Case Study · The Innovator
A Marine Raider’s resilience story pulled 2.5× the engagement of any business post — proof the playbook scales down to 50 people.
The challenge
The founder and CEO of a ~50-person urology medical-device startup is a former Marine Raider who sustained a spinal-cord injury in combat — an experience that became his mission and his company. He arguably had the most compelling personal story in our entire client base, but he was posting in bursts: thirteen posts one month, then three months of silence, then another burst. The engagement was there whenever he showed up, but the inconsistency meant the audience never compounded — each burst restarted the flywheel from scratch.
What we did
The fix wasn’t a content overhaul — it was consistency. Over roughly seven months we converted sporadic bursts into a steady, sustained cadence so the algorithm could work in his favor and the audience could actually build. And we leaned into his “why”: the injury that led to the problem, the problem that led to the company, and the personal moments of recovery and family — the resilience narrative — rather than product launches and milestones.
The results
Sustained posting rose 2.3x, from 2.6 to 5.9 posts a month, and average likes climbed 21% as consistency let the algorithm compound. The decisive data point: his personal and resilience stories averaged 441 likes — about 2.5x the ~200-like average of his business content. His most powerful moments show the ceiling: the first time his sons saw him stand and walk drew over 3,000 likes; his injury anniversary nearly 3,000. The takeaway matters for every founder who assumes visibility is a big-company game: a 50-person startup produced the same compound curve, with the same framework, as a 3,000-person organization.
The playbook doesn’t require scale. It requires consistency.