THINK BESPOKE’S APPROACH
Our mission is to help people reach their full potential, and we work best with values-based individuals and organisations who genuinely want to help their community and make the world a better place.
Our customised training and coaching is based on effective communication and relationship building principles. We believe in good manners, treating people with respect and leveraging the individual and organisation’s brand strengths.
Our approach helps you apply all the truths you know and trust to the digital age.
CUSTOMISED LINKEDIN TRAINING
Our online approach with LinkedIn is based on content marketing principles, and while we acknowledge the role of a great website, we believe in the power of words and images to share your story and attract your ideal clients or employers. We believe your story is your unique selling point and show clients how to use LinkedIn as a powerful tool to collaborate and network online. Our approach is best practice and we enjoy working at your pace and showing you how to start online conversations that result in genuine leads and focussed outcomes.
CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
We’ve built and grown a professional community that helps individuals and organisations maximise LinkedIn. We enjoy analysing the market place you compete in and use these insights to help position you and your unique story and business in a way that is relevant, authentic, reflects your brand and adds genuine value to the clients you wish to influence.
If you lead a business or manage the communication or HR function of an organisation, we’d love to get to know you and your competitive landscape and can tailor our LinkedIn training and content management services to your goals to attract, acquire and engage your community.
Sounds helpful? Take the next step and contact us.
LINKEDIN CONSULTANT & GUEST SPEAKER
Karen is one of Australia’s leading independent LinkedIn Consultants, available as a Guest Speaker and regularly booked to share her insights about LinkedIn for Business, Social Media Management, Career Planning and online Business Networking. She has presented at City Council Economic Development forums, co-hosted events for Small Business Festival Victoria (2014, 2015 and 2016), presented her insights at a Global Recruitment network conference, HR forums, trained graduates in the art of networking, run education seminars for business and been interviewed for business networking communities across Melbourne, career podcasts, social media management training webinars, recorded online training for business communities and contributed to many guest blog posts and published in an industry journal.
If you are interested in booking Karen to speak to your business community, please connect with her on LinkedIn or contact hello@thinkbespoke.com.au to discuss your next event.
In the Beginning
In December 2010 Karen Hollenbach’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. Karen is the founder of Think Bespoke and she reflects on this experience as being pivotal in her decision to focus on building her business. It was a brave step by an ex-corporate career professional and mother of two pre-schoolers to see if she could carve out a more flexible career, enabling her to leverage her skills and be present for her mother and children. If you’ve established and grown your own business, you’ll appreciate the personal mountain climbing that comes with this decision. For the first 3 years Karen continued to work part time for a boutique training organisation, as a business trainer and facilitator with leadership teams across Melbourne, as she developed and refined Think Bespoke’s career and business services.
Formally trained with a Bachelor of Business, Marketing, Karen is a Registered Teacher with the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT), a Certified Trainer, Independent LinkedIn Training Consultant and has extensive experience training and coaching high performance teams and facilitating formal business training programs.
From Little Things Big Things Grow
What began as a resume writing service, grew over the next 3 years into LinkedIn Profile writing for job seekers and self discovery workshops for professionals in the mid stage of their career. There is a common saying that people buy from people they know, like and trust. Being somewhat desk bound with the care of her mother and young children, LinkedIn became a critical tool for how Karen leveraged her networks and generated leads and referrals for Think Bespoke.
With a content marketing strategy in place for Think Bespoke, this began to influence Karen’s community and previous colleagues began to reach out to her on LinkedIn, having read her blog posts and engaged with her online and face to face workshop content about LinkedIn and Career Planning. With an international network of connections on LinkedIn, Karen also has a strong track record working in leadership roles in sales and marketing for global brands. This meant that past colleagues, who’d been watching Karen’s business journey from the sidelines, began to refer their friends and family to Think Bespoke’s LinkedIn and career planning services.
Find Your Voice, Tell Your Story
It was the advice of a wise mentor who suggested to Karen her knowledge of LinkedIn for business growth was deep and her approach for B2B business owners was unique. This encouraged Karen to focus her LinkedIn insights and training on the B2B market. As a community builder, Karen also spent time from 2013-2016 attending and speaking at many local business community events.
Curious by nature, and valued as a social media strategist, Karen also spent this time exploring the value of social media channels to help attract, acquire and engage her ideal clients. Think Bespoke’s online footprint now extends far beyond just LinkedIn, with a following of over 5000 readers across our social media community.
Attending business networking events helped Karen learn many of the skills needed to run a small business in the digital age, and also connected her with many talented service providers who she has since formed strong collaborations with.
Many of the business relationships Karen formed during this time endure to this day, and helped Think Bespoke branch out our service offering and provide social media training and coaching, content marketing planning and curation and social media management services to our existing and new clients.
Karen is now recognised as one of Australia’s leading independent LinkedIn consultants and Think Bespoke has been contracted by many Australian B2B organisations to develop LinkedIn strategies and content marketing plans to attract, acquire and engage their business and stakeholder communities.
Be the Change You Wish to See in the World
Karen’s personal mantra is borrowed from Ghandi and is to Be the Change You Wish to See in the World.
As a trained teacher and certified trainer, Karen continues to enjoy facilitating training workshops for LinkedIn, Social Strategy and Emerging Leader Skill Development. In the past 2 years she has been asked to ghost write for many individuals on LinkedIn and co-writes blogs with a number of leaders in their field. Karen takes a ‘teach you how to fish approach’ and is always available to connect her community with her vast network, or suggest a suitable mentor to help develop your leadership and business skills.
Towards the end of 2015, with two growing boys at primary school and a husband with a busy car restoration business, Karen streamlined Think Bespoke’s service offerings with 3 key collaborations, to ensure she could enjoy a more sustainable work schedule. This has kept her focussed on core activities while continuing to offer LinkedIn Training, Career Planning and Business Coaching services to her growing client network across Australia, Singapore, United States and Switzerland.
For more information about Karen’s sister ventures, please visit Ozsourced and Career Grow.