Compound Content Studio

Well, I've officially worked at Compound Content Studio for 1 year today—and I've never even posted on here about it. Which is funny, considering I’ve spent the past year ghostwriting about 2,000 posts for others. Maybe now that I have a year under my belt, I’ll start posting more—but no promises. I’m not sure I have anything valuable to say (which is ironic because I never understood why our clients said that, knowing full well they do). Anyway, I've been reflecting on the past year, and it's been a ride. Let me give you the skinny (ish): I joined Compound last March after working at a full-service agency in St. Louis. I was looking for something new, Tommy Clark sent me an email, we had an interview, and bam—hired. (Okay, not that easy, but you get it.) At the time, Compound was only 5 members strong, and I was the only woman on the team. Now, a year later, our team is predominantly women (which is something I find pretty awesome), and we’ve grown to 15 insanely talented people. Being early in my career, I've never been able to watch a company grow like this, so it’s incredible to be a part of. That said, I never actually planned on being a copywriter. I think we all have an idea of what our careers will look like. If you’d asked me in May 2022, when I was about to graduate, where I saw myself in a year, I would’ve cut you off mid-sentence to tell you I was moving to New York to work in the fashion industry—photography, graphic design, art direction, whatever. I wanted to do it all. (Anyone who knows me can vouch for this.) Well, fast-forward to now, I live in Chicago, I have the cutest cat, Wasabi, and I’m a LinkedIn ghostwriter for B2B SaaS founders. Pretty different (not the cat part, that was always a part of the vision), but I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, for the exciting part I’ve been waiting too long in this post to share…I’m excited to announce that I’m stepping into an Editor role! After a year of handling up to 7 clients at a time myself and writing thousands of pieces of content, I'll now be overseeing client accounts, mentoring writers, and helping shape our content strategy. It's been a lot of hard work to get here, but I couldn't be more excited. I want to thank the entire Compound family. But specifically, Tommy Clark, for giving me the chance to reconnect with writing. It’s been an incredibly rewarding journey, and seeing what you’ve built is amazing—you’re killing it. And Rachel Rappaport, I'm truly grateful for your mentorship. You've helped me grow so much as a writer and given me confidence I never knew I needed. So here's to year 2—more growth, more amazing clients, and maybe a few more LinkedIn posts from yours truly.

Media selection is one of the more underrated parts of producing winning LinkedIn content. Here are 3 ways to strategically use media to get more impressions and engagement from potential buyers:

Writing job opp for someone earlier in their career looking to grow. A little context about why I think you should check it out. Yesterday Tommy Clark shared a timeline of how writing online changed his career. (He's looking for a new writer at Compound Content Studio, so reach out to him if you're interested.) Why this opp stands out to me. I graduated college as an English major wondering how I could make a living writing. I stumbled around for a while and decided to set up my LinkedIn profile as a freelance writer — I'd figure out whatever assignment came my way. (Thanks Stephanie Roulic for hunting me down!) A few freelance assignments turned into a full-time job writing blog posts, white papers, case studies, solution briefs, and all kinds of things for marketing teams. There are two things that have had the biggest impact on my career. And the 5 years I spent cranking out all that content was one of them. (I'll get to the other one another time 🙂 ) Times have certainly changed. I didn't have AI at my disposal back then (I am old). But the time spent in that role were valuable for a few reasons: >> Reps, reps reps: looking back...the content I was making probably wasn't all that great. But if you're producing 10+ pieces of content per week for years, it's kind of hard not to get better. Reps matter, volume of feedback matters. >> Scrappiness: volume was the name of the game for a long time. And that often meant making do with what you had. When your clients are B2B tech companies with complex products, you have to get good at understanding new concepts quickly. (I remember writing an article for DataDog and flailing around trying to figure out what "observability for cloud-scale applications" actually meant.) >> Deadlines: perfectionism quickly goes out the window when you've got three blog posts to deliver the next day. Not advocating for unrealistic deadlines. But simply getting used to working on a deadline was huge for me. I'm sure Tommy has much better systems and processes in place than I ever did. Even still, I'll bet you come out of that role with some of the same value I found in a full-time writing role.

Tommy and I have BIG goals for Compound Content Studio. And we know exactly what it takes to get there. 3 words: Quality. Ownership. Speed. Coincidentally, those are also our 3 core values that guide every single decision and move we make for the business. I'll tell you what they mean to us. 1. Quality This is our North Star. 99% of our challenges are solved when we nail quality. In the agency space, quality is the name of the game. It keeps our clients happy. Which means they refer us. Which means we get even more new business. Quality also helps us recruit because anyone who shares the same obsession will want to join the team. 2. Ownership If you haven't read Extreme Ownership, let me give you the premise: Anything that happens on your watch is your responsibility. We expect our writers to act like account managers. We expect our editors to act like account managers. We expect everyone in the agency to take full ownership. And for our people managers, we expect them to take accountability for anything that happens under their leadership. The right people want more ownership not less. 3. Speed When you're small and agile, you have a massive competitive advantage. You can just move faster. Full stop. As an agency, this is even more important because the faster we can get content over to our clients, the faster we can prove value. It creates trust and a level of partnership that moving slowly just can't provide. Clients have a post they want to get out tomorrow? No problem. Need to shift the topics around? You got it. And anyone who says speed and quality can't coexist just hasn't cracked it yet 😉 If we continue to nail these values and run every action or decision through them, we'll easily get to mid-7 figures this year. -- BTW—We're hiring a Content Writer and Content Editor. You can find both JDs on the Compound Content Studio LinkedIn page.

2 years ago when I first started my agency, Compound, I thought “core values” were stupid, corporate HR slop that didn’t mean anything. Just do great work. Right? Right?? Well, that was a stupid opinion to hold. As were many of my initial assumptions as an overconfident individual-contributor-turned-founder. Shocker. As the team grew from just me to ~5 employees, I went through growing pains as a new manager. I had a standard that I wanted to see. But I had no idea how to get the entire team to live by that standard without me having eyes on everything all the time. It drove me crazy. I realized that, despite what I initially thought, core values are actually helpful for establishing culture. Done right, they give the team a formula to follow when I’m not in the room. So I drafted 7 of them. They helped. But there was still something off. Confession: I only ever committed 3 of them to memory. Couldn’t tell you what the other 4 were. The values weren’t ‘wrong.’ They were unfocused. And they just weren’t what I relied on in my day-to-day as CEO. Eventually, rather than reviewing the list every time we onboarded a new team member, I decided to slash the list to the 3 we actually used. (1) Quality (2) Ownership (3) Speed A few notes on each: - Quality is our North Star. Quality client work solves all of our business problems. Retention. Lead gen. Team morale. As such, I am recruiting content pros who are obsessed with the craft. - Ownership is a must for an early company. I have time to train, not to handhold. Our best team members own projects start to finish. - Speed is a competitive advantage as a small agency. 100+ person agencies can’t possibly be as nimble. We need to use this to our advantage. If we use these 3 values as a filter for every hire we bring on and every action we take as a company, I’m confident we’ll (1) do great client work (2) scale to mid-7-figures. Values make decisions obvious. ‘Difficult’ calls aren’t actually that hard when I hold them up to these 3 values. Nothing is more rewarding to me as a founder than seeing a team member hold our standard without my input. That happens regularly now. Night-and-day from 2 years back. One more thought: Great values also repel just as much as attract. If you're turned off by ‘moving fast,’ Compound likely isn’t the place for you. If you want to fast track your path to becoming a Top 1% content professional, I don’t think there’s a better place to be. PS: If you want to join our team, we’re hiring for 2 roles right now. Content Writer and Content Editor. You can find both JDs on the Compound Content Studio LinkedIn page.

We're hiring a Content Editor at Compound Content Studio! Want to join a premium boutique content agency for B2B software and AI companies? Since we launched 2 years ago, we've been at capacity with a waiting list. And we've got big plans for 2025. This is a perfect fit for someone who wants to work with a talented team and inspiring founders and loves editing and writing. A few qualities we're looking for: - Obsessed with the quality of your work. A content nerd with high standards for yourself and your team. - Ownership over your projects and client relationships. You know who Jocko Willink is. - A bias for moving fast. Speed is our competitive advantage as an early-stage agency. It's not a ‘chill’ company. Qualifications: - 3-5+ years of experience in B2B written content (agency experience is a plus) - A strong understanding of B2B tech concepts and terminology - Deeply familiar with LinkedIn content strategy - Impeccable written and verbal communication skills Location: the Content Editor role is remote, US-based. Salary: 90-100K USD, depending on experience. JD and application next steps can be found on the Compound Content Studio company LinkedIn page under the Jobs section.

I was meditating at a spiritual retreat in France when I made the decision to join Compound Content Studio. Now I'm the Head of Content. It's been a wild 7 months... I realize I haven't shared my story here on LinkedIn before, so I wanted to share it now. My career wasn't exactly a straight line. If you go far enough back, I was once on track to be a starving artist. I studied opera in college before eventually deciding I preferred to keep singing as a hobby and threw myself into marketing. In 2017, I moved to New York City and took an internship at Convene. Over the next 3 years, I went from marketing to events, even helping open the 64th floor of the World Trade Center (that's a story for another post). Then COVID hit. And the events industry was one of the first to feel the effects. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise - it launched my transition into tech at Bizzabo. 2 years and 4 roles later, we had grown to over 400 people. But I felt the urge to go back to the startup phase. I then took on senior content roles at Singular and Tropic, but something was still missing. The truth is, I LOVED writing. I missed working directly with clients. Most importantly, I wanted to have a deeper impact on the world. Then I found Compound. Or maybe Compound found me - the universe has a funny way of working sometimes. In June 2024, during that retreat in France, I had my final interview with Tommy. After days of meditation, the choice was clear. It was time to make the leap to the agency side. Getting to spend my days writing, editing, and leading content was exactly what I wanted and most importantly, joining Compound meant I'd get to help founders and entrepreneurs share their stories with the world. This was the impact I was looking for. I truly believe entrepreneurs make the world a better place, and I'm thrilled that I get to help them do that every day. Founder-led content is the future (well, it's actually the now, so get on that!) and I'm beyond excited to be riding this wave with an incredible team and incredible clients. Pictured: our recent unofficial offsite and me overcoming my fear of heights

It seems like every B2B founder wants to start posting content in 2025. This is great! But there’s a problem. 90% of them have no idea what to post. You might be one of them. Let’s fix that. We compiled a list of 11 winning content plays any B2B SaaS founder can run on LinkedIn. Read here: https://lnkd.in/dguNJdJG

How to come up with endless content topics as an early-stage startup founder (with a busy schedule): As a founder, your calendar contains all the content inspiration you need. You're always talking to customers. Talking to prospects. Talking to your team. The Google Calendar Method is simple: every week, once per week, review your calendar. Do any meetings stand out to you? Were there any moments that triggered a particular response? Ideally, you want these to either be positive moments you resonated with, or negative moments that kinda pissed you off. Another variation could be moments that surprised you. You just need some sort of emotional response. A few examples: > A team member going above and beyond for a customer could turn into a post about how you build company culture. > A specific objection from a prospect about price point could turn into a write-up that overcomes that objection. > A comment from an industry peer about a trend happening in your space could turn into a predictions post. After you’re in the content game long enough, you start to listen for hooks in conversations. You become a sort of alchemist who have turn fragments of insights into niche-viral LinkedIn content.

Founders. Please, please, please stop playing the "content" game on ultra-hard mode. Too many CEOs are terrified of "repeating themselves" on LinkedIn. This is a false belief that needs to be uprooted. The truth? You put in so much work to find a winning post. Use that to your advantage! Repetition is a tool. More in today's video walk-through.