LinkedIn Content Strategy for Founder Coaches | Netwarm
LinkedIn playbook · Case study
LinkedIn content strategy for founder coaches: how a Brighton coach and ex-SaaS CEO reached 269 founders and CEOs in a month
We read every reaction on 30 posts from a Brighton founder coach and ex-SaaS CEO. 2,406 people, 269 founders and CEOs. Here is what brings buyers, what brings peers, and the 5 posts we'd publish next.
Max Sawyer · Netwarm··14 min read
The creator in this case studyA Brighton founder coach and ex-SaaS CEO
Followers37,453
Posts~7 a week
Sells1:1 founder coaching, business transformation so less depends on the founder, and practical AI and agents to remove work that no longer needs a person
PeriodOct 9 – Nov 7
Ideal client: Founders and CEOs of growing businesses whose company has started to consume more of their time, attention and judgement, and who want more profit, more capacity and more life outside work.The challenge: The founder coach posts every day to an audience of 37,000, and the posts travel: 25,393 reactions in a month. That reach brings a very wide crowd: coaches, consultants, managers, people building careers. The question for LinkedIn is which posts reach the founders who would hire a coach to build a business that needs less of them, and which ones mostly reach everyone else.
These numbers are from 7 November. Your audience has already moved.
New founders and CEOs turn Hot every week and others go quiet. Run your free scan to see today’s version, with the names.
269 founders and CEOs among 2,406 people.They made up 11.2% of the people who reacted in a month. Coaches, consultants, advisors, speakers and other service sellers made up 23.6%: 568 people.
Lessons from famous leaders bring 1.7x the share of buyers of brain science posts.Leader lessons: 13% founders and CEOs over 8 posts. Brain science: 7.5% over 3 posts. The Bezos empty chair post reached 20%, the best of the period.
12 founders and CEOs keep coming back.They reacted to 3 posts or more. One reacted to 6 of the 30.
01
Who actually reads you, and what the LinkedIn algorithm changed
The founder coach posted 30 times between October 9 and November 7, one post a day: lessons from Buffett, Bezos, Jobs and Jensen Huang, AI and the future of careers, trust and feedback, sleep and the brain, a 100-mile run, and short clips turned into business lessons.
The LinkedIn algorithm shows a post to the people who reacted to the last ones, then to people like them. With 37,000 followers and daily posts, that crowd gets wide fast: other coaches, managers, people thinking about their careers. Reach can't tell them apart from the founder who would hire a coach. Who reacted can. We looked at the first 100 people who reacted to each post and sorted them by role.
30posts in a month
2,406people reacted
269founders and CEOs
12came back 3+ times
Audience by roleThe 2,406 people who reacted, by roleFree
Coaches, consultants, advisors, speakers & other service sellers568 · 23.6%
Everyone else1,569 · 65.2%
Buyers are 269 people, about 1 in 9. Peers are twice as many: 568 coaches, consultants, advisors, trainers, speakers and recruiters. Many of them have founder in their headline too, but they sell help to founders rather than buy it.
Everyone else is mostly managers, directors and specialists inside larger companies: people who like a good leadership lesson, but rarely the ones who hire a founder coach. The next section shows which posts reached the founders.
SeniorityAll people who reactedFree
Founder, owner, C-level19.2%
Director, VP6.9%
Manager13%
Independent8.2%
Other52.7%
IndustriesFounders and CEOs onlyNetwarm
Software, AI and tech companies26%
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See all industries and company sizes in your free scan.
Core audience12 founders and CEOs engaged 3+ times · 2 engaged 5+ timesNetwarm
12 founders and CEOs keep coming back. One of them reacted to 6 of the 30 posts.See your regulars
Engager company sizeEveryone who reacted, by company sizeNetwarm
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See which company sizes your founders and CEOs work at.See company sizes
02
What to post on LinkedIn to reach founders and CEOs
Most creators judge a post by its reactions. A founder coach should judge it by who reacted.
We tagged each of the 30 posts by topic, then measured the share of founders and CEOs among the people who reacted.
Your topicsWhat your 30 posts were aboutFree
30posts
Lessons from famous leaders8
Stories and life lessons8
Team and leadership skills6
AI and the future of careers5
Brain science3
Topics that attract founders and CEOsShare of each topic’s reactions from founders and CEOsNetwarm
Lessons from famous leaders13.0%
AI and the future of careers12.5%
Team and leadership skills11.4%
Stories and life lessons8.1%
Brain science7.5%
One topic brings 1.7x the share of founders and CEOs of another. See which.See which topics
Lessons from famous leaders bring 1.7x the share of founders and CEOs that brain science posts do (13% against 7.5%), and the most per post: 12.9 founders and CEOs each.
Posts that brought the most founders and CEOsShare of founders and CEOs in each post’s reactions1 of 5 open
#1Jeff Bezos famously left an empty chair in meetings20%
#2Steve Jobs got one thing right. And another badly wrong.19.2%
#3Two people can be right. And still be missing the point.17%
#4One of the most dangerous career mistakes still gets mistaken for being sensible16.3%
#5What if the limit on your growth isn't real?16%
For comparison, the post on the brain's default mode network brought 3 founders and CEOs among 68 people (4.4%), and the post on 47-second attention spans brought 5 among 100. Both are useful reads, written for anyone who works rather than for the founder deciding what to change.
7 rules for LinkedIn engagement from founders and CEOs
These rules come from what worked on the founder coach's own profile, and from the best-performing posts by founder coaches, CEO coaches and advisors on LinkedIn over the last 3 months.
1
Borrow a famous leader, end on a 10-person business. Bezos, Buffett and Jobs pull the reader in. The founders stay for the line that turns it into their problem: "just as relevant to a 10-person business as a global giant."On this profile: lessons from famous leaders brought 13% founders and CEOs, the highest of the five topics, and the Bezos post reached 20%.
Number the lessons. One leader, a handful of numbered rules, one line each. It's easy to save and easy to forward to a co-founder.Across the niche: Eric Partaker's "Warren Buffett's 7 Rules for CEOs" drew 12,851 likes and 418 comments.
Admire the result, question the behaviour. Founders are tired of hero worship. A post that keeps the result and challenges the method gives them permission to lead differently.On this profile: the Jobs and Kevin O'Leary post drew 1,636 reactions and 19.2% founders and CEOs.
Name the CEO's mistake in the first line. "Most CEOs confuse a full calendar with a full life." The reader checks their own diary before the second line.On this profile: the Buffett and Gates calendar post brought 15.6% founders and CEOs.
Show both sides before you take one. The founder and the team both think they're right. Writing both views, then one practical question, reads like a coach in the room rather than a lecture.On this profile: "Two people can be right" brought 17% founders and CEOs.
Use the clip, but make the lesson the founder's. A film or TV clip stops the scroll. The post works when the lesson lands on a founder's week, not on the clip.Across the niche: Ian Tenenbaum's post on a film clip, turned into a lesson for founders, drew 27,373 likes and 733 comments.
Put yourself in it. A first-hand story gives the advice weight: the 100-mile run, then a tool founders can use the same week.On this profile: the 100-mile run post brought 16% founders and CEOs, above the 11.2% average.
When founders and CEOs read: the best time to post on LinkedIn for founder coaches
We compared the share of founders and CEOs by the day each post was published, in UK time. All 30 posts went out around midday, so the hour can't be compared.
Share of founders and CEOs by posting dayAmong the people who reacted to each postFree
10.4%
Mon
13.3%
Tue
7.2%
Wed
13.9%
Thu
12.0%
Fri
10.1%
Sat
8.3%
Sun
Thursday brought the highest share of founders and CEOs, 13.9% over 4 posts. Tuesday came second at 13.3% over 4 posts, then Friday at 12%. Wednesday was the lowest at 7.2%, and Sunday 8.3%.
Keep the daily rhythm, but put the leader lessons and the posts that name a CEO mistake on Tuesday and Thursday, and keep the lighter brain and life posts for Wednesday and the weekend.
05
5 posts ready to publish to target founders and CEOs
Each post follows the rules above, in the founder coach's voice. Swap in your own details before posting: the real client, the real week and the real numbers are what make it land.
1Ready to postLeader lesson, numbered
Andy Grove's one line on what a manager actually producesRule 1: borrow a famous leader, end on a lesson for a 10-person business. Modelled on the Bezos empty chair post, the best share of founders and CEOs of the period (20%).
Hook
Andy Grove ran Intel with one uncomfortable rule.A manager's output is the output of the team.Not the emails sent.
Not the meetings attended.
Not the problems personally fixed at 10pm.The team's output.It sounds obvious.Yet most founders I work with still measure their week by what they did themselves.4 lessons a 10-person business can steal from Grove:1. Your work is leverage, not volume.
↳ An hour spent training someone can pay back every week for years.
↳ An hour spent doing their job pays back once.2. Every decision you hold is a queue.
↳ If everything waits for you, you are the bottleneck.
↳ Not because you're slow. Because you're the only door.3. Meetings are a tool, not a calendar filler.
↳ Grove used them to transfer judgement.
↳ If nobody leaves a meeting able to decide more, it was a status update.4. Train the replacement before you need one.
↳ Write down how you decide, not just what you decided.
↳ Then let someone else decide, and review it.The point isn't to work less for the sake of it.It's to build a business whose output doesn't depend on how many hours you can stay awake.So ask yourself this week:What did my team produce that I didn't touch?If the answer is "not much", that's the work.
Visual · Photo with quoteA black-and-white photo of Andy Grove with the line "A manager's output is the output of the team" in large type, like the Bezos post.Check before postingQuote Grove from High Output Management as written. Swap the 10pm detail for a real habit you see in founders.
Most founders think they're the bottleneck because they're the bestRule 4: name the CEO's mistake in the first line. Modelled on "Most CEOs confuse a full calendar with a full life" (15.6% founders and CEOs).
Hook
Most founders think they're the bottleneck because they're the best.They're the bottleneck because nothing was designed to work without them.A founder I worked with counted every decision that came to them in one week.61.We sorted them into four piles:↳ What genuinely needed the founder: 9.
↳ What someone else should own: 27.
↳ What AI or a simple process could handle: 16.
↳ What nobody should be doing at all: 9.The founder wasn't slow.The business was built around one inbox.Here's what changed in the next 30 days:1. Decision rights in writing
↳ Who decides, up to what amount, and when they check in.2. One page per repeat decision
↳ How the founder thinks about it, so someone else can do it 80% as well.3. AI on the paperwork
↳ Summaries, first drafts, chasing. Nobody's judgement needed.4. A stop list
↳ Reports nobody reads. Meetings nobody would miss.The founder got back roughly a day a week.The business didn't slow down.It sped up, because nobody was waiting in the queue.Count your decisions this week.You might be surprised how few actually need you.
Visual · Simple chartA four-bar chart: needs you 9, someone else 27, AI or process 16, nobody 9. Plain colours, one line of title.Check before postingUse the real numbers from a client week, with details changed so nobody can recognise the business.
Jack Welch got the results. Should you copy the method?Rule 3: admire the result, question the behaviour. Modelled on the Jobs and Kevin O'Leary post (19.2% founders and CEOs, 1,636 reactions).
Hook
Jack Welch built the most valuable company in the world.GE later dropped his favourite management tool.The vitality curve: rank everyone, reward the top 20%, and let the bottom 10% go. Every year.It worked for a while.It also taught people to compete with each other instead of with the market.There's a lot to admire in Welch.The pace. The clarity. The refusal to accept mediocre.But there's a danger in copying the method because you admire the result.Three things stand out to me.1. High standards don't need forced losers.
↳ A 10-person business can't afford to lose one good person a year to a quota.2. Ranking people tells them where they stand. Not how to get better.
↳ Coaching does that. Ranking only sorts.3. What worked at GE in the 1980s was built for GE in the 1980s.
↳ Your size, your market and your people are different.After 20 years with founders, here's what I've seen work instead:Clear roles.
Honest feedback, often.
And the courage to act when someone isn't right for the role, without needing a curve to do it for you.Admire the results.Choose the methods yourself.
Visual · Video clipA short interview clip of Welch on the vitality curve, with captions, as in the Jobs and O'Leary post.Check before postingKeep the GE facts as stated: the vitality curve and its later abandonment. Add one real example from your own work if you have one.
The diary audit: what goes in the jar firstRule 7: put yourself in it, then offer the tool. Modelled on the 100-mile post (16% founders and CEOs), and it offers the lead magnet from section 06.
Hook
Every Friday I look at my diary and ask one question.What in here genuinely needed me?It's the same question I ask the founders I work with.And the answer is usually uncomfortable.A full diary feels like importance.Most of the time it's just a diary nobody designed.So I made the audit I use into one page.You go through last week, meeting by meeting, task by task, and put each one in one of four boxes:1. Needs me
↳ The decisions and relationships only you can handle.2. Someone else should own it
↳ With the authority to decide, not just to do.3. AI or a process can handle it
↳ Notes, drafts, chasing, reporting.4. Nobody should be doing it
↳ The meeting that outlived its purpose.Then you count the boxes.The first time I did it, box 1 was the smallest.That's normal.It's also the point.Because the aim isn't a busier founder.It's a better business that needs less of you.Want the one-page audit?Comment DIARY and I'll send it over.
Visual · Document previewA photo of the one-page audit on a desk, the four boxes visible, a pen on top.Check before postingMake sure the one-page audit exists before posting, and tell your real Friday habit in your own words.
The founder sees no ownership. The team sees no direction.Rule 5: show both sides before you take one. Modelled on "Two people can be right" (17% founders and CEOs).
Hook
The founder sees a team that won't take ownership.The team sees a founder who keeps changing direction.Both are right.That's the problem.From the founder's chair:↳ Decisions come back to me.
↳ Nobody pushes back until it's too late.
↳ I have to check everything.From the team's chair:↳ Every decision gets reopened.
↳ Last month's priority is this month's distraction.
↳ Why own something that will be changed anyway?Same business.Different side of the ball.The lesson isn't "be more empowering."That's too vague.The real lesson is:Ownership only grows where decisions stay decided.So before deciding who is wrong, try this:1. Write down the three decisions you reopened last month.
2. Ask the team what changed for them each time.
3. Agree which decisions are theirs, and what would make you step back in.Then keep your hands off.It will feel slower for a few weeks.It won't be.Most ownership problems aren't people problems.They're design problems.You just need to sit in the other chair.
Visual · Split graphicTwo chairs facing each other, one labelled founder, one labelled team, with the three lines from each side under it.Check before postingIf you have a real client example, use it with details changed. Keep the three steps practical.
Our pick for the founder coach: the one-page diary audit
Our pick for you: “Our pick for the founder coach: the one-page diary audit”The calendar posts already speak to founders: the Buffett and Gates post brought 15.6% founders and CEOs, and the jar story is built on the same idea. Turn the four questions from the founder coach's own work (what needs you, what someone else should own, what AI can handle, what nobody should do) into a one-page audit of last week's diary. Offer it with "Comment DIARY" (draft 4) and every comment is a founder looking at their own week.With a Reveal link, every person who downloads it is shown by name, with their role and how warm they are. Your first Reveal link is free.Create your free Reveal link
07
From reactions to clients: the founders and CEOs to message this week
Most founders who read the founder coach's posts never comment. They react, or just read, and move on. Of the 269 founders and CEOs who reacted, 12 came back to 3 posts or more.
Netwarm marks a person Hot when they react to several posts in a short time. That's the moment a message lands: the founder already knows the name and has been thinking about the problem.
Hot right now2 founders and CEOs · not contacted yetNetwarm
2 founders and CEOs are Hot. See who to message first.See who’s Hot
First messageAn opener for each Hot person, based on the posts they readNetwarm
Saw you've been reading the posts on founders who are always on. Is your diary still yours at the moment?You reacted to a couple of my posts on decisions this week. Curious: how many of them still come back to you?Thanks for reading along. If it's useful, I can send the one-page diary audit I use with founders.
A first line for each of them, ready to send.See the openers
See who's Hot on your own profile in your free scan.
08
FAQ
On this profile, lessons from famous leaders brought 13% founders and CEOs, 1.7x the 7.5% of brain science posts. The single best post for buyers was the Bezos empty chair post: 20%.
Thursday: 13.9% founders and CEOs over 4 posts. Tuesday came second at 13.3%. Wednesday was the lowest at 7.2%. Every post went out around midday UK time.
Look at who reacted, not how many. Here, 269 of 2,406 people were founders and CEOs, and 568 were coaches, consultants and other service sellers. Watch the buyers who come back: 12 reacted to 3 posts or more.
Yes. Netwarm only uses public reactions, the names anyone can see under a post. It needs no LinkedIn login and never posts or messages from your account.
How we made this playbook
Period: October 9 to November 7, 2026. 30 posts, one a day.
We read the first 100 people who reacted to each post: 2,406 different people. Comments were not counted.
People were grouped by the role in their headline. Role groups are approximate: a founder who sells coaching or consulting counts as a peer, not a buyer.
Niche rules and lead magnets come from the best-performing LinkedIn posts by founder coaches, CEO coaches and advisors over the last 90 days.
