LinkedIn ghost-writing and strategy for CEOs // EO Member

Sales doesn’t fail from lack of ideas. 

It fails when teams default to cold outreach instead of building a system.

Every business owner starts as salesperson, marketer, storyteller, and tribal leader - all in one.

That works well but founder fuel burns fast... 🔥

At first, your energy sells the vision. You’re close to every customer. And you are the leader of your tribe. 

But usually, around the 5–20 employee mark, cracks begin to show. You want to move from working 'in' your business to working 'on' your business - so you hire someone to take over marketing.

Your first junior marketer arrives and…
- Launches a cold outreach campaign.
- Subscribes to HubSpot for $800/month.
- Tries a podcast.

Then, the cold outreach gets paused after no one replies. The HubSpot account sits dormant because you're too busy to hand over your contacts. And the podcast dies after seven episodes because it didn't bring ales. 

And you think: Marketing doesn’t work for us. Do I have to keep doing this myself? 🤨

Good news: You don't. 

Over the past 25 years, I’ve built five businesses, sold three, and advised on 75+ marketing projects.

Because of what I’ve seen, I believe marketing simply fails because nobody makes these 3 calls:
- Choosing one strategy every team member can explain and believe in.
- Sticking with that one strategy long enough to make it work.
- Holding everyone (including you, the founder) accountable with KPIs.

Making those 3 calls is what I call the CMO Gap.

→ Founders want to step out of marketing and need a CMO who makes decisions. But they can only afford a junior marketer who can’t do that.

Our program, CONTENT TURBO, closes that gap: In six months, we implement a repeatable and customised marketing system your team can run on their own, no agencies, no tool bloat, no false starts. 

Just a system that delivers at a fraction of a CMO's cost. 

It's the CMO I wanted in my five businesses but could't afford.


👉 If you’re ready to outgrow the marketing chaos, let’s connect.

✉️ Email me: chappuzeau@storylux.com
💬 WhatsApp me: +44 7375 428 095

Simon Chappuzeau

Viral posts and AI don't build businesses.

Systems do.

A while back I explored how people go viral on LinkedIn and what impact that had on the business.

It was fascinating, fun, and insightful but not one viral post moved the needle for the businesses of my guests.

If you want to revisit that, it's part of the StoryLux podcast (link in the comments).

In season 2 I dove into AI’s role in content creation and found that, yes, it’s powerful but that AI can’t fix a broken marketing systems.

That brings me to the announcement of this new season, Season 3.

This time we'll be talking to business owners who have crushed their lead generation with focus and consistency.

It’s about the quiet power of focus and repeatability.
→ One ICP.
→ One channel.
→ One proven cadence, done consistently.

No shortcuts, no hacks.

So far, I had two inspiring conversations with Glain Roberts-McCabe, PCC, CTDP (she/her) who's built a solid coaching business with simple processes.

And another inspiring call with Marcello Gortana, MBA, who turned out to be a (fellow) South African, now living in Canada!

So, if you want to hear inspiring stories of businesses that grew by focusing (less is more), then season 3 might just be what you need!

It’s launching soon.

Stay tuned.

I turn founder stories into marketing systems that can be run by their teams.

Marcello Gortana, MBA and Glain Roberts-McCabe, PCC, CTDP (she/her)

No alternative text description for this image

Is LinkedIn slowly turning into TikTok?

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

My feed no longer starts with posts from people I chose to follow. Instead it starts with a (viral) post from someone I’ve never heard of.

Yes, the post is often relevant, even interesting to the point that I find myself, ten minutes later doom-scrolling trying to remember “Why did I open this app again?” 🤔 

The shift feels subtle, but I thinks it’s not: 

It’s changing LinkedIn from what I liked about it:

A network-driven platform to an interest-driven one.

It's replacing relationships with reach.

I follow people for a reason. Not just because they had one great post, but because I believe in their thinking.

I’ve read their books, and studied their frameworks.

That trust is the glue of a real professional network.

When the algorithm sidelines those relationships in favour of single-hit posts, something gets lost.

Have you seen the same? 

What are your thoughs?



-------



I preparing the third season of my podcast, featuring founders who built their companies with a single target audience, a single offer, and a single acquisition path.

If you’ve taken that route and want to share the system behind it, please direct message me.

The biggest challenges marketers face:

Convincing the founder to trust facts.

I can't count the number of times that I found myself in discussions with business owners, junior marketers, sales people and other stakeholders about what would be the most effective thing to do in marketing. 

The predicament in these situations?

They come from an anecdotal viewpoint. They saw the one influencer who went viral. One email list guru who's doing 7 figures by sending one weekly email. Or the TikTok influencer who's cracked the code and now selling millions.

The problem is that these successes are anecdotal. Not empirical.

They skew the perception of what's likely to work.


As a marketer, I can't operate from a strategy of luck. That's what these 'success' stories are: anecdotal evidence that something works. 

I can only act based on empirical evidence and frameworks that have proven to work - mostly not to that wild success of the one in a million TikTok influencer. But more often than one in a million. 

As long as a strategy delivers a positive ROI it has worked well enough (and definitely better than an anecdotal success story that can't be replicated).

So, the question really is:

Do you trust statistical evidence that something will work enough to not be tempted by 'success' stories?

If so, your marketing is highly likely to make you money. 



-------



Most small companies can’t afford a $10K/month CMO to build a working marketing system. We help founders fill that gap by installing a marketing system and training their team to run it.

Follow me to learn how to build a marketing system that fits your business model.

From £0 to £22m with laser focus. How a self-funded food business grew in one of the most competitive industries in the world.

In December 2016, George Taylor started cooking clean meals in his one-bed flat, hand-delivering them to local gyms.

By 2023, he had turned Lions Prep into a £22m-a-year subscription business.

How did he do it without spreading himself thin on dozens of channels or burning cash on ads?

Here’s the marketing playbook behind Lions Prep’s early days:

1️⃣ George picked a niche and stuck with it.
→ The brand was built for gym-goers.
→ Messaging, meals, and visuals all screamed: “Performance fuel.”
→ That clarity made them memorable and referable for gym-goers.
Most businesses are not that clear on their ICP.

2️⃣ George treated his deliveries like market research.
→ George delivered meals and gathered insights from his customers.
→ Local gyms became live market research labs.
→ Every conversation shaped the product, the positioning, the promise.
Most businesses disconnect sales & delivery from marketing research.

3️⃣ George used storytelling as their main marketing driver.
→ Behind-the-scenes kitchen content built operational trust.
→ Instagram was built credibility through transparency.
→ Customers shared transformation photos.
Radical transparency built an avid audience.

4️⃣ George grew cash-flow before spending on campaigns.
→ Subscriptions created predictable revenue.
→ That stability funded consistent service and slow, strategic growth.
The new subscription model supported a healthy cash-flow. 

5️⃣ George didn’t advertise until he was sure it would work.
→ Paid ads only came in 2020–2021, once:
✔ The message was clear
✔ The audience was loyal
✔ The systems were stable
Most business advertise when they lack that clarity, wasting money. 

Effective marketing is about relentless focus on the right audience, the right channel, and the right message.

That’s what most businesses skip.


P.S.: In 2022 Lions Prep became Frive and successfully expanded their ICP. But that's a story for another time... 



-------



Most small companies can’t afford a $10K/month CMO to build a working marketing system. We help founders fill that gap by installing a marketing system and training their team to run it.

Follow me to learn how to build a marketing system that fits your business model.

Jason Fried and his team built a $1M+ revenue business, with only 1 product and 1 channel. How did they do that?

In 2004, Jason Fried and his team at 37signals were a small web design agency in Chicago, drowning in email threads and missed deadlines.

Because available alternative like Microsoft Project were too big and clunky, they simply scratched their own itch and built a project management tool that did what they needed.

That internal tool became Basecamp.

On February 4, 2004, Basecamp officially launched.
- No press release.
- No newsletter.
- No lead magnets.

Just a blog post on Signal v. Noise (the company’s internal blog). Jason Fried said:

“We just blogged about what we were building. People followed along and shared it.”

At first, Basecamp was used only by 37signals themselves and their own clients. But it quickly resonated with other freelancers, agencies, and small teams - people just like them.

The user base of Basecamp wasn’t built through paid traffic or launch campaigns, it grew organically through their essays, reflections, and product updates.

And: they didn’t call themselves 'thought leaders', they were just thinking in public.

How did that impact their growth?

Here are the numbers that I could find:
- 2004: Launched with 45 paying customers in month 1
- 2005: Hit $1 million in annual revenue (100% bootstrapped)
- 2006: Published Getting Real, a book on building simple software
- 2008: Reached 2 million users across all accounts (free + paid)
- 2010: Basecamp had become the company's flagship product and they rebranded to Basecamp, stopping any agency work. 

How did they do it? 

1️⃣ With relentless focus on one ICP: small, overworked teams. 

2️⃣ With relentless focus on one channel: their blog. 

3️⃣ And through relentless focus on one message: Simple tools for calm work and no engagement-optimised content.

Now you will say to me, Simon, that was in the early 2000s! 

Well, I believe things are not really that different today, people still love original thought. 

Real thinking still resonates with people, whether on a blog, a podcast, or a LinkedIn post.

What made Basecamp work wasn’t when they built, it was how they built:
- One clear product
- For one clear audience
- Shared through one consistent point of view - for years!

That’s still the most reliable marketing system there is, simple scales but only when the thinking is sharp.



-------



Most small companies can’t afford a $10K/month CMO to build a working marketing system. We help founders fill that gap by installing a marketing system and training their team to run it.

Follow me to learn how to build a marketing system that fits your business model.

Most small business owners overcomplicate content.

They chase trends, read SEO blogs, and try to “rank.”

But content doesn't sell because it’s optimised but because it addresses the information gaps that prevent a buying decision.

There are the five types of content buyers are quietly searching for:

Price
How much does something cost? We are all looking for this, aren't we? Yet, most websites bury this. 

Problem Discovery
The real use of an FAQ section? To reduce buyer anxiety by surfacing past client questions or objections.

Competitor Comparisons
Your buyer is already comparing options. Why not help them - and do it with integrity.

“Best Of” Lists
These pieces signal quality by giving a clear benchmark. Buyers want to know the bar before they commit to any option.

Reviews and Testimonials 
If your reviews and testimonials reinforce the previous four, trust is built, and buying becomes easy.

When it comes to what you write on your website and LinkedIn, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Simply address what keeps buyers from buying.

Replace: “What should we post this week?”

With: “What’s still unclear to someone trying to buy from us?”

That question will build you a better content calendar than any AI prompt or SEO checklist.


P.S.: Bonus thought: if content is hard, it's often because the ICP is too broad. Have a razor blade ICP and these five content areas become as easy as simply interviewing your sales team. 



-------



I'm preparing the third season of the StoryLux podcast, featuring businesses that grew by focusing on a single target audience, a single offer, and a single acquisition path.

If you’ve taken that route of focus, please direct message me.

From £0 to £22m with just one ideal client persona.

How a self-funded business grew by niching down.

Lions Prep (before it became Frive) didn’t grow by serving multiple client personas or being present on all social media channels. 

It instead started to grow with a relentless focus on one ideal client persona (gym goers), and one channel (direct sales in gyms). 

In 2016, George Taylor started cooking clean meals in his one-bed flat and hand-delivering them to local gyms. By 2023, it had become a £22m-a-year subscription business.

So how did they do it, without spreading themselves thin across a dozen channels or serving multiple ideal buyers (just to be safe)?

Here’s the marketing playbook behind Lions Prep’s early growth:

1️⃣ They were bold and narrowed down on a small vertical.
→ The brand was built for a very specific kind of gym-goers.
→ Messaging, meals, and visuals all screamed: “Performance fuel.”

Most businesses are afraid to narrow down on one ICP.


2️⃣ They treated their product delivery like discovery calls.
→ George delivered meals and gathered insights from his customers.
→ Every conversation shaped the product, the positioning, the promise.

Most businesses disconnect sales and delivery from customer research.


3️⃣ They learned the product isn't the story.
→ George obsessed over the product and facts.
→ Growth slowed, until they started telling stories around the business.

Most business still believe that 'they will come if we build it'

George chose to show behind-the-scenes content, customer transformations, and what life looked like at Lions Prep.

Instagram went from a gallery of nice pictures to a diary, a credibility engine. That one shift from features to stories unlocked broader traction.

Good marketing is about focusing on one ideal client persona until you get everything right and growth happens. 

Most businesses don't see growth and think they have to diversify.




-------



Most small companies can’t afford a $10K/month CMO to build a working marketing system. We help founders fill that gap by installing a marketing system and training their team to run it.

Follow me to learn how to build a marketing system that fits your business model.

Your brand is not what you say it is. 

It is what your customers say it is. 

The other week I was evaluating a refurbishment company. The website was beautifully designed, perfect layout, with great photos. I was intrigued.

Then I checked the handful of Google reviews.

One five-star rave obviously written by a family member (same rare last name).

And another one was a page-long takedown describing step-by-step operational issues with that company.

Where it really got interesting was the fact that several positive reviews described completely different projects:

Not luxury refurbishments, Hamptons league, but simple backyard upgrades.

Outch.

The problem wasn’t the bad review, it was the contradiction:
- The website promises prestige.
- The public describes patch-up jobs.

A sleek website used to be the signal when it was expensive to build a website. The fact that someone had the resources to build a expensive website was in- and on itself a trust signal.

But that's different today: everybody can design a great website in minutes. And with that, websites have lost their trust signal quality. 

The only thing we are left with is what other people say about a brand.

And we've gotten really good at picking up nuances in reviews, whether they are fake, a friends favour review, or an over-demanding client. 

What matters today is: consistency between a braind claim and what customers report publicly about a brand.

If the claims of a website don't match reviews and other indicators, every brand  collapses like a balloon at a kids party.

A brand is not what you claim.

It is what your customers say.



-------



I'm preparing the third season of the StoryLux podcast, featuring businesses that grew by focusing on a single target audience, a single offer, and a single acquisition path.

If you’ve taken that route of focus, please direct message me.

BlackBerry went from niche pager to $3.4 billion in profit in under a decade by focusing on ONE:

- one ICP, 
- one product, and 
- one channel.

To anyone who's too young to remember 😉 : Before smartphones were a thing, BlackBerrys were the coolest phone to have. 

How did they achieve that in barely a decade? (And why did they disappear in an even shorter period of time?)

BlackBerry had a relentless focus. Their entire go-to-market strategy was built around telecom carriers serving enterprise IT departments.

- One channel: carrier + procurement partnerships
- One ICP: enterprise professionals
- One message: secure, instant communication

BlackBerry owned an entire category and erased itself in a few short years.  

How did that happen?

In the early 2000s, mobile email was slow, insecure, and unreliable. Executives depended on laptops, VPNs, and delayed sync.

BlackBerry built a device that solved one problem for them:
- instant, secure email in your pocket.

That single use case turned into one of the fastest enterprise adoption waves in tech history. By the mid-2000s:
- BlackBerry had millions of enterprise users
- It dominated corporate mobile communication
- Governments, banks, and law firms standardized on it globally

Their entire system was built with relentless focus:
- One user: enterprise professionals
- One buyer: IT departments
- One promise: secure real-time communication

Then Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. BlackBerry initially dismissed it as a consumer toy and kept optimising what had always worked. 

This insistence was reinforced from its founder Mike Lazaridis (the guy in the picture). He believed the needs of their ICP would always be keyboard-first, security-first. 

The problem was that the needs of their ICP changed when they saw the iPhone: The same executives who once demanded keyboards now wanted touch-screen navigation, and app ecosystems.

BlackBerry lost sight of their changing ideal buyer's needs and thus lost their ideal buyers. By the time they shipped serious touchscreen competitors, the platform gap was already unbridgeable.

So what actually killed BlackBerry?

Not their relentless focus. 

But that they treated a preference of their ideal clients as a permanent feature. Their real mistake was freezing their internal model of that customer while the market evolved.



-------



Most small companies can’t afford a $10K/month CMO to build a working marketing system. We fill that gap by installing a marketing system and training their team to run it.

Follow me to learn how to build a marketing system that works for you.

Hedy AI

As the Founder and CEO of Hedy AI, I'm at the forefront of revolutionizing professional communication and productivity through artificial intelligence. Our mission is to transform the way businesses conduct meetings and collaborative discussions, addressing a universal pain point in the corporate world. By leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, we're empowering professionals across industries to make more informed decisions, contribute more effectively, and dramatically improve the outcomes of their interactions.

Founder and CEO

GlassWall Syndicate 

A large group of venture capitalists, foundations, trusts, non-profits, and individual investors striving to accelerate the mainstream adoption of products and services that positively impact animals, people, and the planet.

Member

EMERGE - Digital Product Agency

As Chief Operating Officer and CTO Julian helps lead Emerge's team and sets the technical direction for the company. He is responsible for the customer facing business operations and ensures that each client realizes all the benefits of Emerge’s high-quality, holistic service offerings.

Co-Founder & COO/CTO

Entrepreneurs'​ Organization

Oregon’s most influential business network, Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) Portland is run by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Connecting, supporting, and inspiring one another across the globe, EO’s community spans 14,000+ business owners in 188 chapters across 58 countries, and our Portland chapter has over 140 members.

Chapter President, Board Member

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Technology Partner Network, built by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is a group of “invite-only” global technology experts assembled as collaborative advisors and resources to accelerate tech-related solutions for global good.

Advisor, Technology Partner Network

Care2Tri

Care2Tri wishes to inspire individuals to lead a more fulfilling life through engaging in new passions, particularly endurance sports such as triathlons. We work with disabled athletes and non-athletes, veterans, addicts, and anyone else we can empower to make changes in their lives. We believe that the key to sustained personal wellness, both physical and mental, is to set goals that extend beyond ones’ self and we hope to convince others of this so that they may lead a more fulfilling life.

Secondly, we wish to promote the inclusion of individuals with disabilities so as to provide them with the opportunities that they may not otherwise be able to have.

Board Member

Nike, Inc.

Business Consultant

Web Developer

Cynobia AG

As the Founder and CEO of Hedy AI, I'm at the forefront of revolutionizing professional and educational communication through artificial intelligence. Our mission is to transform the way businesses conduct meetings and how students engage in academic discussions, addressing universal challenges in both corporate and educational environments. By leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, we're empowering professionals across industries and students at all levels to make more informed decisions, contribute more effectively, and dramatically improve the outcomes of their interactions.

My role extends beyond product development to shaping the future of AI in the workplace and classroom. I lead our efforts in forming strategic partnerships, securing funding, and driving the adoption of AI-assisted communication tools in enterprise and educational settings. 

With over 20 years of technology and product experience, I'm passionate about creating technology that enhances human potential and reshapes how we approach collaboration and learning in the AI era. I'm always open to connecting with fellow innovators, potential partners, educators, and thought leaders interested in the intersection of AI, business productivity, and educational advancement.

Julian Pscheid

Something I've wanted to build for a while is finally happening: we're launching a Hedy AI certification program.

This is a structured path from confident user to certified trainer—someone who can run their own Hedy workshops and help others discover what ambient AI can do for their professional conversations.

The structure follows proven coaching certification models (similar to NLP practitioner/master/trainer progressions):

Practitioner (2 days): 
Master the fundamentals: app functions, session contexts, real-time coaching during meetings, and post-session workflows. You'll build your own context library and develop a personal "Hedy routine" for daily use.

Master (2 days): This is where Hedy becomes part of your larger AI ecosystem. Integration with n8n, Zapier, APIs, and building Custom GPTs that complement Hedy's capabilities. Co-taught with the Hedy team.

Trainer (2 days): Learn to design and facilitate your own Hedy trainings. Covers didactics, workshop architecture, assessment frameworks, and the business model. Graduates can deliver Hedy trainings independently or as part of our growing trainer network.

Each level includes GDPR compliance content and ends with an ISO 9001-compliant certificate.

We're running the pilot program through our partnership with Torsten Koerting and the Koerting Institute in Germany—open to participants in their AI Masterclass. The first certified Hedy Trainers will receive their co-branded certificates at the KI Summit in Bad Homburg on January 30–31, 2026. I'll be there personally to hand them out.

Future cohorts will be open to the public. If you're a coach, consultant, or trainer interested in adding AI meeting intelligence to your practice—or want to build a business around teaching it—this is the path we're building.

More details coming soon.

Pioneering AI-Powered Productivity | Founder of Hedy AI

Huge news in the AI space today with Meta acquiring Limitless.

While I want to congratulate the team on the exit—it’s a testament to the incredible tech they built—I know today is a confusing day for many users.

The original appeal of Rewind/Limitless was its "local-first" approach. It was a digital memory that felt private.

But with the Mac app shutting down and the Limitless Pendant/App entering a "sunset" phase under Meta, many users are feeling displaced.

If you are a Rewind or Limitless user looking for a new home, I want to offer an alternative.

At Hedy AI, we are building the future of meeting intelligence. Unlike the "record everything" approach, we focus on active coaching—helping you communicate better in real-time on Mac, Windows, and Mobile.

Most importantly: We are independent, and we are privacy-first. We don’t train on your data, and we don’t answer to an ad-tech giant.

To help with the transition, I’m offering 3 months of Hedy for free to anyone switching over.

The link is in the comments. Your meetings should remain yours.

A Hedy AI user just showed us their desk setup, and now I'm jealous of their workflow.

Fernando coded a custom Elgato Stream Deck integration for Hedy. One physical button to start a session, another press to stop it. The icon even toggles between START and STOP states to show the current status.

It sits on their Stream Deck alongside screen recording, screenshots, and their other productivity tools. Meeting starts → press the Hedy button → instant AI meeting coach, ready to help them contribute their best insights.

Give people the tools, and they'll find ways to use them that we never imagined.
If you've built something creative with Hedy, I'd love to see it.

taplio

The Battle

Simon Chappuzeau

Julian Pscheid

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreSimon Chappuzeau's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJulian Pscheid's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Simon Chappuzeau

Julian Pscheid

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Simon Chappuzeau's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJulian Pscheid's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreSimon Chappuzeau's LinkedIn Performance