Use These 21 Tactics to Write a WSJ Bestseller to Boost Brand

Unlocking Growth: How Software CEOs Turn Books and Playbooks into Revenue Engines

In the competitive SaaS landscape, finding a unique edge to attract new users and drive revenue is paramount. One surprisingly effective, yet often overlooked, strategy is creating and leveraging a book. In this article, you’ll discover how top software CEOs have turned comprehensive books and strategic playbooks into powerful growth engines for their companies, complete with real-world examples and measurable results.

This isn’t just about publishing a book for vanity; it’s a calculated tactic to establish authority, generate high-quality leads, and directly fuel revenue growth. You’ll get the 4-step playbook to transform your expertise into a lead-generating asset, in addition to over 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples are from top Founders like Nathan Latka at Founderpath, Chris Marentis at Surefirelocal, and Stefan Smulders at Expandi, who have used this exact strategy to add millions to their top line.

The 4-Part Playbook For Using a Book to Drive Growth

This playbook breaks down how to systematically turn a book, guide, or playbook into a consistent source of leads and revenue for your software company. Each step is a critical component of a machine that positions you as an industry authority and draws your ideal customers directly to your digital doorstep.

1. Step 1: Define Your Niche and Authoritative Topic. The foundation of this strategy is deep expertise. Identify a specific problem your target audience faces that your software helps solve. Your book should be the definitive guide to understanding and tackling that problem. Chris Marentis, CEO of Surefirelocal, did this perfectly by writing a book for his dad, an HVAC contractor, detailing how technology could revolutionize local marketing. This book became the intellectual property that his entire $26M ARR SaaS platform was built upon.
2. Step 2: Create and Package the “Book” as a High-Value Asset. This asset can be a physical book, an ebook, or a series of in-depth “playbooks.” The format is less important than the value. It must be comprehensive, actionable, and solve a significant pain point. Stefan Smulders of Expandi focused on creating detailed “playbooks” on LinkedIn growth hacks. Instead of just selling a tool, he taught people how to get massive results, with his playbook on booking 40+ appointments per week becoming a legendary lead magnet.
3. Step 3: Design a Funnel to Exchange Your Book for Leads. Your book is now the incentive. Create landing pages, social media posts, and calls-to-action that offer this valuable content in exchange for contact information. This could be a “comment to receive” post on LinkedIn, a free PDF download for an email, or even selling a physical book for a low price to acquire a new customer. Nathan Latka, CEO of Founderpath, uses his book as a direct call to action in presentations, offering access to exclusive slide decks for those who purchase a copy, effectively turning his audience into a lead list.
4. Step 4: Nurture and Convert Leads into Customers. Once you’ve captured a lead with your book, the final step is to nurture them into paying customers. This involves targeted follow-up that references the content they consumed and naturally introduces your software as the ultimate tool to implement the strategies they just learned. The Expandi team followed up with everyone who commented on their playbook posts, nurturing those warm leads into a $7M ARR business in just 20 months.

40+ Examples of the Book & Playbook Tactic in Action

Below are over 40 examples of founders who have successfully used books, playbooks, and comprehensive guides to build authority, generate leads, and drive significant revenue for their SaaS companies.

• The Surefirelocal founder, Chris Marentis, started his entire company, which now sits at $26M in ARR, based on a book he wrote for his father about leveraging technology for local marketing services. The system outlined in the book became the DNA of the Surefirelocal SaaS platform.
• Founderpath’s CEO, Nathan Latka, leveraged his book “How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital” to achieve #3 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. He uses the book in webinars and talks as a direct call-to-action, offering valuable slide decks and resources to anyone who purchases a copy, turning readers into qualified leads.
• Stefan Smulders at Expandi grew his company from $0 to $7M in 20 months by creating detailed playbooks on LinkedIn automation. He used a “comment to receive” strategy on LinkedIn posts, which generated thousands of leads and helped book over 40 appointments each week.
• Andrei Zinkevich, the founder of FullFunnel.io, wrote “LinkedIn Content Marketing” and sold over 5,500 copies across Gumroad, Amazon, and Product Hunt. This book established his authority and served as a powerful lead generation tool for his B2B marketing consultancy.
• Kyle Vamvouris of Vouris authored “Cold to Committed” to detail his playbook on cold calling and booking outbound sales appointments. The book serves as a foundation for his sales consulting company, which has helped over 45 B2B software companies build repeatable sales processes.
• Outreach.io CEO Manny Medina discussed how acquiring Sales Hacker, a content and community platform, allowed them to educate the market on sales engagement. The book published by Sales Hacker’s founder became a key asset in laying the groundwork for the sales engagement category, helping Outreach grow to over $10M in new bookings per quarter.
• Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels masterfully uses his books, like “DotCom Secrets,” as the entry point to his funnel. He sells the books for a low price, and then upsells customers to his $97/month software, a strategy that has bootstrapped the company to over $160 million in annual revenue.
• Dave Lee, the CEO of PlusThis, co-authored the bestselling book “Performance 360” after launching his software. The book helped solidify his reputation as a marketing automation pioneer, supporting the growth of his SaaS tool to $175k in MRR with 2,500 customers.
• Tommaso Guerra of Go-lay, a SaaS solution for sports clubs, utilized his deep experience as a professional footballer to inform his product. While not a book, his unique expertise, packaged as a platform, helped him raise capital and grow to over 600 paying clubs and $35k in MRR.
• Ian Cullen of Leadiro leveraged his deep experience and previous books on demand generation to launch his new data-as-a-service platform. This expertise helped him acquire his first 20 customers and reach $50k in MRR within four months of launching.
• Dennis Kelly, CEO of Postalytics, used his extensive entrepreneurial background to write the playbook for disrupting the direct mail industry. This approach, centered around a deep content marketing strategy within the HubSpot ecosystem, helped the company sign up over 450 customers and reach $135k in MRR.
• Asaf Draw, the founder of Regpacks, built his $10M revenue company by creating a “playbook” for service-based industries to streamline registration and payments. His deep understanding of their onboarding needs, first developed during his PhD, became the core intellectual property for the company.
• Prayag Narula, CEO of LeadGenius, which hit $10M in revenue, authored several book chapters and papers on human-computer interaction. This academic work established his credibility and provided the foundational knowledge for LeadGenius’s unique combination of AI and human intelligence.
• Ian Cullen’s first business, Target 250, was built on his expertise in B2B lead generation, a topic he has written about extensively. This authority allowed him to raise $5 million and eventually sell the company.
• Michael Osakwe, co-founder of esabazo, used the expertise gained from building custom e-learning solutions to create a comprehensive staff training tool. The “greatest hits” from his agency work were packaged into a new SaaS product, Inform, funded by $200k in saved cash from the agency.
• Adam Schoenfeld of Siftrock leveraged his deep knowledge of the B2B email marketing space to join the company as a co-founder. His expertise, akin to an unwritten book on the topic, helped guide the bootstrapped company to its first $1M in ARR with just five employees.
• Seymour Duncker, CEO of iCharts, wrote the playbook on leveraging the NetSuite ecosystem for growth. His company became the leader in cloud business intelligence within that niche by providing a deeply embedded analytics engine, growing to serve 200 customers paying an average of $15k per year.
• Josh McCarter, CEO of Booker, which raised $80M, literally wrote the book on business management for spas and salons by spinning the software out of SpaFinder. This focused strategy allowed them to serve over 10,000 locations and process $3.5 billion in transactions annually.
• Wes Bush, author of “Product-Led Growth,” used his book to become the definitive authority on the topic. His company, ProductLed, has helped over 400 companies implement PLG strategies, generating over $1B in self-serve revenue for his clients.
• Amin Yazdani of Craver developed an “SMB SaaS Playbook” to reignite his company’s growth after six quarters of stagnation. By adapting enterprise sales tactics for the SMB market, his food tech startup was able to increase its ARPU by 54% in 24 months.
• Jared Kleinert at Offsite uses his expertise in remote work, which he shares through extensive LinkedIn content similar to a living book, to generate over 10.5 million impressions. This content-driven approach has led to multiple five and six-figure deals, including a $100,000 deal with Remote.
• Before joining Siftrock, Adam Schoenfeld founded Simply Measured, a key player in the social analytics space. His thought leadership and expertise in social analytics, shared through countless articles and talks, functioned as the company’s “book,” helping it raise over $20M before being acquired.
• Tomer Levy of Logz.io didn’t write the open-source playbook for ELK stack, but his company became the #1 contributor of content to that community. By authoring the definitive guides and articles on using the open-source tool, Logz.io generated a massive lead funnel, growing to over $3M in ARR.
• Stefan Smulders of Expandi, which hit a $5M run rate, built his entire growth engine on creating and distributing practical playbooks about LinkedIn lead generation. This content strategy generated over 15,000 unique weekly visitors and was the primary driver of new customer acquisition.
• Benny Schneider of Salto, which raised nearly $70M pre-revenue, is writing the playbook for “business operations as code.” His vision, articulated through talks and papers, has established Salto as a thought leader, attracting top investors and talent.
• Garrett Mehrguth of Direct Cconsulting developed his own methodology called “Customer Generation,” which he has effectively turned into a playbook for his clients. This unique IP has helped him grow his agency to serve 125 accounts and generate over $20M in revenue.
• Nitesh Mandvi, CTO of Hiver, is a co-author of the playbook for building a help desk directly on top of Google Workspace. This focused approach has allowed them to double their revenue year-over-year, on track to break a $10M run rate.
• Michael Burns, CRO at vFairs, specializes in deploying a sales playbook that gets companies to repeatable revenue fast. His expertise, honed over 20 years, has helped multiple companies scale past $100M, and at vFairs, his playbook increased ACV by 60%.
• Adam Jankovits of Leadberry built his SaaS tool as an in-house solution for his digital agency, effectively creating a playbook to solve his own lead generation problems. He then spun out the tool, using the agency’s revenue to fund its growth to over 2,000 beta signups.
• John Doherty of GetCredo published an industry pricing guide that became a cornerstone of his content strategy. This “guide as a book” generated a massive number of backlinks and established him as an authority, driving over $250M in leads for digital agencies.
• Kevin Yun, co-founder of GrowSurf, which hit $26k/mo in revenue, is building his company in public. Their open blog and transparent journey act as a living book for other bootstrapped founders, attracting a dedicated following and new customers.
• Adrian Dayton of Clearview Social wrote the first book on social media for lawyers. This book launched his consulting business, which he grew to $400k/year before transitioning into a SaaS company that now does $1.5M in ARR.
• Adam Jankovits, CEO of Leadberry, launched his SaaS product after building the tool for his own full-service digital agency. The agency, which did over $1M in revenue, provided the initial capital and expertise to launch the SaaS offering.
• Brian Yam at Paragon uses valuable content, such as thought leadership on AI features, as the fuel for his LinkedIn ads strategy. These content “playbooks” engage a technical audience of developers and have helped Paragon 30x its ARR in three years.
• Armando Biondi, founder of AdEspresso, grew his company to a $1B ad budget under management by creating unique content with counter-intuitive perspectives on Facebook advertising. This content engine drove 400,000 monthly unique visitors and was key to the company’s acquisition by Hootsuite.
• Wes Bush of ProductLed literally wrote the book on Product-Led Growth. The book established him as the go-to expert, enabling him to build a consultancy and community that has helped clients generate over a billion dollars in self-serve revenue.
• Amin Yazdani, CEO of Craver, turned his company around by creating and implementing a new “SMB SaaS Playbook.” This strategic document, which adapted enterprise tactics for the SMB market, was instrumental in increasing the company’s ARPU by 54%.
• Jared Kleinert uses his LinkedIn profile as a dynamic book to share insights on remote work and team retreats. This strategy has generated millions of impressions for his company, Offsite, leading directly to inbound deals and a $100,000 contract with a major client.
• Nicholas Vandenberg of Chili Piper, which has grown to a $30M run rate, uses a “decision memo” playbook internally to strategically decide on new product lines. This structured approach to innovation has been critical to their multi-product success.
• Ryan Allis of iContact grew his company to a $169M exit by writing the playbook on paid ads for SaaS. His meticulous tracking of CAC, LTV, and other unit economics across channels like Google AdWords was the engine that scaled the company to 70,000 paying customers.

Conclusion

You’ve just learned how top SaaS founders leverage books and in-depth playbooks not just as marketing material, but as a core pillar of their growth strategy. From generating multi-million dollar ARR streams to establishing unbreakable industry authority, the “Book” tactic is a powerful and repeatable system for growth. By packaging your expertise into a high-value asset, you create a lead generation machine that can fuel your company’s expansion for years to come. Now you have the playbook and dozens of real-world examples to build your own. To continue learning from the top SaaS founders, explore the resources and data available at Founderpath.

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