We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Louise Brogan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Louise below.
Hi Louise , thanks for joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
In 2022, I received an email from Buckingham Palace inviting me to a reception to celebrate small business in the UK. I thought it was a hoax! After a few back and forth emails, and checking in with some of my LinkedIn network who were connected to the emailer (Deputy Head of Events at Buckingham Palace!) I realised it was a genuine invitation.
I bought a new dress, flew to London and nervously headed to the Palace. From my online search efforts, I knew that these events generally had about 400 attendees, and if you were lucky, you might meet one of the Royal family (in this case, the new King Charles).
After passing through the gates and security, leaving my bag and phone in the very gorgeous cloakroom (no bags allowed.. and definitely no phones) I headed upstairs. When I got up to the tables with the name tags, the staff couldn’t find mine. My heart sank, I knew it was too good to be true. Then a member of the household staff asked me to come with them… we ended up in a small State room with a small gold table with about eight name badges on it. At this point, I asked, what on earth is going on… and the lady told me that I had been selected to meet with the King ahead of the rest of the attendees.
What an absolute honour. I was taken into another state room, asked to line up alongside 9 other people, most of whom are UK household names in business and offered a glass of champagne.
The King entered the room, came down the line and spoke to each of us. He was so warm and friendly (and turned out to be the same height as me… another surprise). It was the most amazing experience. Then we were gently pivoted out of the room, through the red velvet ropes, and back into the main room with the other attendees.
I am a small business champion here in the UK, and think this is how I got invited – but I will never know! As a result, I have appeared in Forbes and have the pinned video of me meeting the King at the top of my LInkedIn Company Page – you can check it out at https://www.linkedin.com/company/linkinwithlouise/
A memory to treasure forever! Plus I have the photos and invite framed behind me on the wall in my office….
Louise , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I run a LinkedIn B2B marketing agency based in N.Ireland working with clietns from all over the world. I started my business when I wanted to build a career around having three small children. Previously I worked part time as an IT Project Manager in the health service in the UK.
I started a podcast and YouTube channel both of which are focused on LinkedIn. I originally taught small businesses how to use social media, but realised that I could really focus when I niched down into learning all about one platform. I chose LinkedIn because I like the network, it fits with my IT background and I don’t want to keep up with all the moving parts of IG and TikTok!
Our clients love that we are so focused on LinkedIn and blogging – it means our strategic thinking is always right up to date with how to leverage the platform and most of our clients only need to use LinkedIn in order to win their own business. We also write long form content for their websites which fits nicely with LinkedIn articles and newsletters.
I am most proud of building my team – I have several part-time contractors who also want to be able to earn a good income while working around family members. We support international charities aimed at. helping women and girls – we are delighted to be in the position to sponsor a woman through Women For Women International, and can see the impact this is making on her family and local community.
I love supporting our clients – they are generally small to medium sized B2B companies who do not have an internal marketing team, but want to be able to market effectively on LinkedIn.
As the CEO, I also enjoy speaking about how to use LinkedIn for Business and have been invited to speak about LinkedIn in London, Dublin and Los Angeles. I look forward to more speaking opportunities in the future, now that in-person events are making a comeback.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When I was travelling around the world in my 20s, I had a bit of a stressful adventure which I think has helped me with building my resilience muscle and ability to deal with any issues!
I was stuck in Singapore airport – my partner was in Australia and we were supposed to be meeting in New Zealand. This is ion the age before digital tickets. My partner had my round the world flight tickets (I had flown back to the UK for a family event) and we had planned to meet in NZ.
However… when I landed in Singapore on my way to Auckland, the airline staff put out a tannoy call for me. Becuase I didn’t have my onward flight in my possession, they were not able to let me board a plane to New Zealand!
We tried to buy and onwards ticket from New Zealand to Fiji (as long as you have a ticket to show you were leaving the country, you were allowed to enter the country… i am sure the rules are changed now). As a backpacker, I had ONE credit card to buy my ticket with. Turns out it had expired teh week before. I had about $20 in my wallet and no way to buy a ticket.
The lovely personnel from my airline, RAN with me through the airport to an ATM to get money out of my bank account to buy a ticket. I had literally only the right amount of money in my account. Back then, all our travelling money was in Travellers Cheques and guess who had them…. my partner who was in Australia!
We ran back to the desk, bought the ticket to Fiji, ran to the departure gate and I was never so happy to get onto a plane.
Lessons learned – always check your credit card has plenty of months left on it
Always keep your own flight tickets on your own person! And don’t worry because if it all went wrong, it all ends up alright in the end.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
In the last few years, I have found that new inquiries are coming more and more from my YouTube channel.
I advise all my clients to consider creating video – whether they use it for LinkedIn or start their own video channel, nothing resonates more with someone than seeing and hearing you speak – if you can’t do it in person, then YouTube is the next best thing!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.louisebrogan.com
- Instagram: @louisebrogan_
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/louisebrogan
- Twitter: @louisebrogan_
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/linkedinwithlouise
Image Credits
Tara Torrens Photography