Your best work is invisible to the people who decide.
You built the company on your judgment. For years your reputation traveled by handshake: trade shows, association dinners, the plant manager who called you first.
Those channels still matter. But some of the people you sold to are retiring, and their replacements often research vendors on their own before anyone takes a call. Meanwhile the work that would prove you’re the real thing sits behind NDAs, export controls, and liability concerns, so you say nothing. In a shortlist, silence looks the same as absence.
The obvious options each cost you something you can’t afford to lose.
- Posting like an influencer puts your name in front of the small circle of peers whose opinion drives your referrals, and it can read as desperate or for sale.
- A generalist agency doesn’t know the work well enough to publish anything you’d put your name on. One cringe-worthy draft and most founders quietly stop.
- Publishing your real expertise is off the table when the interesting parts belong to your clients.
Executive Presence Engineering™ is built around those three constraints, not in spite of them.
Engineered like a project. Not performed like a personality.
- Diagnose. Find out where buyers in your market form an opinion of you before they ever contact you, and where you’re absent.
- Define your point of view. Pull out the positions you can stand behind, and screen each one for NDA, export-control, and liability risk before it goes anywhere near a draft.
- Build the drumbeat. Executive Drumbeat is a steady, low-volume, high-signal cadence of writing and one-to-one outreach in your voice. It is not a content calendar built for reach. AI helps with structure and first drafts, but the ideas come from you, and a person edits everything before you approve it.
- Turn attention into conversations. Success is measured in relationships and qualified conversations, not likes and follower counts.
What you won’t be asked to do
- Become an influencer, film yourself, or post every day.
- Share anything client-confidential or export-controlled.
- Hand your voice to someone who doesn’t understand the work.
Nothing goes out under your name without your approval.
How LinkedIn for executives works with Blackbird
LinkedIn for executives, without it becoming a second job
Executive Drumbeat runs on LinkedIn, because that’s where buyers, peers and future hires look you up before they call. Here is exactly what it asks of you.
What you do
- Once a quarterA 45-minute recorded conversation with me. It’s casual, with no prep and no slides. We talk about your market, your work, and what you’re seeing that others miss. That conversation feeds the next three months.
- Once a weekA quick review of that week’s 2–3 posts. You approve, edit or cut each one before I post it on your behalf.
- When people respondYou reply to comments, because that’s where relationships start. If you’re stretched, I can handle them for you.
What I do
- Turn your conversation into 2–3 posts a week in your voice, screened for NDA, export-control and liability risk.
- Publish them on your LinkedIn profile once you’ve approved them.
- Keep the cadence steady, so you stay visible in the weeks you’re buried in real work.
The terms
- No long-term contract. You can walk away at the end of the 90-day pilot.
- Nothing goes out under your name without your approval.
Who you’re working with
I’m Joseph McMullen. I founded Blackbird Digital Marketing in 2020. I hold a BS in chemical engineering and an MBA, and I’ve spent more than 25 years working alongside engineers and executives. You can see how I show up on LinkedIn.
I don’t name clients. That’s the same discretion you’d get.
Start with a diagnostic, not a retainer.
| Step | What it is | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Diagnostic | A focused look at how your market sees you before contact, and a plan for what to do about it | $3,000, credited against month one |
| 2. Founding pilot | 90 days of Executive Drumbeat with a small first group of clients | Shared in writing after the diagnostic |
| 3. Ongoing | Continued engagement after the pilot | Scoped and quoted in writing |
Built for a specific kind of founder.
Founder-CEOs and presidents of privately held industrial, engineering, manufacturing, and technical companies with roughly $5M–$100M in revenue, where your judgment is a large part of why customers buy.
Not a fit if you want follower counts, or if you can’t share your point of view even in a screened form.
I speak both.
I’m a chemical engineer with an MBA from Villanova University. I’ve spent more than 25 years in industrial software and technical industries, including at AVEVA, and the last 15 focused on marketing to technical buyers. I know how engineers think and how executives buy, and I translate between the two.