Hey!

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

Hope you had a great weekend. I spent Saturday catching up on some sleep and Sunday cracked out on caffeine writing content. Living the dream.

By the way, quick update. I’ll be in New York next week for an in-person sprint with my co-founder at Bluecast—if you're around, hit me up.

Now, let’s talk B2B content marketing (it really gets me going).

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

How founder-led content saved my a**

What would you do if 15% of your revenue churned overnight?

Sh*t. What do you mean they’re both churning?

I found myself in a tough spot toward the end of September. Two clients, whose retainers were not insignificant, let me know that October would be their last month on our client roster.

One hired a new marketing leader & one decided it was time to take content in-house. Every agency owner’s two favorite messages to get!

Not great.

Fortunately—if you could say that—both off-boards were for reasons out of our control. Doesn’t sting any less, though.

The P&L doesn’t care whether or not churn is “our fault.”

For a moment, my mental started spiraling. Are we still going to hit our growth targets? Should I still make these next 2 hires in October? What if more clients churn and everything crumbles?

You know, normal, mentally-sound founder thoughts.

Here’s the thing. Despite the initial, brief panic—I knew I had an insurance policy against churn.

I’ve been posting daily on LinkedIn for 5 years. I’ve been writing this newsletter for 3. I’ve been publishing on YouTube for 1.

Fun fact: every time I send an edition of this newsletter, I get anywhere from 2-5 waitlist sign ups for Compound. It’s kinda cracked.

So, I shifted from existential-founder-panic mode back to somewhat-competent-operator mode. What were the tools I had at my disposal?

A waitlist full of 100+ warm leads. Check.

A “Closed Lost” list of 20+ founders I could circle back to. Check.

A roster of happy clients who I could ask for referrals. Check.

And I had a month to work with.

It wasn’t a straight line back to a full client roster, though.

Sure. Appointments booked went up from ~5 per month to close to 20 in October.

But for whatever reason, the sales cycle in October was slow as hell. I ended up talking to folks who weren’t qualified. And even with that waitlist built and my calendar full, I was still staring at a down month in November. Net neutral at best.

Sales is funny though. In the last week of the month, we had a surge of qualified inbound. Some from referrals. Some from LinkedIn content. Some from the newsletter—who had found it on LinkedIn.

End result?

We’ll have a record month in November.

Maybe not as much of a record month as if those 2 clients had stayed on, but a record month.

We’re also back at capacity. And I definitely need to make those 2 hires. I feel like I say this every month.

Why share this with you though?

Well, imagine what would have happened if I had found myself sucker punched by unexpected churn without a personal brand to lean on.

I would have had to scrounge for referrals. Load up the spam cannons and send a bunch of outbound to people who have never heard of me. Hope and pray that I’d be able to back-fill those roster spots.

Instead of facing an existential threat—I faced a momentary inconvenience.

The latter is uncommon. I talk to so many founders who lose sleep at night over the reality that their lead flow is unpredictable. Spiky. They don’t know, with conviction, where their next customers are coming from. Sounds stressful.

What would you do if a large chunk of customers churned overnight? Would you have the ability to alchemize leads out of thin air?

If the answer is no…you might want to start publishing more content now, before you ‘need’ it. Just saying.

One last note: If you want to get started, check out this essay next. I’ll walk you through my entire playbook.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• 7 Years of LinkedIn Advice in 31 Minutes by Tommy Clark 🎥

• How we turned a SaaS startup into a designer brand by HYPER 📝

• How to tell a great story (The Robert Greene Blueprint) by David Perrell 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, appreciate you trusting me with this valuable real estate in your inbox.

Quick note ICYMI: I added 5 new prompt templates in Bluecast:

• Case Study

• Industry Predictions

• Myth Busting Listicle

• Short-form Hot Take

• Quick Tips Listicle

You can use these prompts to create winning LinkedIn posts in minutes. It’s actually nuts.

Try them here. And LMK what you think!

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: 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 November (as noted above), but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in December.