From Underdeveloped to Industry Voice: Building a Tech Executive's Thought Leadership Platform

Content Strategy, Ghostwriting, Media Relations, Executive Coaching

The Situation

When the brand brought on a tech expert with the title of Futurist, the vision was clear: establish him as a recognized voice in the smart home and home automation space. He had the credentials, had rubbed elbows with some of tech's biggest names, and had genuine curiosity and opinions about where the industry was headed. What he didn't have was visibility, a media presence, or a content engine to build one.

That's where I came in.

The Approach

Rather than starting with tactics, we started with immersion. I met with him weekly to absorb how he thought; not just what he believed about smart home technology, but how he talked about it. I made note of the phrases he reached for most, the tangents he went down, and ideas he kept circling back to. I took recordings instead of notes so I could capture his style of speaking, not just the content of his ideas.

From those sessions, I developed a topic strategy that incorporated what genuinely interested him, what the media was actively looking for, where SEO opportunity existed, and what aligned with brand partnerships and product direction. That four-way filter kept the content useful to the brand without ever making him feel like a spokesman.

We built out the full infrastructure: a media bio, a press page, LinkedIn presence, and media training. Then we went to work placing content.

The channel mix was deliberate. We targeted high-credibility tech media like Wired, TechCrunch, and TechTarget for bylined pieces that would establish him as an expert contributor rather than just a brand voice. We pursued podcast appearances in the smart home and IoT space, including programs where he had pre-existing relationships. We also positioned him for interview opportunities at major industry events like CES, where visibility compounds quickly.

The ghostwriting process itself wasn't complicated, and I'd argue the simplicity was the point. Brain dump sessions and recordings gave me deep enough familiarity with the executive’s voice that I could write in it without them having to fix it.

The Results

Bylined pieces reached tens of millions of combined readers. Podcast appearances reached audiences of 10,000 to 100,000 monthly listeners across the IoT space. Ultimately, the was appointed president of the parent company’s new venture capital firm. He has since been named to Constellation Research's Business Transformation 150 in both 2023 and 2024, an elite global list recognizing executives leading business transformation efforts, and is now a repeat contributor to multiple major tech publications and a regularly sought-after speaker.