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Sarah Noel Block went three months without landing a new client. So she ran a 30-day business development blitz, tried several strategies and tracked every one. One of them produced 40% of the work she closed. She ran it again to make sure it was not a fluke. It was not.

The strategy is niche communities: the Slack groups, paid memberships, Discord servers, industry forums and invite-only circles where your ideal clients already spend their time. And none of it involves self-promotion.

In this session Sarah walks through the whole system. How to find the right communities (start by asking your network), why you should join three and track them for 30 days, and her "magic DM" that qualifies people before they even accept your connection request. Then how to scale it: Slack keyword alerts so you are first to answer, pitching a talk to community owners, offering a paid resource with a 100% promo code instead of a freebie, and building an owned stage like a podcast or a short "capsule" season before you commit to forever.

She also explains her gateway offer, a paid, named first engagement that replaces the free proposal and brings every decision maker into the room.

Sarah Noel Block is the founder of Tiny Marketing and host of the Tiny Marketing podcast, helping independent consultants with marketing and sales systems.

0:12 Niche communities and the 30-day blitz

3:21 How to find the right communities

5:52 Join three and track them

6:59 Step 1: the directory and the magic DM

10:02 The 15-minute connection call

10:51 Step 2: Slack keyword alerts

12:28 Step 3: pitch a talk to the community owner

13:37 Why a paid resource beats a freebie

14:36 Step 4: invite them to your events

16:18 Step 5: build an owned stage

21:44 Start with a capsule podcast

22:32 Step 6: value first, then a signature resource

25:33 Step 7: analyze and refine

27:33 Finding communities for corporate buyers

30:18 What to track

32:01 The gateway offer

33:51 Are LinkedIn groups worth it?

35:44 Where the best communities actually live

The Power of Connection is hosted by Bobby Umar, 5x TEDx speaker and Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. For weekly insights on personal branding and thought leadership, join his newsletter: https://bobbyumar.substack.com

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William Arruda has worked in personal branding longer than anyone. He read Tom Peters' "The Brand Called You" in July 1997, put the magazine down and decided to start a personal branding company. His three-step process, Know, Show and Grow, has not changed in 25 years. What has changed is everything around it.

In this conversation William walks through how personal branding moved from senior executives to everyone, then from the real world to the digital one, and why AI is the biggest shift of all. Not because it replaces the work, but because the people who use it well will pull ahead.

He shows how AI fits each step. In Know, he uses ChatGPT as a voice-based brand coach and feeds it years of outside feedback to find patterns no human could spot. In Show, he trains it on his best writing so a bio comes back 98% there. In Grow, he turns one article into ten. Along the way: why you should name your methodology so AI credits it to you, why you should ask "how can AI help with this" before every task, and why most people create far more content than they need.

The Q&A covers how to measure a brand by the depth of relationships rather than follower counts, how to carry a past career into a new one, the shift from SEO to GEO, and how to sell personal branding to companies that will not buy it by name. His answer: sell them what they are buying.

William Arruda is the founder and CEO of Reach Personal Branding, a Forbes columnist and the author of "Ditch. Dare. Do!" and "Career Distinction."

0:12 Bobby on first hearing the words "personal brand"

1:09 William Arruda joins

2:43 From Tom Peters to LinkedIn to COVID to AI

7:05 Know, Show and Grow

8:59 AI as your brand coach

13:42 Feed it your best work

16:58 Say it again: repetition and repurposing

19:15 Why the Know phase matters most

21:43 Name your methodology so AI credits it

22:43 Pick one AI tool and build the relationship

27:19 The biggest trend: owning your use of AI

29:59 Measure relationships, not followers

32:30 Changing careers? Take your story with you

33:54 From SEO to GEO

35:51 Share the same idea 7 times

39:09 Sell them what they are buying

41:23 A named AI that knows everything about you

44:26 Client acquisition is relationships

46:36 Where to find William

The Power of Connection is hosted by Bobby Umar, 5x TEDx speaker and Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. For weekly insights on personal branding and thought leadership, join his newsletter: https://bobbyumar.substack.com

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Paid speaking is paid consulting. You are an expert in something, and you should get paid for sharing that expertise. In this session Bobby lays out the system he uses to land paid speaking gigs, and it is simpler than most people expect.

It starts with three things: be clear on your speaker story, build one to three topics with a clear benefit to the organization and to the attendee, and have a plan for pitching. If you pick only one, pick the topic. A buyer has to look at it and say, yes, we need that.

Bobby walks through the triangle behind his own Power of Connection talks (connection with self, with others, with the world), why your target is the people who serve your audience rather than the audience itself, and a visualization exercise for picturing the room you were born to speak to. Then the practical side: the one-minute speaker video, collecting testimonials now, and three talks anyone can give tomorrow at their old high school or college.

On outreach: where speaking gigs actually hide, why your pitch should be short enough that they have to ask for more, and the best email subject line he ever tested, the one that landed him a lot of international gigs.

He is also candid about when to speak for free and when to walk away, including the conference that charged 1,000 attendees $600 each and paid its speakers nothing.

Also in the room: Mitch, who has sold from the stage for 38 years, on recording every talk you give and capturing "the money shot."

0:12 Everyone has expertise worth paying for
2:09 Three talks, and the Power of Connection triangle
3:24 Let a LinkedIn poll pick your topics
4:15 Target the buyer, not the beneficiary
5:16 Visualize your ideal audience
7:31 Your speaking style and your speaker type
9:59 If you pick one thing, pick the topic
10:49 Portfolio, testimonials and the one-minute video
12:27 Three talks you can give tomorrow
13:52 Where to find speaking gigs
16:31 Keep the pitch short
17:52 The subject line that worked
19:58 Pricing international gigs
21:49 When to speak for free
24:38 Mitch: record everything and make the promoter money
26:45 Paid speaking is paid consulting, and when to say no

The Power of Connection is hosted by Bobby Umar, 5x TEDx speaker and Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. For weekly insights on personal branding and thought leadership, join his newsletter: https://bobbyumar.substack.com