r/GrowthHacking

Last month, I opened up a few spots for Personal Brand Executives to join my team as we scale our client work. I kept the search targeted, receiving 45 applications over the course of two weeks.

every single candidate had the same credentials: Content Strategist, LinkedIn Growth Expert, Storyteller.

everyone claimed they could write for founders. but, only 5 candidates even made it to the short-list assessment round.

the assessment was straightforward. I gave them a brief and asked them to write a single post from a founder’s perspective. What came back from most candidates was technically correct, clean sentences, logical structure, and perfect grammar.

Basically, exactly the kind of "AI slop" that Claude or GPT-4 would write in 10 seconds.

It sounded like a polished output from a content creator,'s perspective, not a founder. it lacked the voice, and the messy reality of building a business.

Only two candidates made it to the final round. When I asked one of them how she approached the brief, she said: "I stopped trying to write it like everyone else on LinkedIn, and started trying to think like a Founder-- who is always on the path of an endless grind."

That was the line that made me select her.

I’ve spent the last 5+ years building my own community of 36k+ founders and investors on LinkedIn. I’ve seen the platform evolve from a place of genuine connection to a playground for forced influencer narratives and algorithm-chasing.

Founders are getting distracted by "growth" metrics that don't translate to business results. They are drowning in AI-generated content that looks good but says nothing.

Ghostwriting has started to become a disappearing act.

The idea is to find the clearest version of a Founder's thinking and put it on the page that inspires users, buyers, and potential clients to reach out to them. Having your own community can take you to places, and get you into rooms where you never thought you would enter.

If you are a founder, stop hiring for "LinkedIn Growth" and start hiring for the ability to synthesize thought.

If you are a writer, stop trying to write like a copywriter and start trying to think like the client. That pivot is exactly what differentiates a commodity service from a high-value partnership.

6 months ago I couldn't tell you the difference between a funnel and a landing page.

I'm a builder. I write code, not copy. Marketing felt like a foreign language — loud, manipulative, and just not me.

But I had a product I believed in and zero users. So I had to figure it out.

Here's exactly what worked.

The mindset shift that changed everything

I stopped thinking about "marketing" and started thinking about value. As an engineer, that framing clicked immediately. It's basically an API — you give value, you get trust back. Enough trust compounds into customers.

Simple. But most people skip straight to the ask.

I built free tools and let Google do the work

Instead of writing blog posts I'd never finish, I did what I know — I built things.

Small, free tools directly related to my niche. No signup required, just instant value. Under each tool, a quiet link to my actual product.

Two things happened. People using the free tools were already my exact target user. And Google started picking them up organically — free SEO with zero content marketing effort.

The tools did the outreach for me, 24/7, while I slept.

Community first, product never second

I joined Facebook groups in my niche and made one rule — give before you ever mention your product.

Answer questions. Share insights. Show up consistently. Only after genuinely contributing did I start saying "hey, I built something for this exact problem, want to try it free?"

The conversion rate on that ask was unlike anything else I tried.

Make the free plan embarrassingly good

This is the one people push back on most.

If someone on your free plan thinks "this is already incredible" — they're not churning. They're upgrading. The free plan isn't a limitation, it's your best salesperson.

I obsessed over free plan users being genuinely happy. That happiness spread. Word of mouth kicked in before I even had a paid marketing strategy.

Where I am now

50 paying customers in 2 months.

No ads. No cold outreach. No marketing budget.

Just free tools, genuine community presence, and a free plan good enough to sell itself.

If you're a builder who's been avoiding marketing because it feels fake — it doesn't have to be. Build value first. The rest follows

Been in brand management for about 6 years and looking to shift into growth marketing with a focus on AI search stuff like GEO and AEO. From what I've seen, AI search is already around 35% of website traffic and expected to hit 50% by end of this year. Google's AI Overviews are showing up in 15% of queries now and organic CTR has dropped like 18% on average, worse for informational queries. Traditional brand management feels like it's missing the boat on this. I've been messing around with optimizing content for LLM citations and AI overviews using some of the newer tools, but honestly not sure if this is a real long-term play or just another hype cycle. The community seems split - some say it's just an evolution of SEO with maybe 10% new tactics, others reckon it's a whole new discipline. For anyone who's made this pivot already, what actually moved the needle? Did you focus more on entity consistency across the web or did you change how you structure content entirely?