Her Personal Brand Made Her a Sports Illustrated Model, with Gigi Robinson

She became a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and a Penguin Random House author, and neither of those things came from a talent agent, a manager, or a plan. They came from a LinkedIn post and a cold DM.
Gigi Robinson has been building her personal brand since she was 12 years old with a Squarespace portfolio and a competitive swimming injury. Now she's a speaker, a creator, a published author, and the founder of Hosts of Influence, and she's done all of it without a manager, without niching down, and without “waiting until she was ready” 😑!!
In this episode, Gigi explains why niching down is destroying your brand, why you ARE the niche, why a talent manager might be costing you more than they're making you, and the exact way she pitches journalists to get featured in Forbes, DigiDay, and AdWeek.
She also gets into why LinkedIn is the most untapped platform right now (if you are here is because you already heard this!!!), how she hit 100 million impressions in 2025 just by responding to trending news, and the LinkedIn banner strategy that makes people decide whether to trust you in under 3 SECONDS.
Oh, and she also just casually tells us how she ended up shooting with the photographer who shoots Vogue covers, the same photographer she used as inspiration when she was a kid.
📌 Get Gigi's children's book A Kid's Book About Chronic Illness on Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books → gigirobinson.com
📌 Want to learn more about Hosts of Influence, Gigi's platform for creators and professionals building real careers? → gigirobinson.com
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11:32 Why having a talent manager is probably not the business move you think it is
14:55 Why niching down is a trap, and what to do instead
17:44 You don't have a niche. You ARE the niche.
22:09 How she became a Penguin Random House author overnight, without a traditional book deal
27:33 She literally became a Sports Illustrated model from a LinkedIn post
28:20 Why she posted herself in a bikini on LinkedIn and didn't think twice about it
13:11 Less than 2% of LinkedIn's 1.1 billion users post weekly. That's your opening.
16:49 How to get press: the exact stalking strategy she uses to get into Forbes and AdWeek
23:46 The LinkedIn news hack that got her 100 million impressions in 2025
About Gigi Robinson
Gigi Robinson is a speaker, creator, author, and founder of Hosts of Influence, a platform helping creators and professionals build personal brands that actually turn into careers. She's partnered with 100+ global brands, including Adobe, Spotify, Unilever, and LinkedIn, spoken on 100+ stages, and wrote A Kid's Book About Chronic Illness, a bestselling children's book published by Penguin Random House. She's been featured in Forbes, DigiDay, AdWeek, Business Insider, and the New York Post, and hit 100 million impressions on LinkedIn alone in 2025.
Connect with Gigi
👍 Instagram: @itsgigirobinson
🎶 TikTok: @itsgigirobinson
💼 LinkedIn: Gigi Robinson
🌐 Website: gigirobinson.com
Stay connected with me
📧 Contact: courtney@smoothmedia.co
👍 Instagram: @builtinpublicpod
👍 Instagram: @courtlynnjohnson
💼 LinkedIn: Courtney Johnson
🎶 TikTok: @courtney..johnson