Innovative Minds with Mel Francis

Daniel was an overworked manufacturing worker who turned his life around 360-degree after his daughter was born. Today he’s a Top Voice on LinkedIn running his own marketing agency called Ghostright. We dive deep into his best practices, mindset, networking strategies, and his experiences while he scales his voice into a multi-channel brand. Dan’s someone who’s been building for nearly half a deca...

This guy is a LinkedIn video master. It’s none other than Alex Sheridan.  I love Alex’s videos as they’re super creative and engaging. They stand out in a noisy feed so I was curious to find out how he does it. He was happy to share with me… How he shoots so much content and keeps it captivating. How he edits his creative videos?  And the nuts and bolts of his content process. Seriously,...

Over the last four to six months, Rob has captivated my attention with his personal brand. Rob has positioned himself as a thought leader within the legal recruitment space. Very targeted niche. Legal content might sound like a snoozefest, but Robert makes you hit that follow button on his profile on LinkedIn. How? Because he knows how to position boring content into engaging content, it’s a skill...

Dorian is a seasoned entrepreneur who previously scaled a company from scratch to a grand team of 130 and to 7 million ARR solely through cold calling. Whilst scaling companies, he saw how difficult it was for salespeople. Salespeople had to use so many solutions to extract data, perform outreach, calls & follow-ups. Doing so was costing sales teams time, and therefore money. That’s how ZELIQ...

This episode is a special one as I speak to self-proclaimed ‘nobody’ on LinkedIn, Joe McKay. He’s a LinkedIn ghost-writer who creates success for his clients whilst building a copy empire for himself. We dove into… How to craft impactful thought leadership content on Linkedin Joe’s top tip for ideation and creation  The secret sauce for attention-grabbing hooks If you want to get into the Lin...

I got the opportunity to sit down with the maestro of business exits, Mac Lackey. He’s a legend in the business world, successfully exiting six 7-8-fig businesses in his 25-year career (so far). With such an impressive track record, I was all ears for… How entrepreneurs should gear up for a successful exit  The biggest misconceptions surrounding mergers and acquisitions  And how to get t...

I sat down with the super stylish serial entrepreneur, Lisa Teh. She’s a force to be reckoned with in the entrepreneurial world.  With an impressive portfolio, including a cutting-edge marketing agency attuned to Web 3.0 and a unique toothpaste brand, Lisa shows us you can carve whatever path you want.  I loved delving into: How she steers her entrepreneurial journey through the ups and...

This sit down sesh was a refreshing deep dive into who we are behind the business.  I’ve known Alex Kain for some time and we usually talk software. His company Human Pixel is a software development automation company. But, I got super intrigued when he suddenly shared his philosophy and I asked him to tell me more. We riffed on what the world would look like if: We treated strangers as if th...

Melanie Borden is a major Linkedin personal brand. I noticed her and just had to find out how this woman was on fire.  In this episode, she shared her exceptional journey to 140,000 followers. How she started with no intention to be a major influencer, and no monetisation purpose. And that’s the secret of how she’s done so well.  She tells all and her major tip is: when starting a person...

I love getting into it with another marketing agency owner. This time it was Chris Roche, CEO at Catalyst Consulting. We got stuck into: Why the design of your website should be the last thing you focus on  Facebook is not only for B2C, but also B2B Why you should have a retargeting layer on Facebook and YouTube How to work with a small budget How to divide time between organic and paid ads W...

Welcoming Will Wang to the podcast stage… He’s the Founder of Growth Labz and the god of using emails to land Fortune 500 companies. I picked his brain, so you can all benefit from his stellar strategies. What I found in there: The best practices for email subject lines The best practices for writing cold emails The optimal length for an email And, the golden ticket… How to build the best converti...

I sat down with SEO guru Rand Fishkin, co-founder of MOZ and SparkToro. He’s legendary in the marketing and SEO world. Amassing 400,000 Twitter followers and 139,000 on LinkedIn, and growing. Now I had to know: What it took to kickstart MOZ Where his genius ideas come from And how he navigates the tricky waters of bringing an idea to market We discuss his current business, SparkToro which was buil...

In a special edition of our podcast, I was interviewed by Dreamdata's Laura Erdem. We discussed the power of ChatGPT in marketing and I shared my secrets on how to use ChatGPT for LinkedIn. You can find my ChatGPT prompt sheet here: https://bit.ly/chatgpt-prompt-sheet I hope you get huge value, and can use some of these secrets to build your brand on LinkedIn. Remember to: Follow Laura on LinkedIn...

I caught up with Mark Stouse who is a GOD at using Linkedin polls. His polls attract A LOT of attention. His insights caught my attention. In this podcast we dive into Mark's Linkedin journey and how brand can make or break SaaS startups. The Ex-CMO of Honeywell's Aerospace arm is now the CEO of SaaS platform Proof Analytics. A marketing analytics company helping B2B companies to forecast, prove,...

LinkedIn has changed. The algorithm has gotten a lot tougher. That's why I sat down with the God of LinkedIn Algorithm Richard Van Der Blom to find out "How to Drive Growth on LinkedIn in 2023". In this live event, we both share our content strategies, commenting strategies and thought leadership frameworks which will see you win on LinkedIn in 2023. This episode is jam packed with LinkedIn gold....

There are only 5 entrepreneurs in Australia who have hit the type of success Tony Nash, founder of Booktopia has.  I mean the guy bootstrapped his company to a $100 million ARR! He is one of the most astute business entrepreneurs I have spoken to and I’m proud to share with you his story and his strategy on how he built a 300M ARR business (yes he is up to 300M ARR now) out of nothing. ...

Dina Calakovic is a LinkedIn power writer. She's a master at authority marketing and has quickly grown her following to 64,000 followers In this episode we get into: How she got into LinkedIn? How to write a great LinkedIn profile from top to bottom?  Her content writing process? What she thinks of ChatGPT as a writer? The goddess of LinkedIn Profiles will have you rethinking your LinkedIn pr...

Jasmin (Jay) Alić is one of the fastest growing LinkedIn Influencers. A teacher, a rapper and a Fortune 500 Copywriter who failed 3 times on LinkedIn, before gaining 70,000 followers in 18 months. His concise copy and beautiful carousels caught my eye and got me interested to find out: How he does what he does? How he got into LinkedIn? What's his secret to such rapid growth? What's his content pr...

My guest Liam Darmody is a LinkedIn Influencer with 33,000 followers. A proud father, hot sauce aficionado who uses humour to great effect in LinkedIn. His authenticity really comes through and here is what we get into 👇🏼 How he got into LinkedIn? What's his content process? How to add humour when creating content. How Liam uses personal branding as a employee? Liam has grown 33,000 followers bi...

Want your content to convert?  Want people to orbit around your content?  Then this episode is for you.  Richard Moore is a Linkedin conversion expert (for consultants and coaches)! Here is what we get into:  How do you write content that gets your customers to orbit around you? How to convert profile views into $? [the secret recipe]  What's Richards secret content strate...

Want to know how to go from Zero to 37,000 followers? My guest Rosie Chong has gone from 0 to 37,000 followers in 18 months. How does she do it? What's her strategy? What's her secret sauce? Is a good selfie stick all it takes? Most importantly what's her content process? I'll be digging to find out ALL her secrets. Incase you haven't come across Rosie Chong,, she is a Social Media Strategist duri...

Want to know the secret behind creating content that goes viral, again and again and again? My guest Tasleem Ahmad Fateh 👽 receives 5000 likes, 700 comments, 60 re-shares on average daily on linkedin. How does he do it? What's his story? What's his why? What's his content process? I'll be diving into it all. Incase you don't know Tasleem Ahmad Fateh 👽 is an Australian refugee who has gone from d...

This episode is a bit meta: a podcast about podcasts! I caught up with Tom Hunt, founder of Fame. Tom has essentially perfected the art of podcasting - and his winning format powers successful podcasts in almost every vertical. If you think the podcast game is saturated - think again! Tom's view is that if you don't have a podcast as part of your marketing, you don't have a marketing plan. He shar...

Marketing Ad spend going nowhere? Maybe it's time to consider partnership marketing. If that sounds nebulous and/or complicated - fear not: My guests this week on Innovative Minds have not only solved the puzzle, they've built a live marketplace where you can start partnership marketing today. The solution they've built empowers businesses from any vertical to find the right partners - easily . Ja...

I know this might sound like an overstatement - but it's true: This week I caught up with someone who’s completely reinvented the selling process. Anil Menghani won LinkedIn’s first “Modern Sales Award”. Even better: His team is crushing it using these techniques! As Anil says: "The award recognises salespeople who are “LinkedIn savvy, who are really up there on their game of online engagement” Ta...