How Morgan Snyder Learned the Real Role Content Plays in Building Companies

Morgan Snyder did not start Thought Leader Today with a grand content strategy. He started because he had worked at a healthcare startup, helped create pitch decks and white papers, and thought, “I could probably do this myself.”

That was four and a half years ago. The first year did not go well.

He got “beat up pretty badly”, as he puts it, because he tried to be everything to everyone. Website copy. Sales enablement. Marketing strategy. Social media. If someone needed it, Morgan said yes.

But saying yes to everything did not build a business. It just made him tired.

The Early View On Content

When Morgan first started, he thought his skills would translate easily. He had helped raise money for a startup, created investor materials, watched founders talk about their company, and then compared that to how they showed up online.

So he went out on his own, confident that he could pitch general marketing consulting services and find clients the same way he had done investor outreach.

He was wrong.

The first year, he got walloped. He identified as a content writer, but that meant different things to different people. If someone wanted website copy, he could do that. If someone wanted sales enablement, he could do that too. He kept mirroring whatever prospects said they needed.

Without realizing it, he was devaluing himself. Saying yes to everything signaled that he did not do anything particularly well. He had not yet figured out the relationship between content and company brand. His personal presence and business positioning felt disconnected.

When Content Started To Matter

Content started to matter when Morgan realized the broad, generalist approach was not working.

He kept rewriting how he wanted to show up, but he never landed on something that felt clear or confident. Prospects could sense it. The sales calls were not converting. The business was not growing.

The turning point came when he decided to focus exclusively on social and executive visibility. That was the work that actually excited him.

Once he narrowed the focus, everything started to change. He went from 5 or 6 consistent clients to 10, then 20, and eventually more than 30 people and brands. His founder thought leadership began to take shape because he finally had a clear point of view.

The Friction Founders Face With Content

The hardest part for Morgan was that everything felt available. He could write website copy, help with sales enablement, do marketing strategy, and help with social. But having all those options made the business harder.

As a creative person, too many options created fatigue and frustration.

The constraint of focusing on one thing helped him. Once he said, “This is the mission every day,” it became much easier to build a process and get better. This is a common struggle in any founder content journey. The pressure to be everything for everyone often kills clarity.

The Turning Point

The first major turning point was deciding to stop being a generalist. The second was realizing that his own personality could become part of the business. That is when his founder brand content started to feel authentic and not forced.

Morgan began experimenting with humor on LinkedIn after seeing people from X bring memes and comedy into the platform. He wondered if he could do something similar.

The first time he posted something funny and strange, he almost deleted it. He worried it would embarrass him or hurt his reputation. But he left it up. That post got around 100,000 impressions.

He tested another one, making a joke about a BYU Y painted on the curb by pretending it was Yale. That got around 80,000 impressions. From there, he kept experimenting. Eventually, he posted a story about helping someone at Starbucks set up their LinkedIn profile, and that got around 170,000 impressions.

Those posts changed how he thought about content and company brand. He realized that personality was not a distraction from professionalism. It was the thing that made people pay attention.

How Content Changed The Business

Once Morgan leaned into personality-driven content, the results became clear.

Before he fully embraced humor and personality, he had around 12 clients. After the shift, the business grew to around 20, then 25, and eventually more than 30 people and brands.

The content created more inbound conversations. People reached out because something he posted made them laugh or made them think there was probably a method behind the madness. His founder thought leadership became something people actually looked forward to reading.

The content did not close every deal by itself, but it created more chances to pitch, explain the work, and show people what he could do. It also gave him proof that what he was telling clients to do was something he was willing to do himself.

People started getting on exploratory calls and saying, “You are funny. Tell me about that.” That gave them a natural way into the real conversation.

The Lesson For Other Founders

Morgan thinks founders misunderstand content because they think it has to look professional in the safest possible way. They are afraid to show personality because they think people will take them less seriously. They underestimate how much founder brand content matters in a crowded market.

For him, the opposite happened. When he started putting more of his real personality into the work, people took him more seriously. It made him more memorable.

He also thinks founders misunderstand the relationship between content and company brand. They treat them as separate things. But for most small businesses, the founder’s voice is the company’s voice.

His one-line reflection: “I learned that being clear, focused, and fully myself was far more valuable than trying to look like every other professional on LinkedIn.”

Closing

Morgan’s story is not about having a perfect content strategy from day one. It is about learning the hard way that trying to be everything to everyone does not work. It is about realizing that your personality is not a liability but your competitive advantage. And it is about understanding that content is not something you fix later because it is already shaping how people understand you.

You do need to show up somewhere with a real point of view.

The sooner you figure out who you are, what you do, and how you want to be known, the sooner content starts working for you.