The executive ghostwriter for operators with real skin in the game.

Who this is for

You are a senior operator: a CRO, CTO, managing director, partner, or an exec whose name carries the company's credibility into the market. You are not trying to become an influencer. You need the people who matter, buyers, boards, future hires, the industry, to see the judgement you actually have. And you work inside a corporate context where a careless post costs more than silence.

What an executive ghostwriter does

An executive ghostwriter builds and runs the written presence of a senior operator, primarily on LinkedIn, with long-form where it earns its place. Posts, articles and commentary in your voice, drawn from a 30-minute weekly conversation. Everything moves through an approval flow designed for people with something to lose: you see every word before it ships, sensitive ground is flagged early, and comms or legal can be slotted into review without slowing the cadence to a crawl.

The week itself is ordinary, which is the point. Research has already been watching which formats, hooks and topics are earning attention in your market this month. You take the 30-minute call and talk through whatever is live for you, a deal that stalled, a hiring lesson, a constraint the board is sitting with. Senior writers draft from that conversation and from voice capture, the map of how you think, what you believe, and where you draw lines. Editors remove anything that reads like a template, because your buyers can smell it, and a formulaic post under an executive's name costs the credibility the hire was meant to build. You review for a few minutes. We schedule and publish. The weekly report shows replies, profile visits and meetings, and the next week moves because of that report.

If you are hiring the firm that sits around this rhythm, the service page is executive ghostwriting. If the feed is the whole job and the approval line is light, the closer page is hire a LinkedIn ghostwriter.

How this differs from a comms team or a copywriter

A communications team is paid to protect the company. The draft that survives that job is often safe, sanded down and forgettable, because the success condition is that nobody objects. An executive ghostwriter is paid to put your judgement in public, under your by-line, so buyers, boards, future hires and the industry meet the person who was in the room. The company still receives the advocacy, and it is the kind an audience believes, because it sounds like someone who made the call. Legal and communications stay in the approval flow. They get a clean review step. The author stays you.

A freelance copywriter is a different product, and sometimes the right one. The useful version is one essay or one speech you will edit line by line and then stop. Paid per piece, you still own the strategy, the editing, the scheduling, and whether anyone books a meeting. The whole system is one diary. When that person is ill, travelling or gone, the presence goes quiet, which is when a market assumes you had nothing to say. Words filed without the weekly session sound like the category. A sceptical buyer already has a feed full of the category.

The executive engagement keeps senior writers, editors and a living voice guide on the account. Publishing is included. The approval line is part of the work, including the reader who will screenshot you. You own every draft, every published piece and the voice guide if you part ways. The price of that system is a retainer. The tiers are on the pricing page. When a freelancer is still the better buy, and what the rest of the market charges, sits in the 2026 cost and pricing guide.

The corporate difference

Writing for a founder is easy mode: they can say almost anything. Writing for an executive means holding two lines at once, a point of view sharp enough to be worth reading, inside boundaries tight enough to survive a screenshot. That is an editorial skill, not a prompt. Our senior writers have run content for executives across finance, AI and cybersecurity, markets where the audience is smart, sceptical and pitched constantly, and where generic content actively damages the author. We also write for a former NFL player.

Career capital, not just company marketing

There is a version of this that only serves the company, and it is the version most comms teams produce: safe, sanded down, forgettable. The engagement we run serves you as well. The point of view is yours, the by-line is yours, and the audience follows the person, not the employer. Executives who build a visible track record negotiate from a different position, inside the company and out of it. That is not disloyalty; it is the only kind of company advocacy an audience actually believes.

How to choose an executive ghostwriter

Use these tests on every quote, including ours. Name the buyer before the first call: a title, a kind of company, the problem they already have. Keep that sentence next to you. If the person selling the work cannot repeat it back, the writing will be aimed at people who will never buy. A proposal that says "your network" is how the feed fills with strangers.

Ask for a sample that came out of a conversation. A colleague of that client should be able to hear them in it. A post with the industry noun swapped could sit under anyone in the category, which means the voice work never happened. Ask who writes, by name, and how senior they are. Then ask what happens to the cadence when that person is ill or away. You should be able to leave with the voice guide. Publishing belongs in the engagement, and nothing should go live without your sign-off. Your part is about thirty minutes a week, then a few minutes of review.

A provider who needs a long brief from you every week is still using you as the writer. A provider who needs nothing after kickoff will invent a version of you, and your market will notice. The report should carry names: replies from the right accounts, profile visits from named buyers, and meetings booked. A follower count can sit underneath that. Treat the figures already published on this site as receipts from work that happened, and read the rest on the results page. A price you can read before the call belongs on a page. Ours is on pricing.

Questions for the first call

Ask these in the first ten minutes. A vague answer is the answer. Who writes my posts, and what happens to the cadence when they are away? Do you publish, or do I? What does week one look like, and what does month three look like? How is the voice captured, and where does the guide live if we stop? How do legal and communications get a look, and what will you refuse to publish? How do you count a meeting, and what changes in the plan when the report is quiet? What does the invoice include: strategy, editing, scheduling and the report, or only the words?

Red flags

Any one of these is enough to leave the call. A follower package, or a promise of virality with no number, no window and no condition, is a pitch you cannot manage. A promised view count is not, by itself, a reason to leave: ask for the number, the window and what you have to hand over. We guarantee 100,000 LinkedIn views within 90 days, and only if you give Underdog full autonomy over the content strategy: topics, formats, posting cadence and timing. If you direct those choices, the guarantee does not apply. Samples that are one post with the industry noun swapped tell you the voice work has not started. A senior pitch that cannot name the writer means you should assume a junior bench until you are shown otherwise. Drafts dropped in your inbox, for you to edit, schedule and chase, mean you are paying for a queue and then doing the job. A missing approval line is its own reason to leave. So is a habit of posting while you are in a meeting you cannot leave.

A price that appears only once you are on the calendar is the part they did not want compared. Success defined as impressions, likes or a personal-brand costume is a hire for applause. A refusal to say when they are the wrong hire, or a willingness to invent opinions you have never held, means the voice work is already fiction.

That is the short version. The longer checklist, including when an in-house hire is the right shape, is how to hire a LinkedIn ghostwriter. Market ranges, and the cases where the freelancer still wins, are in the 2026 cost and pricing guide.

What the first month looks like

Month one is voice capture. We sit with you and map how you decide, what you believe, and the lines you will not cross, including the corporate ones. Later drafts are checked against that guide. A client a year in sounds more like themselves for that reason. The weekly 30-minute session starts in the same stretch. You talk, we take notes, and the conversation becomes the raw material. Research is already running around the clock. Drafts come back for a few minutes of review. Where you push back, the voice guide is updated, so the next draft moves toward you. Most clients stop editing heavily once the first month is done.

The approval line is built in those same weeks. Sensitive topics are flagged before drafting. Legal or communications get a clean review step, so sign-off fits inside a normal day. Nothing publishes without you. Scheduling and publishing sit with us. The weekly report starts with replies, profile visits and meetings, and the following week changes because of what that report shows. If you cannot give about thirty minutes a week, this is the wrong engagement. The voice drifts, and a stranger under your name costs more than silence.

We ask for ninety days, because that is the minimum a cadence needs before it compounds. One week tells you whether you recognise yourself in a draft. The quarter is what tells you whether the right people are replying. One client signed business in week two from a single post. More often the first quarter is when the right names start appearing, and the compounding is visible in the report. The monthly itemisation, once you know the shape, is on the services page.

Proof

How we do it

Every engagement runs on the same operating system. First, voice capture: we sit with you and map how you think, what you believe, and where you draw lines, so drafts sound like you on your best day rather than a competent stranger. Second, a 30-minute session each week where you talk and we take notes. That conversation becomes the week's content. On Presence, that week is four LinkedIn posts, written, designed and scheduled.

Then the part you never see. Senior writers draft from your session. Editors strip out anything that reads like AI filler, because your buyers can smell it, and a formulaic post costs you the exact credibility you hired us to build. You review in minutes, we schedule and publish, and a weekly report card shows what moved. From Authority, research runs around the clock, tracking which formats, hooks and topics are actually working in your market this month, and that signal feeds every draft.

What it costs

Engagements start at $2,500 a month, billed quarterly, because ninety days is the minimum for content to compound. Presence, the entry tier, is four LinkedIn posts a week, written, designed and scheduled. Most clients land between $2,500 and $6,500 depending on volume and formats. We guarantee 100,000 LinkedIn views within 90 days, and only if you give Underdog full autonomy over the content strategy: topics, formats, posting cadence and timing. If you direct those choices, the guarantee does not apply. See the pricing page for our tiers, and the 2026 cost and pricing guide for market ranges and when an agency beats a freelancer.

Related: executive ghostwriting for the firm, hire a LinkedIn ghostwriter if the feed is the whole job, how to hire a LinkedIn ghostwriter while you are still choosing, CEO ghostwriter if you run the company, or what ships each month.