The silent executive problem: how fintech brands are losing trust before the first sales call

Most fintech brands are pouring budget into pipeline — but their executives are completely absent from the places buyers are actually paying attention. Roland breaks down why executive thought leadership is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost growth levers available, shares real examples of fintech leaders doing it right, and delivers a three-speed content playbook any team can start using today.

Timestamps

[00:00] — The problem: your best asset is invisible Your senior leaders are having genuinely interesting conversations every day — with customers, prospects, and their teams — and nobody knows because it's not being shared publicly.

[01:15] — Who's doing it right: four fintech leaders worth watching

• Jason Weida (Candescent) — relatable, funny, posts hot takes as himself. The brand gets warmer every time he shows up.
• Brett King (Breaking Banks) — built the world's #1 fintech podcast, 7 million listeners, 180 countries. By being loud, opinionated, and everywhere.
• Alex Johnson (Fintech Takes) — sharp voice, real engagement, consistent cadence. People wait for his next post without realizing it.
• Ron Shevlin (Cornerstone Advisors / Forbes Fintech Snark Tank) — combines original research with humor. Proof you can be an executive, a researcher, and a personality at the same time.

[03:10] — The stat that should wake everybody up 95% of B2B buyers are more receptive to outreach from companies whose executives publish thought leadership. (Edelman + LinkedIn research.) In fintech — where trust is everything and CAC is enormous — that is a competitive advantage.

[04:30] — The reframe: this is not about becoming an influencer Not about posting every day. Not about going viral. It's about building one simple, repeatable system that makes content feel like a business asset instead of a chore.

[05:15] — The playbook: crawl, walk, run

[05:30] — Crawl: one post, once a month One LinkedIn post per month on something you actually have an opinion about. Use this formula:

1. Hook — stop the scroll with a specific moment or observation
2. Your take — what do YOU actually think?
3. Evidence — one stat, story, or example
4. Takeaway — one thing to do or think differently

[08:00] — Walk: expand your surface area Get on a podcast at least once a month — your own or someone else's. Run bi-weekly or monthly content syncs with your team. Engage within the first hour of every post going live. The LinkedIn algorithm is watching.

[10:45] — The repurposing flywheel: one post, five outputs

1. Pull the strongest sentence → next week's post
2. Main insight → newsletter paragraph
3. Record a 60-second video riffing on the same topic
4. Turn the takeaway into a question post
5. Repeat — before you create anything new, ask: did I get everything out of what I already made?

[13:00] — A note on ghostwriting Ghostwriting isn't cheating. Your competition is using it. The execs you admire are using it. A good ghostwriter pulls the ideas out of your head and shapes them into content that sounds exactly like you — with zero extra lift on your end.

[14:20] — Run: multi-voice, coordinated, on purpose Multiple people across your org posting consistently, connected to a single narrative. A content calendar built a month in advance with clear topics, clear ownership, and a predictable cadence. Active PR, media relationships, and stage time layered on top.

[16:00] — The executive voice capture system A monthly 20-minute recorded conversation. Three questions every time:

• What's one thing you observed in the market this month that surprised you?
• What's one thing a customer or prospect said that you keep thinking about?
• What's one thing the industry gets wrong that you see differently?

Want to work with Propagate Fintech? Fill out a contact form at www.propagatefintech.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

What's up folks? I want to talk about something today that I genuinely believe is one of the most underutilized assets in all of fintech. And it's not a technology, it's a product feature, it's not a new channel or a new tool. It's sitting inside the heads of your senior leaders and yourself right now. You are most likely having conversations every day that are genuinely interesting with customers, prospects, your team. You're seeing things happen in the industry, but the people you're trying to connect with have no idea because you are not putting it out there, or at least most of you are not. Now, I talk to fintech leaders every single week, smart, experienced people who genuinely have interesting things to say and you know funny hot takes. And often, most of the time, when I ask them, you know, how are you guys telling your story online today on LinkedIn, in publications, on podcasts, right? Places where their buyers are paying attention, a lot of times there's not really a good answer there where there's nothing happening. So let me give you an example of a handful of people that are really doing this right today. Jason Wida, a Candescent. Full disclosure, I don't even know Jason, but I already know a lot about him and his style. He's kind of funny, doesn't take himself super seriously. He shows up as a regular person posting hot takes, calls himself the patron saint of fintech. And every time he does this, the Candescent brand gets warmer, more human, more trustworthy before you've ever even visited their website, which, by the way, is pretty dang sexy. I think they actually just launched it. Brett King is next up. This guy built breaking banks into the world's number one fintech podcast, 7 million listeners, 180 countries. Well, how did he do this? He did it by being himself, being loud, opinionated, everywhere. That is what we are talking about. Next up, Alex Johnson at FinTech Takes. This guy is smart, funny. He has a lot of street cred in the fintech and banking space, and he has he has a more engaged following than most companies could hope for. Why? Because he has a genuine voice and he uses it, posts real comments, not just likes on inst on LinkedIn. Uh, you know, I'm I'm waiting for his next piece of content, even if I don't even really realize that I am because he's so regular with showing up online. Ron Chevlin at Corner's own advisors, he writes the fintech snark tank column in Forbes. You know, he combines original research with humor. He's not afraid to, you know, be very candid about his perspectives. And this is proof that you can be an executive, a researcher, and a personality all at the same time. Now, here's a stat that should wake everybody up. Edelman and LinkedIn recently put out research showing that 95% of B2B buyers are more receptive to outreach from a company whose executives publish thought leadership. And this is so powerful in FinTech because we have enormous customer acquisition costs and trust is literally everything. That is a competitive advantage. And if you're not showing up online as an individual, you're leaving a ton of value on the table. And you're kind of stuck with the type of, you know, high-cost acquisition channels like showing up at conferences to sign business versus being able to pull in business through the content that you're producing online. Now, look, I'm not here to make anybody feel bad. I'm just trying to shine a light on something here. Everyone's in execution mode, and content keeps falling to the bottom of the list. That's totally normal, but it's a huge misstep, especially in 2026. And look, I get it. I totally do. But here's the reframe I want you to sit with. So this isn't about becoming an influencer, and let's be honest. That word gives a lot of people the ick. This is not about posting every single day. I'm not here to talk about, you know, trying to go viral. It's about building one simple, repeatable system. That's what we're here to talk about today, that makes content feel less like a chore and more like a business asset. So here's what I want to share today a playbook, you can make your own. You can chop it up however you want. Okay. Make this your own. Find a way to start doing this. And so there's three speeds that you can lean into when trying this out crawl, walk, run, and we're gonna talk through each of those. Okay. So you pick where you start. There's really no wrong answer. Now, the way to think about this though is like the hardest exercise at the gym is the front door, right? And so you just have to begin. Okay, so let's start with crawling. This is the most approachable thing here. So crawling is simple, and here's an example, okay? You're posting once a month on LinkedIn. That's it. One post once per month. But here's what that post needs to be. Okay. Needs to be personal, something you actually encountered, something you've been thinking about, a hot take, a real opinion, something that should only come from you. Not a company update that you're so excited about, not a product announcement. Like those are fine and have a time and a place. This is really about you and you getting started. Okay. Now to make that one post as strong as possible, here's a simple formula that is working right now on LinkedIn. And I'm going to cruise through it pretty quickly. So feel free to hit rewind if you need to. So the one post formula, okay. So we start with the hook, a specific situation, moment, or observation that makes someone stop scrolling. You gotta stop the scroll. Okay, that's critical. And so the first piece here is gonna be your take. What do you actually think about it, not what the industry thinks you? It's fine to have a contrarian take or actually it's probably better. Next is evidence. One example, one stat or one story that backs it up. And then the takeaway, the one thing you want someone to do or think differently after reading your post. Okay. So if you forget the formula, that's fine. The main thing I want you to take away from this is to stop being invisible and to insert yourself into the conversation at least once per month. For a lot of you, if you start posting once per month, that is going to be a total game changer in how you operate and show up online. Even if it's one post in one place, that is a million times better than never. Okay, so let's shift gears and talk about the walking stage here. Okay, so walking means you are still posting on LinkedIn, right? We talked about crawling, now we're talking about walking, but now you are also expanding your surface area, if you will. So one of the best moves you can make at this stage is getting on a podcast at least once per month. You could be, you know, doing this as a guest on someone else's show. You could be starting your own show. It could be a short segment, a guest spot, anything that puts your voice in front of a new audience or your target audience. Because here's the thing about audio people listen on the way to work, at the gym, walking the dog. You know, it's one of the most intimate formats there is. And most fintech brands are completely absent from this. And there's a huge rise in video podcasts happening right now as well. But the other piece of walking that most teams completely overlook is how you are working together. So when you're walking, and then the walking stage here of content creation, your team is meeting on a regular cadence to talk about content biweekly, monthly, whatever fits, but it's on the calendar calendar. It's a real conversation that you guys are having. And so what does that meeting look like? You're asking what you guys are all posting. You're connecting with each other on content. What are we putting out through this month? What are we saying? Are we aligned? And most importantly, are we supporting each other with likes, reposts, comments? I would like to see you commenting within the first hour of it being out there. Not a fiery emoji, like a real actual comment that adds to this conversation and maybe poses a question at the end of it. You reshare it with your own take, you engage with the people that are commenting on it. And so here's why that matters. The algorithm on LinkedIn is watching that first hour. This is critical. The more engagement a post gets right out of the gate, the more it gets pushed out to new people and to the network of anybody else who interacts with it. And so your team is one of the most powerful distribution tools that you already have. And most brands really are not activating this. And so that meeting could be internal, marketing, comms, leadership getting aligned, or it could include an outside partner, an agency, or a consultant who's helping to keep the trains running on time with this newly minted strategy that you're trying to get airborne. And if any of this is starting to feel like a lot, or you have the ideas but not the time to package them, that's exactly what ghostwriting is for. You bring your unique perspective and a ghostwriter shapes it into content that sounds exactly like you and is handed off to you in a copy-pasteable format. Now, shameless quick plug, because this is literally what we do at Propagate. You know, ghostwriting is a big part of our offering, and you know, we only work in FinTech, and that is the whole sandbox for us, nothing else. Which means when we sit down with a fintech executive, we are not learning the space on your dime and using Chat GPT to produce all of our content. We already know the players, the acronyms, the regulators, and the takes that are landing right now. So ghostwriting is worth exploring if you're serious about showing up consistently. Now, you know, to make all this content go even further, here's the other tool that lives in the walking stage, okay? The repurposing flywheel. So I'm gonna go fast again. Feel free to rewind if you need to. So one post, five outputs, okay? Start with the one post for the month. Output number one, pull up your last post and extract the single most prominent sentence from it, okay? And then we're gonna riff on that the next week for your next post, okay? Output number two, turn the main insight into a newsletter paragraph. Short intro, to the point, one call to action. Okay, output number three, record a 60-second video riffing on the same topic, post it. You could be walking and talking while out with your dog in the neighborhood, no problem. Output number four, turn your takeaway into a question post. Most fintech brands do X. What if you tried Y? Again, this is all stemming from that single initial piece of content. And so that's five pieces of content, all spinning off that initial idea. So before you ever create something brand new, ask yourself have I gotten everything I can out of what I already made. Okay, so let's shift gears into the running phase. This is where it gets really fun. So when you're running, it is not just you posting, multiple people across your organization have a voice and are posting and showing up as well. Not just the CEO, not just marketing. Think of it like this: your head of product has a voice and insight, your head of partnerships, same deal. Your founder obviously has a voice. And they are all talking about things that connect back to a single narrative. It's planned, it's coordinated, it's on purpose. Okay. And a lot of times this is done through a content calendar that's built out a month in advance with clear topics, clear ownership, and a predictable cadence for your team to work within. And so this can look like a podcast or a video series set on a regular schedule, not whatever you stumble across. Okay. And so your team's amplification system is structured. That's really what we're talking about here. And every time someone posts, there's a process for the team to follow. Okay, so here is another example of a content creation formula, okay, that I bet you're not doing today. How do I know this? Because pretty much nobody is doing this, and it's a giant opportunity. Now, what I'm talking about is video creation. So I'm going to call this the executive voice capture system. Okay, and this is a you know monthly 20-minute recorded conversation between the executive and one other team member, doesn't matter who. Okay, so ask these three questions every time. What's one thing you observed in the market this month that surprised you? What's one thing a customer or a prospect said that you keep thinking about? What's one thing that the industry gets wrong that we see differently here at Company X? Okay. Step two, transcribe it. Pull the two or three best lines from this conversation. Then shape each line into a post using this formula. Provocative observation, why most people get it wrong, what we believe instead, and one action. Okay, rinse and repeat. Step four, send to the exec for a quick vibe check. Does this sound like you? Are you comfortable with this? Step five, post done, repeat next month. Total executive time utilized here, 20 minutes a month. Total post produced, two to three. And so at this level, a lot of teams are also working with ghostwriters. And I know for some of you, that word still feels a little weird, like it's cheating somehow, like if you didn't type every word yourself, it doesn't really count. But let's put that idea to bed. Your competition is using ghostwriters. The execs you admire are using ghostwriters. Taylor Swift has co-writers, Obama had speech writers. Almost every CEO op-ed that you have ever read in the journal almost certainly was ghostwritten. And as they say in Wayne's world, live in the now, man. So here's what a good ghostwriter actually does. Okay. They sit down with your executives, pull the good stuff out of their head, know how to do that, and shape it into content that actually sounds like them. And, you know, over time, everybody gets better at working together to pull this off. So there's no extra lift on the exec's end, just their ideas, packaged and out in the wild. And at the running stage, this is all happening alongside active PR and media relationships, earn coverage in the trade spots, showing up on other people's podcasts, getting on stages at industry events that matter. And this all builds on top of itself and starts to snowball. All right, let's bring these concepts home. So the brands who are winning on content right now are not the ones with the biggest teams or the biggest budgets. They can be, and that certainly happens. However, generally they are the ones with a repeatable system and leaders who are willing to show up and participate in this content strategy. So here's what I want you to do before you go to sleep tonight. Pick one thing, just one. And if you fall into the crawling category in terms of trying to get started with content creation, I want you to open LinkedIn right now and write one sentence about something you actually have an opinion about. It could be implementation time frames, it could be storytelling, whatever. Just one sentence. See where it goes. Who cares if it gets a lot of impressions? But remember what I said about the hardest exercise at the gym is the front door, and you just need to begin. So if you're walking, text one person on your team right now and say to them something along the lines of let's get a content sync on the calendar, uh, bi-weekly, monthly, whatever. Just get it on the calendar. If you are at the running stage, congratulations, or you want to be, come talk to us. That is exactly what we do at Propagate FinTech. Really appreciate you guys listening to this episode. We're always trying to find ways to deliver value and not just high level theory. So I hope that this has been informative for you. Appreciate you hanging out. Go make something awesome today. We will catch you on the next one.