How to Use LinkedIn to Land Public Health Consulting Contracts

▶ Free Workshop: Public Health Consulting 101
The last piece of the puzzle is knowing how to get in front of the people who can pay you. Dr. Des is teaching a free live workshop — Public Health Consulting 101 — on June 16th AND June 17th. Two days. Same content. Come live.
👉 Save your seat at https://www.publichealthclub.com/public-health-consulting-training

Resources Mentioned

Free LinkedIn Guide — Step-by-step profile optimization, thought leadership strategy, and copy-paste DM templates for pitching clients. Free inside The Public Health Club at https://www.publichealthclub.com/

Six Figure Public Health Consultant Playbook — Workbook companion for the PHC Consulting 101 class. Free inside PHC at https://www.publichealthclub.com/

Public Health Consulting 101 — Free live workshop, June 16 + June 17. Register at https://www.publichealthclub.com/public-health-consulting-training

Subcontracting to Six Figures (S26F) — Special member offer ends June 15th. General public doors open June 16th. https://www.publichealthclub.com/course



Applying to RFPs isn't the only way to land consulting contracts — and for Dr. Des, it's not even the primary one anymore. In Day 5 of Public Health Consulting Week, she breaks down how to use LinkedIn to position yourself in front of potential clients, what thought leadership content actually looks like in a public health consulting context, and the exact approach to go from following someone to getting a call on their calendar.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

Why LinkedIn is non-negotiable if you want contracts to come to you
The most common LinkedIn mistakes that keep consultants invisible
Why you don't need a business page — your personal profile can do the work
What thought leadership content looks like for a public health consultant
Why one month of posting is not enough — and what the real timeline looks like
How to find, follow, engage with, and pitch the people who can hire you

Timestamps
[00:00] Welcome to Day 5 — wrapping up the week and what comes next
[01:30] How Dr. Des stopped applying to RFPs and what replaced it
[03:00] The $25K project management contract that came from an old boss
[04:30] Why LinkedIn is the first place to start if you want inbound contracts
[06:00] The most common LinkedIn profile mistakes consultants make
[07:30] Personal page vs. business page — what Dr. Des actually uses
[08:30] What thought leadership content looks like for PH consultants
[10:00] How long consistency actually takes — and what realistic expectations look like
[11:30] How to find potential clients and slide into the right DMs
[13:00] Free LinkedIn Guide + Six Figure Consultant Playbook inside PHC
[14:30] S26F club member special — offer ends June 15th

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a business LinkedIn page to land consulting contracts?
No. Dr. Des built her consulting practice  from her personal LinkedIn page without ever creating a business profile for Strickland Health Consulting. If you're the one doing the work and showing up as the consultant, your personal page is enough. Start there.

What kind of content should public health consultants post on LinkedIn?
Post thought leadership tied to your niche. If you specialize in evaluation, share findings from a project, discuss methodology, or weigh in on a relevant study. The goal is to make it visible that you know what you're doing — so that when potential clients see your profile, they already trust your expertise before you reach out.

How long does it take to start landing contracts through LinkedIn?
Longer than most people expect. Dr. Des recommends giving it at least six months of consistent posting before measuring results. The people who give up after a month never see the payoff. Consistency is the variable most consultants underestimate — not the platform itself.

About The Dr. Des Show
The Dr. Des Show is the go-to podcast for public health career development, consulting, and entrepreneurship. Hosted by Dr. Desiree "Dr. Des" Strickland — DrPH, public health CEO, and founder of The Public Health Club.

https://www.drdesshow.com/

https://www.publichealthclub.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Day five, y'all. We have made it to day five of five of Public Health Consulting Week. Now, after this, that this does not mean that Public Health Consulting Week is over. This just means that you are now ready for public health consulting one-on-one to dive into some strategies to figure out what that next step is in helping you either make this a side hustle or make this a full-time thing. Okay. We are ready. And even if you haven't watched all of them, they're not that long. So you got time to go back, watch them, or even if you just want to show up public consulting one-on-one, it's fine, Fred. I got you. I got you. Those are just some extra strategies that we've been talking about, like we're going to be talking about today. Today, listen, I wore my blue, my PhC blue, and also simultaneously it's LinkedIn blue because we are talking all about LinkedIn today and how to really market yourself on LinkedIn for contracts, right? How to really position yourself to get contracts on LinkedIn. Um, one of our upcoming episodes in um the Dr. Dare show, we're gonna be talking with uh Dorian, and Dorian actually positioned himself on LinkedIn and landed a contract 5k, 25k, like, and he was on my subcontract and the six figures alumni. So here's the thing: let's talk. Oh, wait, wait, wait. If you haven't registered for Public Consulting 101, do it, do it. The link is below. Like, if you are um inside the club, just go to live events and workshops, RSVP there, or um, the link should be below. If you are on YouTube or if you're on Instagram and you're listening to this, just comment consulting under here, and I'll send you the link to join. We got two days, June 16th and 17th, and we are live each day. All right, so come get all your questions answered, come get that kickstart that you need to really get started in consulting. Okay, so now day five, y'all. This was so good. I don't know. Did y'all like did y'all like it? Let me know. Let me know in the comments below. Did y'all y'all been having fun with me? But um, I've been having fun with y'all, regardless, even if y'all don't comment. Makes me sad. But but no, um, in all seriousness, y'all, like let's talk about it because you know, yesterday we talked a lot about like um, you know, contracts and the day before, like, like we talked about RFPs um a few days ago. Like, we've talked about a lot of that. But one of the major ways you land contracts is by marketing yourself and by networking and getting in rooms with people who have the potential to pay you and give you, give you contracts, right? Um, I stopped applying to RFPs a couple years ago, and I stopped not because like I wasn't winning them, like I was getting RFPs, I was getting proposals, like I was getting rejected a lot too, because it's just a part of the game, right? I do not win everything that I go after, okay? But I say that to say, like I started building my network and my relationships. So now my contracts, they come from networking, they come from like people that I talk with. So I still do have the active part of my consulting business. Um, I still do maintain, I keep about one or two clients. Um, just because, like, you know, I really love what I do at the public health club and teaching y'all how to do this. Um, and consulting has always been a side hustle for me. Uh, but this public health club is like my full-time thing now. And consulting is still like my little, my little side girl. Uh, but I say that to say like it's because I positioned myself, right? I positioned myself to land contracts. One of the contracts that I won, it was uh maybe about $25,000 to provide some project management support. Maybe like I made it like three hours a week, five hours, not even five hours a week, really, just depending on the week, honestly. Like some weeks it might have been two hours. But it was about $25k a few months uh to provide that project management support for them. Now, the client was one of my old bosses. I let her know what I was doing. She had like things just happened, right? So that's what I want to make sure that you understand. Like, there are multiple ways you can go about this, and this is one of my favorite ways because writing proposals can be hard, it can be intense, right? You have to start letting people know what you do and how you do it and how you can help them, okay? And that starts with a lot of the things that we have talked about this week: developing your niche, really trying to understand like what you what services that you offer you can offer a client and really going about it from there, right? So, number one, I will say, like, if you are not on LinkedIn, get on LinkedIn. Simple, point blank period. If you are not on LinkedIn, get on LinkedIn. That is the number one thing, right? Because yes, opportunities still happen on LinkedIn, and you may be frustrated just because you don't know how to use it properly. LinkedIn is not Instagram, LinkedIn is not Facebook. And even so, like, a lot of people you get on LinkedIn and all you do is like you ain't got no profile pick, or your profile pick is blurry, and you can't even tell it's you or it's a selfie. There's nothing on there, like your stuff is not optimized, you're not commenting on things, you're not talking on things, you're not posting, you're just like, oh, I applied for the job and I didn't get it, or I applied for this and I didn't get it. I don't see how people are using this, I don't get it. It's because you haven't tried for real with guidance, okay? And I actually developed a guide for you all. Of course, day five. Day five of resources, all right? So you have a LinkedIn guide where I'm walking you through step by step what you need to do to get your LinkedIn up to parts, position yourself to land clients, okay? Now that is inside the public health club. If you are not in the public health club and you are listening to this, join the public health club so you can get this resource as well as all the four other resources that I've given you all for free this week alone, okay? And our in-depth six-figure public health consultant playbook is free right now for you all, okay? Inside the public health club. You literally get it free, and it's the workbook and guide that goes along with our public health consultant one-on-one training next week, okay? Now, here's the other thing that I see with a lot of people with like LinkedIn. And one thing I want to like address too, even though we're talking about consulting, we're talking about starting your business, you don't have to have a business page on LinkedIn. You don't. You can use your personal page if you want to, especially if you're gonna be like the principal consultant on things, you're gonna be doing the work, like you're not just building out a firm to land contracts and you're not working any of them. You can definitely build up your um your consulting business by um just posting through your personal page, okay? And that's honestly what I did, right? I still don't have a business page for my Strickland Health Consulting. I still don't have a website for Strickland Health Consulting, but yet somehow I continue to get contracts. What I'm telling you works, okay? It works, all right. It is multiple strategies and that you can do, but I'm telling you different things that you can do because you know everybody's comfort level is different with consulting and putting themselves out there. So I say that to say, like, next thing I want you to do is start interacting with people, start posting, start posting thought leadership content, meaning that you are looking at, you know, different things that are online, you're taking different stories. If I focus in on evaluation, I may talk about, you know, a program and some different strategies that they can evaluate. I may evaluate a program and list some of my findings and start talking about some of my findings from my evaluations and inviting other people to comment on and talk about it, right? That is what you do. You put out your thought leadership and how you do stuff, you showcase your talents and people will start getting attracted to it. Now, the number one thing that I do see is that people will they will get discouraged because, oh, I've been posting for like a month and nothing happened. Hit me back when you've been posting for six months, okay? Because you need to be consistent with this, right? If you really want consistent revenue streams coming in, I need you to be consistent with posting your content. And then also I want you to go out and find the founders of these organizations. I want you to go out and not only find the founders of these organizations, but I want you to go out and find the people who could be in position to actually give you contracts, right? That is one of the major things, getting in position to actually land contracts. And if you are like looking at like somebody that owns a uh nonprofit, right? Like I want to look up the founder of this nonprofit because I want to pitch them to do like impact reporting and all of this stuff, right? Then one of the major things that I want you to do is go look up the look them up and start following them on um LinkedIn, start connecting with them on LinkedIn, and then I want you to really go from there with everything that you're doing, right? So that is gonna be one of the major keys in connecting with them, start commenting on their stuff, really providing that and then sliding their DMs after you've engaged for a little bit. Let them know, like, hey, I love the work that you're doing. Like, I wanted to know if you had any impact reports. I wanted to take a look at them. Or if you don't, I specialize in doing evaluations of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd love to get a call on the calendar with you to see how I could best support you, right? So that is what we do. We pitch ourselves, we market ourselves, we build that up, right? And in that LinkedIn guide, I teach you how to do all those things. I have like templates for use. You can copy and paste all of that good stuff. Like, y'all, listen, I've given you the blueprint this week, okay? Next week, I'm giving you even more. Why? Why are you giving us all this stuff that it is? Why are you doing all this? Because you do not have to be poor in public health. You do not have to be broke, you do not have to sacrifice your income just to make an impact. All right? I want you to know that, and I want you to believe that, okay? And I want you to know, regardless of the things that are going on out there in the world right now, regardless of everything that is happening, people are still landing contracts, people are still winning in their careers, okay? There is still good things happening, there is still movement happening. All of this rural health funding that just got released, guess what? Contractors are needed, consultants are needed. And if you are not in position when these funds hit, if you are not in position to receive them, then you won't get them. Okay. So I want to make sure that you are in position. My whole goal with this public health consulting week, with public health consulting 101, with subcontracting six figures is to put you in position to make more money to increase your income and your impact in public health. Because through doing the work that I'm in that I'm doing, I'm not only increasing my income, but I'm also making an impact in the communities. I am doing amazing work and I love the work that I do and I get to do, right? That is the thing, like you really can love the work that you do and get paid well to do it. All right. And that is what we do in public health club, right? That is what we talk about and do in um subcontracting the six figures, right? Those are the things that we talk about, those are the things that we do, and those are the things that we are going to continue to do in these spaces. Okay. Now, if you have not signed up already for public health consulting 101, join. If you're on YouTube, the link is below. If you are on Instagram, comment consulting, I'll send it your way. If you are in the club, go to live events or RSVPs and join us. Join me live, y'all. Even if you may have sat through a public health consultant 101 in the past, I guarantee you, listen, I revamp things. Okay, things get revamped. And we are going in and we are going to talk about a lot of different strategies to get you to where you need to be. Okay. Now, for my club members, you have a special offer going on right now to join Subcontract in the Six Figures. Check the club, check it out, and I hope that you join us. This offer does go away the end of day on June 15th, because then June 16th, Subcontracting the Six Figures opens to the general public. But for my club members, you know I got y'all. Y'all get something special. So, all right, I will talk to y'all later. Have a good day. Download the resources. Download those resources, use them, and let me know when you won your first contract. Head on over to the share your win space in the community and let me know that you won. All right. I'll talk to y'all later. I'll see y'all next week at Public Up Consultation. It is here. All right, bye, y'all.