how to build a founder-led content engine in 2025

Hey,

I had a conversation last Tuesday that perfectly captures the challenge most of us are dealing with right now.

I was on a call with a VP of Marketing at a $8M ARR SaaS company. Smart operator. Great team. Solid growth trajectory. But when we started talking about getting their founder more active with content and thought leadership, her frustration was immediate.

"I know our CEO should be posting more on LinkedIn," she said. "I see other founders like Gal Aga (CEO of Aligned) building massive audiences. I know it would be huge for our business. But getting him to do it consistently? And figuring out what he should actually post? It's been a nightmare."

Sound familiar?

This isn't an isolated case. I've had this exact conversation with dozens of marketers over the past few months. They're all hitting the same wall.

They know founder-led content works. They see competitors whose CEOs are becoming industry voices. They understand that having a visible founder creates opportunities their company would never get otherwise. But they're completely stuck on execution.

The problem isn't that their founders don't have valuable insights to share. These are people running successful companies, solving real problems, learning lessons every day that would be incredibly valuable to their markets.

The problem is they're approaching founder content backwards.

The Content Trap Most Marketing Teams Fall Into

Here's what typically happens: A marketing team decides their founder (or exec) needs to "do content." They schedule a monthly content planning session, open up a Google Doc, and brainstorm what the CEO should post about.

Maybe some company updates. Perhaps industry observations. They might try to turn random business insights into profound wisdom that fits LinkedIn's algorithm.

The content feels forced because it IS forced. They're manufacturing content instead of capturing the value the founder is already creating through conversations, meetings, and strategic thinking.

But there's a systematic way to solve this. And it starts with a counterintuitive first step.

The Framework That Actually Works

Last week, Sergey and I spent two hours breaking down exactly how the smartest marketing teams we know are building founder-led content engines that actually drive business results.

Not vanity metrics. Not feel-good engagement. Real business impact: pipeline, partnerships, and industry positioning.

Here's the step-by-step playbook for marketing teams who want to make this work:

Step 1: Book Your Founder as a Podcast Guest

Forget about launching a company podcast. That's the last step, not the first.

Instead, your job is to book your founder on 8-10 existing podcasts in your space over the next 3-4 months.

Why start here? Because podcast hosts have already done the hard work. They've built audiences, figured out the format, handled all the technical details. Your founder just shows up and shares their expertise.

But here's the strategic part you need to understand: treat every guest appearance as a an exercise in content development. Your founder isn't just sharing insights – they're testing messaging in real-time with the podcast host and audience.

Your job as the marketer is to pay attention to patterns:

• Which stories get the strongest reactions from hosts?

• Which frameworks generate follow-up questions?

• What topics light up conversations while others fall flat?

• How does your founder naturally explain complex concepts?

i.e. market research disguised as content creation.

One marketing team I know booked their CEO on 12 podcasts in four months. By appearance number 8, they had completely mapped out his strongest content themes. They knew exactly which three frameworks resonated most with their target audience. They had identified his best stories and most compelling examples.

When they finally launched their own company podcast six months later, they weren't guessing at content strategy. They were launching with proven messaging that had been tested across multiple audiences.

Step 2: Harvest Everything!

Here's where most marketing teams leave massive value on the table.

Your founder just spent an hour having an in-depth conversation about your industry, your company's unique approach, your market insights. That's not just one piece of content – that's 20-30 pieces of content waiting to be extracted.

Your job is to systematically harvest that guest appearance:

• LinkedIn posts: Pull 3-4 key insights and turn them into standalone posts

• Long-form content: Extract the best stories for detailed LinkedIn articles

• Visual content: Turn tactical frameworks into carousel posts or image posts

• Video clips: Edit compelling 2-3 minute segments for social

• Blog content: Expand on key themes for your company blog

• Sales enablement: Create one-pagers with key insights for your sales team

But here's the move most marketing teams miss: upload the full episode to your company's YouTube channel.

Why? SEO dominance. When someone searches for topics in your industry, you want your founder's face showing up in the results. Even if it's someone else's podcast, if you upload it to your channel with proper optimization, you're building search presence for your company.

Plus, you're creating a large library of your founder's thought leadership that prospects can discover and binge-watch when they're evaluating whether to work with you.

Step 3: Launch Your Own Show (But Make It Strategic)

Now – and only now – you're ready to launch your own company podcast.

But you're not starting blind. You have months of data about what content works. You know your founder's strongest topics, most compelling stories, most engaging conversation style.

You also understand the biggest mistake most marketing teams make: treating YouTube as an afterthought.

Here's a stat that should change your content distribution strategy: 60% of Google search results now include YouTube videos. When someone searches for topics in your industry, YouTube content has a massive advantage in ranking.

Spotify doesn't have a discovery algorithm that actively promotes your content to new audiences. Apple Podcasts doesn't either. They're platforms for people who already know about your show.

YouTube actively recommends your content to people who've never heard of your company but are interested in your topics. It's the difference between a filing cabinet and a growth engine.

Make YouTube your primary platform. Audio-only platforms can be secondary distribution, but optimize for video-first.

As the marketer, your job is to:

• Optimize titles for search: Use keywords your ICP is actually searching for

• Create compelling thumbnails: Visual consistency that builds brand recognition

• Write detailed descriptions: Include relevant keywords and clear calls-to-action

• Plan guest strategy: Invite prospects, partners, and industry influencers who have audiences that match your ICP

Step 4: Connect Everything with Email (Your Secret Weapon)

Every podcast episode becomes the foundation for your weekly newsletter. Not a summary – a deep dive into the most valuable insights from that conversation, written from your company's unique perspective.

Your email list is the most valuable asset you can build. It's the one channel you completely control. Algorithms can't throttle your reach. Platforms can't change the rules. You have direct access to your most engaged prospects and customers.

What most marketing teams get wrong is that: they think newsletters need to be these perfectly designed, highly polished publications with product updates and company news.

The best founder-led newsletters feel like getting “behind the curtain” insights directly from someone building in the trenches. They're sharing what the founder is learning, what's working in the market, what trends they're seeing. They're pulling the best insights from conversations and passing them along to subscribers.

When you connect your podcast content to your newsletter, you create a marketing flywheel:

• Podcast creates deep, valuable conversations

• Newsletter extracts and amplifies the best insights to your email list

• Audience grows because the content is consistently valuable

• Larger audience attracts better podcast guests

• Better guests create even more valuable content

• Sales team gets warm leads from engaged newsletter subscribers

The Compound Effect (Why This Beats Every Other Marketing Channel)

Here's what happens when you run this playbook for 12 months:

Your founder has guested on a dozen shows, building relationships with hosts and their audiences. You've tested and refined messaging through real conversations. You've built a library of content on YouTube that's ranking for industry terms your prospects are searching for.

You've launched your own show with a proven content strategy. Your founder is established as someone worth listening to in your space. You have a newsletter that people actually forward to colleagues because it's packed with insights from real conversations with industry experts.

Most importantly, everything connects to business outcomes: building relationships with prospects, establishing market authority, attracting ideal customers who are already pre-sold on your approach.

Why This Works When Everything Else Doesn't

Most founder content strategies fail because marketing teams are building on assumptions instead of data.

They create content they think their audience wants instead of testing what actually resonates. They treat each piece of content as isolated instead of building a system where everything reinforces everything else.

This framework works because:

1. You're testing before you scale - Guest appearances let you experiment with messaging at low cost.

2. You're building on proven data - Every step is informed by real feedback from real conversations.

3. You're creating compound value - Each piece of content supports and amplifies the others.

4. You're optimizing for business outcomes - Everything connects back to pipeline, relationships, and revenue.

5. Your founder actually enjoys it - Because they're talking about topics they're passionate about instead of forced corporate content.

Getting Started (Your Next 30 Days)

If you want to test this framework:

Week 1-2: Research 20 podcasts in your space. Look for shows with 500-5000 downloads that regularly feature founders or executives.

Week 3-4: Craft outreach emails positioning your founder as a guest. Focus on their unique insights, not your company's product.

Month 2-4: Book and execute 6-8 guest appearances. Document what resonates.

Month 4-6: Start harvesting content and uploading to YouTube. Build your content library.

Month 6+: Launch your own show with proven messaging and guest strategy.

The marketing teams who start this process now will have an unfair advantage 12 months from today. The question isn't whether this works – it's whether you're ready to commit to the process long enough to see the compound effects.

Check out the episode we recorded on this very topic (we practice what we preach):

- Joe, Co-Founder at Sway One