Why storyarb Pivoted From Ghostwriting for Founders to Producing Niche Content for Customers’ ICP

I was wrong. 18 months ago, I launched @storyarb to be the best content agency for founders & executives. My vision was a $10,000,000/year ghostwriting business.

SPOILER: we pivoted. But the future has never looked brighter. Today, storyarb is a B2B company's outsourced Head of Content Marketing. We help our partners create high-quality, niche content for their ICP, while driving scalable demand & pipeline.

Keep reading (below) for the full story... I launched storyarb to be the best content agency for founders & executives. I saw the acceleration of short-form video agencies (viralcuts, clipt, shortzy), but felt like there were no businesses supporting execs on text-based social (twitter & linkedin). From my own experience (and that of other founder friends), I knew that Twitter/Linkedin could be a magnet of opportunity.

From my own experience (and that of other founder friends), I knew that Twitter/Linkedin could be a magnet of opportunity.

• It’s how I’ve met amazing entrepreneurs like @RomeenSheth , @jspujji , @alexisohanian.
• It’s how I’ve gotten 8-figures worth of advertisers at @MorningBrew.
• And it’s how I’ve worked through business ideas, company challenges, & thoughts on where the world is going.

At the same time, I knew most founders didn’t have the chops or the time to create great content, solo on social.

Which led to a literal shower thought.

What if I pair founders with world-class strategists & copywriters. A strategist would pull unique insights from the founder & help set their social strategy. A copywriter would translate ideas into sharp content. Seems logical, right?

Personal brand is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have for founders. The result was 5-6 months of smooth sailing with a client followed by the gutpunch…

“Can we catch up?”

Churn for exec social became unpalatable. It was driven by:

1. Founders becoming impatient & expecting results sooner.
2. Founders being pulled in 50 directions & lacking time for social content.
3. Founders feeling like their internet voice was slightly different from their real life voice.

My cofounder, @AbbyMurray, and I knew that we had to get off the hamster wheel if we wanted to build a $10m biz. So we did two things:

First, we asked ourselves: “What unfair advantages do we have as a business today?” “The best writers & strategists on the internet, period. We have better ideas & execution.”

Second, we listened to our customers (and honestly, no one else). We reflected on past convos:

• A B2B HR Tech co asked if we could write their newsletter
• An e-comm SaaS founder asked for help with e-books
• A CMO wanted a company social revival

We also interviewed the shit out of our customers. We asked them if they had any other content needs. We asked their marketing teams about their biggest current challenges. We asked “if you had access to world-class writers/content minds, how would you use them?”

The answer (and our pivot) became clear.

Founders kinda need content help. B2B companies reallyyyy need content help.

Marketing teams are scrambling to stand out & grow their business today.

• Marketing costs are rising (adios cookies, bye zero interest rates, hello increased competition)
• Product differentiation is narrowing (software + AI begets more software + AI)
• Attribution has become religion, which forces marketers into a box of undifferentiated content
• Most brands are living in a sea of sameness (groupthink + AI tooling)
• Headcount is recalibrating (we no longer live in pre-COVID La La Land)

Which means every marketer & every company is looking to stand out creatively & acquire customers cheaply & scalably. High-quality, high-value content that drives demand is one of the answers.

But marketing orgs aren’t equipped to build & execute stand-out content strategies for 5 main reasons:

1. They don’t know how to hire great content talent (copywriters, video creators, producers, strategists), because they’ve never had to do so.
2. They have marketers doing a lot of the content work, but are starting to realize it’s a completely different skill from most marketing responsibilities.
3. They have 1-2 team members creating content, but it feels flat & they have no idea what the hell to do now.
4. They do a poor job of tracking performance & connecting content to pipeline.
5. Content isn’t centralized...so it’s good in some places, fine in others, and f*cking atrocious elsewhere.

Today, storyarb is your outsourced Head of Content Marketing, helping to resuscitate your company’s lifeless content (no matter which situation you’re in). It starts with us understanding the state of your content today. This includes a literal content colonoscopy up & down the org:

• Newsletters
• Email marketing
• Company social
• Founder social
• Ad creative
• Website copy
• Blog posts
• Lead magnets
• SOPs/technical docs
• [FILL IN THE BLANK]

Next, our strategists & writers work in lockstep to UNF*CK YOUR CONTENT by answering one crucial question:

“What strategy (read: channels & ideas) will allow us to drive scalable customer demand without sacrificing the quality of our content?”

That was the pivot. And it’s working in a big way.

Series C tech startups to publicly traded multinationals trust us to be their Head of Content Marketing & we’re driving pipeline with high-quality, niche content built for our customers’ ICP.

A few final notes as I reflect on the experience & journey building @storyarb alongside Abby over the last year.

1. Pivots are basically inevitable. The odds that your day 1 product is your day 365 product is close to zero. It’s impossible to make perfect assumptions pre-launch & what’s most important is how you sift through info from your customers & make intuitive & informed decisions thereafter.

   
   

2. There is a business to build around founder social, it’s just not a recurring revenue agency. If I was to build a founder/exec social-only business again, it’d be a combo of courses (organized by platform & expertise), corporate workshops & paid community (accountability/engagement groups).

   
   

3. Building a great business is far more important than being right. As a first-time founder, you want to stay the course & protect your ego. As a second-time founder, you want to make adjustments & build a strong, dependable business.

   
   

4. Great talent creates great competencies. Great competencies create options. The only reason we’ve been able to evolve storyarb & crush it for our current clients is because the business was built on a foundation of exceptional talent.

I hope this post made pivoting feel a little less like a failure to you. And if you’re a marketer, I hope this post made you feel like you don’t have to settle for mediocre content, while growing your business.