SaaS founder
Founder & CEO, Series A B2B SaaS
3.4×
profile views
first 90 days
Illustrative, typical range for a first-quarter programme
Strategy
Executive LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Founders and CEOs
Executive LinkedIn profile optimization rewrites your headline, About, Featured section and banner around what you want to be known for, rather than where you've worked. It starts with a paid audit of eleven things senior buyers check, and ends with a profile that converts the click after a post. Not for job seekers.
- A scored audit of eleven profile elements, with the fixes ranked by impact
- Headline, About, Featured and banner rewritten around your position
- A before and after you can see, on desktop and on mobile
Book your free audit call30 min · Free · No pitch deck
You approve every word before it goes on your profile. If we're not a fit, we'll say so on the call.
Want a score right now? Run the free LinkedIn profile audit
The audit and rewrite are included in all three packages, from $1,500/month. Compare plans
Headline, rewritten
I help mid-market CFOs replace three finance tools with one. 11 years doing it badly before we got it right.
First line of About, rewritten
Most finance teams don't have a software problem. They have four systems that each tell the truth about a different week.
Last updated:
Founders and executives in
- B2B SaaS
- Fintech
- Healthcare & MedTech
- Legal
- Consulting
- Real estate
- Manufacturing
- Hospitality
What buyers say · market research
- of B2B decision-makers trust thought leadership more than marketing materials to judge a company's capabilities
- 73%1
- of decision-makers are more receptive to outreach from a company that consistently publishes high-quality thought leadership
- 90%1
- of decision-makers say good thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium
- 60%1
What is executive LinkedIn profile optimization?
Executive LinkedIn profile optimization is the rewrite of a founder’s or senior leader’s profile so that it states a position, not a career history. The headline makes a claim. The About section opens with an argument rather than a summary. The Featured section gives a buyer somewhere useful to go. The banner does a job instead of holding a stock photo.
It’s a different task from the one resume writers do, and the two get confused constantly. A job seeker’s profile has to satisfy recruiters and keyword filters. An executive’s profile has to answer one question from a stranger who just read something you wrote: is this person worth my time?
The sequence matters. Your profile is almost never the first thing a buyer sees. It’s the second. They read a post, they’re mildly interested, they click your name, and they decide in about eight seconds whether to follow, message or leave. Optimising the profile without fixing what you post is polishing a shop window on an empty street. Doing the posts without the profile means losing the people the posts just earned.
Who this is for, and who it isn't
Right for you if
- You're a founder, CEO or senior executive, and buyers look you up before they take a meeting
- Your headline is still your job title and your company name
- Your About section reads like a third-person bio from a conference programme
- You post, and the profile views aren't turning into conversations
- You're raising, entering a new market, or about to start publishing seriously
Not for you if
- You're looking for a job. Recruiters read profiles differently, and a resume specialist will serve you better.
- You want keyword stuffing to game LinkedIn search. It reads as desperate to the humans who matter.
- You want a rewrite with no positioning decision behind it. We'd be guessing, and so would you.
- You're not going to post. The best profile in your category still needs traffic.
Step 1: the profile audit
Every engagement opens with the paid audit, because a rewrite without a diagnosis is just a different set of words. We score eleven elements, each against what a senior buyer actually does rather than against a checklist of LinkedIn features.
- Headline. Does it make a claim, or does it list a job? You get 220 characters and most founders use 40.
- Profile photo. Crop, eye line, recency, and whether it survives being 48 pixels wide in a comment thread.
- Banner. Dead space, a stock skyline, or one line that says what you do for whom.
- The first two lines of About. Everything after them is behind a “see more” link most people never click.
- The rest of About. Whether it argues or lists.
- Featured section. What the first click leads to, and whether it’s current.
- Current role description. A position, or a duty list copied from a job spec.
- Earlier roles. Whether they build credibility for the claim or just fill space.
- Skills and recommendations. Whether they come from buyers and partners or only from former colleagues.
- Discoverability. Custom URL, the terms your buyers would actually search, and your current search-appearance data.
- Mobile rendering. What all of the above looks like on a phone, which is where most of your profile views happen.
You get the scores, a ranked list of fixes, and a note on which ones matter for your position specifically rather than in general.
Included in every tier. Available on its own as a fixed-fee project.
There’s also a free, automated version. It won’t read your market or your positioning, but it will catch the mechanical problems in under a minute: run the free LinkedIn profile audit.
Step 2: the rewrite
Positioning first, then words. If you haven’t done the positioning work, we do it here, in a shortened form, using the method on our LinkedIn personal branding page. You cannot write a headline that makes a claim until the claim exists.
What gets rewritten
- Headline. One claim, in your words, using the terms your buyers use. No slash-separated job titles.
- About. Opening two lines that work as a standalone hook, then the argument: what you believe, who you do it for, what you’ve seen that lets you say it, and what to do next.
- Banner. A single line of positioning, set in brand type, legible at phone width. Supplied as production-ready artwork.
- Featured. Three to four items chosen for a buyer, not for your ego: your pillar post, a case study, your newsletter, a way to contact you.
- Current role. The company’s position and your part in it, written as prose a stranger can follow.
- Earlier roles. Compressed into proof for the claim.
- Discoverability. Custom URL set, searchable terms placed where they read naturally.
Your part. Two rounds of review, in line, on a shared document. Most founders spend about 45 minutes in total on this.
Our rule. If a sentence could appear on a competitor’s profile with the name swapped, it doesn’t ship.
Book your free audit call30 min · Free · No pitch deck
A before and after
A job, not a claim
Illustrative example. Not a client profile.
I help mid-market CFOs replace three finance tools with one. 11 years doing it badly before we got it right.
Illustrative example. Not a client profile.
Could be anyone
Illustrative example. Not a client profile.
Most finance teams don’t have a software problem. They have four systems that each tell the truth about a different week.
Illustrative example. Not a client profile.
The first versions aren’t badly written. They’re interchangeable. The second versions are specific enough to be wrong, which is why they get read.
How we measure
Profile work has the cleanest measurement of anything we do, because the change is a single event with a clear before and after.
- Baseline, screenshotted in week one. Profile views, search appearances, follower count, and the seniority mix of recent viewers.
- Search appearances, 30 days after. Whether you now surface for the terms your buyers use. This responds faster than anything else.
- Profile view to follow rate. Views are the input. Follows, connection requests and messages are the output. The ratio between them is the number that tells you whether the rewrite worked.
- Viewer quality. Seniority, company size and industry of who’s looking, not just how many.
- Inbound messages. Counted, with a note on what prompted them.
One honest caveat: profile views depend on your posting activity, so if your content volume changes in the same month, we say so in the report instead of claiming the rewrite caused it.
Results
Prospects now arrive having read three of my posts. The first call starts at the second conversation.
Agency owner
Managing Director, B2B growth agency
Items marked Sample are anonymised, illustrative examples written to typical industry ranges. They are not client results.
Read the LinkedIn personal branding case studies for the full write-ups.
Rewrite it yourself, hire a resume writer, or hire us
| Factor | Us | Resume or CV writer | Do it yourself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Written for | Buyers, partners and investors | Recruiters and applicant filters | Whoever you had in mind at the time |
| Starts with | Positioning, then an eleven-point audit | Your career history | A blank box |
| Headline logic | A claim your buyers care about | Job titles and searchable skills | Usually your job title |
| Cost | Included in every package, from $1,500/month | Typically $200–$800 one-off | Your Sunday |
| Best when | Buyers look you up before meeting you | You're applying for roles | You write well and know your position |
If you’re job hunting, hire a resume writer. We’ll say that on the call rather than take the work.
Industries we rewrite for
Healthcare & MedTech
Credibility signals that survive compliance review.
Real Estate & PropTech
Profiles built for investors and partners.
Legal & Compliance
Partner profiles that bring referrals.
All ten on the industries hub.
What it costs
The audit and the full rewrite are included in every package, so most clients don't buy this on its own.
- The Presence — $1,500/month. Audit, rewrite, positioning, a steady content cadence.
- The Authority — $3,500/month. Most clients start here.
- The Accelerator — $6,500/month. Highest cadence and the full engagement layer.
Compare what’s in each package.
Included in every tier. Available on its own as a fixed-fee project. 3-month minimum, then month to month with 30 days' notice. Prices exclude VAT (5% for UAE-based clients).
Executive LinkedIn profile optimization FAQs
The paid audit and full rewrite are included in all three of our packages, which start at $1,500 a month. Compare packages. On its own, the audit and rewrite is a fixed-fee project.
The eleven-point audit with scores and a ranked fix list, then rewritten headline, About, Featured section, current and past role descriptions, discoverability settings, and production-ready banner artwork. Two rounds of your edits are included.
About 45 minutes in total: a short positioning conversation if we haven't already done one, and two review passes on the draft.
Yes, and this is the part people get wrong about profiles. A profile written in corporate third person reads as a committee product. We write it in your voice, from a recorded conversation, so a reader who then opens your posts hears the same person.
Yes. Nothing is changed on your profile until you've approved the final text and artwork. You can also make the changes yourself if you'd rather we never touch the account.
Search appearances usually move within 30 days. The view-to-follow ratio shows up in the first full month after the rewrite. Inbound messages depend on posting volume, so the profile alone won't produce them.
For research and for transcribing the positioning conversation. The headline and About section are written by a person, because they're the two highest-leverage sentences you own and a model has no idea which claim you can defend.
No. Recruiters and applicant filters read profiles differently, and a specialist resume writer will do a better job for less money. If you're job hunting, we'll tell you that on the call.
Use ours: the free LinkedIn profile audit runs in under a minute and will catch the mechanical gaps. What it can’t do is read your market, decide what you should claim, or tell you which of your eleven problems is the one costing you meetings.
The profile rewrite is a one-off piece of work inside an ongoing engagement, so the term question is really about the content that follows it. 3-month minimum, then month to month with 30 days' notice.
Thirty minutes, and a straight answer
We read your profile before the call, so we arrive with the eleven scores already filled in. You'll hear the two fixes that matter most whether or not you hire us.
We read your profile first.
Your headline, your About section and your last twenty posts, before we speak. You don't need to prepare anything.
You do most of the talking.
What you sell, who you need in the room, what you've already tried and why it stopped.
You leave with a plan, or a straight no.
If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call and point you somewhere better. We'd rather lose the retainer than take an account we can't make work.
Book your free audit call30 min · Free · No pitch deck
hello@thoughtleaders.aeWe reply within one working dayMon–Fri, 9:00–18:00 GST
If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call.
Or run the free LinkedIn profile audit and read the score yourself