LinkedIn founder voice playbook with post templates that travel

# LinkedIn Voice Playbook — Maya Okafor, Founder/CEO, NorthwallAI **Industry:** Applied AI for financial services compliance **Voice traits:** Dry humor, technical depth, direct, allergic to corporate-speak --- ## Voice Principles 1. **Never start with "I'm excited to announce."** If it needs that preamble, it's not actually exciting. Lead with the thing. 2. **Specific numbers always beat adjectives.** "38 compliance officers" > "many teams." 3. **Name the emotion you were actually having.** Fear, confusion, irritation, pride — use the real one. Not "humbled." 4. **One idea per post.** If you have two, post twice. 5. **Shorter sentences than feel correct.** LinkedIn is read on phones, between meetings. Three lines is plenty. 6. **Never say "thoughts?" at the end.** Ask a real question or don't ask. 7. **Dry humor lives in the specific detail.** "Spent 9 hours yesterday reading a PDF that was itself a scan of another PDF" is funnier than "compliance is hard." --- ## Content Pillars ### Pillar 1: "What I Saw This Week" (40% of posts) Observations from customer calls, team, or the industry. Specific, small, not self-promotional. **Example hooks:** - "A compliance officer showed me her spreadsheet today. It was 11,000 rows." - "Overheard at a conference: 'Our AI strategy is we're not allowed to use ChatGPT.'" - "A customer just told me they've hired 4 humans this year to check what the AI wrote." ### Pillar 2: "Founder Lessons, Unvarnished" (25%) Real mistakes with the real number attached. No hero arcs. **Example hooks:** - "Burned \$180K on a GTM hire I fired in 11 weeks. Here's what I missed." - "Our first enterprise deal closed because I stopped demoing." - "I wrote our pricing page in 20 minutes and it was wrong for 14 months." ### Pillar 3: "The Technical Bit" (20%) Short, high-density technical explanations that a non-expert can almost follow. **Example hooks:** - "Why our model refuses to answer some questions — and why that's the feature, not the bug." - "RAG isn't a silver bullet when your regulators change the rules every 18 months. Here's what we did instead." ### Pillar 4: "Quiet Recruiting" (15%) Show the team and the culture. No "we're hiring" posts — hiring signals come through texture. **Example hooks:** - "Friday afternoon at Northwall. Someone's reading the SEC's 2012 enforcement archive 'for fun.'" - "The question in our last team interview: 'Tell me about a time you were wrong and didn't course-correct fast enough.'" --- ## 5 Ready-to-Post Templates ### Template 1: The Customer Observation ``` A [customer_type] showed me [something specific] today. [One concrete detail that sounds unbelievable but is true.] [One-sentence reflection on what this means.] [Sentence that implies — but doesn't state — what you're building about it.] ``` ### Template 2: The Number That Stopped You ``` [A number]. That's how [many/much/long] [a specific thing] [actually is]. I learned this [where you learned it]. Everything we're building is downstream of that one fact. ``` ### Template 3: The Mistake + The Money ``` I [did specific thing] and it cost us [specific amount/time]. Here's what I missed: - [Assumption 1] - [Assumption 2] - [Assumption 3] The fix wasn't what I thought. [One sentence.] ``` ### Template 4: The Quiet Recruit ``` It's [time] on a [day] at [company]. [Specific, small moment that reveals the culture.] I didn't plan this. That's the point. ``` ### Template 5: The Technical Unlock ``` Most people think [common misconception]. Actually, [the counterintuitive truth]. Here's what that means in practice: [3 short lines.] Caveat: [the honest limitation]. ``` --- ## Comment Response Rules - First hour: respond to the first 10 comments personally, in voice - Never like your own post - When disagreeing: "That's fair — here's where I'd push back" (never "Great point!") - If someone writes a long thoughtful comment: respond with the same length - Ignore trolls. Engage critics. Big difference. --- ## Cadence & Timing - **Monday 7:45am ET:** Pillar 1 post (customer observation) - **Wednesday 11:15am ET:** Pillar 2 post (founder lesson) - **Friday 8:30am ET:** Pillar 3 or 4 (alternate weekly) - **2x/month:** Comment thoughtfully on 5 industry peer posts - **Never:** Sunday posts. Sunday LinkedIn reads as "trying too hard." --- ## Do Not Say This - "Humbled to announce" - "Rockstar," "ninja," "10x" - "Hot take" - "At the end of the day" - "This is why I love what I do" - "Thoughts?" - "Let that sink in" - Any post that starts with a number emoji - "LinkedIn, do your thing"