Let’s talk about Adrian Portelli, a self-made Australian billionaire, and the one thing he did to trigger a huge change in his impact and success.

Adrian Portelli is a 35-year-old car enthusiast and online promotions guru from Melbourne. He’s founded a suite of loyalty rewards businesses and has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion.

My kids saw him on the front of The Australian last week and were baffled as to ‘how a guy in cheap shorts and t-shirt could afford all those lambos’. (Their words.)

But we’re not here to talk about that, you can Google Adrian later.

What I want to share with you is the single thing he did to bring about a big change in how hegrewhis business.

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Just about everyone can relate to this.

Adrian had been operating for about two years and was aware people were sceptical and afraid of getting scammed. He knew he needed to build trust.

You wouldn’t know it now, but Adrian says he’s quite shy. Previously, all his socials were set to private mode and he maintained a low profile in his marketing activities.

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Are you nodding your head yet?

Then, for whatever reason, he put his face in a Facebook ad…

and conversions went through the roof!

So, why has this worked?

It’s about recognising the power of individual personal brands.

Putting yourself in the centre your go-to-market strategy helps personalise everything you do and makes you relatable.

• It helps with social proof.
• It helps with engagement.

We like to see people’s faces and look them in the eye – even through a screen.

• It builds trust.

Doing this one thing enabled Adrian to scale his business fast.

There’s no doubt, it will feel uncomfortable at first.

I know this from my own experience, it was excruciating at first, I used to close my eyes every time I published something. With practice, you work your way through that.

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We all know being uncomfortable can produce extraordinary outcomes.

You might be wondering how this would apply to your team or business.

Let’s look at that now.

1. You have a team with really average LinkedIn profiles, poor or unprofessional photos and no clear go-to-market message that compels people to engage with them. Start here. Fix these profiles.
2. Your business has been or is going through a massive upheaval – PwC, Qantas and Woolworths all fall into this category. The question is, how are you going to support your people to re-engage with the market?
   
   Focus on building relationships. This is a low risk, low profile activity that builds trust with your key stakeholders. Start by training your people to do this well and get them out in the market.
3. Your business is growing fast and you now have bigger targets to reach so you need additional pathways and capacity for growth. Do the above two things and get a strategy that will map it out for you.
4. Your people don’t have strong relationships with key stakeholders or you don’t have the partnerships you need to access markets and grow. This is more common than you can imagine because it’s somewhat invisible.
   
   You can start to see it when teams that should be engaged with the business or have great rapport with stakeholders are hiding behind data and stakeholders are disparaging of their work.
   
   Do the above three things, start using your people in all your marketing materials (that means stop using actors and stock photos) and prioritise relationships first and foremost.

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Empowering your people to be your ambassadors is one of the single most effective ways to enable growth, yet it’s so often overlooked.

Giving them the training and skills makes this repeatable, scalable and powerful.

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Putting faces to your brand lets people in and is an essential part of doing business no matter what industry you’re in.

All these strategies are mapped out in my ebook – Thrive When Others Survive – Strategies for Growth in Uncertain Markets. Grab your copy today.

Nina

PS. We’re consolidating our systems at the moment – it’s part of our growth strategy – so this is the last newsletter on the Beehiv platform. I’ll still be publishing – and these growth stories will continue next week – but it might look a little different.

Bear with me, these things take a bit of figuring out… Thank god I’ve got a good team to help!