How Founder-Led Content Drives New Deals: Conversation with Will Leatherman of Catalyst

In a recent webinar, Will Leatherman, Founder of Catalyst, shared how his agency has helped 100+ executives in FinTech and beyond scale their growth through authentic, founder-led content. By leveraging AI-powered workflows and a proven interview-to-content system, Catalyst's clients are seeing impressive results, with founder-led content driving up to 80% of new deals for some companies.

Follow Will on Linkedin.

Quick Recap of Key Takeaways

• AI Speeds Up Founder-Led Content Creation: Founders can now take their raw ideas and turn them into polished content faster than ever, without sacrificing their personal voice or perspective.
• Better Research, Smarter Questions: AI tools make it easier to do deep research and craft thoughtful interview questions, helping founders uncover richer insights and create more meaningful content.
• Focus on What Matters: By automating tedious tasks like drafting and structuring, AI lets founders spend more time on the creative and strategic aspects of their content, like storytelling and connecting with their audience.
• Catalyst recommends founders post 3-4 times per week on LinkedIn to balance data collection and workload.
• Key LinkedIn content hacks include crafting compelling hooks, using data and statistics, sharing challenges and thought processes, and engaging with comments and connections.

The Challenge

Many founders and executives struggle to create consistent, high-quality content due to time constraints and a lack of systematic processes. Generic content fails to resonate with their target audience, leading to poor engagement and missed growth opportunities. Additionally, maintaining authenticity while scaling content production poses a significant challenge for many companies.

The Results

By implementing the founder-led content framework, Catalyst’s clients, guided by Will, have achieved:

• Up to 80% more new deals
• Increased impressions and follower growth on LinkedIn
• Reduced content production time for internal teams
• Improved content quality and consistency

Workflow Deep Dive

Authentic Content at Scale

Catalyst's AI-powered workflow enables them to create authentic, founder-led content at scale. The process begins with research and data collection, including past interviews, sales calls, and company documentation. This information is used to prepare for structured interviews with founders or executives.

During the interview, Catalyst's content lead asks carefully crafted questions to elicit valuable insights, examples, and stories. The interview transcript is then processed using AirOps to generate detailed content briefs for various themes and post types.

Human writers use these AI-generated briefs to create the final content, ensuring voice accuracy and technical correctness. The content is then distributed across multiple channels and optimized based on performance data.

Key tips:

• Break down the content creation process into smaller, manageable steps.
• Use AI to assist with research, data organization, and brief generation.
• Maintain human oversight for quality control and authenticity.

Best Practices and Key Learnings

Conduct Effective Interviews

Crafting the right questions is crucial for extracting valuable insights from founders and executives. Will's interview playbook, developed using AI to synthesize a psychology textbook on executive interviews, includes six key steps:

1. Build rapport and trust with the interviewee.
2. Ask open-ended questions to encourage storytelling.
3. Use follow-up and probing questions to dive deeper into specific examples.
4. Encourage the interviewee to share their emotions and thought processes.
5. Seek out unique insights and contrarian views.
6. Record the interview for future reference and content repurposing.

‍

Focus on Customer-Centric Content

When creating founder-led content, it's essential to focus on the target audience's needs and pain points rather than writing solely for peers or investors. Founders should create content that addresses common customer questions and challenges, even if the topics seem basic from an industry insider's perspective.

Experiment and Iterate

Building an effective AI-powered content workflow requires experimentation and iteration. Start with a simple process and gradually add complexity as you gain experience and identify areas for improvement. Continuously collect data on content performance and use those insights to optimize your strategy over time.

Leverage LinkedIn Content Hacks

To maximize the impact of founder-led content on LinkedIn, Will recommends:

1. Crafting compelling hooks in the first two lines of each post.
2. Using data, statistics, and specific examples to support your points.
3. Sharing challenges, failures, and thought processes, not just successes.
4. Engaging with comments and other users' content to boost algorithmic visibility.
5. Sending connection requests to target prospects to increase content reach.
6. Tracking profile views in addition to individual post impressions.
7. Mining customer conversations and sales calls for content ideas.

Putting the Insights into Practice

Founder-led content has the power to drive significant growth for companies across various industries. By combining AI-powered workflows with human expertise and a customer-centric approach, founders and executives can create authentic, high-performing content at scale.

To get started, focus on building a simple, repeatable process that leverages AI for research, organization, and brief generation while maintaining human oversight for quality control. Continuously experiment, iterate, and optimize your workflow based on performance data and customer feedback. By consistently creating valuable, authentic content, founders can establish thought leadership, engage their target audience, and ultimately drive more deals for their business.

Ready to take your content strategy to the next level? Book a personalized strategy session with Will Leatherman or the AirOps team to start building your own AI-powered content workflow today! Don't miss this chance to work with AirOps experts and develop workflows that will position your business for long-term success in the AI-driven SEO landscape.

Email team@airops.com to secure your spot today.

‍