Jochen & Compliance
Jochen Vankerckhoven is a former in-house and compliance counsel based in Belgium and the founder of Compliance Explained.
Jochen had left his job a few months before joining the program. He wanted to start his own entrepreneurial journey and build his own revenue streams doing what he loves: strategising compliance differently.
He saw LinkedIn as a great source to drive leads to the door, and decided to join to grow his online presence on social media.
Jochen Vankerckhoven. Founder of Compliance Explained.
The Challenges
Before joining, Jochen:
Had been posting text posts on LinkedIn for a year without much traction.
Struggled to be consistent on social media
Did not know what to post about, in which channel, and how
Did not know how to purposefully build an audience of potential customers
Felt he was too ‘early’ in the process for social media to even be worth it
Did not know how to get the right message across in front of the right audience
Jochen’s business goals when deciding to join
Figure out a market fit for the productisation of compliance.
Attract law firms interested in partnering with compliance related productisation services (and create a new distribution channel).
Shift the customer base to other personas than law firms buyers (e.g in-house legal / compliance teams).
The Program
Defining the niche and strategy
We defined the niche and content strategy that Jochen was going to focus on as part of the program.
Because of the duality of the original goals consisting of reaching both law firms and companies, we divided the niche into two personas:
A law firm led audience
how can law firms complement their service offering with the use of materials designed to implement legal and compliance advice
An in-house led audience
how to execute compliance in a practical and effective manner using processes, tools, and communication
Getting started
Jochen started off pretty strong with a myth breaking post about compliance.
This post helped him win 35 followers in one day alone and he experienced a 10% growth of his following base within the first 5 days of starting off the program.
This epic beginning gave Jochen the strength and confidence to keep going. He started to post 3-4 times a week on average, following the steps of the coaching program.
The Compliance Iceberg
Designing signature content around compliance
Creating legal content that sticks to an audience goes beyond following the steps academically.
You have to build your own take on what can seemingly look quite a dull and boring discipline.
Jochen understood the importance of building his uniqueness in the messaging to stand out from the competition.
He has, in a matter of weeks, built a number of posts that got really high reach and engagement.
Beyond the simple vanity metrics, he built a strong compliance voice on what he thinks compliance should be VS what the industry labels compliance as.
Results
As a first time and recent solopreneur, Jochen generated his first lead within 3 weeks of joining - which later became his first client.
He subsequently generated multiple leads including from his offline network who thought of him for a particular project based on his content.
By the end of the program (3 months), Jochen had:
Grown his audience by 50%: with people falling into his niche (compliance and in-house professionals)
More clarity and a new direction for his business: his content gave him a new direction and focus on what the market wants. It is currently a service based offering to better deliver compliance in-house. As a result, he dropped the idea of productising compliance and selling to law firms.
Credibility: Jochen has been invited to industry recognised publications to do interviews, articles and public speaking engagements which expanded further his audience and strengthen his credibility by association to these organisations.
Corporate offering: Jochen’s content struck a chord with certain corporates wanting to deliver compliance differently - which has given rise to a pilot in a big organisation.
Jochen’s success story is the primary example that it is never too early to start building an online presence.
Strategic execution and speaking our own truth, does get us the clients we want to work with in a much shorter period of time than we can ever imagine.
Jochen’s full review of the program
“It feels like a steal. As soon as I started executing the lessons learned, I immediately started to get traction with my business”
“I started a bit clueless in my entrepreneurship journey.
After all, a trained lawyer doesn’t have an entrepreneurial mindset.
I knew that in this digital age, online attention is gold.
I just didn’t know how to get it.
Then, Sarah announced the start of a new coaching program. I didn’t hesitate to jump in because Sarah was miles ahead of me in turning herself from a lawyer into a digital entrepreneur.
Getting insight into her mind, methods and template feels like a steal. And it actually is a steal. She figured it out on her own, you get to grab the fruits of it.
As soon as I started executing the lessons learned, I immediately started to get traction with my business. People were reaching out to me. I got my first customers 100% through my Linkedin-activities, which is entirely based on Sarah’s input.
After the coaching program was over, it felt like I hadn’t stolen enough of her wisdom. Three months coaching is far too less.
Luckily, Sarah offered a next step in the program.
I will gladly take it.”
