Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩

Turning Impact Leaders into Authority Figures Through Powerful Stories | Ghostwriting LinkedIn & Educational Email Courses ✍️📚

Climate tech founders are building world-changing solutions.

But most of them are invisible online.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel lobbyists have near-infinite marketing budgets. Greenwashers dominate the conversation. Climate deniers spread misinformation to millions.

The people actually solving the problem? They're too busy building to talk about it.

That's where I come in.

As a climate tech ghostwriter, I build LinkedIn thought leadership for Series A+ climate tech CEOs and founders — helping them take control of the narrative and build visibility that compounds.

Here's how it works:

→ 6-12 month projects built on weekly or bi-weekly interviews
→ I extract your expertise and turn it into content that sounds like you
→ Full strategy, content planning, and profile optimization included
→ Continuous improvement baked in (that's what Kaizen means)

I'm not an agency with 47 writers and a sales team. I'm a solo operator with a limited client roster, which means you work directly with me — every interview, every post, every edit.
Results my clients have seen:

→ Inbound leads and investor connection requests
→ Podcast invitations and speaking opportunities
→ Top talent reaching out directly
→ Measurable traffic to demos, books, and qualification surveys

I've worked with 20+ climate leaders across 4 continents, including 3 LinkedIn Top Voices and a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder. Collectively, my clients have raised $200M+.

I've ghostwritten 1,000+ posts and have been running Kaizen for almost 3 years.

If you're looking to take control of your narrative and start building your visibility, DM me "climate" and I'm happy to talk more.

Growth Marketer

~ Running company social media marketing operations
~ Running paid ad campaigns on social and Google Ads
~ Inbound and content marketing

Most solar companies grow by expanding into new territories.

These three grew by going deeper — block by block — in Brooklyn.

Meet T.R. Ludwig, Gaelen McKee, and Mark Cunningham — CEO, President, and CTO of Brooklyn SolarWorks.

Before founding BSW, all three were building careers in solar. T.R. and Gaelen were at Sunrun, driving out to New Jersey and Long Island to install panels on suburban homes.

But they all lived in Brooklyn. And every day, they were driving past a massive untapped opportunity.

The problem? NYC's rooftops aren't like the suburbs.

Flat roofs. Fire code restrictions. Limited space. HVAC equipment everywhere. One of the most complex building codes in the US.

NYC desperately needed solar. But traditional racking systems couldn't work here.

So in 2015, they decided to build solar where they lived — and invented a way to make it possible.

Their idea: the Brooklyn Solar Canopy.

A patented system that elevates panels above rooftop obstacles — creating usable living space underneath.

Mark leads design and engineering, ensuring every system works within NYC's notoriously complex code. 

Gaelen runs operations and product development — turning their hyperlocal insights into a scalable national product. 

T.R. drives business growth and industry advocacy.

Instead of expanding outward like every other solar company, they went hyperlocal.

90% of their 2,500+ projects sit within just 15 zip codes, all reachable from their Gowanus headquarters by car, bike, or even foot.

That local focus gave them deep expertise with NYC's zoning, permitting, and code — and a level of accountability to the communities they serve that's hard to replicate.

→ 2,500+ residential and commercial installations across all five NYC boroughs 
→ Over 40,000 tons of CO2 emissions avoided 
→ Launched Brooklyn Solar Canopy Co to sell their system nationwide 
→ Named a Top Solar Contractor by Solar Power World 
→ T.R. named "Trailblazer in Clean Energy" by City & State New York 
→ T.R. helped pass NYC's City of Yes Carbon Neutrality amendment, unlocking rooftop space for solar across the city

They even donated a full canopy system to CHiPS, a Park Slope nonprofit running a soup kitchen and housing program — right down the street from their office.

I'm convinced every European capital could replicate their success (or partner up with them).

—

Do you think urban solar should be the norm?

—

I share stories of exceptional climate leaders every Monday for #ClimateFounderMondays

Follow me by clicking the bell icon on my profile to be the first notified next week.

Roman Pikalenko

recright

CEO at Brooklyn SolarWorks

President at Brooklyn SolarWorks

CTO at Brooklyn SolarWorks

Brooklyn SolarWorks

I turn $10M+ Series A climate tech founders & execs into LinkedIn thought leaders to attract capital & talent | Helped 3x LinkedIn Top Voices & 10+ climate tech founders | Obsessed with solar right now ☀️

I posted about wanting to go back to study 4 weeks ago.

37 comments. DMs I wasn't expecting.

People sharing their own "I went back to school mid-career" stories.

Here's where things are at:

→ I started with Aalto's Open Uni
→ My first course is on M.E.T.A.LS. (or Metallurgical Engineering and Technical Analysis of Lifecycle and Sustainability)
→ One hour a day after work, before bed + weekends

It's humbling.

I haven't done anything close to formal studying in 9+ years.

And the 18-year-olds in the same course are probably better at it than I am.

But I'm also more motivated than I've ever been.

Back in high school, I'd scoff at nerds doing physics.

(not that I was a cool kid or anything)

Now, I want to actually understand the science behind what I write about every day.

And then maybe apply it to something else 👀

—

A small update for the people who asked.

The experiment continues.

PS. If you've done full-time work + full-time studying — drop your best tip below. Seriously.

Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🍉

He grew up in Oman surrounded by pristine beaches, corals, and desert.

Then he discovered a dead zone the size of Florida sitting right off his country's coast.

Meet Talal Hasan, Founder and CEO of 44.01.

Talal was born into a family of environmentalists in Oman. But he didn't take the obvious path into climate.

He studied French and Business Management in London. Became a corporate lawyer. Spent 10+ years working on energy transactions in the Gulf.

Then he helped launch IDO Investments, a $130M VC fund for the Omani government, investing globally in technology.

The turning point came while working at the sovereign fund.

He read that Oman's coast had the largest ocean "dead zone" in the world — a lifeless stretch of water caused by CO2 emissions being absorbed by the sea.

As someone raised by environmentalists, he couldn't look away.

When he investigated, he found something remarkable:

The problem and the solution were literally right next to each other.

Oman's Al Hajar mountains contain the world's largest surface deposits of peridotite — a rock that naturally turns CO2 into stone.

This process happens in nature. But it takes decades.

Talal's question: what if we could speed it up?

In 2020, he founded 44.01 (named after the molecular weight of CO2).

Here's how the technology works:

→ They capture CO2 from the atmosphere or from industrial processes
→ Dissolve it in water (essentially fizzy water — no toxic chemicals)
→ Inject it into peridotite formations underground
→ The rock mineralizes the CO2 in under 12 months
→ It becomes part of the mineral crystal lattice.

If something did leak? It's a puff of CO2 like opening a soda bottle.

The results have been extraordinary:

→ $47M raised ($42M Series A led by Equinor Ventures)
→ Backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures
→ Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Siemens, Air Liquide, and Sumitomo also invested
→ Won Prince William's Earthshot Prize in 2022 ("Fix Our Climate" category)
→ Won $1M XPRIZE Carbon Removal Award against 1,300+ teams from 80 countries
→ Won another $1M XFACTOR Award in April 2025
→ Partnered with ADNOC to scale in the UAE
→ Partnered with Climeworks (world's leading direct air capture company)
→ 50+ employees across Oman, UAE, and London

And peridotite isn't only in Oman. It's found on every continent.

The US, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia — all have deposits.

Which means 44.01's technology could scale globally.

Their goal: mineralize 1B tonnes of CO2 by 2040.

For context, the IPCC says we need to remove 1 gigaton per year by 2030. 
That's equivalent to all global air travel emissions.

—

Did you know about Talal and 44.01's work?

PS. I share more stories of exceptional climate leaders every Monday for #ClimateFounderMondays

Follow me by clicking the bell icon on my profile to be notified next week 🔔

Helping the world achieve negative emissions

44.01

Just signed my 7th client. 3 months upfront. 

Solar software founder. First call was with their marketing manager — who became the internal champion (as they usually do). 

The only real challenge? Helping them decide between posting in German or English. I've had clients wrestle with this before, so I put on my consultant hat and broke down the trade-offs. 

The close happened on the 2nd call. 

This is my 3rd solar client now. And what I've noticed is that the more specialized you get, the faster the sales calls go. 

You've already solved their problems for someone else. You already speak their language. 

It's one of those times when I pat my past self on the back and say: "Great job niching down on climate tech, dude." 

February is off to a great start. 
Onwards.

The fastest way to build authority in a new climate niche:

Stop talking about yourself.

Almost a year ago, I started highlighting a climate tech founder every Monday.

Not the famous ones. Not the people raising $200M or working with Bill Gates. Lesser-known founders doing exceptional work that most people hadn't heard of yet.

I called it Climate Founder Mondays.

At first, I just thought these founders deserved more attention. And I wanted to be more embedded in the world I was writing for.

38 founders later:

The quality of who's engaging with my content changed. Climate tech founders, VCs, senior execs started showing up in my comments and DMs. New conversations started. Clients came from spaces I hadn't even been targeting.

Here's why it worked — and why a content series might be the most underrated move on LinkedIn:

1/ It builds credibility without you having to claim it.

When you consistently highlight what's worth paying attention to in your ecosystem, your audience starts to see you as someone with their finger on the pulse.

I had almost no track record in climate tech when I started. A year of Monday posts helped change that.

2/ Every post reaches an audience you'd never get to otherwise.

Before each post, I connect with the founder I'm featuring. After it goes live, I send one message:

"Hey, wrote a post about your work. Hope you like it."

About 2 out of 3 posts get reshared by someone from that founder's community — people who had never heard of me before.

One post about Liz Dennett, CEO of Endolith, brought roughly 20-30 chemical engineers and sustainable mining specialists into my orbit in a single week.

3/ It makes consistency effortless.

A content series kills the blank page problem at least once a week. The format is already decided.

You pick the who or the what and follow the structure. After a few weeks, it becomes a habit.

The research becomes interesting. The writing becomes almost secondary.

—

This approach is built on 'borrowed credibility' concept.

3 things to avoid if you try this approach:

First, make sure you still show your own credibility in other posts. Your journey, behind-the-scenes, other proof of progress. Takes both to become the category leader.

Second, don't share the same viral videos everyone else is sharing on LinkedIn. I can't tell you how many people have posted about Notpla, for example, 2-3 times in the last 3 months.

Third, keep it within your niche. If you're a solar founder, maybe don't highlight vertical farming. Tempting, I know.

—

If you were to start a content series like this, what would it be?

Would love to know.

I named my business Kaizen.

Most people assume it's a clever brand name.

It's actually more of a personal commitment.

Kaizen (改善) is a Japanese concept: continuous, incremental improvement — as a way of life, but also a strategy.

I started using it as a business principle in 2023.

3 years in, it's still the most useful framework I've found.

In practice, it means:

→ Every client's content gets measurably better over 12 months. I'm constantly refining.

→ My internal processes become more efficient. I've recently been working only 5 days a week, yet I have more clients than ever.

→ I'm always upskilling and building. Could be sales practice, a new vertical, or adding email to my strategy.

The problem with LinkedIn is that most people are chasing the spike.

The viral post. The big announcement.

But true visibility doesn't work that way.

It builds quietly. Over months.

Till one day you look up and realize you're the person people think of first.

—

Does your brand name hold a deeper meaning you haven't shared?

Last Friday, I spoke at Climate Drift's Thought Leadership for Humans program.

The Q&A after was fire. Here are 6 questions I got from people in climate (and my honest answers):

Q1: Will AI replace ghostwriters?

Think of AI like Photoshop was for graphic designers. It's a tool, not a replacement. My job isn't writing posts — it's building your presence, course-correcting when things go sideways, and extracting stories you didn't know you had. AI can't do that. If anything, AI raised my client cap from 5 to 7.

Q2: LinkedIn reach is dropping. Should I even bother?

The reach is declining because LinkedIn is going the Facebook route — incentivizing people to pay for distribution that used to be free. But you don't need 50,000 impressions per post. You need the right 50 people to see your post and start a conversation. Focus on profile views, # of conversations started, or revenue as the right metrics.

Q3: Should I start with LinkedIn or an email newsletter?

LinkedIn is your distribution channel. Email is your middle channel. If you start a newsletter without an audience, you'll need to drive traffic from somewhere anyway. Start on LinkedIn. Build the list from there. Then email becomes your insurance policy when the algorithm gets worse.

Q4: I have multiple goals — speaking, advising, growing my business. How do I choose?

You can't pursue them all at once. Something always has to give. For example, if you want to speak and advise? Podcasts are a stepping stone — you build credibility for advising while getting reps as a speaker, without traveling.

Q5: Should I expand to Twitter or Bluesky?

Only if you've maxed out your current platform. Take your 20-50 best-performing posts from LinkedIn and use them as your starter library on the new platform. If you don't have that library yet, you haven't finished building your foundation.

Q6: How do I build an audience in a niche I'm new to?

Borrowed credibility. Highlight people already in the space. I do this every Monday — I pick a lesser-known climate tech founder and tell their story. Tag them. Connect beforehand. 2 out of 3 times, their network engages and a chunk of them follow you. You're borrowing their audience by giving them recognition.

—

These questions came from a variety of people:

Small business owners
Heads of startup incubator programs
Jobseekers
Climate scientists

If you're in climate and want to start building your LinkedIn presence but don't know where to begin, follow me. I share stuff like this regularly.

What question would you add to this list?

PS. Huge thanks to Katie Gilbert and Marco Morawec, for inviting me as a speaker once again 🙏

AI can write a LinkedIn post in 10 seconds. It still can't do my job.

If all you need is a post written, AI is good enough. Seriously. Paste a prompt, get a draft, publish it. Done.

But that's not what my clients pay me for.

I'm confident AI will never take my job because:

1/ I course-correct in real time.

A client goes viral and attracts a wave of negative comments from people outside their industry. What do you do? Engage? Ignore? Delete? Post a follow-up? AI doesn't know. I do, because I know their brand, their audience, and what's at stake.

2/ I extract stories founders don't know they have.

Every week I get on calls with founders and ask questions they've never been asked. Half the time they say "I've never thought about it that way." That's the content. AI can't interview you. It can only remix what already exists online.

3/ I read the room.

A client's fundraise just fell through. Do we still publish the optimistic industry take we had scheduled? Or do we pivot to something more grounded? AI doesn't know what happened on your board call yesterday. I do.

4/ I protect the voice.

Your LinkedIn should sound like you, not like a marketing intern with ChatGPT. Building a Tone of Voice Guide, catching when a draft sounds "off," knowing the difference between how you talk to investors vs. customers — that takes months of working together.

5/ I connect content to outcomes.

AI doesn't ask "why are we posting this?" I do. Every post ties back to a goal — investor visibility, talent attraction, partnership opportunities. If it doesn't serve one of those, we don't publish it.

—

AI made me better at my job.

I won't argue with that.

Without AI, my client cap would probably be 5. I have 7 right now because AI helps with research, transcripts, and first-pass editing. It handles the grunt work so I can focus on the strategy, creative direction, and quality control.

Think of it like Photoshop for graphic designers. When Photoshop came out, nobody said "we don't need designers anymore." But it did make good designers faster.

Same thing is happening with ghostwriting.

—

The founders who try to replace ghostwriting with AI usually come back 3-6 months later.

They crave a human approach. And let's be honest — they don't have time to tweak AI prompts every week.

Do you use AI for your content?

PS. I don't think I'll ever stop getting this question lol

I don't often mention this, but I had ZERO climate tech background when I decided to build my entire business around it.

No science degree.
No industry connections.
No portfolio of climate clients.

It all started in 2019. I was an exchange student in Germany. One lecture a day. Bored out of my mind. Doom-scrolling IG.

I stumbled on 4Ocean and learned about plastic pollution in the ocean for the first time.

That sent me down a rabbit hole.

Deforestation. Biodiversity loss. The scale of what we're doing to the planet.

I started resharing everything on my Instagram. Became an activist in my own way.

Even went to a Fridays for Future march — one of the early ones, back when Greta was just getting started.

For a few months, I was all in.

Then life happened.

I went back to Finland. Had to write my thesis. Covid hit right before I graduated. I delayed my graduation because I was an immigrant and couldn't afford to be jobless with no safety net.

After I finally graduated, I spent 1.5 years working service jobs. Survival mode. Climate passion took a back seat.

Eventually, I landed a marketing role at a recruitment SaaS company.

When I quit to start my own ghostwriting business, I had one thing I was sure about:

I didn't want to write for other marketing agencies. That's what most of my peers did, and there's nothing wrong with it.

But I wanted to work with people building something that matters.

So I picked climate.

Except I had no idea what I was doing.

For about 9 months, I was all over the place. Targeting coaches, random CEOs, "sustainability tech" (whatever that means), founders, anyone who'd listen.

My positioning was a mess. My confidence was shaky. And I kept second-guessing whether climate was even viable as a niche.

Then I gave myself a deadline: 3 months. Reach out to 200+ people in climate tech. If I don't land a single client, I move on.

It worked. I landed an angel investor in food tech.

2.5 years later, I have 7 active clients. 6 are in climate tech.

I've ghostwritten for investors, LinkedIn Top Voices, consultants, founders, and execs.

And I like to think I'm becoming one of the go-to climate tech ghostwriters in Europe.

And my ambition has also grown:

I'm on a mission to help people in 1,000 climate tech companies build visibility online.

Right now, I do that 1:1. Mostly with Series A founders and execs who are too busy to open LinkedIn, let alone post on it.

But I don't want to scale into an agency.

So I got only 1 other option:

Building digital products.

Specifically, for marketing teams trying to build their founder's LinkedIn in-house — and earlier-stage founders who have the time but need the system.

For now — if you told me back in Germany, doom-scrolling on Instagram, that I'd build an entire business around climate tech without a single day of experience in the industry...

I would've laughed.

—

How did you end up working in climate?

PS. I miss my IKEA shark :(

In 2025, I got invited to LinkedIn's HQ in Amsterdam.

Cool experience. Met some great people. But one thing stuck with me that I haven't talked about publicly.

The core topic of the event? How to use LinkedIn's advertising tools to boost your personal profile posts.

Not company page ads. Personal posts.

Two years ago, this wasn't even an option. Boosting was only possible through company pages.

Now, there's a little button at the top right corner of every post that says "Boost." You put in 50, 100, 200 and LinkedIn pushes it to more people.

Why does this matter for you as a climate tech founder?

Because the platform is evolving in the same direction as Facebook.

LinkedIn is incentivizing people to pay for reach that used to be free. And the more people boost, the less organic content gets distributed to make room for it.

That's why your reach feels like it's been declining. It's not your content getting worse. It's the platform shifting its model.

So what do you do about it?

I'm not a fan of boosting. I'm very much an organic-first person. But I won't pretend it doesn't exist.

If you want to experiment with it, do it.

But it'll dilute your organic data. If you publish 10 posts without boosting and 1 with, you can't compare them the same way. You'll need to treat boosted content separately when analyzing what actually resonates.

The core idea behind posting hasn't changed.

Your content strategy shouldn't depend on the algorithm being nice to you. It should depend on whether the right 50-100 people see it and whether it starts conversations.

That means:

1/ Stop obsessing over impressions. Start looking at who's viewing your profile after you post. Are they investors? Customers? Partners? If yes, your content is working — even if the numbers look smaller than last year.

2/ Use your posts as conversation starters, not performance metrics. The DMs, the replies, the introductions — that's where LinkedIn actually converts for founders.

3/ Double down on content analytics as a skill. When organic reach shrinks, you can't afford to keep posting stuff that doesn't land. Learn to read your own data — what topics your audience actually engages with, what formats fall flat, and what's worth doubling down on. Now is the time to 5x the effort on quality.

4/ And build your email list. You own that. You don't own your LinkedIn reach. If the algorithm keeps going this direction, having a direct line to your audience is insurance.—

Have you noticed your LinkedIn reach dropping?

Curious how others are experiencing it.

📸: Met the legendary Harald Friedl at the same event.

Circular Economist | CCO | Keynote Speaker | Investing in human capacity for the circular & AI transition

They've been best friends since 9th grade.

One left her corporate career at P&G. The other dropped out of medical school.

Today, they're backed by Y Combinator and building the world's first polyester alternative made from food waste.

Meet Myra Arshad and Avneet Ghotra, co-founders of ALT TEX.

Myra grew up watching her mother run a cut-and-sew business she'd built from scratch after immigrating from Pakistan.

That put Myra inside the fashion industry's dirty secret:

60% of all clothing contains polyester.

A petroleum-derived material responsible for 35% of all ocean microplastics that never biodegrades.

Meanwhile, her best friend Avneet was at U of T studying environmental science and biochemistry.

She cared deeply about the problem.

She just didn't know yet that Myra had the missing piece.

In 2019, Myra called Avneet with a plan.

"Come to my kitchen. Let's figure this out."

Avneet left medical school. Myra left P&G.

They started experimenting with discarded apples, banana peels, rotten tomatoes — whatever post-industrial food waste they could get their hands on.

Their breakthrough?

A patent-pending fermentation process that converts food waste into biodegradable biofibre that works with existing polyester supply chains.

No factory overhaul required.

Each shirt made from ALT TEX fabric:

→ Diverts 1 kg of food waste from landfill 
→ Avoids 9 kg of carbon emissions 
→ Prevents 4 g of microplastics from entering the ocean 
→ Is 70% stronger than cotton

But turning a kitchen experiment into a commercial fabric isn't exactly easy.

They had to convince university professors to validate their findings, secure government grants, and navigate deep-tech materials science.

The persistence paid off.

Today, ALT TEX has:

→ Been backed by Y Combinator
→ Raised $2.3M USD in funding 
→ Secured $1M in pilot LOIs 
→ Won U of T's Adams Sustainability Prize 
→ Won H&M Foundation's Global Change Award (€200,000) 
→ Grown to a team of 10 in Toronto

Myra on the scale of the opportunity:

"We're not trying to make a niche Canadian company — this can be a $4 or $5 billion company within the next 10 years."

And if replacing polyester sounds ambitious — remember it's a $104B industry.

And it all started in a kitchen.

—

Would you swap your polyester for fabric made from food waste?

—

I plan to share more stories of exceptional climate leaders like Myra and Avneet every Monday for #ClimateFounderMondays

Follow me by clicking the bell icon on my profile to be the first notified about it next week 🔔

A founder told me last week:

"I've been thinking about LinkedIn for 2 years. Just haven't started."

I asked what was holding her back.

"I don't know what to say."

It's always interesting to me. In her case, she'd spent 8 years building something the world can't afford to ignore.

100s of customer calls. Investor decks. Team offsites.

She had opinions, stories, and proof — everywhere.

Her problem wasn't the lack of copywriting knowledge.

She had an idea capture problem.

Struggling to extract what's already there.

That's my whole job as a climate tech ghostwriter btw:

→ A 30-60-minute call every week
→ A few good questions
→ And 3+ years of experience on how to turn founder-speak into something people actually stop to read

Trust me when I say this:

The ideas are never the problem.

—

What's your relationship with LinkedIn right now?

Had a wild conversation with a client this week.

He used to run a solar company. Built the team. Set up the processes. Hired good people.

And one day he's sitting in his office thinking: "I have nothing to do."

Not in a good way. He felt useless.

What messed with his head the most:

Someone on the warehouse floor asked him a simple question. Something like "hey, we forgot to do this on a job — should we go back?"

His gut said: "Yeah, go back."

But that one answer? That was him making a decision his manager should've made. Without context. Without the full picture. Without anyone else knowing.

And every time he did that, he was quietly undermining the people he hired to run things.

So he had to unlearn the one thing every founder is wired to do — solve problems on the spot.

Instead, his answer became: "Talk to your manager. Follow the process. They'll figure it out."

Brutal for a problem-solver. But necessary.

Once he stopped being the answer machine, he had all this mental bandwidth. 

So he started tinkering with a recurring problem he kept seeing across the industry.

That problem became a product. That product became its own company. He eventually exited the first business entirely.

The "useless" phase wasn't a dead end. It was a signal that he'd outgrown the role — and was ready to grow as a CEO. Or, in his case, to also build the next thing.

This is the kind of stuff that comes up in my weekly calls with founders. I frequently get feedback like:

"I didn't expect this to come up today."
"Idk how you pulled these out of me."
"Came completely unprepared. Yet we covered so much."

This is my bread and butter.

The tiny details.

The stuff that no AI will ever be able to replicate.

—

Have you ever felt useless in your own company?

Curious if other founders can relate.

This wasn’t on my 2026 bucket list, but...

…I just took my first step towards my STEM degree!

I’m now officially a student at Aalto Open University. And I decided to start with a course that would’ve given me a headache 5 years ago:

Metallurgical Engineering and Technical Analysis of Lifecycle and Sustainability.

Or M.E.T.A.L.S. for short.

(gotta love the creative name)

I picked it for a few reasons:

- It’s 100% self-faced and online
- It’s 5 CTS (I need 45 to qualify for a bachelors)
- I have time till end of June to submit the assignments
- And metals are kinda cool (idk where this is coming from)

I’ve put aside about 5h/week as a start for this.

Will keep you updated on how it goes!

PS. Should I start a BTS series covering everything I learn?

I haven't talked to one of my clients in over a year. And she's one of the best-performing accounts I manage.

Her exec syncs with me monthly. She reviews content in 10-15min per batch. 
And her posts consistently attract investors, partners, and customers in her space.

How?

We spent months building the foundation — her voice, her positioning, her themes. Once that was locked in, the system runs without her needing to be in every conversation.

But that's not how most of my client relationships work.

Here's the full breakdown across my 7 clients right now:

- 4 clients are on a weekly cadence. 45-50min calls where we go deep on what's happening in their business, industry, and head. I ask questions. They talk. I turn it into content.

I like weekly because it keeps the context fresh. New deals, new conversations, new opinions — that stuff has a short shelf life. If I wait too long, the moment's gone. These are also founders that are involved in the daily business activities so they have rich context to share.

- 2 clients are on a bi-weekly cadence. Heavier travel schedules, board-heavy months, more visionary people. We batch more per call, and I lean harder on async — voice notes, Slack messages, articles they've shared.

- And then the monthly setup I mentioned above.

There's no single "right" cadence. The best setup is the one that matches:

How a founder actually works
Their communication style
And their schedule

Some founders think best out loud on calls. Others drop fire voice notes at 11pm. One client sends me regular articles he reads with his thoughts on it.

I even had a CEO who'd jump on random WhatsApp calls for 10-15min in the moment of inspiration.

My job is to meet them where they are.

—

If you've been putting off LinkedIn because you think it means another weekly meeting on your calendar — it doesn't have to.

What's your best format for sharing your thoughts? On calls? Via text? Voice notes?

Would love to know.

A climate investor once told me something I haven't stopped thinking about.

She sees 300+ inbound decks a year.

Before any meeting, she does one thing: she Googles the founder.

Not the company. The founder.

She's not looking for awards or press features.

They're important, but they don't tell her much about the person.

She's looking for proof that this person understands the problem they're solving — and can articulate why NOW is the moment.

That's it.

A few questions she goes through:

→ Do they have a point of view?
→ Can they explain their sector without buzzwords?
→ Do they engage with what's happening in the space — or just announce their own milestones?

Most founders who are fundraising right now undermine their strategy.

They build a content strategy around their company.

But investors want to meet the founder, not the brand.

After all, they're investing millions in the leadership and the team.

—

What does your LinkedIn say about you right now?

One thing Chris Do and I have in common?

We've both been guests on Sergey Leshchenko's Be Yourself podcast.

(Hi Chris 👋)

Sergey asked me how I built my business from scratch.

The honest version: I had 15,000 followers when I quit my last job. Not one of them would've hired me.

I'd spent two years at my last company building a personal brand around helping young marketers.

The moment I wanted to ghostwrite for founders, I realized I'd built for completely the wrong people.

Nine months of experimenting followed:

→ Sustainability tech
→ General founders and CEOs
→ Six-figure entrepreneurs

Nothing clicked.

Then climate tech.

I went in with only passion. Zero industry knowledge. Not what people recommend, right?

My first client was an angel investor in food tech. I gave her a big discount in exchange for something more valuable: sessions where she'd teach me about the space.

That's how I started to learn a niche I had no business being in.

Over two years in now. Still learning. But it's paying off.

I can now close new deals by simply saying "oh yeah, I've work with 2-3 founders just like you."

Good times.

Listen to the full conversation between Sergey and me here: https://lnkd.in/d4BVwQV5

PS. Still grateful for those 15,000 btw. It sucked having to disengage, but I had to.

I spent 3 years building a 4-level batching system so I could take a 2.5 week vacation with 6 clients.

Here's how each level forced the next (and why I'm now scaling to 7 without adding hours):

The forcing function was Japan.

I planned a 2.5 week trip and realized my system would collapse if I stepped away. So I spent 2 months building a month's worth of content buffer for all 6 clients.

Just to buy myself a real vacation.

That constraint became the catalyst for Level 4.

At first, I was batching one week at a time.

Ideation → hooks → outlines → drafts → edits → visuals → submission.

All in one go.

Worked fine for 2-3 clients. Broke immediately at 4.

So I increased batching to 2-3 weeks per client.

Longer calendar blocks. Smoother process.

Better. Still felt like racing the clock.

Then I split the process.

Day 1: Ideation, hooks, outlines, v1 drafts.
Day 2: Finishing drafts, visuals, editing, submitting.

Got me to 6 clients. Where most people stop.

But here's where it gets interesting.

I noticed every client has daily themes. My sustainable materials founder:

→ 2 posts/week on denim insulation
→ 1 post/week repurposing from 300+ archive
→ 1 post/week on Australian manufacturing
→ 1 post/week on company updates

Instead of batching by "weeks," I started batching by topics.

Pick "denim insulation." Create 4-6 weeks of content on that single theme.

Then "Australian manufacturing." Same thing.

But here's the key—and this is what most people miss:

I combined this with a buffer.

Weeks 1-2: Create the standard 2-week batch.
Weeks 3-4: With everything ahead, I have breathing room to focus on topic-based batching.

By week 3, I have almost a month's worth prepared. 80-90% done.

By weeks 4-6: The compounding is so efficient I can plan and draft content for the next 1-2 months.

This is the system that lets me manage 6 clients without working weekends.

And it's the same system I'm now using to scale to 7 — without adding hours.

—

Most climate tech founders I work with have the opposite problem.

They're not batching 6 clients' content. They're struggling to post consistently for themselves.

They know LinkedIn matters for fundraising, hiring, and partnerships.

But they don't have time to figure out the system.

So every Monday, I send out the exact strategies I've built ghostwriting for climate tech leaders who've raised $10M+ — broken down so you can use them yourself in 10 minutes per week.

430+ climate founders already get it.

Join them here (free): https://lnkd.in/ezCxpYcH

First podcast appearance in a while. Really enjoyed the chat, cheers Sergey Leshchenko!

Producing video podcasts and growing YouTube for your business🎙️Cinematic videos for ads 📺 Host of Be Yourself Pod

My guest today is a fellow Ukrainian Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🍉 who made a bold move: leaving a stable corporate marketing career to become a solopreneur in a completely different arena.

After organically growing his LinkedIn audience to 15K followers, Roman took advice from Matt Barker and pivoted into ghostwriting and LinkedIn strategy for climate tech founders 🌍 —> helping them attract investors, talent, and attention.

What impressed me about Roman’s journey is how intentional it was. No overnight hacks. Just experiments, consistency, and sticking to a niche long enough for the compounding to kick in.

This episode is a guidebook on:
 • how founders use LinkedIn to raise capital and hire talent 💼
 • why niche positioning beats trying to appeal to everyone 🎯
 • the biggest personal branding mistakes founders make
 • why AI won’t fix your content strategy 🤖
 • how patience quietly builds inbound opportunities

📺 Check on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eE-DZ4Wt
🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/efUUzMGj

I've ghostwritten 2,000+ LinkedIn posts for climate tech founders.

After all of them, I know what stops founders cold: they can't structure a raw opinion into a post.

They know what they think about their industry. They have strong takes.

But when they sit down to write, the blank page wins.

Writing LinkedIn posts is a formatting skill. Most advice skips straight to "just start writing." That's where founders get stuck.

So I'm giving away The 5-Question Post Builder. For free.

Answer 5 questions about any opinion you have → get a complete post structure ready to write in 30 minutes, or hand to AI in 5.

I built this as part of my onboarding process for new ghostwriting clients. Before I write a single post, I run every founder through these questions — to figure out exactly which format their POV belongs in.

It works so well I decided to stop keeping it to myself.

Here's what's inside:

• 5 POV extraction questions (~10 min, works on any climate tech topic)
• 4 post structures mapped to 4 different POV types
• A real before/after: a raw founder opinion → finished LinkedIn post
• An AI mega prompt that turns your answers into a first draft
• A publish checklist so you stop second-guessing and actually hit post

Here's the access: https://lnkd.in/drANgV-2

taplio

Roman Pikalenko's Linkedin Analytics

Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩

Performance ScoreRoman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's LinkedIn Performance

What is Roman talking about?

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Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's Best Posts (last 30 days)

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taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Roman Pikalenko's Linkedin Analytics

Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩

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);}Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's LinkedIn Performance

What is Roman talking about?

Who is engaging with Roman

Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Roman Pikalenko's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreRoman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's LinkedIn Performance

Roman Pikalenko 🇺🇦🦩's Best Posts (last 30 days)