The board
The board does the math. So every claim carries its basis in the sentence, and the brief says openly where its one study comes from and where it stops.
The Decision Brief
The people you want to hire check you before they apply.
This brief helps you and your owners decide: is LinkedIn worth it for our chief executive: yes, no, or not yet?
Who this is for
A paper that survives the owners' meeting.
A sober paper for the meeting where your company decides on the budget. Not a sales brochure.
Everything you need for that decision is in it: one benchmark read honestly, the three most common objections, the real costs, and a recommendation with three options. One of them is: not yet.
Talking about your own visibility as a founder is awkward. To the board it can sound like vanity, to the owners like marketing, at the family table like self-promotion. All three suspicions are wrong. But each one ends the conversation before it has started.
That is why the brief talks about hiring and trust. Candidates and clients look your chief executive up online, whether you do anything about it or not. The brief backs that up with sources, which makes the topic discussable.
The owners
The owners ask: what is this for? The brief's answer: for candidates, clients, and partners. Not for followers.
The family
The family asks: do we really need this? That is why one of the three options is “not now”, with clear reasons for when it is the right call.
The situation
One number, read honestly.
The brief rests on one hard outside number. It says plainly what that number covers, where it stops, and what fills the gap.
82 percent of candidates look at a chief executive's online presence when they are weighing an application (Brunswick, Connected Leadership, 2022).
Everything else in the brief rests on our own first-hand practice, marked as practice observation rather than research wherever it appears.
The brief is honest about its evidence. The benchmark is one global study, not a repeated measurement. And we are not neutral: this is the work we sell. That is why the brief is built so you can check every claim, including against us. What holds up: candidates do look, they look at the person at the top, and few executives give them anything to find.
What the brief covers
Five sections, made to be passed on.
Read the brief once yourself. Then simply pass it on. It explains itself without you.
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The situation, in one number
The benchmark from the section above, read honestly, including where it is thin and where our own practice fills the gap.
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What this means for a founder-led business
People who get recommended get checked online first. Why the company page alone is not enough, with a documented case from our own work.
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The objections, taken seriously
Time, self-promotion, outsourcing. None of the three is unfounded, and the third one is simply right.
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What it realistically costs
What it costs you in time, what outside help costs at market rates, and what it costs to decide nothing. No invented hours per week.
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The recommendation
Three options: not yet, build it yourself, or bring in help. With clear criteria for when each one fits.
The point
Candidates check you online. Whether you take part or not.
From the mandates
What changes for them
“It has to have real value. For readers, and for me.”
Antje Lenk
Interim Management · Bridge imp
6,000 → 23,000 followers
Read the case →“I clear the connection requests. The next day there are 70 new ones.”
Sarah Gäbler
HR & Interim Management · Bridge imp
1,000 → 4,800 followers · +380%
Read the case →“For you, it's simply not an option that this doesn't work, is it?”
Michel Karaenke
IT Interim Management · DACH
534,919 impressions in 3 months
Read the case →The costs
The numbers are in the brief before anyone asks.
Agencies rarely publish their prices. The brief still names one documented figure.
The requests that reach us often name budgets below €1,000 a month. That is less than the market costs.
The third cost is deciding nothing. Nobody can put an honest number on that, and the brief does not try. What is certain: candidates and business partners look you up, whether you take part or not.
A documented case
“When I attend conferences or board meetings, people bring up my LinkedIn posts. That never happened before.”
70 weekly profile visitors became 900. Section 2 of the brief shows this case in detail, and the full story is in the Dieter Leikermoser case study.
The brief
The brief arrives by email.
Eighteen pages as a PDF. Enter your email, confirm once, done. The brief is written so you can hand it straight to owners and the board.
Your brief
One confirmation, and the brief is in your inbox.
An email from Builderz is on its way to you right now. Confirm it, and the PDF follows straight into your inbox. No email in sight: check your spam folder.
Read the brief once yourself afterwards, then forward it unchanged to owners and the board. Set a date for the decision, or the question just sits. And if you would like to walk the three options through for your own business first: Bernhard will make the time.