Nick Broekema

Getting you inbound leads through Content Design

I ran an agency for 6 years and invisibility nearly killed it (twice).  

We 100% relied on word-of-mouth marketing:

- Leads from friends and family (not even kidding)
- Leads from former and current clients
- Leads through competitors

We took on what we could get.

Sometimes we skyrocketed. Often we struggled.

The feast and famine cycle was real.

And it was painfully frustrating.

As a business owner, I didn't have:

- Time and focus on growth
- Time to take care of my team
- Time to generate leads myself

I was consistently hustling and putting out fires.

When I pivoted in 2022, I chose a different strategy:

→ Creating content to build a reputation and presence
→ Creating content to show the world my offering
→ Creating content to generate leads every week

At least, that was the plan.

It took me months to do it:

I started with text posts. Then I added visuals. Then I added carousels. Then I 'designed' my content. Every upgrade increased my growth and revenue.

This led me to craft a new solution:

Content Design for LinkedIn. 

Since then, I've helped clients build recognizable brands that attract and sell: 

- Matt Barker 2X’d his post views, attracted higher paying clients, and 2X’d product sales within 2 months of working together.

- Mollie Cox made $16k (next to her full-time job) within 2 months of working together.

- Pascalle Bergman's revenue went up by 73% after working together.

If that sounds good, there 2 ways I help founders, coaches, and creators attract leads on LinkedIn: 

1. Content Design 1:1 coaching to attract your ideal audience
2. My Content Design cohort (see Featured for waitlist)

Check out my Featured section 💪

Brand Scaling Consultant

"People who obsess about work life balance are typically mediocre at both". 

Alex Hormozi said that in a post recently. 

I read it and thought: damn, am I that mediocre?"  

I'm a rational thinker so I put it in perspective. 

I hit the gym and play padel several times per week. 
But I don’t have a six pack. 

My income allows us to do everything we need. 
But I'm not a millionaire. 

I spend a lot of time with my family.  
But I could probably make more money if I didn’t.

We moved to a small town in Spain to escape city life.
But there are arguably fewer opportunities around us. 

Yet I still believe I’m winning at life.
 
I'm not obsessed with my private life or my business. 
I just enjoy both. 

But that's irrelevant for you. 

Because my situation doesn't reflect yours. 

Just like Alex's situation doesn't reflect yours or mine.

Winning in life depends on how you define winning.  
And parenthood has a way of redefining it.

So the next time you read something that makes you feel bad about your situation, zoom out. 

Look at what you DO have. 

Perspective matters.

Learn how to attract your ideal audience in my Content Design Cohort | Waitlist on my profile | Kick-off January 27th

"I don't know who my ideal customer is".

You might be overthinking it.

Most problems I hear from clients: 

1. I don't know what to write about
2. I don't know what my offer should be
3. I don't know who my ideal audience is

If this is you, great. These are the right questions.

Now, you can solve all 3 of them in 3 steps.

---

1. Create an "I am 60% happy" Ideal Customer profile ↓

- Get something to write on
- Describe your best past collaboration
- Extract their pains + goals and divide over 2 lists

→ Tip: use ChatGPT to expand/refine the list

2. Create an "I am 60% happy" offer ↓

- Take your Pains + Goals list
- Take the highest impact + ROI + fulfillment ones
- Define a clear and direct proposition (like a headline)

→ Mine = "Content Design that attracts your ideal audience"

3. Create content using ICP doc + offer

- Use your Pains + Goals list
- Create hooks for all of them (or combined)
- Solve problems in your posts (breakdowns like these)

→ Tip: look into PAS, AIDA, Future-pacing copywriting

---

Now you've got:

→ One specific ICP
→ One clear and simple offer
→ One clear and simple message to share

Why aiming for "60% happy" with your ICP and offer?

Because you get to "100%" through validation.

Every post, DM, sales call, rejection/win = data points.

Perfectionism is your enemy.

Continuous iteration is your ally.

PS. ICP creation is one of the things we'll cover in cohort starting next Tuesday. Get on the waitlist for updates and details.

https://lnkd.in/e33NDZ-3

Content design to attract your ideal audience on LinkedIn

I grew up thinking I had to become a specialist.  

Pick one skill, improve, and ignore the rest.
 
That’s what I was taught.
 
When I went to art school in 2008, the focus was simple: 

Creating logos and brand collateral.
 
I enjoyed it but something didn’t sit right.
 
The market was clearly moving online. Yet web design wasn’t even part of the curriculum.
 
So I started teaching myself.
 
Books. Countless of YouTube and Lynda videos. Late nights in Dreamweaver (who remembers this one?), Sketch, and eventually Figma.
 
Later, I co-founded a branding & design agency.  
 
Brand + website wasn’t “doing too much”. It was the sweet spot (fun times). 
 
After my agency years, I moved into interim roles at Series A-C tech companies. Suddenly design wasn’t enough anymore. 
 
I had to learn leadership. Corporate politics. Building products at scale. Reading people instead of pixels.
 
Then in 2022, I started posting on LinkedIn to get more clients.
 
That was a whole new skill set again.
 
I had to learn how to:  

- Attract the right people with content  
- Turn attention into business opportunities 
- Sell in the DMs, through docs, and sales calls
 
It was the hardest learning curve of my career. But also the most rewarding one.

My content has now been viewed over 25+ million times. 86,000 people decided to follow along. 

I can run my tiny business from anywhere in the world. And it’s more profitable than ever.
  
My "broad" skillset became my edge.
 
Design. Writing. Psychology. Business. Sales. Branding. Marketing. 

(Up next: email and video)

It all just connected. 
 
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned: 
 
The people who win don’t just learn new skills.
 
They know how to showcase them publicly. 
 
PS. Next Tuesday I’m breaking down exactly how I did this inside my new cohort. Waitlist is open below.

https://lnkd.in/e33NDZ-3

I've been sharing content for 3+ years and thought about quitting every month. 

But not because things weren't working. 

You see, there's a cycle everyone goes through when they build something.

At first, everything feels new. You're learning. You're growing. It's exciting.

Then you hit a point where it starts working. 

And that's when something weird happens: you begin to see the mechanics. You understand why things work. You can almost predict what will land.

And suddenly, the thing that made you excited now feels boring.

You think: "This is repetitive. I'm saying the same thing over and over. People must be sick of me."

So you panic. You want to rebrand. Try something new. Chase the shiny object.

That's where good things come to die. 

In my agency era, marketing teams would see their brand every single day.

"We need a rebrand", they'd say in meetings. 

Meanwhile, their actual customers saw it once a week (if lucky). And it was still working.

Result: brand recognition + loyalty down the drain. 

The cycle looks like this:

- "This is growing" 
- "This is boring" 
- "This is repetitive"  
- "This is successful" 
- "This is hard" 
- "Ah, a shiny object" 
- "I'm gonna try this" 

→ repeat

If things go well, boredom is usually a signal that you've actually figured it out.

And the work that feels repetitive is the work that's working.

Continuous iteration: hell yes.

A full 180? Probably not the best call. 

Consistency is often just managing boredom.

According to 90% of LinkedIn’s "standards" I’m failing: 

I’ve built offers that sold $0.
I frequently sell in my content.
I don't have a passive income.
I don't comment for reciprocity.
I don't "grind" 80 hrs per week.
I don’t beg people to comment.
I don’t have the most followers.
I don't batch or schedule content.
I skip posting when I don’t feel like it.
I avoid arguing with strangers online.
I've seen my reach go down by 50%.
I’ve spent 10 hours on carousels that flopped.

But after 3.5 years creating content... 

I’m still here.

My tiny empire is steadily growing.

I like my life simple.
I like my content simple.

Simple scales. It's sustainable.

Because every time you add something new…

You sacrifice momentum you’ve already built.
  
"It doesn't work" 

Until it does. 

Stay in the game. 

PS. In 2 days, my next Content Design Cohort kicks off. Join the waitlist below if you want to visualize and simplify your expertise to attract the right people on LinkedIn.
 
https://lnkd.in/e33NDZ-3

In 2023, I cashed out my S&P 500 funds to invest in coaching.

Back then I was all over the place. 

Sharing content on LinkedIn about 10+ topics. Obsessively commenting on influencer posts. Spending 6-8 hrs per day on the platform like a maniac. 

Sure, I made some money.

But I felt I could do a lot better.

"We need to invent a category for you", coach Ken said.

"And I have a perfect one: Content Design".

I wasn't sold on it. Also knew it was some kind of UX term.

But I thought, screw it and rolled with it:

- Changed my profile headline
- Changed my Featured Section
- Did an announcement post about it

Post got over 800 likes, 150k views (the good old days), and it literally rained inbound leads.

In hindsight, it wasn't a lucky shot.

I had been sharing content designs for over a year.

I just labeled it and packaged it as a clear offer.

Soon my tiny business was doing better than ever. 

Since then, I've been helping my clients do the same:

- Trim down their offer (it's always more than necessary)
- Help them simplify their positioning and packaging
- Create content (designs) that attract real ICPs
- Interact with the right people to sell 

Here's what always strikes me.

The most skilled people have no clue:

No clue how to write. How to visualize what they do. How to sell.

I love working with them because it makes winning easy.

A few months ago, I started working with a client like that. 

Consultant. Had around 9k followers. Been posting for 3 months.

Did okay but wanted more. More revenue. More confidence.

In one call, we redefined their ICP and shaved off 80% of their offering.

We created a crystal clear "Content Design-like" category.

We made a sales deck so simple they could pitch it by heart.

“I just sold €6K!” they said in week 1. 

Then another one. And another one.

Fast forward 7 weeks: €50k in new revenue. Podcast invites. Private masterclasses. All organic.

And here's the best part:

They're now creating their OWN content designs.

Using proven frameworks - reframed in their brand and voice.

I'm sharing everything we did (and more) in a private group starting the end of this month. 

4 weeks. Weekly calls. Reviews and support by me. Community access included (might be the last group I do this with). 

If this sounds interesting, get on the waitlist for more details soon. 

https://lnkd.in/eGyW_iD3

My new Content Design Cohort starts next week. 

Here's why I built it. 

4 years ago I started copying influencer accounts and hoped my content would sell like crazy. 

It took 4 months to sign even 1 client. 

That frustrated the hell out of me because I thought I did everything right: 

- Posting and commenting like a madman
- Creating educational content to build authority
- Writing about dozens of topics I thought would hit  

But I forgot about my "unfair advantage": 

My branding and design experience. 

I'd been working with startups and scale-ups for 10+ years. 

And their biggest struggle was always to visualize what they offered. 

In most cases, their messaging and brand was confusing and complex. Just like mine back then. 

And confused people don't buy. 

So I started simplifying and visualizing MY brand and offer. In a way that would finally attract the right people. 

This resulted in a fully LinkedIn inbound business, 86k followers, and enough income to work from Bali, Cape Town, and eventually move to Spain with my family. 

It became a Content Design System for me and my clients to sell out offers, attract clients in every segment (even with today's algo), and build big audiences. 

Members in my 1st cohort got inbound leads, signed clients in the DMs, and had their first viral posts. 

I’m keeping it private for now with 6 seats. 

Kick-off is next week.

Join the waitlist for daily updates and first dibs ↓

(167 people already signed up)

https://lnkd.in/e33NDZ-3

I'm sharing my DM Sales Playbook for free. 

(no comment needed)

What it is: 

1. 2x LinkedIn DM conversations
2. A breakdown how they lead to conversion
3. A proven sales call outline (when needed)

What it isn't: 

- DM automation
- Cookie cutter scripts 
- Pitch-slapping tactics 

Just a breakdown of what worked for me and my clients. 

You see, most people avoid the DMs: 

- They hate rejection  
- They don't know what to say 
- They prefer content (feels safe)
- They don't know how to do selling
- They are afraid people are tired of pitch-slapping 

(I know because I was one of them)

But I tell you this: 

If I had to start over on LinkedIn, I'd start with DMs: 

- It converts better than content 
- I've sold offers up to $30k without meetings
- Offers between $1k-$8k convert best in the DMs

So far, I've only shared this playbook with clients. 

Today I'm sharing it for free. 

No comment needed - just an email (giving it to you straight). 

Happy selling ↓

https://lnkd.in/e9Yg5Fts

Tomorrow at 3 pm CET, my Content Design Cohort kicks off.

Here's an honest post about it. 

1. "I don't need no stinkin' cohort. Why is this different?"

Most cohorts are around 1 thing (e.g. writing or sales), which is probably the best ngl. I'm ignoring this by squeezing positioning, writing, design, and sales in 4-5 weeks (+ tons of resources). 

2. "Isn't this some kind of coaching pyramid scheme?"

No, but coaches are welcome. I just share best practices and proven frameworks that helped me, consultants, founders, and solopreneurs make money on LinkedIn, and grow along the way.

3. "Sounds fishy. Does this really work?"

Cohort members got inbounds, booked calls with ICPs, went viral. Haven't done the math but 1:1 clients made a couple of hundreds of thousands together (more in my doc). What worked I shall share in the cohort. 

4. "Can I buy a Lambo after this?" 

If financed, absolutely. But for real: you have to put in the work. This isn't DFY. It isn't a get-rich-quick hack. We'll implement DWY-style. Some never show up. Some never post. Then it'll all just collect dust. 

5. "Must be expensive. What's the cost?" 

Early Birds are gone. Full rate: €2k. I'd like to be mysterious and ask you to DM me "INFO". Then I'll share a doc to challenge objections and show proof. Then you can determine if this a good investment or money wasted. 

6. "Will we use AI? "

AI does 2 things: it amplifies mediocrity or skill. We'll go through the latter (while leaving your writing and creativity muscle intact). 

7. "Will you teach me how to create these funky animations?" 

Yes. 

Sounds good? DM "INFO" for the details. 

→ Adding FOMO: Today's the last day for enrollment. 
→ Adding urgency: 4 spots left. Doors close today. 

See you inside.

Founder @ Drilldown | Custom-designed business dashboards for B2B SaaS that deliver insights in one click, eliminating the need for complex spreadsheets in just 60 days.

We help B2B SaaS teams build an owned data system - so metrics align across the organization and growth decisions are based on evidence.

This might resonate:

As B2B SaaS companies scale, it becomes harder to understand on where growth comes from and what to do next.

Most teams already have dashboards, data integrations, and the technical ability to build new ones. 

Yet they still struggle to agree on what metrics mean, explain drivers of revenue, or produce reliable forecasts.

What you need is one set of accurate, explainable numbers that your team can rely on.

Our work focuses on the data system underneath dashboards: the definitions, structure, and logic that determine whether analytics can support decision-making at scale.

If you’re trying to make decisions based on data but the numbers don’t line up, this explains why: https://thomasvarekamp.substack.com/p/you-have-dashboards-why-are-decisions

Thomas Varekamp

2025 in a nutshell (the good, the neutral and the bad):

The bad:

- marketing & positioning is still a challenge.
- life was very unbalanced → more stress.
- wasted a ton of money (but learned a lot).

The neutral:

- moved to Amsterdam (for a couple of months).
- got a bigger office (which we closed down).
- updated our website (like 20+ times).

The good:

- helped 11 companies with data & analytics.
- revenue grew by +30%.
- hired first full-time employee.
- got clearer on what I want from life.
- grew as a person (I feel more peaceful).

All in all, 2025 was a good year. But my goal is to make 2026 even better.

So this is what we will be doing in 2026:

Change 1: we’re becoming remote-first.

I want to travel more and have more control over my time. Everyone that works for Drilldown can work wherever they want.

Change 2: a new offer.

A recurring theme from clients was how much they valued that their teams could own and maintain the systems after we were done.

Our new offer is much more focused on transferring knowledge, not creating dependency.

Change 3: make things simpler.

From now on we're only going to focus on:

- 1 client profile: B2B SaaS leaders >$1M+ ARR.
- 1 outcome: helping you see what’s driving ARR.

I genuinely feel the right foundations are in place to make 2026 our best year ever, both personally and professionally.

Huge thanks to everyone we worked with in 2025.

Hope to build more together next year!

Best,
Thomas

ps. here’s a photo from my first surfing lesson, a fitting way to wrap up a year of trying new things, failing, and learning :)

Drilldown | Helping B2B SaaS leaders regain control by turning data into direction.

I spent €20,000 building a data platform. This year, I’m shutting it down.

Most of our clients use Dutch software to run their business.

To build great dashboards, we need to pull this data out of the tools.

The common data extraction tools do not support these sources. 

So I decided to build our own extraction tool called the Drilldown Extraction Hub: 

- fixed price.
- unlimited data.
- custom support.

On paper, it made sense. 

We onboarded a few customers and within a short time it was doing around €400 MRR. But then sucky part started.

Connectors started breaking, APIs changed, edge cases appeared…

Everything required constant custom work.

Problem #1: data extraction is not an easy one-time build. You need permanent maintenance.

Problem #2: Instead of fully focusing on what we are actually good at (analytics for B2B SaaS), I was now splitting attention between client work and engineering work. 

Not good.

By the end of last year, I made the call to stop. 

We still support existing customers, but for new clients we use existing tools.

My big lesson: focus is extremely important. Especially in the stages we’re at (~€220k revenue / year).

Keep building!

Most people know HeyReach.io as the LinkedIn tool that sprinted to $10M ARR in 29 months. Few know the real story of how they started.

- before the 2,900 monthly trial signups.
- before the 4,000+ paying customers.
- before the 8-figure revenue.

---

The founders actually began their journey in Macedonia, an place they described as "prehistoric" for startups.

Their first venture, Howitzer, burned through $500k as they fell into the "White Knight" trap: trying to hire expensive managers to fix their problems.

It didn't work. 

So they decided to build a product where they owned the growth. 

That was v0 of HeyReach.io.

---

In 2023, with only 3 months of cash left, they negotiated a life-saving AppSumo deal at 2:00 AM in a club.

That cash injection allowed them to answer the question:

“𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘴?”

They positioned themselves as the LinkedIn layer of the modern sales stack (Clay + Smartlead + HeyReach). 

They exploded.

Between 2023 and 2025 they saw:

→ 10-15% Month-over-Month growth.
→ A surge to 2,900+ free trials per month.

Then, data visibility became the bottleneck.

Stripe couldn't handle the complexity of their growth and caused internal chaos. 

The CEO would see $20k in "churn" and demand answers, while it was just failed payments that would be recovered the next day. 

As Ilija Stojkovski put it: 

"𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘴. 𝘕𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩."

---

That's when we crossed paths and helped them at Drilldown to build a custom data infrastructure in just 4 weeks.

We moved them off generic dashboards and built a single source of truth.

In December 2025, HeyReach.io officially crossed $10M ARR.

They’ve proven that world-class tech companies can be built from anywhere.

My 8 unpopular opinions on B2B SaaS analytics in 2026:

1. CAC:LTV is mostly a vanity metric. It tells you where you stand, not what to fix.  Cool for VCs, useless for your team. 

2. Averages are your enemy. Segment your data to find your biggest growth levers.

3. Having 100% accurate numbers is overrated. Knowing trends over time and direction is more important.

4. If you are spending $5k/month on data tools before having product-market fit, you're being robbed.

5. Using "Free" open-source tools is EXPENSIVE. Buying a managed service is almost always cheaper than your hourly rate spent debugging.

6. Founders: if you're spending Saturdays fixing broken pipelines, that is a failure of prioritization. Your time is worth more than a Weld subscription.

7. AI writes great code, but it will never 100% understand your business. Humans must be responsible for insights.

8. Context > code. The hardest part of data is not technical. It's understanding how the business works.

Data analytics can have huge impact on your business, both positive and negative.

Good luck!

Currently digging in some B2B SaaS that used analytics to reach $1B+ valuation. Did you know this about Slack?

Slack began as an internal tool for a failing gaming company. 

When they analyzed the retention data, they found a specific “magic number”: 2,000 messages. 

Teams with fewer than 2,000 messages were likely to churn, but teams that crossed this had a 93% retention rate.

They engineered their entire onboarding and “freemium” limit around this metric. 

The free plan allows users to view 10,000 messages, giving teams enough space to blow past the 2,000-message “hook” before hitting a paywall.

This retention engineering helped Slack become the fastest-growing enterprise app in history, eventually acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion.

Crazy stuff

After building the same dashboards, data structures, and metrics 10+ times, I stopped rebuilding them from scratch.

I call this the SaaS intelligence system. 

It gives every SaaS company the things they should already have, but often don’t:

1. accurate, real-time ARR waterfalls everyone agrees on.
2. dashboards to go from revenue → accounts → users.
3. metric dictionaries so definitions don’t live in people’s heads.

That alone removes hours of manual work and discussions.

But the real benefit comes from what this foundation enables:

1. data enrichment → reach better users.
2. marketing attribution → acquire more of them.
3. customer health scoring → reduce churn.

It gives leadership and operators a reliable system to make decisions, without needing a big data team for maintenance.

The cool part: everything runs from the data warehouse.

That’s what the SaaS Intelligence System is: the core data setup most B2B SaaS teams end up rebuilding anyway.

I put together a short doc showing the 5 dashboards we recommend for $2M–$10M B2B SaaS teams. 

This is what that foundation looks like in practice.

taplio

The Battle

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Thomas Varekamp

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taplio

The Battle

Nick Broekema

Thomas Varekamp

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Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Broekema's LinkedIn Performance

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