Carson Alworth — Articles

The Founder's Voice Problem: You're Brilliant on a Call and Boring on the Page

2026-07-06T00:00:00Z

If you even clicked on this article, I’d estimate there’s a 98% chance you already know what I’m talking about. You’re brilliant. I’m not overselling you, either. Founders do what almost nobody else on earth does—they take an idea, turn it into a business, and turn that business into a success.

And then somebody clicks your LinkedIn page. They’re instantly “turned off” of your ideas, your business, and your brand. Maybe it’s because you don’t even post. Maybe it’s because when you do post, you’re quoting your business with a caption like “Great insights here 👇” or something equally clinical and generic.

Seems like a disconnect, right? On a call, you’re brilliant. Magnetic. When you pitch in meetings, your ideas land, and when you speak, people lean in to listen. Here’s the gap: your voice lands in the room, and disappears on the page.

Seriously—why is that?

Lesson 1: It’s not a talent problem

Let me be clear. Founders, CEOs, CFOs, you name it—are talented. Probably more talented than I am. I’ve worked with CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and executive-level strategists. Name the gig, and I’ve written for them.

Half of my clients tell me their writing “sucks” verbatim. Let me tell you something—half of my clients are wrong.

Their writing doesn’t suck at all. It’s fantastic, actually. It usually hits all the right notes, presents information accurately, and puts their experience and knowledge on display.

But that’s not enough. I always frame it like this. “Writing and thinking-out-loud are different skills,” I say, because it’s true. Your voice works on a call because it’s unpolished, human, and in-the-moment.

But when you write, you try to overthink it. Writing demands professionalism, right? So you keep it formal, keep it proper, and nail each and every fact.

That turns your writing generic.

That turns you invisible.

Lesson 2: Blank page tax

Keeping this section short, because you already know what I’m talking about. You have ideas. You have the strategy. You have the drive.

You just don’t have the time. Fun fact: a Stanford study found that speaking is roughly three times faster than typing. So when you force yourself to suffer through the drudge of writing, editing, and refining your ideas—when you can put them out at three times the speed by just talking through it—you’re handicapping yourself.

No wonder your LinkedIn page feels empty, and you never post. You don’t have the time to write. It’s as simple as that.

Lesson 3: What you do instead

The solution is simple: you repost your company’s content. Except that takes away your brand—your personal brand, not your business. It makes you, “the person,” invisible, and replaces you with you, “the brand.”

That’s painful—because the ideas are yours, and you’re not getting recognition for sharing them. So change that…but how?

Maybe instead, you try a simpler solution: late-night, caffeine-fueled writing sessions. You keep it up for a day or two, but again—Writing is slow, talking is fast. Writing needs editing and polish—talking has none of that.

So instead, you hand it off to a marketing agency. Three weeks later, your first batch of posts arrives, and it sounds soulless—exactly like the “sterile brand voice” you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Here’s the truth: if you end up going down that route, you’re losing something that might be hard to quantify at first, but is the most important piece of you.

Lesson 4: What’s actually being lost

You’re probably wondering, around this point, what you’re actually losing. Is it just an ego trip? Should you just give it up, and keep reposting your company’s articles? No.

Absolutely not. And I’ll explain why. I have seven years of experience ghostwriting in the hundreds of voices of my clients. Each time I close out a project, I learn something about writing—something new, that only their voice could offer.

With one CEO I write for, he values calm, careful descriptions, and long, winded explorations into tangential side stories. It sounds like it shouldn’t work. Craziest thing—it works. It sounds good, and it sounds like him.

You’re not just losing the pride of having your voice (the real one, not a buttered-up marketing version) published to a page. You’re also losing your business asset, your trust, your credibility, and everything else that your voice accomplishes when you actually speak.

And if you decide to go silent, that has a cost, too. Because the other guys—the ones who are completely wrong, but somehow manage to post multiple times a month—are the ones getting the attention.

But you’re clever. You’ve noticed by now that I haven’t told you how to solve this yet. I’ve explained what CEOs and founders might attempt to do, and why it fails…but I haven’t given the fix.

Lesson 5: The real fix

Capture your voice, don’t manufacture a new one.

There it is.

It’s that simple.

You can stop reading now (if you want). Good writing isn’t sounding smart, and it’s not sounding sterile. None of your favorite authors or CEOs sound sterile when they write. They have a strong voice.

That’s why—whether you’re writing the content yourself, or contracting out to a ghostwriter like me—the fundamental strategy is the same. Your voice is an enigma: figure it out, and you solve everything.

When a new founder hires me to ghostwrite, the first thing I do isn’t rush to a page and start regurgitating technical terms and boring strategies. I pause. We have a short call.

I study them. Find their appearances. Listen to their speeches and podcasts. And then, when I finally do write, it sounds exactly like them. So whether or not you try to find the time to do it yourself—or hire a guy like me—the solution is the same.

Don’t make yourself sound different on paper than you do face-to-face. But there’s one last piece to the puzzle, and that’s the Ship of Theseus.

Lesson 6: Is it fake?

“If someone else writes it, is it even me?”

That’s basically the Ship of Theseus problem (a thousand-year-old philosophical paradox) applied to writing. If you decide that you don’t actually have the time to write your own content (which you probably don’t) and decide instead to hire someone, are you just faking it?

The best analogy here is a translator. When a translator speaks for a foreign diplomat at an event, those words are the words of the diplomat. They are his ideas. It was his judgement that was respected. His name is the one being listened to.

And it’s being translated into a different medium.

The same thing applies here. If you read a book by a busy founder or leader, the odds are they haven’t taken the time out of their day to write the entire thing. But the odds are also that the ideas contained in the pages are truly theirs.

Finale: Sounding brilliant is hard work

It’s difficult to sound brilliant all the time…because it takes time. It does. Spending hours carefully crafting your ideas, writing (and re-writing) your posts, and then finally hitting publish only to realize that it still sounds sterile (and doesn’t sound remotely like you) is draining.

But you know what doesn’t take time?

Saying what you already say on a call, on podcasts, and during speeches, when you naturally are brilliant—and still sound exactly like you. That’s the difference.

You’re only boring on the page because the page doesn’t sound like you. It’s already brilliant. It just needs your voice.

What 340,000 Words in Someone Else's Voice Taught Me About Writing

2026-07-05T00:00:00Z

One book—a book slightly over 85,000 words—written and edited. I followed it up with another of similar length, a third and longer one, and then the fourth: “my” magnum opus at just under 125,000 words.

I’m tired. Some days—after relentless planning, revisions, and refinements—I’m writing for over eight hours. Word after word, paragraph after paragraph, the book unfolds. I want to look away from my computer screen. The eye strain is killing me.

Then, it’s finally complete. My magnum opus.

Except it’s not really mine. That’s what really makes it strange. Just over 400,000 words (yes, the 340,000 figure you might see advertised on my homepage is a bit modest) and in someone else’s voice. One client, four books. Those words will never carry my name, and I’ll never even mention my name in the same room as those books.

Why? Because that’s my job. It’s the stark reality I faced when I first tried to share what I did with interested clients. “Can you show me a sample?” they ask.

“Well…no.” That would have been my answer several years ago, because all my best work—the work that truly shows what I can do—is already owned by someone else. But I love it—and, for what it’s worth, I benefit from this work, too. Writing over 400,000 words in someone else's voice has taught me invaluable things about writing.

Lesson 1: What voice really is

Maybe that’s the most important lesson I’ve learned. Voice isn’t just vocabulary. It’s not just thinking to yourself—well, my favorite author likes to capitalize words he shouldn’t, I should do that. Because that doesn’t capture voice.

When I study the voice of one of my clients, I quickly notice there’s so much more to it. Why they say what they say. How they go about it. How long their paragraphs are. Whether or not they prefer descriptive, tonal, and visual explanations and worldbuilding, or short, concise, punchy action beats.

Writing isn’t a “one suit fits all” art. I’m calling it art, because it really is—but it’s a subjective art. And, objectively speaking, every person you’ve ever met has an incredibly unique voice that only they write in. Whether it's a novel, a founder's LinkedIn presence, or a best-selling self-help book, the principle is identical…down to the atom.

Sure, we share the same vocabulary, but vocabulary is only one piece of it. What a person avoids saying, what tangents they follow, even the reason they give their characters traumatic backstories—it all makes up their voice.

Lesson 2: Consistency isn’t fun (but it’s required)

I don’t think I’m magically “more” driven, disciplined, or talented than anyone else. What I am, however, is motivated to finish a project once I’ve started it. That see-it-through mentality is what actually gives me the drive when it comes to projects like this.

When my client (we’ll call him John) approaches me for another book, I don’t stop and think “Oh no, not again.” Because I already know—and love—writing in his voice. When it comes to a 400,000-word project, the consistency isn’t just in typing every day for months.

It’s also keeping that voice consistent on every page, every chapter, and every book across a series. I’m not just deciding about “Would this character say that?”

I’m also deciding, “Would my client write this character saying that?” And that’s a completely separate question that you need to answer before you decide whether or not the character can say it. To do that—truly do that, not just rough it out—you need to actually understand how the person you’re supposed to be writing as thinks, and then formulate that into the structure of an entire book.

Lesson 3: Invisible is good, actually

Have you ever watched a magician’s disappearing act, and thought to yourself, “Wow, this guy is talented!” I have. And at the very least, you know what I’m talking about. But when an author does it, the reaction is completely different.

Why? After writing over 400,000 words using someone else’s voice, I’ve realized that writing invisibly, as I do, actually comes with benefits. And I’m not just giving you some “it’s the art of the craft” BS. That would be lazy.

When you actually strip away your own habits and ego, you stop writing to ‘sound smart’ and start writing to serve the reader instead. And when you focus on serving the reader and delivering up a killer product, you can also encapsulate the voice of your client better.

It’s really that simple.

I’ve met ghostwriters with an ego.

They’re not good ghostwriters.

It’s not even because their writing is bad—usually, it’s as good as mine is. But the ego is the silent, structural killer, because it worms its way into every sentence they write, every chapter they edit, and every outline they critique.

As a ghostwriter, my goal is NEVER to replace my client’s voice. Frankly, I think ghostwriters who have that goal have fundamentally misunderstood the job. Nobody is hiring me to “write a good book” that I want to write (even though I have plenty of ideas).

When my clients hire me, it’s to write in their voice…so that’s what I do.

Lesson 4: So what is success?

Seriously, what is it? That’s what I had to learn—and re-define—during my seven-plus years as a ghostwriter. One client’s brief had a careful note to keep flowery language to a minimum, and keep romance out of her book. “Focus solely on the action,” she said.

And so I did.

Turns out, when I sent over the book, she thought it was fantastic…but she also wanted more romance. Now, would I personally disagree with that decision?

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Your ghostwriter holds up a finger and says, “Well, actually, you’re writing a book in a genre where action should be the main focus, not romance. Let’s steer clear of that.”

Except I don’t. Because that would ruin everything—from their voice, to their brand, to their own creative ideas.

It’s all about what you bring to the table while I do the writing: creativity and value. Creativity and value aren't sterile—they're fluid, and they work with the author, not against them.

So instead of chastising her, I work with her. I put my head down, immerse myself in her (and her main character’s) world, and I figure out how to add the romance she’s looking for without ruining the action she loves. We end up deciding to condense one of the more repetitive, action-building beats for one that expands the romance sub-plot, and it fits in perfectly.

And I’ll say it: it turned out better than it would have been. It’s more unique. More her flavor. And readers can tell when a book is a passion project.

It sounds like I’m being a “yes-man.” I don’t see it that way. When it comes to creative projects, the result is as much your client as it is you…oftentimes, moreso.

That’s how I know I was successful. When, after I close out another successful project, my client messages me and tells me they read the book and could picture themselves writing it.

Finale: Whose book is it?

Let’s make this clear: if I, as a ghostwriter, ever pretend that the book is mine, I’ve already failed. The goal is never to make it sound like I wrote a book for you. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. (I won’t tell.)

But the paramount goal is to remain authentic and deliver writing that is confidently yours. Not mine. If I can do that, then I close out a project, and I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.

At the end of the day, and after months and months of writing 400,000 words (and counting) for one client, I can say I seriously learned something: It’s not my magnum opus. It’s his magnum opus.