Stephen Covey wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in 1989. The second habit is “begin with the end in mind.” Covey was talking about life, which is a big topic. I’m going to apply it to content, which is a smaller topic, but a real one.
Here’s the version of Covey’s habit that runs through my head every time I’m in a content strategy conversation: before you write a word, before you book a podcast guest, before you record a Loom, before you schedule a single LinkedIn post — you answer one question.
What does success look like?
Not what does good content look like. Not what’s our brand voice. Not what’s our editorial calendar.
What does success look like — as a measurable business outcome.
The question, sharpened
A phone call from a qualified prospect? Specifically, how many per month? From what kind of company?
A new subscriber? How many subscribers per month is the goal? What’s the conversion rate from subscriber to next-step action you’re trying to produce?
A sale? At what price point? In what time horizon from initial subscriber action?
A position in your market — being the firm called when a specific kind of problem comes up? In what timeframe? With what supporting metrics (inbound, press, speaking invites, qualified referrals)?
Until you can answer that question with specifics, you don’t have a content strategy. You have a content hobby.
This is uncomfortable to read because most businesses are running content hobbies and don’t know it. They’re publishing on schedule, hitting their numerical targets (“we did 4 posts this month”), and feeling productive — without an answer to what is the work for. The number of pieces published isn’t the work. It’s the activity in service of work. If the work doesn’t have a definition, the activity is decoration.
The math runs backwards
The reason this matters is everything downstream — what to write about, where to publish, how often, what format, who to write for, what tone — is determined by the answer to “what does success look like.”
If success is 25 net-new qualified subscribers a month at the top of your funnel, the content that produces that is wildly different from content that produces 3 qualified inbound calls a month from category-leader positioning.
The first one needs distribution-friendly assets — a newsletter, articles that get shared, lead magnets that convert. It needs to compound through audience growth. Cadence matters more than depth.
The second one needs depth. Long-form pieces that demonstrate a specific point of view. Signed by you (or the founder). Published in places your category actually reads. Less volume. More care. Different rhythm.
Same business. Same brand. Same writer, even. Wildly different content programs, depending on which “end” you started from.
The work of identifying the goal
The honest version of this exercise is harder than it sounds. Most businesses can’t articulate what success looks like — not because they’re lazy or unstrategic, but because the answer is genuinely difficult to figure out without doing the work.
You have to look at your actual sales process and figure out where it leaks. Is the leak at the top (not enough qualified leads)? In the middle (qualified leads not converting)? At the bottom (converted leads not closing)? Each leak demands a different kind of content. Misdiagnose the leak and you’ll produce the wrong content for the wrong outcome — perfectly executed and entirely useless.
You have to look at your actual customer base and figure out which segment is most profitable to acquire. Generic “ideal customer profile” exercises usually produce generic ICPs. The real answer comes from looking at your top 10 most profitable customers and asking what they had in common — what role they were in when they bought, how they found you, what specific problem they were trying to solve, what their actual decision timeline was.
You have to look at your actual capacity and figure out what content cadence is sustainable. “Four posts a week” is a number, not a strategy. “One deeply-researched essay per month, plus a weekly newsletter, plus a daily LinkedIn presence built around a single argument” is a strategy — for the right business, with the right resources, working backwards from the right outcome.
Most of the planning conversations I have with new clients start here, and most of them last longer than the client expected. It’s the single most leveraged hour of content strategy work you can do. It’s also the hour most businesses never do, because it doesn’t feel like “doing content.” It just feels like meetings.
Find someone who’s already done it
Once you know what end you’re working backwards from, there’s a step Covey doesn’t talk about that I’ve found indispensable: find someone who’s already done it, and study what they built.
I don’t mean copy them. Copying is a way to produce derivative content that fails. I mean study them. Understand the architecture of what they built, what business outcome they were producing, why their format choices made sense for their specific goal — and then build your version using the structural lessons as a base.
A few examples I keep coming back to:
Red Bull is the most famous example of “content as the business.” Red Bull’s content arm — the events, the videos, the magazines, the documentaries — was built around a specific outcome: associate the brand with an aspirational identity (extreme sport, peak human performance) and make the energy drink the implicit hero. They didn’t write Red Bull is great for athletes. They built the world athletes wanted to be in, and put the drink inside it. The “end” they began with was psychological brand association, not direct conversion. The content was the strategy.
HubSpot built a content business that arguably exceeds its software business. The inbound methodology, the certifications, the academy, the podcast network — all of it serves a single end: make HubSpot the default category authority on inbound marketing, so when companies grow into needing inbound software they think of HubSpot first. The end was category capture. The content was the engine.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is the closest analog to what most of my B2B services clients are trying to build. Their content operation — podcasts, essays, deep market research — exists to drive a specific outcome: have founders pitch a16z first, before any other VC. They built thought leadership infrastructure that makes them the obvious first call when a founder is raising. Their content isn’t marketing in the traditional sense. It’s deal flow.
Nate B. Jones is someone I follow in the AI space who’s a more individual example — one person, building consistent commentary that’s become a credibility platform. He didn’t try to be everything. He picked an angle on a fast-moving space, kept showing up, and made himself the person to follow if you want a specific kind of clarity on AI. The end was personal authority in a niche. The format was disciplined consistency around a clear point of view.
Build your version
Now here’s the part that matters: what each example teaches you depends on which “end” you’re working backwards from.
If you’re a founder trying to be the obvious first call in your category, you’re probably learning from a16z and Nate B. Jones. The lesson is about consistent point of view, signed work, depth.
If you’re a B2B services firm trying to build category authority that drives long-term inbound, you’re probably learning from HubSpot. The lesson is about owning the methodology and the language of your category.
If you’re a brand trying to build emotional association rather than direct conversion, you’re learning from Red Bull. The lesson is about identity and world-building.
You don’t copy any of them. You can’t — their resources, their context, and their goals are different from yours. But you study them. You understand the relationship between the end they began with and the content they built. And then you build your version, calibrated to your end.
This is the work most content strategy skips. Most strategy goes: “we want to grow our blog → what should we write about?” That’s starting from the middle. Begin with the end. Work backwards. Find someone who’s done what you’re trying to do. Build your version.
The end in mind isn’t the publication. It’s the outcome. The publication is downstream of the outcome. Don’t reverse them.
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