thank you so much for being respectful with how you've gone about it because I appreciate not everybody has obviously the same opinions as mine. Take me back to those first two questions you asked, sorry. It was around, it was in the imposter syndrome, which you're doing a great job,

Simon Dell (29:40)

I've forgotten what they were.

What are we talking about? Yeah, I know, I was

gonna say, well, see, this is why I don't plan anything, because I have great questions and I can never remember the great questions. ⁓ But no, I mean, we're talking about content and like, I guess probably the question then I would ask from there is, everybody wants their content to go viral. Everybody wants the LinkedIn algorithm to see what they're sharing, right?

Kateesha Hembrow (29:52)

It's...riven.

Simon Dell (30:13)

What's the trick there? Are there any tricks or are we just all kind of crossing our fingers and hoping for the best?

Kateesha Hembrow (30:19)

Yeah, look, the LinkedIn algorithm has definitely been doing some weird things over the last 12 to 18 months. My, I guess, like, rule of thumb is I honestly don't stress about the algorithm. Like, it can change to the drop of a hat. I focus on who is an ideal client of mine and creating content that's going to be valuable for them. Something that I have personally noticed, particularly over the last three months, with me quadrupling my content impressions.

is I'm finding my content that's going viral is when people are commenting, like I'm getting a lot of comments and they're jumping on quickly and commenting. I would encourage you, guess, when you're creating content to really have a think about your call to engagement at the bottom of the post. So what question are you gonna ask to get people to comment?

Simon Dell (31:06)

Yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (31:10)

because yeah, the more comments I'm getting on my content, the more viral they go. And virality is not always a great thing as well. I wouldn't tell you to set the intention of trying to go viral. I have clients that start with me with three to 500 followers and they generate a dozen inbound leads within their first month of working with me. And that's just off the back of really good content and not necessarily going viral.

Simon Dell (31:37)

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's probably how, I mean, I think, again, you and I had a conversation last time, and I think I still topped you in the fact that I've got the most viral posts between the two of us. ⁓ Just under a million, because that was it, you shared it in the hope that we'd get it over a million. And I haven't, do you know what, I need to go and check that. We'll check that while we're here. We'll check that too. ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (31:51)

What was it again? How many was it?

that's all right. Chocolate one.

I have to.

Go check it and see. a ticked over.

Simon Dell (32:05)

View analytics, here we go. Yeah, it was something insane, like almost a million people had.

Kateesha Hembrow (32:13)

And this is

the thing, right? It's like sometimes you also just can't pick what is going to go viral. I had one that got seen by almost 200,000 people a couple of years ago. It was a spare of the moment post that I threw up on a Thursday afternoon and it just blew up.

Simon Dell (32:27)

Yeah,

Yeah, mine was a picture of a pizza. You know, it was insane. You know, why that went viral was absolutely confusing as hell to me. But I do find pictures do well. ⁓ There we go.

Kateesha Hembrow (32:44)

Yes, they do.

Simon Dell (32:48)

No, didn't, see, you didn't help me, Cateshia. My leading one was 10 months ago. It was the chocolate bars, chocolate bars in Woolworths.

Kateesha Hembrow (32:57)

I gonna

say I thought it was the chocolate bars when you said the pizza I thought to myself I was like don't know. Okay. Well we know what everybody's favorite now is out of chocolate and pizza. Which I would agree with.

Simon Dell (32:59)

The pizza got 650,000 impressions. Chocolate and pizza, yeah. And then basically,

see with me it was anything where I'm picking on a brand.

that is a loved brand or a well-recognized brand in the Australian market. So, Cadbury's, Woolworth's, Domino's, Cole's, all those kind of things. That's where I've seen viral success. But to your point, that doesn't necessarily turn it into, no, no.

Kateesha Hembrow (33:28)

Mm.

It creates dollars in the bank account. Like that's

the reality of it. I've been very intentional with my content over the last couple of months. And it was funny. I've been doing a lot of storytelling as of recent as well. And I think that's also a really powerful way to gain credibility and trust with your audience. And coincidentally, I had a group coaching call just last week with my guys and I'd posted a piece of content the week prior and it was probably one of my most vulnerable.

in raw posts, if I'm honest myself. And it was one that made me quite uncomfortable to share. But anyway, it went viral and I was just talking through it with my clients ⁓ about how, you know, like it builds trust and whatnot. And a new member that had just come into the academy that morning turned around and he said, yeah, that's how you got me. And he laughed and I said, what do mean? And he said, well, like he hadn't been following me up until that point that.

that post had just come up in his feed and he's like, I just appreciated like how honest you were. And he said, it really resonated with me and I liked it and I connected with you. you know, he said, he said to me, I was talking to another LinkedIn coach literally two nights beforehand and I didn't really vibe with them. And then, yeah, he said, your post came up. He said, we connected, we had a quick chat and he was a client within less than 20 minutes.

Simon Dell (34:59)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, look, I think there's a lot of parallels between what you do on LinkedIn versus what you do in your real life in terms of how you market yourself, how you market your business. you've talked about storytelling, you talked about being genuine and authentic and all those kind of things. I think for me, and I look at the difference between, I look at David Neal, right?

We both followed David Newell. He's done something insane like what, 50, 60,000? 70,000 people on LinkedIn. I suspect the last part of his business he gets from LinkedIn, The thing I find, the difference that I would intrinsically say between him and me is the word discipline, right?

Kateesha Hembrow (35:31)

I think he's closer to 70 now, but yeah, he's got quite a few. Yeah.

He does. ⁓

Hmm. ⁓

Simon Dell (35:51)

Whenever

I see David's posts, he is disciplined in terms of he's within his brand, he's talking about his subject matter, he's consistently, there is a level of consistency, discipline, I mean, he's ex-army, so he would be, you know? But he's staying within his lane and he's talking very consistently about things that are close to...

Kateesha Hembrow (36:01)

He's consistent, he's consistently posting.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (36:20)

what he does in business, right? The challenge I have, and this would be my criticism of myself, right, is that I would just go off on tangents about stuff that interests me. Right, that isn't necessarily within the same frame of what I should be doing from a fractional CMO perspective. ⁓ How would you...

Kateesha Hembrow (36:33)

Yeah.

Simon Dell (36:48)

If you were coaching me, you were trying to reign me, no, no, I'm interested to hear what you would say to me because I think I have a problem. Katisha, I have a problem. I'm, you know, that's, but that's, if I was in your group, I'd be standing up going, yeah, last week I talked about chocolate bars and people would go, well, what the fuck's that got to do with being a fractional CMO? And I'd go nothing. It's easy to get distracted, isn't it?

Kateesha Hembrow (36:49)

I was going to say I'm going to have to my coaching hat on here.

Yeah, yeah. So, so what I would say...

It is easy to get distracted. I think my question first of all would be, well, why are you trying to grow your brand? Like that would be my first question is like, what's your intention behind growing your brand? And it's very funny.

Simon Dell (37:28)

So, well, I'll answer that for you. So the purpose

of me growing the brand, me, stroke, CMO, whatever it is, would be to do exactly what you do, is just have people come in to me and say, hey, I need one of your people to come and help my business out. I don't want them asking me for help, right? Because it's not that I don't want to, but I just, that's not the structure of the business. Not even in a group setting, right? I want them to come and say,

Kateesha Hembrow (37:48)

Yep, you were.

That's fair. Yep.

Simon Dell (37:58)

I have a problem in my business and I would need someone to come and help me address that problem. So that would be my objective of growing the brand.

Kateesha Hembrow (38:03)

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Yeah, okay, cool, cool. So if you recall, saw you were posting random shit about chocolate or you know, all those, do you want me to sugarcoat it or do you want me to give it to you straight?

Simon Dell (38:23)

Look,

you've never struck me as the sort of person who's going to ⁓ sugarcoat a Cotetia. So, you I don't know. You can be as nasty as you like and I'm good.

Kateesha Hembrow (38:34)

Okay.

If you're a client of mine, I'd tell you to pull your head in. I would say pull your head in. Like any of my clients will laugh and back me on this. This is my coaching style. But I would say to you, well firstly, how's that working out for you? Because there's a good chance if you're posting lots of, yeah, you're probably not getting results from it. And I would tell you...

Simon Dell (38:57)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (39:00)

There's a few things to there, guess. Like one is if you're finding you're maybe throwing out content on the fly, I would say to you, well, why aren't you time blocking? Like why aren't you planning content in advance? Like what are you doing there? The thing is, Simon, people have all the excuses in the world, right? Like all the excuses. Like I don't have time, I have ADHD, I have kids, I'm running a business. Like all the excuses in the world. And to me, I'm like, that's cool. It's just not a priority for you then.

Simon Dell (39:17)

Yeah.

Kateesha Hembrow (39:30)

But then you can't have a bitch about the fact that your business isn't growing and you're not attracting the right clients and you're losing to competitors because it's like, well, you chose not to take your branding seriously. So for me, it's like, you need to work out what are your priorities because growing a personal brand is a commitment. It's not something you can half ask. You can't throw up a piece of content once maybe every couple of weeks. It's not how it works.

My goodness, are there huge benefits to it if you commit to it and you do it well.

Simon Dell (40:03)

Yeah, think that that's, look, that has always been a challenge for me and I'd say that in the fact that I think it's also a challenge for a lot of other people, right? ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (40:15)

I also just think, I think people are lazy,

if I'm gonna be honest. I think people are lazy. Even with AI, see people, people reach out to me and have conversations and go like, how can I automate this and how can I do this? And I sit there and I think sometimes there are things that you actually can't automate and you just need to stop being lazy and prioritize it. But the thing is, is with personal branding, you don't see results overnight.

And so that's when people get the shits and they throw in the towel.

Simon Dell (40:47)

There's a, I think it's the Jerry Seinfeld quote that I'm gonna paraphrase saying there's no point, there's no such thing as an attention span. know, there is either people want to do something or they don't want to do something. You know, either they want to watch the show or they don't want to watch the show. So, ⁓ you know, and it's the same with something like this. Either you want to grow your personal brand and if you do, then you require the discipline and the fortitude and the skills to do that, or you don't do it. ⁓ You know, as, yep.

Kateesha Hembrow (40:57)

They don't.

Absolutely.

Yep. Because it's actually not worth

it. Like I've spoken to people where I've turned them away and said like, you're not going to commit to the process. Like this is going to be a waste of your time and energy and money and mine. Like just don't bother if you're not going to commit, don't bother.

Simon Dell (41:30)

Yeah, absolutely. think that's, you know, yeah, I think the it's the Yoda quote, do or do not, there is no try, you know, that that's what we're all. Yeah. But it's the do or do not for, know, when you're when you're talking to Yoda, but the do or do not is over six months. It's not you're taking one shot at it and going, I've either got it or I haven't got it.

Kateesha Hembrow (41:57)

No, it's, it's

every day putting in effort.

Simon Dell (42:00)

There is a fear

that if I spend the next six months promoting ⁓ my personal brand on LinkedIn, I'm going to get to the end of six months and I'm going to see no benefit. And I think probably the core thing that, the core message if people take nothing else out of the conversation and listening to you today, I think you are testimony, David Neal is testimony to the fact that if you do invest your time,

Kateesha Hembrow (42:28)

Yeah.

Simon Dell (42:29)

and you do have that discipline, you will see results. Is that a fair statement to be making?

Kateesha Hembrow (42:34)

It's

It's funny you say this because I was reflecting on this the other day. I've never had a client that put in the work that didn't get results. Like it's actually impossible. It is, you think about it. Like unless there is something so off with their content, with their messaging, like if you keep showing up regularly online and you're putting out, sometimes it's not even amazing content.

If I'm really honest, sometimes it's just the consistency of people seeing your face. I've not seen a client win. Like not win.

Simon Dell (43:13)

I think that the other quote, we talked about repetition breeds confidence, but I think consistency beats creativity is the comment that I've seen so many times. And I think this is such an important lesson that so many people are starting to understand now.

Kateesha Hembrow (43:22)

Yeah, it does.

Simon Dell (43:34)

Especially what I've seen again, this is I digress slightly, but in the Brisbane marketplace, we've seen a lot of creative agencies, advertising agencies go under in the last six to nine months. Yes, the industry is changing and yes, the economy is in a weird place at the moment. But I think most people have gone, I don't necessarily need all the big creative ideas. I just need to be consistently communicating in an engaging way.

Kateesha Hembrow (44:03)

Yeah.

Simon Dell (44:04)

And

Kateesha Hembrow (44:05)

Yeah.

Simon Dell (44:06)

as you say, sometimes not even in engaging way. Sometimes just in your face.

Kateesha Hembrow (44:09)

⁓ What I think is going to happen,

what I really see is going to happen over the next couple of years is I could see more and more people using like ChatGPC and AI for like their branding. And to me, it's just going to make it even easier for people like myself and my clients to stand out and win more because everyone is going to be so sick of the generic.

stuff written by computers that if you're actually just authentic and you show up online and you really nail your storytelling, you are going to absolutely crush it over the coming years. Absolutely kill it.

Simon Dell (44:46)

We've gone on for way too long. It's almost been 45 minutes and I know I promised that I wouldn't say this ⁓ but I do need to I Do need to everyone that Katisha is single she is looking she is looking for a boyfriend husband And he's on the Gold Coast and I've just about made a go red the same color as a lipstick there ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (44:53)

⁓ You're not!

You kill me.

Usman.

I'm actually...

Oh my goodness. Why does your dude have a snobby do that?

Simon Dell (45:13)

There you go, there's the banter.

There's the banter after you told me, after you've just deconstructed my attempts at social media and told me off. There we go, I get my own back on you. Yeah, sorry. Look, I say this, I would make sure that every single one of our... ⁓

Kateesha Hembrow (45:29)

You got your revenge back. ⁓ so funny.

Simon Dell (45:42)

consultants watches this 45 minutes and what you've said today. I would also stress that anyone that does want to take this seriously, that does need help, is to reach out to Katisha and join your academy. How does that work? What do they do or what do they get as part of that?

Kateesha Hembrow (46:05)

Yeah, so I could go a couple of different programs. It just really depends on the level of support they're looking for. But I have just recently launched a 90 day dare to be known program. So with that, they get access to all my all my training and resources. And then we also run a group coaching call on a Wednesday at 11 a.m. as well for them to jump into. And then I give them live feedback that can be around anything from profile optimization, your content.

right through to your lead gen and sales strategy and processes, because that's really important as well. I want to make sure that if my clients are generating the leads, we've got a beautiful process and communication happening afterwards to actually sign those clients as well.

Simon Dell (46:48)

Yeah, okay, look, everybody get out there, join that. If you wanna take LinkedIn seriously and you wanna build a business ⁓ that uses LinkedIn as a cornerstone of your marketing, ⁓ you definitely need to ⁓ get involved in what Katisha's doing. So look, thank you for being part of this podcast. ⁓ No doubt you and I will have more conversations in the future.

Kateesha Hembrow (47:10)

Thank you.

Simon Dell (47:15)

and maybe in six months time get you back on the podcast to maybe talk about some more. I tell you what might be a good idea is ⁓ the whole sales navigator thing. don't think we've not touched on that and how to use that ⁓ because that is a fantastic tool that I don't think people...

Kateesha Hembrow (47:19)

Good.

Yeah, beautiful.

Simon Dell (47:38)

I think lots of people don't even know it's there. And I think the other people that do know it's there just scratch the surface of what they could be using it for. So ⁓ I think maybe we'll in a couple of months time, we'll do a sort of sales navigator expert ⁓ session and talk about that a bit more. But other than that, thank you, Rick. Thank you hugely for today. And it's been a pleasure as usual.

Kateesha Hembrow (47:42)

I really use it.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having me on.