In this episode, Ryan shares one of his favourite LinkedIn tactics: using thought leader ads to boost posts from other people who say genuine, positive things about your brand. A testimonial posted from your own company page gets skipped over. The same praise coming from a real customer with a real voice is far more believable, but it usually dies in the feed because that person only has a few hundred followers. This tactic fixes that, letting you put real budget behind authentic advocacy and get it in front of exactly the right audience. Quick to listen to, easy to apply, and genuinely effective.

Takeaways:

• Thought leader ads let you boost an individual's post to a precisely targeted audience, not just their own followers
• Praise from a real customer in their own words is far more credible than a testimonial posted by your brand
• Build a list of happy customers, partners and advocates, then ask them to post (a small incentive like an Amazon voucher can help)
• Let people write the post themselves so it sounds genuine, but offer to draft it if they are short on time
• Always get a fact or a stat in there, and keep it snappy rather than a long essay
• Check whether people are already tagging you with positive posts, because those are ready to boost right now

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Jamie, Rocket SaaS's paid media and strategy lead, for a deep dive into what actually makes a great ad on LinkedIn and Meta. This is not about targeting or budgets (listen back to episodes 63 to 65 for that). This is about the creative: how to research what your buyers are really thinking, how to build ads across the full funnel, which ad formats are worth your time, and what needs to happen after the click. Jamie also ranks every major LinkedIn ad format out of ten in a quickfire round. If you run ads and you are not getting the results you want, this episode will show you where you are going wrong.

Takeaways:

• Great ads start with research, not design. Find the real scenarios and language your buyers use when they talk about the problem
• Use AI to analyse 100 recorded sales calls and surface the most common pain points, then build ads around exactly what your customers said
• Most B2B SaaS brands waste budget by only running bottom-of-funnel ads when they have no brand awareness to support them
• Top-of-funnel ads are about getting on the radar and building the right associations, not chasing conversions
• Middle-of-funnel ads (case studies, testimonials, comparison content) can work even to cold enterprise audiences
• At the bottom of the funnel, the offer is everything. A free strategy call or audit often beats a straight demo request
• Keep creative simple: ten words or less on the header, minimal graphics, and use dark backgrounds to fight the white LinkedIn feed
• A great ad is useless if the landing page or asset behind it does not convert. Sometimes the problem is the offer, not the ad

In this episode, Ryan makes the case for founder-led sales and explains why, at $7M ARR and over 60 employees, he is still the primary person doing sales at Rocket SaaS. No SDRs, no AEs, just the founder qualifying leads, running discovery calls and closing deals. It sounds like it shouldn't work at that scale, but Ryan argues it's one of the biggest reasons the business is growing so fast. He breaks down why the founder is almost always the best person to sell, how a strong personal brand makes those sales calls dramatically easier, and why consultative selling beats a traditional sales pitch every time. If your growth has plateaued, this episode might point to the reason why.

Takeaways:

• Until you are past roughly $10M in revenue, the founder should be spending around 50% of their time on sales and marketing
• Founder-led sales works best for higher-ticket businesses doing a handful of deals a month, not high-volume, low-ticket sales
• The strategy only works if the founder also has a strong personal brand, since people buy from people, not logos
• When the founder is front and centre of the marketing and then shows up on the sales call, it creates a seamless chain of trust that a random AE cannot replicate
• Founder-led sales is closer to consultation than selling. Ask questions, give genuine advice, and lead the dance into the pitch at the end
• Strong marketing means leads come inbound already 80% sold, rather than chasing people who are not in market
• If you plan to sell the business in the next one to two years, founder-led sales is probably the wrong strategy, since it makes the business too dependent on you
• If growth has stalled, log your time, delegate everything that is not sales and marketing, and get back to 50%