New American Dream #1 - Brenda Baran
Oct 09, 2026
Welcome to New American Dream, our weekly series where we learn about 3 tactics and 3 tools from Creators earning over $100,000 annually with under 100,000 followers. First up: Brenda Baran, who earns $120,000 a year from 13,700 LinkedIn followers.
Who Brenda Baran is
Brenda Baran earns $120,000 annually with just 13,700 followers by selling LinkedIn profile makeovers, websites, and branding through her agency, My Digital Makeover.
Until last year she was a marketing manager at a fintech company. She left that job, then started this business almost by accident with one LinkedIn post in September 2025.
Her whole practice runs on a single platform, which is what makes the math work: $8.74 of annual earnings for every follower she has.
Audience breakdown
| Platform | Follower count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 13,733 | Her only platform. Posts 4 to 5 times a week. | |
| Email list | Not disclosed | Built from lead magnets. Never emailed (see Tactic #3). |
Earnings breakdown
| Income stream | Share of income | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Websites and branding | ~60% | $3,500 up to $15,000 to $20,000 for B2B tech clients. |
| LinkedIn profile optimization | ~30% | Base package a bit over $1,850, plus add-ons. |
| Brand ambassadorship | ~10% | One ambassadorship with a startup. |
| LinkedIn coaching | Just launched | A 3-week program, or a single Power Hour. |
Three tactics
The top 3 tactics Brenda uses to earn outsized income per follower.
Tactic #1: Offer free help in public and see who raises their hand
"I wrote a post, completely randomly, offering to help three people with their profiles. And the post blew up overnight. I had 30 messages in my inbox."
Brenda Baran
Brenda was about to launch a content agency for fintech companies. Giving away a little help for free showed her where the demand actually was, and she enjoyed the work so much that she rebranded within a day.
How to use it:
- ✓ Pick a problem you can fix with low effort that others find much more challenging.
- ✓ Tie it to something happening now. Brenda's hook was layoffs, and job seekers with weak profiles.
- ✓ Cap it at three people. Every DM is a demand signal, and how people describe the problem becomes your sales copy.
Tactic #2: Build your profile like a website
"You have the holy trinity, as I like to call it: the banner, the headline, and the profile photo, which act like the hero section of a website."
Brenda Baran
Posts send people to your profile. The profile's job is to turn that visit into a booked call or an email signup.
How to use it:
- ✓ Hero section: in one glance, your banner, headline, and photo should say who you help and point people down the page.
- ✓ Featured: keep it to three items, a consultation link, a work sample, and one email capture, which she calls "something to deplatform people into their own lists."
- ✓ Rotate Featured every few weeks so repeat visitors see something new.
- ✓ If you have Premium, use the slideshow banner: one slide listing every service, then one slide per service, each pointing down the page.
Tactic #3: Use email collection to qualify leads
"People that sign up for your newsletter are warmer leads than even people who reach out to inquire about your services on LinkedIn. They're people who you know have a problem that you can solve, and it's easier to tap into that audience."
Brenda Baran
Brenda has never sent her list a single email. She builds it anyway, because a download of a lead magnet tells her what problem someone has and indicates they are serious about solving it.
How to use it:
- ✓ Write one short guide on one problem your paid work fixes, and gate it behind an email collector in your LinkedIn Featured section. If you write multiple guides for multiple problems, you will know exactly which problem each prospect has.
- ✓ Email prospects yourself, rather than sending a newsletter. Early on, ten real conversations beat grinding for 20 to 30 reactions a post.
If you need a home for the list: beehiiv, the platform this newsletter runs on, is a Creator Access Network partner, and members get 25% off for a full year.
Three tools
The three tools Brenda says she would keep if she lost everything else.
Tool #1: LinkedIn
Her only platform and her whole sales engine. She posts short text with a photo 4 to 5 times a week, comments and starts conversations by hand, and removes AI commenters from her feed so the platform stays fun enough to show up daily.
"I'm on LinkedIn every single day. I try to be there at least for half an hour on a busy day when I have a lot of client work. I start conversations with people, and I act like a human."
Brenda Baran
Tool #2: Canva
She designs in Figma but delivers in Canva, so clients can edit their own banners and templates after the project ends.
"A lot of my clients also ask for editables, so it's much easier for them to use Canva than to give them editable access in Figma."
Brenda Baran
Tool #3: Cursor
Websites are now 60% to 70% of her service revenue, and she vibe codes many of them in Cursor, an AI code editor. An experienced developer reviews the code before anything goes live. An AI coding tool plus a qualified reviewer can get you into higher-priced work without being a developer yourself.
"I am practically vibe coding, and then before I deploy any project, I'll have him proofread my code."
Brenda Baran
Also in her stack: Claude, Figma, Squarespace, and Google Workspace.
Learn more
You can find Brenda Baran and her work here:
- ✓ LinkedIn: Brenda Baran
- ✓ Website: My Digital Makeover
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Join Creator Access NetworkNew American Dream runs every Thursday in the Creator Access Network newsletter, where subscribers get each profile first. Earnings, follower counts, and pricing in this profile are as reported by the Creator at the time of the interview, September 2026.
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