Chris Donnelly’s personal brand is one of the main drivers of growth behind 2 multi-million-dollar businesses.
This is the system behind it.
Most founders post content but few know how to convert that content into business. The reason is usually the same: they're treating content as a single channel expected to do everything - get attention, build trust, and convert. Those are three different jobs. That's why you need an ecosystem: a system where each layer has a purpose and feeds into the next.
Chris built all three layers. That's how one personal brand is currently running two multi-million-dollar businesses at once.
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Combined followers across LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube
Newsletter subscribers (Step By Step)
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Chris Donnelly is one of the most followed founders on LinkedIn, and one of the clearest examples of what a personal brand can actually do for a business - at 1.2M followers, he's one of the platform's top creators globally.
Chris and I go back to 2020. By complete chance, I was moving flats in London and ended up living with him. That's where we became business partners, while I helped him build his personal brand from scratch.
By 30, he'd sold Verb Brands in an eight-figure exit. At 31, he co-founded Lottie and raised $35M raised 100+ employees before it hit unicorn status as the #1 startup in the UK.
Today, at 35, he's running two businesses at once:
Through every business launch, pivot, and exit, one thing stayed constant and kept driving value: the personal brand. What started as consistent LinkedIn posts in his flat during COVID has evolved into a multi-layered ecosystem that spans platforms, captures leads at every stage, and converts attention into actual revenue.
That's the long-term value of a personal brand. Someone might first follow you for a useful post. Months later, they could become a customer, apply for a role or introduce you to someone you need to meet.
It worked for Chris - so we turned the same system on our clients, and kept seeing results, again and again. By the fourth, fifth, sixth success story, we knew we had something legit. Which meant we needed more than just the two of us. So we turned to LinkedIn, the same platform that had done it for Chris, to find the people to build it with. That's how Tom joined the team.
How it started:
How it’s going:
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If you've read my newsletters, you've probably heard me talk about a personal brand ecosystem.
The most common misconception is that people think personal branding is just posting content. Post consistently, get views, build an audience.
That's one piece of it. Stop there and you're missing the two layers that actually make money and get you in front of the right people.
We think about personal brands as an ecosystem with three layers: