Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

You’ll notice it’s Tuesday, not Monday this time around. No real reason—I just forgot to hit ‘schedule.’ Lol. Busy day.

That leads me nicely to today’s topic though. I’ll walk you through the reality of publishing founder-led content consistently. It’s not as easy as a lot of folks make it seem.

It’s doable. And it’s lucrative—very much so. But it’s hard.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Content Creation Cycles

The raw reality of producing founder-led content in a fast-growing company

There’s this myth in content marketing that drives me insane.

Apparently, audience growth and inbound demand are supposed to trend up and to the right from the day you first hit publish. Oh, and you're supposed to be a machine that turns customer stories and curated content into stories for LinkedIn. Every day. Without fail.

This philosophy doesn’t account for something—the real life of being a founder.

Company growth happens in seasons. Your content output will reflect that, both in quantity and quality. I just experienced this.

Compound (my agency) went through a perpetual hiring sprint over the past 6 months. Demand outpaced supply—poor me, I know—so I was pulled deep into the weeds. On top of that, I had to train that team. Oh, and I was still tasked with running client calls.

My calendar became a hell I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I think my team was scared for me. But this is normal, from what I’m told.

I do have a confession, though.

I’m not too happy with my content during that time. I have a million plans that haven’t been executed. There was this week where I went hard on Instagram and pulled in 1.7M views from Reels. But I gassed out. Couldn’t sustain it.

There have been short stints of large growth on LinkedIn. But it’s been sporadic. Spiky. Those trend lines mirror my meeting load.

Drives me insane.

I hate feeling like I’m just ‘keeping the lights on’ with content. Some call it perfectionism. I call it giving a shit. Topic for a different essay, though.

Back to the point here. Your calendar will go through cycles as you build your company. Fundraising for 3 months. Hiring sprint for 2 months after that. Deep in the weeds on ops fixing shit for 4 months. Big product launch soon.

Then, once you think you're in the clear, you end up wasting 2 days going back and forth with your useless payroll provider to resolve some admin issue that is far below your pay grade.

This is normal. And if you let that perfectionism—helpful as it may be at times—keep you from publishing at all, you’ll feel it. Maybe not next week. But in 90 days when that marketing lag effect kicks in and leads dry up, you’ll be wishing you didn’t punt content to the next quarter.

Eventually, you turn into that person whose mantra is “diet starts on Monday.” Except that diet is your content output.

You can’t let yourself get paralyzed to the point of not posting.

Instead, you need systems to support your content output through the cycles. There are 2 types of systems you need.

(1) Creative frameworks. A lot of being a founder is gaslighting yourself into thinking everything’s fine, so you just keep moving forward. Same applies here.

One framework I’ve found helpful is to think of planning your content about like you periodize a training schedule.

Periodization refers to the idea of changing your approach to training sessions depending on the time of the year.

When I played basketball in college, the offseason was for putting on muscle, improving performance, and making massive skill jumps. By the time you get in-season, your training sessions are tailored to just keep you from falling apart. If you didn’t get injured, you won.

The workouts during each of those seasons looked way different.

You can think of content the same way.

During your “off-season,” go hard on content. You have the time and creative bandwidth to make it happen, without burning yourself out. You have the large, uninterrupted blocks on your calendar to get in flow. Let’s call this your ‘Creator’ season.

During your “in-season,” like during a fundraise packed with back-to-back-to-back 15-minute investor intros, just keep content consistent. Don’t stress over growth or get too hung up on your ‘creative vision.’ Let’s call this your ‘Operator’ season.

A super tactical framework I apply during your Operator season is just don’t miss two days in a row. I think I got this from James Clear in Atomic Habits. Works for any goal, content included.

Don’t try to force ‘Creative’ behavior during an ‘Operator’ season. You’ll just drive yourself nuts. There will always be a gap between the idea you have in your head and what you bring into reality. During an Operator sprint, your only goal is to stay consistent. Save the mood boards and massive essays for your next Creator window.

By being explicit about the part of your content cycle you're in, keep yourself consistent. You also keep yourself sane.

(2) Build your content team.

I was just talking to a client who also came out of a hiring sprint in the past week or so. His team jumped from 15-22 people. It consumed his calendar for months.

But, if you looked at is publishing cadence on LinkedIn, you’d think he never missed a beat. This is the beauty of building a team.

It’s kind of like an insurance policy against calendar catastrophes and creative block. Founders we work with at Compound often write their own stuff when they have time. When they don’t, we’re there to make sure the plates don’t stop spinning.

Some founders will build this in-house. That’s great, too. Either way, just install infrastructure around you to keep your content cadence consistent.

A surprising amount of your favorite founders and writers have teams around them. On a recent episode of How I Write, Scott Galloway said that he rarely ever writes a first draft of an article anymore. His team of writers & researchers puts the rough piece together, and then he jumps in to edit.

Treating content like a team sport gives you so much flexibility. Your schedule can fluctuate from meeting hell to creative paradise—and your output will remain unaffected.

Content infrastructure is an insurance policy against inconsistency.

Anyway, I hope this piece helps you navigate your next hiring push or get through your next raise. If you know a founder who could use this advice, send this essay to them. They’ll thank you.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

• SaaS marketing was hard until I understood these 3 concepts by Tommy Clark 🎥

• 13 Years of No BS Business Advice in 79 Mins by Alex Hormozi 🎥

• Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk 📚

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, appreciate you allowing me into you inbox every week.

By the way, if you’re a Content Writer looking for your next role, we’re hiring at Compound. Check out the JD here.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: I just released a template pack, with 30+ of the prompts we use with B2B CEOs at Compound.

PPS: If you want Compound to run a founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity through August, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in September.