How Alain Theriault Learned the Real Role Content Plays in Building a Company

Alain Theriault is not the founder of EXOB2B; he’s a partner who has spent over 14 years inside a company that has been operating for more than two decades in Montreal.

The firm works primarily with B2B industrial, manufacturing, and high-tech companies, helping them create content that reflects their expertise.

At EXOB2B, content has long been viewed as a core strategic function, something deeply tied to how the business communicates, positions itself, and grows.

But Alain noticed a contrary scenario among most founders his company worked with: they didn’t consider content important enough to give it serious thought. 

For a long time, content lived in that same category for these founders; something secondary, something delegated, something that didn’t feel core to building the business.

But over time, that perspective inevitably had to change.

 

The Early View on Content

“Content wasn’t something founders in our space really thought about,” says Alain.

“Most of the companies we work with are B2B industrial or manufacturing. For them, the mindset was clear. Sales equalled investment. Marketing was seen as an expense.”

They often treated content as optional or something to be delegated to a junior marketing hire, rather than an essential component for business growth.

In a nutshell, content wasn’t always positioned as a strategic driver by the majority of EXOB2B partner organizations. Early on, they saw it as more of a supporting function, sitting on the sidelines while other parts of the business took priority.

When Content Started to Matter

The shift came gradually, through repeated patterns.

“We saw founders struggling to establish authority,” Alain says. At the same time, buyers were changing. They were researching more, forming opinions earlier, and looking for signals of expertise before ever speaking to a company.

Platforms like LinkedIn made that shift more visible. “Founders had more credibility than their companies when they showed up personally,” he notes.

That realization reframed the role of founder brand content. It wasn’t just about publishing. It was about presence. If founder thought leadership wasn’t visible, their expertise wasn’t either.

The Friction Founders Face with Content

Even when founders understood the importance of content and company brand, acting on it was another challenge entirely. 

Among the biggest challenges for founders is “time,” Alain says. Many were so busy they didn’t know where to start their founder content journey.

But time wasn’t the only issue. There was also confusion about what content actually meant. For many, it was reduced to something secondary rather than something strategic.

Additionally, without time, there was the tendency to delegate everything. Founders would rely entirely on marketing teams, expecting them to translate expertise into content without direct input. 

That rarely worked.

“Messaging wasn’t reflecting real authority,” Alain explains. Without the founder’s thought leadership, content felt generic. And generic content doesn’t build trust. 

The Turning Point

One example Alain shares stands out.

He worked with the CEO of a large engineering firm that had gone through a major transformation. Despite leading a company with thousands of employees, the CEO believed “he didn’t need to create content,” and that “the communications team could handle everything.”

Instead of pushing a full content strategy, Alain introduced a simple approach to help the underperforming CEO:

• Monitor relevant conversations on LinkedIn.
• Identify moments where his voice mattered.
• Send him short prompts to engage.

That’s how it started. Over time he became more active, started shaping his own content and his presence subsequently grew naturally.

How Content Changed the Business

Once that shift happened, things started to change in a way that felt practical rather than forced.

Content became more intentional, no longer treated as something reactive or disconnected from the business. At the same time, the founder’s voice became more visible, which brought a level of clarity and authenticity that hadn’t been there before.

As that visibility increased, engagement became more natural. Conversations didn’t need to be pushed. They started to happen on their own.

There was also less resistance to participating. What once felt like an extra burden or an unfamiliar task began to feel like a normal part of how the business communicated.

Just as importantly, the fear of content being too much or overwhelming ended. Instead of trying to do everything at once, the approach became simpler and more focused.

Content became targeted, relevant, and manageable.

From there, the impact was clear. Credibility for founder thought leadership increased, not because they were saying more, but because what they shared reflected real expertise.

Positioning in the market became stronger, with a clearer sense of what the company stood for and how it was different.

Engagement also shifted. It became more relevant, more connected to actual industry conversations rather than generic updates.

The gap between content and company brand began to close, creating better alignment between expertise and messaging.

In a B2B context especially, this mattered. Expertise became the differentiator. And content became the way that expertise was seen.

The Lesson for Other Founders

Most founders think content means “doing everything,” notes Alain.

But that’s not where the value comes from.

It’s about clarity, not volume. It’s about expertise, not activity. It’s about relevance, not presence everywhere.

That shift in perspective changes how content fits into the business. It stops being a constant pressure to produce and starts becoming a way to express what already exists inside the company.

There’s also a harder reality behind it. If you are not visible, you are not seen as an authority. Even if you are the best.

That realization reframes everything. Content is no longer optional but becomes the bridge between what you know and what the market can recognize.

If your expertise isn’t visible, it doesn’t exist in the market.

For founders trying to figure out where to begin, the advice is more grounded than most expect. Start with your story, not your marketing. Identify the “trigger moment” that led you to your expertise and share that narrative.

There’s no need to be everywhere at once. Don’t try to be everywhere, just be relevant somewhere.

At the same time, there’s a level of personal adjustment involved. Learn to put yourself out there. Use video if possible. Adapt to how your audience consumes content.

And just as importantly, know when to quit. Not everything should be pushed forward. Sometimes the better decision is to step back or change direction.

Closing

Looking back, the perspective that founders of most companies partnering with EXOB2B have about content  has since shifted from something optional to something inseparable from how a business is understood.

And as shown with the engineering CEO whom Alain helped, elevating content can offer several perks, including credibility for founder thought leadership.