Amelia Sordell 🔥

Agree? 💜

Advice for young women, if you want to have an amazing life;

1. Make your own money.
2. Build an amazing group of friends.
3. Don't be a b*tch.

Your life gets dramatically better when you're financially independent, have the right people around you... and zero interest in tearing other people down.

💜

My friend has been dating this guy for the last 18 months. After a pretty toxic long term relationship, she took her time before jumping into another one.

To start with, he was amazing.

She runs her own business - he turned up to her events. Would support and comment on her content. He was telling everyone about what she was doing to anyone who would listen.

He was amazing.

And then about 6 months ago, her earnings overtook his.

She was smashing it at work - and all of a sudden, he no longer wanted to hear about it.

He stopped turning up to her events. Stopped supporting the content she was sharing to promote her business - he stopped even talking about her business, and when she'd bring it up, he'd tell her that life wasn't all about her work.

And so she began watering herself down, to keep HIM happy.

We had a long phone conversation the other day. She told me she's now questioning whether she even wants to run the business she has spent the last 7 years building, because she thinks her success upsets him.

If you relate at all to this story, let me tell you this - your partner should see YOUR success as there success.

Not a competitor to it.

My fiancé is my greatest cheerleader. Even when things weren't going so well for him - especially when they weren't.

That is what true partnership looks like. In fact, it's the bare minimum.

The ultimate career hack is marrying the right person.

Because a bad partner will drain you. Exhaust you. Ensure that every inch of your being is dedicated to managing them and your role in THEIR life - no matter the consequence to yours.

A good partner fuels you. Supports you. Loves you. But most importantly, wants you to WIN at life. And will go out of their way to help you make that happen - no matter the consequence to theirs.

So, choose who you want to be with wisely.

It will be the best (or worse) career decision you’ve ever made.

💜

You can beat 99% of people by:

1. Saying thank you.
2. Looking people up before you meet them.
3. Remembering people's name.
4. Listening before you talk.
5. Be willing to suck at something new.
6. Being easy and fun to work with.

Most successful people aren't smarter than you, they just do the basic stuff - better.

💜

If you're under 30 and you have absolutely no responsibilities you should be spending as much time as possible networking.

There is never going to be another time in your life where you can go out, meet strangers, and build a network
of people who can help you in the future.

Because as you get older…
you have kids,
a mortgage,
responsibilities,

bedtimes,
bath times,
school runs.
You can’t just pop out for coffees or drinks after 5pm anymore.

I book dinners now at 5.30pm, specifically so can be in bed by 9pm 😂

And yet, your network IS your net worth. I’ve closed £32,000 deals from DMing strangers on LinkedIn and just asking them for a coffee.

Have a KPI of 10 coffees with strangers every month.
Find 25 people on LinkedIn.
Message them.
Offer value.
Offer to buy coffee.

Out of 25:
10 will reply
5 will say yes
That’s 5 new people in your network every single week.

Do that for 12 months… and you’ve added 260 highly valuable people to your network.

I can promise you now, thats 260 people more than your peers have - because they're too nervous, or too lazy to build relationships with real people in real life.

Give it a go. Worst that will happen is you get ignored. Best, is you add a few people to your friendship circle who change the trajectory of your business, and your life.

Business is a numbers game.
And the more people you are willing to play with, the more likely you are to win.

💜

I put the TED logo on my vision board in 2020. Today, I am delivering my TEDx talk 🥹

There is absolutely NO limit to what you can achieve when you have a clear goal, work hard… and don't be put off when things go wrong, or take a bit longer to achieve.

A lot can happen in 6 years.

Keep chipping!

💜

At 19, I was working 3 jobs.
Had zero self-worth. And I was broke.

At 22, I started my first business.
It went bust after 2 years. I was still broke.

At 30, I started again - with zero investment.
At 35, I passed £3.8M in revenue… off the back of posting content online.

Not because I’m special. Not because I got lucky. (Although, I wish more people were honest about how much that helps!)

Because I realised every single thing holding me back came down to other people’s opinions.

What I should do with my career.
What I should post online.
What I should want.

So I stopped waiting to be liked. Stopped asking for permission. Stopped playing small to make everyone else feel comfortable.

And I chose myself.

I learned how to sell. How to speak. How to build something that didn’t need anyone else’s approval to be successful.

Most women waste their lives waiting:
For a mentor.
For a moment.
For a man...

Let me save you the suspense: no one is coming. No one is picking you. You have to pick yourself!

The woman you dream of becoming, she’s already in you. But you’ve got to choose her - daily.

Because the moment you start choosing to be her…
You already are.

Amelia x

💜

If we haven't met, Hi my name's Amelia! I've built a following of 370k followers, $4million in revenue, and completely changed my life because I finally found the confidence to build my personal brand.

On 8th July, I’m hosting a small, intimate 2 day retreat for women who are ready to stop hiding behind the business and start building a founder brand that actually helps build your business.

But I’ll be honest - this isn’t for everyone.

Building a real founder brand takes honesty, courage, consistency, and the willingness to be seen probably before you feel fully ready.

If that sounds like you, there's only 6 sports, so let's get to work: https://lnkd.in/dRtPaNqB

If you keep a goldfish in a tank, it will grow to about 6 inches.
If you put a goldfish in a pond, it will grow to about 12 inches.
If you put a goldfish in a lake, it can grow to over a foot long.

People aren’t much different.

If you spend your time around people who play small, make excuses, and settle for less than they’re capable of, and eventually you’ll start to believe that’s normal.

If you spend your time around people who take risks, back themselves, and chase big goals, and suddenly things that once felt impossible start to feel achievable.

I make a real point to spend as much time with my friends as possible. Because you rise - or shrink to meet the expectations of the people around you.

So, your circle isn’t just who you spend time with… It’s the decider of how big you’re allowing yourself to grow.

💜

Age 21: Quit my full time job to start my first business.
Age 22: Profitable within 12 months. Get funding to grow my first business.
Age 23: My first business goes bust. Left with £100,000s of stock I couldn't sell.
Age 24: Re-enter the workforce. Get a job after 100 rejections. Start at the bottom.
Age 25: Get 3x promotions within 12 months.
Age 26: Quit my job to give business another go. Find Out I'm pregnant the day after I hand in my noticed.
Age 27: Have my first baby. Rejoin the workforce, in a completely different job function. Start from the bottom.
Age 28: Find out I'm having another baby.
Age 29: I wanted more. Started posting content about it.
Age 30: Hit 24k followers. Quit my job to start Klowt.
Age 31: Grew that business to $500k revenue and a team of 4.
Age 32: Hit $1million in revenue. Team hit 10.
Age 33: Hit $2million revenue. Team hit 17.
Age 34: Burnt out. Realised this isn't what I wanted after all.
Age 35: Unscaled my business to a team of 4.
Now: Never been happier - or more motivated to win. On my terms.

There is so much pressure on people - especially women, to have a neat little story of success.

But in case you needed reminding today, you're dead a lot longer than you're alive. But you're also alive for a lot longer than you think.

You don't have to have it all figured out by 21, 34 or even 67.

You're allowed to pause. Stop. Change your mind. Unlearn. Relearn. Scale and un-scale. Redefine what 'success' looks like to you.

Stop living your life for other people's expectations - and timelines.

Because actually, your life gets 10x better if you don't.

💜

Win or learn. Agree? 💜

Shamelessly promote your business until you're rich.
Tell your friends.
Tell strangers.
Talk about it online.
Talk about it off.
Talk about it to anyone who’ll listen - and probably a few who won’t.

Wear t-shirts with your logo on. Create a background with your logo for Zoom meetings. Carry a bag with your business details on it everywhere.

Shamelessly promote your business until you get every customer, client, supplier - hit every milestone, every target.

And then when you do that - hire people, and pay them to shamelessly promote your business, too.

No one is going to know your business exists unless you tell them about it.

And if you - the founder, are not willing to promote it, who the hell is?

If you’re scared of being cringe or “too much”? That’s fine.
Be cringe. Be too much.

But also be paid.

Promote your f*cking business.

And keep promoting it until you don’t have to explain what it is anymore - because all those customers you got do the promoting for you.

💜

Like it or not how you dress, matters.

💜

People will go on 3 bad dates and conclude that there are “no good men”.
Have 1 friend do something sh*try and decided that they “can’t trust” anyone.
Share 10 pieces of content, not get “enough” engagement and convince themselves they can’t build a brand.

Even babies fall on their ass 1000 times before working out how to walk.

So what makes you think you’re any different?

Life is a numbers game. And the people winning - in their relationships, their careers, their business - their life… They are willing to look stupid long enough to actually get good.

You don’t get to skip that stage.
Nobody does.

So get to work sucking at something new.
Try the thing and look like an idiot.

The higher your tolerance for embarrassment, the more likely you are to succeed.

Just look at videos of Elon Musk dancing on stage for evidence of that…

And PS, your ego is probably slowing you down more than your lack of ability ever will.

💜

Building Brand You at MAD//FEST.

We were SOLD OUT! What an afternoon with so many ambitious women.

Thank you to everyone who squeezed in... (especially the ladies who ended up sitting on the floor 😭)

I started my business exactly 6 years ago, today. 31st July 2020.

We we're in the middle of the global pandemic, the economy was in free fall.

I know it was a painful time for a lot of people, but for me it was the greatest opportunity of all time. There has never been a time in history where where the banks we're allowed to take your home for missing your mortgage, or come after you for a missed credit card payment. A built in safety net for someone who wanted to risk it all on a dream.

On 31st July, I quit my job and started a business.

Within 6 weeks of hard launching Klowt on LinkedIn, I was at £10,000 MRR and hired my first employee - Shout out Danielle Mimoni. She continues to be one of the best hires I ever made. I am still her biggest fan 6 years on.

Within 8 months, we were a team of 5.

18 months after that we hit £1.8mil ARR.

And then in 2024, I nearly lost the business completely.

Bad cashflow management.
Operational mess.
0 upper management other than me - which meant the team didn't get the time or development they needed.

All lessons.

Klowt has had many, many iterations over the last 6 years.

We've been one of the fastest growing agencies in the UK - we've also been in free fall and just about managed to stay afloat.

And that is the reality of business that no one on LinkedIn likes to post.

The good - AND the really, really bad.

But I wouldn't change any of it.

Because the years that nearly broke the business taught me more than the years it looked successful.

6 years later, I've actually learned that the most successful entrepreneurs aren't the ones who avoid failure, they're the ones that refuse to mistake a bad chapter for the end of their story.

So, for anyone going through the really, really bad bit right now - don’t ask whether this whole thing is supposed to feel this hard.

Ask whether you’re willing to become the person capable of dealing with it when it does.

💜

Ps - Pic taken from DAY 1 - in the corner of my bedroom where this whole thing started 🥹

Someone once said to me "i've never met a person who goes to the gym, takes care of themselves... who isn't also wildy successful in their business life"

This triggered me into going to the gym 3-4x a week, religiously since Jan 1st.

I've:
- Dropped 4kgs
- Feel like a little baddie
- And have closed 3x new consulting gigs with tremendous f*cking founders, wanting to use their personal brands to grow their businesses.

If you're feeling sh*t about work...

Go to the gym.

💜

Advice for young people; get really good at sales.
Because everything is sales.

- Interviewing.
- Hiring.
- Marketing.
- Dating.
- Marriage.
- Negotiation.
- Presenting.
- Friendships.
- Parenting.
- Convincing anyone to do anything.

No matter what your job title is, we’re ALL in sales.

So, if you want to be successful in anything, you better get really bloody good at it.

💜

It costs nothing to be a supportive friend x

6 weeks after founding Klowt, I hired my first employee. Danielle Mimoni.

She didn't come for the money - there wasn't any.

She came because she understood what we were building. And to date, she's been one of the best hires I've ever made.

Danielle came with me from a corporate office of 70 people in Central London to sit at my kitchen table 30 miles outside of it and figure out what the f*ck Klowt was going to be.

And she didn’t even BLINK when she made that decision.

Employers talk so much about taking a “risk” when they hire candidates but the reality is every single one of my team at some point over the years, have taken a risk on ME.

On MY dream.
On MY vision.

6 years on - almost to the day, I'm still trying to figure this whole business thing out. But one thing I know for sure - while the business was my idea, it was built by the amazing people who've worked within it.

And for that I couldn’t be more grateful.

💜🙏

I went back to work just 3 months after having my second baby.
Truthfully, I wore that quick return like a badge of honour.
I thought it made me look like I had my sh*t together.

That I was mature.
Smart.
Valuable enough to be able to have a baby, whilst managing a 18 month old and get right back to work.

And crushed it.

But actually, I was crumbling.

I was tired.
Unsure of myself.
My confidence was shot and to be honest, like a lot of mothers can relate to... totally lost my identity.

But I was terrified of being left behind in my career.
So, I went back to work.

As a result, I completely overwhelmed.

I missed out on moments at home.
Missed targets I'd set myself at work.
And felt totally depleted.

I had nothing to give anymore.
But most importantly I had nothing to give myself, anymore.

There is no RIGHT time to go back to work after a major life event, if you can afford to make that decision.

But there definitely is a wrong time.

Be kind to yourself.
Listen to your body.

Outsiders might think you look like Superwoman.
But there aren’t any real life medals for wearing that cape.

Amelia 💜

If we haven't met before, hi - my name's Amelia. I built a $4million revenue business off the back of my personal brand, now I post content about how you can do it, too.

I run a weekly live - The Branded Show - where we go through tools, tactics and strategies small businesses can use to stand out, get more leads and make more money. Save your spot here: ameliasordell.com/live/

My first post got 1 like.
So did my second.
My third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Six.
And seventh.

In fact I think it was around 25 ish posts before anyone other than me cared what I had to say.

But eventually, those 1 likes eventually turned into 10. 10 turned into 100. 100 turned into 1000.

Now I regularly reach 1m+ people with a single post.

Now, I speak to people who’ve been posting content a handful of times for 12 months complain about the algorithm, or being shadow banned. You’re not. You just aren’t good enough to have consistent results. Yet.

Your ego will convince you that building a brand, a business, posting content - whatever it is, is quick. It's not.

It takes time.

So if you're in year 1, 2, or 3 of building your thing and wondering if it's working -
It is.

Because YOU are.

It took me 6 years to build a personal brand of 370k+ followers online. Give yourself some credit!

Now go write down every little win you had this week and give yourself a little pat on the back... then get back to work.

Most people quit right before it starts working.

So, if you’re trying to achieve something extraordinary… don’t be most people.

💜

I met Emmie Faust in 2025. Actually, “met” is probably too strong of a word.

We’d connected on LinkedIn and did the good internet-friend thing of liking and commenting on each other’s content, but never actually interacted 1:1.

Until mid-December last year.

Emmie DM’d me and asked if I was game for collaborating on a project. A few days and approximately 396 mins of WhatsApp voice notes later, we had a plan:

Run a four-week Personal Branding Challenge for the Female Founders Rise community - Emmie’s amazing business.

I ran the Masterclass.
She’d do the facilitating.

We announced the challenge across a combined 4x LinkedIn posts and 3x emails.

By the first week of January, we had 900+ founders signed-up to the launch.

There were no six-month negotiations.
No 48-page partnership agreement.
No endless meetings about roles, responsibilities and “strategic alignment.”

We saw an opportunity.
We knew what each person was good at.
We decided quickly.

Then we got to work.

Emmie and I didn't actually meet until months later, and now we're planning the next collaboration.

Most opportunities don’t die because they were bad ideas. They die because most people spent six months discussing something they could have tested in six days.

Speed doesn’t guarantee being successful in business, but moving slowly guarantees you won't.

So stop trying to make everything perfect.

Make it clear. Make it fair. Then just make it f*cking happen.

💜

In case you needed reminding today, most of the world's most successful people have ADHD, Dyslexia - or got really crappy grades at school.

Stop measuring your kids 'success' on a system that is built to fail them.

💜

We've just started doing outbound sales last month. I've been lucky enough that my personal brand has driven 100% of our leads, inbound up and until that point.

The DMs we've been sending have been respectful. Clear - and to the point. 90% of the replies we get are really positive.

But every now and again, we get someone replying with some snarky, arrogant "I'm better than this" message.

One guy called me a "clown" for even attempting to message him yesterday 😂

And I think we've created a really weird culture around sales where the person trying to grow their business is somehow the embarrassing one. They're not.

The person sending 100 thoughtful messages trying to put food on the table, pay their team and build something is not embarrassing. But the people acting superior because someone dared to try and sell to them, is.

There is a lot of sh*t sales messages on LinkedIn.

Mainly because there is a lot of sh*t sales advice on LinkedIn.

But I don't EVER want ANYONE - especially other women - to be put off selling what their business does because one kn*bhead didn't like how you sold it.

It's really hard to build up the courage to sell yourself - especially if you've exclusively relied on referrals, or are just getting started out.

So if you're currently sending the DMs.
Making the calls.
Following up for the third time.

Asking someone if they want to buy the thing you worked your arse off to build: keep going.

Because building a business requires you to risk looking a little bit stupid sometimes.

And I don't know about you, but I'd rather someone thought I looked stupid for trying - than than be the person mocking people for trying because I am too scared to try myself.

💜

Realistic day in the life of a founder…

👉🏻 Morning chaos
👉🏻 Panic packing 3 mins before the Uber for Business arrives
👉🏻 Fly to Brussels
👉🏻 Creating the slides 2 hours before the keynote 🫠
👉🏻 Speaking at PWC Brussels about Personal Branding
👉🏻 Sending 647 voice notes to the team
👉🏻 Grabbing content for Uber for Business - which automatically syncs your expenses to your bookkeeping software (expenses are the bane of my life - sign up for free today at uber.com/business)

And of course, pretending that my schedule isn’t trying to kill me🤣

What does your “day in the life” typically look like?

AD

I spend 8 hours+ a week creating content for my personal brand. I have been doing so for the last 3 years. So far that content has generated $5mill + for my business.

And we're 100% inbound.

If your business isn't getting enough leads to hit your revenue target, get a timer and set it to 2 hours.

And then create content for your own channels until the timer is up.

Pick one platform.

And write, record yourself, voice-memo. Whatever you find the easiest place to start. Share your opinions. Your expertise. Your stories. Your lived experience. Your personality.

And when the timer is up, stop. And do the same thing again tomorrow.

Repeat this until you start getting leads inbound into your DMs or website. And when you do, ask them which post they saw, and do more of that.

Founders in the comments saying "I've tried this and it didn't work"... you've just highlighted the exact reason why it will never work for you.

You give up before it does.

You've got 2 options as a founder.

Promote your business every day until you're rich. Or keep telling yourself you're too busy - and stay broke.

💜

Can you relate? 💜

Clip taken from Sitting Uncomfortably with James Connelly.

Listen here: https://lnkd.in/eQyzDZuJ

Hack to get more leads.

Host an evergreen webinar.

1. Pick one specific topic that solves a real problem for your audience.
2. Pre-record a 15-45 min session.
3. Make it genuinely high value. Data, dashboards, real examples.
4. Clip it into micro videos.
5. Put some paid spend behind the micro clips to funnel people through to your webinar sign up page.
6. Require email addresses on the sign up page (so you can nurture them once they do).
7. Spend the final 25% of the webinar selling your product/service. Don't skip this. I add a QR code that sends them to a sales calendar link to your slides to make it mega easy to buy.
8. Send them an email immediately after. They're most likely to convert in the 24 hours post webinar.
9. Repeat every quarter. Test topics, test formats, see what converts.
10. Keep pumping paid behind the best performing clips to have a constant stream of new leads.

This works for any professional services business.

I did this in January and generated 900 qualified leads in 24 hours.

Give it a go and see how you get on.

💜

Cheers to your f*ck ups. Besides, if you’re not messing up at least some of the time, you’re probably not trying hard enough… Agree? 😉 💜

Want more leads? Watch this 💜

Employee personal brands are an opportunity NOT a threat. Agree? 💜

My first business was a clothing brand - and when it went bust in 2015, I was left with £100,000s worth of stock I couldn't sell.

After listing huge amounts on eBay and bulk selling on Overstock to try and recuperate some of the losses, a friend approached me to take the rest.

"I'll give you £5 a jacket" she said.

£50 less than the manufacturing cost.

Her friend had a big online clothing store - and was 'willing' to take my stock for basically nothing to sell on their shop.. for a large profit.

I remember feeling so hurt by this. My business was going down. I was broke. And whilst this person could afford to meet the manufacturing costs, they chose to use the situation to get a better deal.

I declined.
They got upset.

"How are you going to sell this stuff on eBay and not take MY deal?"

And that was the lesson.

Real friends don’t ask for mates’ rates. They don’t get offended when you don't give them a discount, because real friends are rooting for you to win.

If you're someone who buys from big corporations, or celebrity brands - take a look at your friends businesses, first.

Before you hand your money to already-millionaires, look at who in your friendship group makes a similar product, you can buy instead.

Support from your friends really doesn't cost anything.

If you say you support, small businesses, start with your friends businesses first.

Amelia

💜

Even Simon Squibb had no followers or likes when he first started. Now he has more than Steven Bartlett.

Just f*cking post it!

When I meet people for the first time, I always introduce myself with my full name. Most people don’t do this because they think it’s a bit weird.

But, if people know your first name AND last name, they can:

Google you.
Remember you.
Refer you.
Recommend you when someone asks, “do you know someone who does that?”

I hope this makes you think about how you're introducing yourself to people differently, because in business your name is NOT just an introduction - it's a search term.

And if your customers can't find you... they'll work with someone else

💜

In my first year of business, I made $550,000 with no website and less than 100 likes a post.

If you’ve been waiting to “grow your audience” before you start selling - stop.

You don’t need millions of followers to make serious money. I've got a friend who has less than 5k followers and makes over a million pounds a year!

What you need to make content that’s actually valuable to the people who buy what you sell.

If you’re a brow artist in a small town and your videos get 1,000 views - that’s amazing.

Because there might only be 1,000 people in your whole area who even book brow appointments - and you just reached every single one of them.

We get obsessed with views and likes, we all compare ourselves to these huge creators with enormous accounts but YOU don't need an enormous account to make an enormous amount of money, you just need to create content that is specifically designed for who you're trying to reach.

So the next time you think, “Only 300 people watched that,” imagine standing in a room with 300 potential customers looking straight at you.

A small, focused audience will always outperform a massive, distracted one.

So stop waiting until you “have more followers.”
Start creating content for the people who actually pay you.

Because trust me when I tell you, 100 people watching your content who will actually buy are worth more than 100,000 who just scroll past.

If we haven't met before, hi - my name's Amelia. I built a $4million revenue business off the back of my personal brand, now I post content about how you can do it, too.

I run a weekly live - The Branded Show - where we go through tools, tactics and strategies small businesses can use to stand out, get more leads and make more money. Save your spot here: ameliasordell.com/live/

You can beat 99% of people by just being prepared. Agree? 💜

The quickest way to ruin your reputation is to be nice to people’s faces, and a b*tch behind their back.

Be a nice person. It will get you everywhere.

Someone once said to me "The secret to success is biting off more than you can chew, and then learning how to chew it."

If you're feeling;
unmotivated
depressed
bored at work
like you lack a purpose.

Say yes to everything.

And start f*cking chewing.

💜

It’s not hard to wake up early when you stop watching “one more episode.”
It's not hard to stay focused when you delete instagram from your phone.
It's not hard to stay on your diet when you refuse to stock your fridge with the things that might derail it.

Willpower is a terrible strategy.

It works… until you’re;
- tired
- stressed
- hormonal
- busy
- bored
- or just "had a DAY” (relate?!)

So stop building a life that requires you to be strong 24/7.
Make the right thing the easiest thing to do.
And make the wrong thing slightly embarrassing to do.

Put your phone in another room.
Leave your gym kit by the door.
Set up a direct debit to automate investing.
Don’t “test yourself” with snacks you know you’ll just inhale.

Because when you’re craving sugar, you’re not going to “use discipline.”
You’re going to use whatever’s closest.
So make the apple closest.

I've met and interviewed some of the most successful people in the world.

They are not more talented than you.
They just make better choices.

Everything you want in life is on the other side of just getting the f*ck on with it.
Agree?

💜

Hi, my name's Amelia and I had to liquidate my first business at 24.

I also sent the wrong email to 15,000 people at 28.

And botched one of the biggest pitches of my career at 30.

2 years ago, I forgot to tell finance to invoice 2 clients for 6 months.
... leaving a £50,000 hole in my revenue.

In the early days of my current business, I didn’t properly invest in operations.
It probably cost me £100,000+ in business process errors.

Over the years, I’ve missed deadlines.
Forgot to call important people back.
Send out work I wasn’t proud of.
Picked up sales too late.
Said the wrong thing.
Befriended the wrong people.
Spent £20,000 a month on an office we didn’t need.

I have f*cked up time and time again.
And I’m not talking small f*ck ups.

I am talking huge, career altering, life changing, maybe-this-is-the-end f*ck ups.

But they’re not the end, are they?

There is not a single thing I have said, done, been or become that I haven’t come back from.

We all run and hide from our failures. There are plenty of people on this platform who would love to portray the picture of perfection. Where every customer is happy and every team member thinks the sun shines out of their butt.

But the reality is we all mess up.

But not every loss IS a failure.
And not every success is a win.
Really and truly you can’t win or lose.

You win or you learn.

So, cheers to your f*ck ups.

Besides, if you’re not messing up at least some of the time, you’re probably not trying hard enough… 😉

💜

📸 - Photo taken from being interviewed by FashionTV at London Fashion Week in one of my designs from my first business, a fashion label. Still a highlight of my career 🥹

Success isn’t about being fearless - it’s about being willing to look like an idiot and doing it anyway.

If you're trying to build a personal brand.
If you're trying to generate leads.
If you're trying to grow a business.
If you're trying to succeed at anything in life...

Embarrassment is the cost of entry.

Pay it.

💜

In 2023 I launched a podcast. And I spent most of that year trying to get it sponsored. Nobody would touch it.

It was hovering at around 1,000 downloads an episode. No one was interested.

“Come back when you’re bigger.”

The craziest part now was that while I was hell-bent on getting long-form sponsorship, the Instagram account where we were posting 3x pod clips per week was getting 1 MILLION organic views a month.

Some months as much as 1.8 MILLION.

This went on for about 2 years. And I eventually pulled the plug, because it was just costing too much to produce.

But the sponsors weren’t wrong about the podcast. I WAS wrong about what we’d built. Nobody was listening to the show - a million+ people a month wanted to watch the clips, though.

Which makes sense. I never watch a full-length episode of Diary of a CEO, or The Joe Rogan Experience - I do binge-watch clips of them though.

And brands are paying attention. TBPN - a super niche tech podcast - was just acquired by OpenAI for $200 million, and they get around 7,000 live viewers each episode. Which seems a nuts figure to pay until you realise 37x more people watch its social clips than the actual show.

I’ve since done the maths. If we’d sold sponsorship against the clips instead, we’d have been doing £5-15k a week sponsoring our podcast clips.

I don’t run a podcast anymore. I’m a professional guest on other people’s - and one appearance, recorded once, becomes weeks of content for my own channels.

Once I get the raw footage, I upload it to @Opus Clip and it auto-generates a transcript. It finds the strongest hooks for my audience, clips them and uploads those into @Opus’ AI Producer tool.

It’s pretty cool actually, you can just prompt AI Producer on what you want - “tight shot, cut the filler words, bold accent words and pull out the numbers”.

It cuts the filler, auto-generates the captions (accenting how I actually speak) and uses b-roll and visuals I’ve uploaded to make the video editing style match my own.

The whole thing takes about 20-25 mins.

Try it yourself here: https://lnkd.in/ewaxidim

If you’re thinking about launching a podcast, or already have one - Distribution isn’t part of the strategy. Distribution IS the strategy.

Create once, distribute a thousand times.

And if you don’t want to create, just go on a podcast someone else created and still distribute a thousand times.

💜

AD

When I first started out - I thought to build a successful business, I needed the apps, the team and the shiny new thing.

What you actually need is friends.

Friends who will support you.
Friends who you can call and rant to.
Friends who understand what you mean when you say you’ve had “a day”.

And to have friendships you have to prioritise them.

See your friends for dinner, find the time for a coffee.
Book it in weeks in advance if you have to, but nurture those relationships.

Because you are the sum of the 5 closest people to you – and investing in those people will always pay the highest ROI.

In your business AND your life.

💜

If we haven’t met, hi hello - my name’s Amelia. I built the UK's leading personal branding agency (as a mum of 2!) + now I teach founders and their teams how to build a personal brand that generates leads and sales (not just “engagement”). Follow me for personal branding tips + the reality of what it's like to build in public 🤓

I’ve built a $4million business off the back of my personal brand - and helped clients turn social media into their most profitable channel.

I host a weekly free live show. You’ll walk away with:
💜 the stuff that makes people trust you fast
💜 Marketing trends, new platform features + viral posts
💜 social-first ways of communicating your expertise.

Join us for the next one: https://lnkd.in/gMqpvwpR

Almost 15 years ago, my A-level politics teacher told me: “I’ve never been more certain that a student is going to fail.”

For years, I told that story as proof that she was wrong. I've always found academic learning hard. School was awful for me.

But the truth is, at the time, she probably wasn’t.

I wasn’t focused.
I wasn’t disciplined.
I wasn’t showing her anything that suggested I would succeed.

She wasn’t wrong about the student standing in front of her.

But she was wrong to assume that was the person I would go on to be. Because since then;
- Made a real name for myself in personal branding.
- Written a #1 best-selling book.
- Spoken on stages around the world.
- Built an audience of hundreds of 400,000 people that I'm very grateful for and has all but guaranteed I can't fail.

And made a career out of the one thing she was certain I couldn’t do:

Apply myself.

The next time someone tells you that you’re not good enough, don’t waste your life trying to prove them wrong.

Someone can be completely right about who you are today and completely wrong about who you are capable of becoming.

💜

This is probably the best business advice I've ever been given.
It was from a client - he has founded and built Europe's largest personalisation business. It came off the back of a particularly stressful week, where I was in 8 meetings a day, no time to eat - or think.

It took about a month before I had a gap in my schedule to even grab lunch with him. He asked me why I was so busy? He runs a £30mil rev business with well over 100 staff and 3 kids.

"I'm build a business" I said.

He laughed.

"You can't build a business without having time to wonder".

So, for the last couple of months, I haven't started “work” until after 10 am. Most mornings, I wake up at 5 am. I go to the gym. I think.

I spend time with my kids and my partner before the day properly starts.

Then after 10 am, I take meetings, answer messages, make decisions, and do all the things people traditionally call “work.” I have a no-meetings-before-10 am rule every day, except Monday.

Founders have this weird obsession with being "first in and last out", but sitting at your desk the longest doesn’t mean you’re building the biggest business.

I used to be one of those people. I think most of us have had at least 2 sh*tty jobs, with even sh*ttier bosses who've convinced us that being visible to our clients and our team = we're valuable.

But that is employee thinking. Not founder thinking.

Your job as the founder is not to look busy. Your job is to grow a really f*cking successful business.

And that usually doesn’t happen when you’re buried in Slack, meetings, and other people’s problems from 8 am.

It happens when you have space to think.

"Doing" gets you from A to B, but thinking works out whether B is even the right place to go.

So no, I don’t start “work” until 10 am. Instead, I spend the first few hours of my day "wondering".

Because a founder who spends all day doing has no time left to think about all the wonderful things they could build.

💜

This advice is not for everyone, but if you're ridiculously ambitious and want to be on HUGE podcasts, this is important.

I work clients who have 2,000 followers that say: "I want to be on the Diary of a CEO, High Performance Podcast and Modern Wisdom".

Let me just give you a bit of a reality check.

If you’re a founder building a personal brand, you probably have an interesting story. You probably have a pretty interesting journey, especially from building your business to where you are today.

But no one is going to invite you onto a million+ download podcast if there isn’t a history of you being on other people’s podcasts first.

So before you start aiming for the stars, you need to look at your guest features in three categories:

1. Category three podcasts

These are podcasts with less than 500 downloads an episode. They usually have a super niche audience you want to tap into. They’re not going to give you virality, but they are going to ask you interesting questions about your journey. And you’ll be able to turn that into content for your social media.

2. Category two podcasts

These are podcasts around 10,000 downloads. Mid-weight podcasts. They’re relatively well known but don’t have a global audience yet. They’ve usually got ad hoc sponsorships, they’re talking about a specific topic, and they have audiences that are exactly who you’re trying to speak to. You’re not going to go viral. But you are going to get a strong conversation, a networking opportunity, and content you can share.

3. Category one podcasts

This is the top podcasts in the world. Diary of a CEO. Modern Wisdom. Call Her Daddy. High Performance. Joe Rogan Experience. These are the biggest podcasts in the world. And to reach category one, you have to go through category three and category two.

Press is exactly the same. You are never going to get a feature in The Times if you haven’t already been featured in your local press first.

So when you start building your personal brand, aim for what is achievable.

Get your EA or PR to get you on as many low hanging fruit podcasts as possible - share the clips online to attract more.

The bigger your showreel becomes, the more credibility you build.

And the closer you move to the big podcasts you actually want to be on.

💜

You’re not stuck.

You’re just avoiding the decision you already know you need to make.

You stay in jobs that drain you.
You stay in relationships that don’t challenge you.
You stay as a version of yourself you’ve outgrown.

Not because you like being unhappy.
Because predictability feels safe. Even when it sucks.

But doing nothing is still a choice.

And it’s the one keeping you exactly where you are.

The minute you decide to stop tolerating a life you don’t want, even if you have no idea what comes next, everything starts moving again.

You don’t need certainty.
You need the courage to just f*cking do it.

Because the life you actually want is waiting on the other side of the decision you’ve been avoiding.

💜


If we haven't met before, hi - my name's Amelia. I built a $4million revenue business off the back of my personal brand, now I post content about how you can do it, too.

I run a weekly live - The Branded Show - where we go through tools, tactics and strategies small businesses can use to stand out, get more leads and make more money. Save your spot here: ameliasordell.com/live/