In this episode, I sit down with Flo LaBrado, an executive leadership coach who spent 27 and a half years in telecommunications and technology, 25 of those in leadership, before leaving corporate life to build her own coaching practice.

We talk about the gradual process of getting clear on her own values, strengths and relationship with work, and how that clarity gave her more courage than the fear of starting something new. It was not one galvanising moment. It took around seven to eight months between getting serious about her strategy and opening for business.

Flo explains how she worked out exactly who she wanted to serve, not just a vague audience but people with a specific problem or goal. Through months of unpaid coaching and practising how she talked about her work at networking events, she learned to notice when she felt energised and connected versus when she was just saying what she thought people wanted to hear.

We get into the shift from having your professional identity tied to an organisation to owning it yourself, and why that distinction matters so much when your company's identity can change but your own purpose should not.

Flo shares the fear that comes with self-promotion, particularly for people who feel uncomfortable stepping into their own authority, and how reframing content as being in service to others helped her move past it.

We also discuss why depth of trust matters more than reach. Flo explains why relying on the hundred or so people who deeply trust you creates a stronger business than chasing volume, and why consistency across everything you put out, from your writing to your images, is what makes people feel safe enough to trust you.

Towards the end, Flo shares the exercise she uses with every client to help them get clear on their values: thinking back to a moment when everything in life felt right, and identifying what was actually present in that moment.

If you are thinking about leaving a corporate role, building a coaching or consulting practice, or trying to work out who you actually want to serve, this episode will give you a practical way to think it through.

How I help you

I help experts to win clients on LinkedIn without waiting for referrals. I teach people how to leverage social selling to build a predictable pipeline.

I do this through 3 vehicles

No paid ads. No pushy tactics. No posting every day.

Most of my clients launch within 30 days (depending on your bandwidth) and start seeing leads in the first 60.

If you'd like to know more schedule a call here. (https://www.deanseddon.io/winclients)

Who is Dean?

If you're new here, I'm Dean Seddon a global social selling expert, founder of Maverrik, and a 15-year practitioner who has trained over 25,000 salespeople and business owners. If you enjoyed this content, please follow and subscribe to see more.

I went down the self-absorbed rabbit warren of Googling myself this week, and what came back changed how I write.

Past the usual Companies House stuff, there was a snippet: my net worth. So I clicked. And Gemini told me, accurately, that I run Maverrik, roughly what the business turns over, and what my target is for this year. It knew my goal. Not because it hacked anything, but because I'd been posting about it on LinkedIn for months. My own posts had become training data.

That's the thing I don't think enough of us have caught up with. In the old world, I posted on LinkedIn and it stayed on LinkedIn. That's over. Everything I write is being hoovered up and spat back out in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, to people who are checking me out before they'll ever get on a call with me. And they are checking. Buyers have never been more sceptical. Reviews can be faked, engagement can be faked, entire people can be faked. Before anyone invests with you, they want reassurance you're not the latest in a long line of chancers.

So I asked myself a blunt question: what evidence am I actually leaving? I can't post "I'm really good at what I do" and hope the machines repeat it. I have to weave in the proof: the 25 years, the 500 people trained one-to-one, the 25,000 in sales teams, the 150,000 who've been through some form of training with me over 14 years of social selling.

In this episode I talk about how I've changed what I publish, and why I've stopped leaning on AI to write the things I want to last. I share the "public journal" approach I use when a client won't let me name them, why PR and blogs are about to matter far more than tips posts, and the simplest place to start if you haven't got a blog at all.

It's the easiest thing in the world to skip. That's exactly why it's worth doing.

Who is Dean?

If you're new here, I'm Dean Seddon, a global social selling expert, founder of Maverrik, and a 15-year practitioner who has trained over 25,000 salespeople and business owners. If you enjoyed this content, please follow and subscribe to see more.

In this episode, I share seven toxic habits that stopped my business growing, slowed my progress, cost me money and made running the business harder than it needed to be.

These are not habits I have observed from a distance. I have done every one of them.

I talk about how comparing myself with competitors damaged my confidence and pushed me towards changing things for the wrong reasons. I was comparing the messy reality of my business with the polished version of theirs that I could see online, without knowing what was really happening behind the scenes.

I also explain why chasing trends and looking for secret tactics is a trap. Trends change, algorithms change and technology changes, but people do not. The more deeply I understood my customers, the less I needed to rely on the latest tactic. That lesson has shaped how I think about business growth and social selling.

Another habit was searching for the answer instead of making a decision. I spent too long looking for certainty when what I really needed to do was assess the options, make the best choice I could and move forward.

I also share how half-hearted commitment delayed one of my biggest ideas for years. I wanted the outcome, but I had not committed to the work required to create it. I explain why real progress often means going beyond the point where it feels comfortable and giving an idea the time, attention and energy it needs.

I cover the danger of waiting until a situation hurts before taking action, confusing busyness with productivity and spending time on work that feels good but has little impact. I also talk about the cost of repeatedly fixing immediate problems instead of dealing with their root cause.

The biggest lesson is that growth does not come from reacting to whatever appears in front of you. It comes from making decisions, committing to the right work and building systems that move the business forward.

If you are relying on referrals, struggling to create consistent growth or trying to make social selling work, this episode will help you recognise the habits that may be holding you back.

I help experts to win clients on LinkedIn without waiting for referrals. I teach people how to leverage social selling to build a predictable pipeline.

I do this through 3 vehicles

No paid ads. No pushy tactics. No posting every day.

Most of my clients launch within 30 days (depending on your bandwidth) and start seeing leads in the first 60.

If you'd like to know more schedule a call here.

If you're new here, I'm Dean Seddon a global social selling expert, founder of Maverrik, and a 15-year practitioner who has trained over 25,000 salespeople and business owners. If you enjoyed this content, please follow and subscribe to see more.

In 2018, I stopped trying to sell everything and focused on one clear LinkedIn offer. Within four months, the business was generating £30,000–£40,000 a month, and that decision helped me make my first million.

In this episode, I explain why too many offers create confusion for you and your buyers, how focus improves your marketing, and why predictable revenue should come before diversification. You will also learn how to choose the right offer, position it for LinkedIn, and avoid using cheaper products or new services to disguise a messaging problem.

Who is Dean Seddon?

Dean Seddon is a global social selling expert with 15 years’ experience helping sales teams, consultants and business owners generate revenue through LinkedIn and social selling. Through Maverrik, he has trained more than 25,000 salespeople and business owners and helped clients generate over $100m in revenue. 

If you get most of your business from referrals, this episode is for you. Being referral dependent feels comfortable, but it means you're relying on someone else's trust to bring you clients, and you don't control how or when that happens. In this episode I explain why that's a risky place to be and what to build instead.

I walk through the three-circle ecosystem I use with my clients:

I share why these numbers matter and how getting them right gives you predictable leads instead of feast and famine.

I also talk about my own approach to social selling, why I believe in always building trust ahead of where you want to be, and how I learned this the hard way when my first business ran out of leads. If you want consistent clients without becoming a full-time salesperson, this is the practical way to think about it.

Walk into a Rolex shop and try to buy the watch everyone wants. You can't. There's a waitlist. That scarcity is exactly why they can charge what they charge and choose their terms. Your business can work the same way.

In this episode, I take apart the most logical trap I see expert-led businesses fall into: "I only need one or two clients, so why do all this marketing?" Whether you're a consultant, a professional services firm, or a solo expert, my answer is the same. Your content, LinkedIn, and email list were never meant to land the next client. They're there to build a waitlist. More demand than you can supply. That's what protects your pricing, weathers any downturn, and puts you in control of who you work with and what you charge.

I'll explain why a single client is a fragile foundation, how excess demand lets you walk away from bad-fit work without flinching, why even 0.1% of your niche would overwhelm you, and what the "infrastructure" behind a waitlist actually is. It's simpler and far less icky than funnels and chasing virality.

If lead generation feels like banging your head against a wall, this is the shift that turns you into the Rolex of your niche: the one people wait for.

Take the quiz: https://www.5pathstogettingclients.co.uk/quiz

Episode highlights: build a single $5K offer, pre-sell it through your profile and content, and use a simple pipeline (Leads → Appointments → Proposals → Deals).

Plus five proven lead channels—demand-creation content, email/newsletter, relationship-led selling, hyper-targeted outreach, and live webinars—and how to pick one to master.

People have been telling me the same thing. Summer's coming, projects are coming to an end, new ones aren't starting until September, and they've got a gap to fill.

In this episode, I'm sharing five simple ways to drum up business right now without cold calling, paid ads or spending hours and hours on marketing.

These are practical strategies you can put into action straight away using your computer, the internet and your social channels.

If you've got a quiet patch coming, or it's already here, this episode will show you some of the quickest levers you can pull to create more conversations, more opportunities and more business.

In this episode, discover why repeating a simple, emotionally resonant message is essential to getting noticed and winning clients. Learn how the mere exposure effect, low cognitive load, and owning a memorable slogan—like successful political campaigns and famous brands—help build familiarity and trust so prospects are more likely to choose you.

Use consistent repetition, reduce complexity, and decide now what key idea you want to be known for to create a powerful, repeatable brand message.

What if the key to everything you want in your business (higher prices, better clients, a constant waitlist, and effortless lead generation) is actually much simpler than you think?

In this episode, I break down the exact "Category of One" architecture that takes you out of the crowded, price-competing marketplace and positions you as a world class specialist. If you have been feeling the frustration of shouting into the social media void or trying to split yourself between three different business ideas, this is your exit ramp from that permanent state of limbo.

By the end of this episode, you will discover:

The Slipstream Effect: How to align your marketing, sales, and delivery so they fuel each other automatically, making your business light to run but highly profitable.

The 5-Pillar Architecture: The precise way to lock in one urgent problem, one ideal audience, one proprietary methodology, one clear offer, and one high conviction message.

The Certainty Path: Why clients do not just buy outcomes, they buy the certainty of a visible path. Learn how to build your own IP so you never compete on price again.

The "Limbo" Cure: How to overcome the fear of closing doors so you can create the compounding momentum that funds your biggest future goals.

Stop playing a broad, exhausting game that yields zero impact. Tune in to learn how to dial in your focus, build massive trust before clients ever jump on a call, and build a business that works for you.