Refresh Your LinkedIn Profile for Consulting in 2026

Hey, it's Curt.

In today's issue:

Keep Building!

Quick Hits

📌 This week: This issue covers the LinkedIn profile sections that matter most for professionals 55+ building a consulting or coaching business. If your profile still reads like a resume, this is the week to fix that.

💡 The insight: When you give a potential client three places to go, most of them go nowhere. Every competing link, option, or action you add to any page, profile, or email reduces the chance they take the one action that actually matters to you.

🎧 Listen: This week's podcast episode covers the profile refresh every consultant needs before their next outreach. 👉 Listen now!

🔨 Still Building

This week I am heading to a social media conference with a legal pad full of questions and no shortage of uncertainty about what is actually working. That is not a complaint. It is where honest builders spend a lot of their time.

A few weeks ago I reached out to subscribers who had expressed interest in beta testing a new tool, and opened it up to last week's readers as well. The response was silence. That is not a reader problem. That is a signal that something about the timing, the message, or the offer itself did not connect, and that means it is time to iterate.

The conference is not a victory lap. It is research. If you are building something and the feedback you are getting is mostly silence, the answer is probably not to push harder. It is to get around other builders and figure out what you are missing.

Still Building
Curt

📰 Featured Story

Your LinkedIn profile is still optimized for a hiring manager. That is the wrong audience if you are building a consulting practice.

Your Headline Is the First Thing — and Most People Get It Wrong

The default for most professionals is a job title or a credential string. That tells a visitor who you were, not who you help.

The headline is LinkedIn's highest-visibility field. It needs to answer one question for the right reader: is this person for me?

Replace the job title format with a value statement built on this structure:

→ Who you help

→ The outcome you create

→ Optional proof (years of experience, credentials, results)

Here is what that change looked like on my own profile. The old headline read "Founder @ Retirepreneur | Still Building." The new one reads "From Corporate CFO to Retirepreneur | Helping professionals 55+ monetize expertise through consulting, coaching, and courses." Same person. Completely different signal.

Your About Section Is a Sales Page — Treat It Like One

Most About sections read like a bio submitted for a conference program. Chronological, credential-heavy, written about someone who stopped building two years ago.

Restructure yours around five elements in this order:

→ Who you help

→ The problem they face

→ Your background as proof

→ What you do now

→ One clear next step

The first two lines are everything. That is all a visitor sees before they click "see more." Write those two lines as if they are the only two lines on the page.

Your Featured Section Is Your Funnel — Most People Leave It Empty

The Featured section sits directly below your About section. Most professionals ignore it or fill it with an old post that happened to get engagement. That is a missed conversion.

Every visitor who makes it past your About section is warm. Give them somewhere to go.

Feature one item to start. Make it your clearest entry point:

→ A lead magnet or free resource

→ A newsletter subscribe link

→ A "start here" page on your website

One focused action outperforms three competing options every time. This is not decoration. It is the handoff from profile visitor to someone in your world.

Your profile is not a history. It is an invitation.

Rewrite your headline today using the structure above, then move to your About section. By the end of the week you have a profile working for clients, not committees.

The full version is on the Retirepreneur blog: LinkedIn Profile Refresh: A Step-by-Step Guide for Professionals 55+

🎯 Next Steps

Your Move

Open your LinkedIn profile today and time block 30 minutes for the headline only. Write three versions using the formula in this week's article, read them out loud, and pick the one that sounds like something you would actually say to a potential client.

Do the same for your About section tomorrow. One focused block, first two lines only. If those two lines do not pull the right reader past "see more," nothing else on the page matters.

The Featured section takes less than 15 minutes once you know what your single entry point is. Three focused blocks across three days and your profile is doing completely different work by the end of the week.

Go Deeper

The Soft Retirement series on the Retirepreneur YouTube channel covers the transition decisions that matter most before you make the leap. Work through the series at your own pace and subscribe so you do not miss what is coming next.

▶ Video 1: Soft Retirement: The Smarter Way to Leave Your Career

▶ Video 2: Your Soft Retirement Is Broken If You Haven't Done This Calculation

▶ Video 3: How to Negotiate Soft Retirement With Your Employer

Yeah. That Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So do Codie Sanchez, Scott Galloway, Colin & Samir, Shaan Puri, and Jay Shetty. And none of them are doing it for fun. They're doing it because a list you own compounds in ways that social media never will.

beehiiv is where they built it. You can start yours for 30% off your first 3 months with code PLATFORM30. Start building today.

🕰️ Remember When

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