Startup Founders: Here’s How to Turn Your Pitch Deck Into Thought Leadership Content

You’re short on time. So why not repurpose your hard work?

This post originally appeared in my thought leadership newsletter for founders, Leading Out Loud.

Showing up consistently as the public face of your company takes a ton of time, right? And time is something you don’t have much of as a founder.

I have two responses to that:
1. You don’t need to spend hours each week to show up consistently
2. You don’t need to start from scratch to come up with great things to write about

You’re already sitting on so much material. You officially have my permission to repurpose all the stuff you can publicly share.

Take your latest pitch deck as just one example. Bet you could write at least a month’s worth of content from that one document alone. Don’t believe me? Let’s break it down:

• What stats did you include? Now go a step further. What stories can you tell (real or hypothetical) that showcase the human impact of those stats? How about the societal impact?
• Now look at your vision slide. Spend some time thinking about how you arrived at that vision. Go as far back as you can, even before you decided to start a company. Every step on the path from “I have this crazy idea” to where you are today is a story worth telling. The big stuff and the little moments, too. How has your vision evolved over time? How has your industry? How has the world changed?
• Next up? Your roadmap slide. Look at where you’ve been and where you want to go next. What stands out from the successes, setbacks, conversations with your target customers, etc.?
• Then there’s your team slide. When you think about the people you included here, what stories and memories come to mind? Why was working with them a no-brainer?

Write a post addressing one of these bullets each week. You might even get multiple content ideas for each one. And since you likely practiced your deck so many times that it’s permanently burned into your memory, odds are turning those slides into content will feel pretty simple.

Liked reading this? I publish thought leadership and storytelling tips for founders every week in my newsletter, Leading Out Loud. Subscribe here.