Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
"You can't analyze data until you have things to actually analyze. So no strategy is going to really be meaningful unless you're genuinely executing on it and taking action and putting things out there." - Molly Godfrey
Molly Godfrey is a LinkedIn strategist, viral content creator, and the founder of the Impressions Community, a high-touch LinkedIn membership for female founders. She works one-on-one with female founders and leaders to turn their LinkedIn presence into an effective personal brand and business development tool, and her clients consistently receive new inbound business and opportunities as a result. Her work has been featured in Bloomberg, The Today Show, and InStyle magazine, and her home base is New York City.
Molly spent her twenties in sales and partnerships at a fast-growing fintech company, often as one of very few women in the company. After four to five years, she left to find work that felt more personally meaningful, took a year and a half to write and meditate, and published a blog post that went viral and opened doors to larger publications. She scaled her first online business in the coaching space to multiple six figures through digital writing, and in this conversation she shares how that path shaped the way she thinks about stories, selling, and the way LinkedIn actually works.
Connect with Molly Godfrey
Impressions Community → https://mollygodfrey.com/impressions
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-godfrey
Website → https://mollygodfrey.com/
Connect with Naomi Haile
Website → https://www.naomihaile.com/
Sign up to my Newsletter → https://powerofwhy.kit.com/57ca5180df
Purchase the Purpose Canvas to ensure your dreams have an action plan → https://naomiahaile.gumroad.com/l/purposecanvas
This episode is for you if:
You're a service-based founder who posts on LinkedIn consistently, and the posts aren't turning into discovery calls or DMs.
You're a founder who feels uncomfortable promoting your own work and wants to learn how to share more stories.
You're wondering whether your posts are too broad, too niche, or missing the mix that builds trust with the people who would hire you.
You're an agency owner or consultant who gets great questions on sales calls and in DMs and wants a way to turn them into content.
You're AI-curious and want to know where a creator draws the line between using AI for editing and automation and writing in your own voice.
You're a former corporate professional who is starting to see that you could build something of your own, and you're looking for a first step.
You're deciding how to shape an offer or a membership and want to hear how someone tested several offers before one found its market.
Looking for a specific gem?
00:00 Welcome and introduction to Molly Godfrey
04:24 Reclaiming sensitivity and empathy after being told to develop tougher skin
05:17 Taking a year and a half off after corporate, blogging to make sense of the transition, and the post that went viral
07:12 Recognizing that her sales experience could help her build her own company
09:25 How coach training, sales, and thousands of hours of meditation sharpened her listening and her content
12:18 Being one of the only women in fintech sales and building the LinkedIn space she wished existed
15:13 Why most founders do all marketing and no selling, and how a journalist's quote became a post that booked a call
16:21 Building an evergreen content bank from posts that generate responses
19:19 Why a post on taking action brought 30 new followers, and why middle-of-funnel content is where trust gets built
22:07 Turning an offhand client email into a post on how to actually repurpose content
25:06 Where AI fits: using AI for content reviews, editing, and backend automations
27:54 Testing offers and finding demand for high-touch membership support
28:13 Why she hires specialists for community, messaging, marketing, and pricing
31:01 Three audits when posts aren't turning into calls: invitations, the opening lines, and the offer itself
33:48 LinkedIn as a social graph, and why who you engage with shapes who sees your content
35:47 Why she enjoys LinkedIn as a game of leverage and introductions
37:02 Where to find Molly and what happens inside Impressions
Conversation Transcript
Naomi Haile
Hi everyone! Welcome to another episode of The Power of Why podcast. My name is Naomi Haile, and today I am here with Molly Godfrey. Molly, how are you doing today?
Molly Godfrey
I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.
Naomi Haile
Thank you for making the time today. I have been following you on LinkedIn for probably about a year now, and then a mutual connection introduced us and thought it would be really great for us to connect. I'm excited to chat with you about all things LinkedIn, positioning, and strategy on the platform.
For the audience, Molly is a viral content creator and LinkedIn strategy evangelist. She successfully scaled her first online business in the coaching space for women to multiple six figures, all from the power of digital writing. Her mission is to help deep-thinking founders build genuine authority and attract ideal clients without the cringy marketing tactics, which I'm sure you are all very familiar with.
Now she works one-on-one with female founders and leaders to help them turn their LinkedIn presence into an effective personal brand and business development tool. Her clients consistently receive new inbound business and opportunities as a result of her strategies. Her work has been featured in Bloomberg, where I actually used to work, The Today Show, and InStyle magazine. Her home base is New York City, and if she's not writing or talking about LinkedIn, you'll probably find her at a yoga or Pilates class or cooking an Ayurvedic meal. Molly, great to have you here.
Molly Godfrey
Thank you. That was a mouthful.
Naomi Haile
You've done a lot. I'd love to get started by hearing a little about your origin story and how you grew up. What were you like as a child, and were you encouraged to color outside the lines, or to stay within them?
Molly Godfrey
Oh goodness. I was a really sensitive kid. I loved animals, and I would get so upset at those ASPCA commercials about saving the animals. I really wanted to help people as a little kid.
I remember hearing, "You need tougher skin. You need to get your head out of the clouds. You need to be more with it." I've reconciled that in recent years. I think deep thinking, sensitivity, and empathy are actually so important now, so I'm trying to reclaim that and remember some of the messaging I got as a kid.
Naomi Haile
Was that reclaiming what happened when you started your business in the coaching space, which was about four or five years ago? You also had a long career in sales before that. When did that reconciliation start for you?
Molly Godfrey
That was the end of 2019. I took a year and a half off after I left my corporate role to figure out what I wanted to do, and I started blogging. I wrote to make sense of the transition I was in and all the lessons I was learning. It was really just for my own journey, my own healing.
Some posts were more popular than others, and about six months in, one went really, really viral. That kicked everything off. Bigger publications started wanting me to submit pieces, and the Today Show found me shortly after.
I've come to realize that the more original thinking you have, and the more willingness to be vulnerable and show emotion, the further it goes in content. I work with founders who don't want to be cringy. They don't want to follow viral templates or chase tactics. They want to be known for their thinking, and I think that helps me attract more intentional marketers.
Naomi Haile
I love the way you're positioned on LinkedIn. It's clear and concise, and it's evident that you've spent a lot of time refining the types of stories you share and how you want to be positioned. I have so many questions about positioning.
First, I was curious about your twenties. You did really well in tech sales, and then you walked away from all of that. What was happening in that season of your life, what were you hoping to optimize for, and what would meaningful work look like for you?
Molly Godfrey
I had a moment where I realized I was making the company I worked for millions and millions of dollars, and I thought, "Wait a minute. I could make myself millions of dollars. I could build something." It was an aha moment while I was hitting quotas and milestones. I thought, "That's a lot of money going back to this company. I'm very good at this. I could do this for my own company." It was very empowering.
I didn't know what it would look like, and it wasn't until years later that I started forming it into a business. I learned a lot, and I'm super grateful for the experience. I was on the sales and partnership side, and I had a lot of access to leadership. It was a really valuable role.
It peaked around year four going into year five, and I thought it was time for something different and a different kind of impact. I didn't necessarily want to stay in tech or fintech. I was looking for something more personally meaningful. It was a lot of things at once, and I'm really glad I had that at the start of my career.
Naomi Haile
Sales experience takes you anywhere, especially if you're building your own thing. Knowing how to take no as an answer and keep pushing is a really good skill to have.
You mentioned resonating with women founders in particular, who don't want to fall into cringy marketing tactics when it comes to digital writing and the online world. I'm curious about all the work that happens before you sit down to write a post or hit publish. There are positioning questions that have to be answered: Who am I speaking to? How can I help? What do I want to be known for? How did you get clear on that for yourself, and how do you help founders get clear on it for themselves?
Molly Godfrey
There's so much that goes into content and content strategy. One of my big skill sets came from training to be a coach, and definitely from sales. Some of my best clients are therapists, and I think coaches do really well with content. It comes down to the ability to listen, be present, and really pay attention.
During my sabbatical between work and starting a business, I did thousands and thousands of hours of meditation. It helped fine-tune my ability to sit with someone, feel for what's being said and what's not being said, and ask the right questions. The therapists and coaches I work with make fantastic content creators because they're that much more attuned and attentive, and they can turn that into observational pieces of content.
It all comes down to deeply knowing who you're talking to, what motivates them, and what keeps them up at night. You get that through research and spending a lot of time talking to people.
Naomi Haile
Before you brought up meditation, I thought you were going to say you spent all that time talking to people. It leads into what you mentioned about research and getting to know who you're building for. Was the period after you decided to start your own thing spent figuring out who that person was, or did you already know? After your post went viral and people started asking you to do this for them, what did that research phase look like?
Molly Godfrey
I don't know that it was so logical. When I worked in tech and fintech, I was the only woman so much of the time. Maybe there were five women in a company of 300. It changes your day-to-day, being the only female in those spaces. When I left, I was craving other women and other perspectives. We have such a different experience of life, and I was drawn to helping other women and getting to know them. That time in a silo and a bubble made me want a very different experience, so I swung to the complete other side.
Working in that environment, I also saw all the gaps. I thought, "I didn't get this kind of support," or "I was talked to in this way," or "I had to contort myself in this way." By the time I left I was so done with it, and that really shaped what I built.
When I got onto LinkedIn, there were no female creators. It was me and a lot of tech CEOs, and I had to make friends with men. I wanted to create a space where women feel okay to show up, use their voice, and publish. Back in 2020 and 2021 it was very male-dominated, and I thought I had to be the one to take what these men were saying and translate it into our experience, in a way women could resonate with. My experience in tech made me want to build what I didn't have.
Naomi Haile
That morphed into a community you built, and a thriving business. I joined LinkedIn in 2017, and it was a very different platform back then. In 2026, at the time of this recording, many more female founders are using the platform beyond a digital form of a resume, which is wonderful.
In past interviews you've drawn a distinction between marketing content and sales messaging, and you've said most founders are doing all marketing and no selling. What is the formula you've seen work on this platform, specifically, that isn't borrowing what works on Instagram or TikTok?
Molly Godfrey
It's such a good callout. I wrote a post about this last year. I did the math on all the female founders I've worked with, and I have never once had to tell any of them, "You're selling way too much. It's too cringy." I'm always encouraging them: you actually have to sell something. LinkedIn isn't working because you're not inviting people into anything you're doing.
That includes me. Directly promoting myself is my least favorite part, but I do it to model the behavior, so I understand that experience. I have found that sales works best through storytelling. There's a time and a place for a very direct invitation: "I'm doing this thing next week, come to it, this is what you can expect." We need to be clear about what's happening. In the meantime, I love a good story. "This type of business came to me because they were experiencing this in a quarter." Or, "I had so much success in my first business, and now I'm helping clients do the same."
It goes back to knowing your customer and what keeps them up at night. Last week I was talking to a journalist at an event, and she said, "The first thing I do before I feature someone is go to their LinkedIn." I thought, what a great quote, so I wrote a post around it. A woman booked a call and said, "That's me. I want to invest in PR, but I have nothing going on in my LinkedIn." I could feel her embarrassment.
That perception, reputation, and online presence is what keeps my clients up at night. When I speak to it in a kind and disarming way, as in, "Hey, we can fix this," that's awareness I've gained. It takes a lot of experimentation. I've told a lot of stories that were good stories but weren't quite the right angle. That goes back to positioning: what motivates them enough to spend a higher dollar amount? I'm a huge fan of using stories to sell.
Naomi Haile
You have something you call an evergreen content bank.
Molly Godfrey
Yes.
Naomi Haile
What is that, Molly, and how has it helped you create content consistently?
Molly Godfrey
When you've done this for long enough, and I think this is year six, which is wild, you have enough reps and enough out there. I tell clients all the time that you can't analyze data until you have things to actually analyze. No strategy is going to be meaningful unless you're genuinely executing on it, taking action, and putting things out there. After five or six years, you have a big enough sample size to see what works when you talk about a given topic.
This month I tested one I hadn't posted in a while. I have a common sentiment around decisiveness and taking action, and I think this is the fifth or sixth time I've posted about it. Every time it performs so well. It's a universal evergreen theme around trusting yourself, taking a bet, and believing in yourself. I get new followers because people want to be that person.
I pay attention to what gets the most responses and what gets people to reach out. LinkedIn has such fantastic analytics now. In the last six months it has added so much, and it's the best time ever to be creating and running a business. You can diagnose where people stop in the customer journey, and whether it's LinkedIn, your business messaging, or your positioning. LinkedIn will tell you that you wrote a post and someone reached out, or someone saved it. You can also see that you got a bunch of website traffic and nothing happened there. In that case LinkedIn is doing its job bringing people to you, but it's not converting.
I pay attention, and then I tend to do more of what works. Evergreen content is so important because when you don't have the energy or bandwidth to create something brand new, you can take one of those themes and reiterate it into something new.
Naomi Haile
So many good things there. You mentioned a bias toward action, and a belief-based type of content. I see some people who create only that type of content, which speaks to a belief system. They typically have a coaching offer and don't speak much about tactics, whether that's marketing or operations, because tactics change, whereas beliefs get to the core and work all the time. Would you advise for or against that?
Molly Godfrey
That kind of content is important. The post I did about taking action brought something like 30 new followers. Great, I have things I'm going to do later in the year and I want new people in. It's a great thought, and we love it, but there's only so far that message will go.
The mistake I commonly see is that people's egos get involved. This content does well, so they do those themes and messages all the time. You end up with broad, motivational, inspiring content, and that doesn't necessarily make me want to pay you money. You uplift my spirits, and I'll support you and I'm grateful you're on the platform, but I'm going to hire the person who shows social proof, breaks things down in a technical way, and solves something very specific I've been thinking about all week. You need both, and it's an art.
I recommend very, very top-of-funnel content once or twice a month. It's something everyone can relate to, and it's industry agnostic. It doesn't matter what industry or career stage you're in. You want that, because it typically gets you a lot of visibility and brings new people to you.
Where you keep people is what marketers call middle-of-funnel content. It's more niche, more specific, more technical, and more expertise-driven. It says, "I understand this problem, how it applies to your business, and how I would advise you to solve it." You get that from working with clients, being an expert, and seeing situations play out. It's less relevant for the masses and it gets lower engagement, so people say, "It's not my most popular post." It's really important, though, because the people who want to hire you will binge it. That's where you build trust: consistently posting quality, industry-specific insights that your own clients are thinking about every day, every week.
Naomi Haile
It might not be the most popular, but if it's getting you discovery calls and people in your DMs, that goes much further than a vanity metric. I'm glad you said that.
In some of your content you talk about using enrollment call questions, DMs, and offer objections as content sources. The same goes for a networking event, like the one where you met the journalist. How can a founder take those raw materials and turn them into a post? How do you think through the process from "that's a really good question" to the framework of the post?
Molly Godfrey
I love what people say offhand in conversations or quick DMs. A client emailed me last summer and said, "Molly, I know you tell me to repurpose content, but I don't know what you mean. How am I supposed to do that?" I created a post that said, "Everyone tells you that you need to be reusing your content, but no one actually shows you how. Here's how."
It takes some skill to take those quotes and ask how you can acknowledge and normalize the experience this person is having. This founder knew it was almost back-to-school season and she wasn't going to have time in three weeks, so I framed the post around the time of year. I like to name something you're probably saying a lot, and then give my perspective or the solution.
It doesn't work every time. The journalist's quote was a slam dunk. Sometimes people say things and I write them down, and there may not be anything I can do with them. If it inspires you to think, "I can answer this question for everyone," or to make it a piece of content my whole audience could benefit from, great. Typically I'm trying to solve, acknowledge, or resolve someone's objection or the problem they're bringing to me.
Naomi Haile
You're always paying attention. A lot of the founders I work with are always on in a sense, and I'd say that's a differentiated skill. Every conversation, every moment outside, is a data point you can learn from and use. You've demonstrated how you do this through conversation and feedback.
I brought up your community earlier. I love the name, the Impressions Community. As I was reading the sales page, I saw something called Impressions AI. I'm big on AI literacy, which is a large part of my business as an operations consultant, and I love hearing how creative people are using AI to do real work.
I know your methodology is rooted in authenticity. How do you think about integrating AI into your business and process, especially now in 2026? Where is it part of your process, and where does it not touch it at all?
Molly Godfrey
Everyone wants to know the answer. I love it for editing, for some research, and for building automations. In the Impressions creator tier there are 40 women sending me content and writing drafts every month. If 40 people are creating 12 pieces of content a month, that's a ton of content.
The biggest piece of AI is an automation. When a member sends something, it triggers my team to let them know the content is in the planner. Then I've built my brain into a GPT that reviews it and does a first pass. Someone went viral from that revision a couple of weeks ago, which is so cool.
I love it for editing, and I don't love it for writing. I tell clients to put 90% of their own brain in there. You can try it, but AI content doesn't get much reach. Someone came to me getting 100 to 200 impressions with AI. When we started writing using their own thinking, it went into the tens of thousands. The difference is wild.
I love it for automating things and making the backend process faster. For example, having it listen to a call and feed you notes that spark your own thinking, which you then write from. It sometimes has good one-liners, and you can prompt it to add credibility or a stronger sales call to action. More and more, though, I'm having clients detox from AI and go back to their own voice. It's an easy button that will write you anything in one second, and I'm seeing more people go back to analog. There are parts of the process where I like it, but mostly on the back end and not for the main thinking.
Naomi Haile
I agree. Understanding, for whatever business you're in, where AI works and where it doesn't is critical. You do yourself an injustice if you think an easy button will get you all the results you're looking for.
You mentioned creating an offer, and that you have to sell something. How long did it take you to clarify your offer? Did you seek help, or was it your own process, or both? I know you were previously a dating coach, which I thought was interesting. How did you refine your offer and decide this is what you want to focus on and double down on right now?
Molly Godfrey
Very much to the theme of this conversation, it was a lot of experimenting. I've had a lot of offers that never went anywhere and some very popular offers, and the community is the one where I really got it right. I found a gap in the market of high-touch support without a very high ticket price, and I asked how to add AI and systematize things so that's possible.
I'm a huge fan of coaches and specialists. I have a community strategist, a messaging strategist, and a marketing strategist. I'm good at content and storytelling, but I'm not good at all the things, so I invest in people who are really good at them. Recently I partnered with an offer and pricing strategist to come into the community and help everyone, and members got so much value from that.
It comes back to being willing to ship things, put them out there, and listen. People didn't like a format, or an aspect wasn't compelling. My offers also have different buyers. My higher-ticket one-on-one offers are for a certain type of person who wouldn't benefit from a membership model. The membership has DIYers who are self-paced and very self-motivated, and they can get what they need from that model. So it's about knowing what motivates people and what kind of support they need.
In general, I like to keep things simple, with two or three core things. It took a lot of testing, and you're seeing me five-plus years into this. Things are changing so quickly in the online business space that what was selling even six months ago isn't now. We have to be that much more attuned to what people want and need, and AI can do a lot of things now.
Naomi Haile
The online world has changed a lot, Molly. I love what you said about getting it right with the community. Some people have tried and haven't gotten the community piece right, or it isn't the effort they want to put into building a community, whatever its size. You listened, found the gap, and went in.
A nod to your team as well. I saw a post last year where you gave a shout-out to every expert who played a part in your growth, which is huge and so important.
Molly Godfrey
I won't pretend I have everything figured out. It's important to know what you're good at and who to hire for, and the right people make all the difference.
Naomi Haile
Let's talk to someone listening right now who is a service-based founder. They're really good at their work, they have their offer, and they have a relatively consistent LinkedIn presence, but it's not turning into calls or DMs. Consistency is one piece. What could they do this week to start seeing results in the right direction?
Molly Godfrey
I would look at the overall strategy. If people aren't reaching out, are you making invitations? Is it clear? Are you leading people to take some sort of action? A lot of times it's as simple as, "I have three spaces available in my consultancy this month." You're informing people and inviting them. That's step one. If you're not doing that, do it for two or three months, because people need to see four or five of those posts. You won't immediately start getting business, but over the next few months of inviting people in, you should see improvement.
Audit two is whether your posts are actually reaching people. Usually it's the introduction. So many times I work with brilliant women who leave the most compelling part of the insight or belief halfway down the post. The beginning isn't getting anyone to stop, and no one can take action or start to trust you if they're not consuming your content. A lot of times it's a skill gap in writing, communication, framing, and positioning.
It's easier to fix than you think. It's learning the art of framing things sooner and speaking more authoritatively and confidently right at the start. That takes practice, and it takes someone with an eye, a good editor or strategist, to see it.
Then it could genuinely be your offer. If people aren't reaching out, either it isn't solving something sticky enough, or it isn't being communicated so that people see the value. With the analytics, if people are clicking your link and then not booking, it's probably a you problem and not a LinkedIn problem. If people aren't reading the post, visiting your profile, or clicking your link, then it's probably the writing. And if there's no activity at all, you've got to take more of a stand and speak with more authority.
The other thing I'll add is that you probably need more community. LinkedIn is very social. You need engagement, and you need other people to help you get visibility. If you post and then disappear, without leaving comments or interacting with your peers and friends, your content isn't going to get much reach either. It could be a lot of things.
Naomi Haile
Lots of factors. You talk about LinkedIn being a social graph as opposed to an interest graph. That speaks to what you just mentioned. Can you talk a little about that?
Molly Godfrey
I find it so fascinating. LinkedIn has first-degree, second-degree, and third-degree connections, so it's built strategically in a social way. On TikTok, if I watch a recipe for soup, it immediately gives me more soup recipes. Every third video is soup, cars, dogs, whatever. They pay attention to what you like and try to keep you on there.
LinkedIn is the opposite. I can see it happening every week. If I go to my DM conversation with someone, or to someone's profile, I start seeing their activity constantly in my feed. It gives me content based on who I'm engaging with socially. If I go to my old coworker's profile, I'm now seeing all of his activity, whether I want to or not.
You have to be strategic about who is engaging with you and who has access to your ideal clientele. Just because I like marketing doesn't mean I'll get marketing content. They've started suggesting posts, and last summer they were feeding more in, though I don't see that as much anymore. Essentially, who you know on LinkedIn matters, and who knows you matters.
TikTok works if you're trying to reach people of a certain age who want to cook meals after work, because it has that data. On LinkedIn you have to know who the thought leader in that space is, and then be friends with them and interact with them. It's a different algorithm altogether.
Naomi Haile
Is that what makes you love it so much? I love LinkedIn personally.
Molly Godfrey
I think it's such a fun game. I'm a collaborative, relationship person. I have a client right now who's a consultant in the very particular tech space I used to work in, serving a specific niche. I can make her intros because I know those people and they're in my feed, so it will get her access to them. It's a fun game of leverage and strategy, but it's really different, and people don't always understand that.
Naomi Haile
People come onto the platform with different ideas for what works, and it's not landing. Your tips were fantastic, Molly. Thanks for getting into the nitty-gritty. For those who want to connect with you, what's the best place?
Molly Godfrey
Definitely LinkedIn. Search Molly Godfrey, LinkedIn strategist, and I should come up. I also have a Threads account where we repurpose a lot of my LinkedIn. My newsletter is linked in my LinkedIn profile, but LinkedIn is by far the best place to reach me.
Naomi Haile
Can you tell us a little about the Impressions Community and how people can learn more?
Molly Godfrey
Impressions is a high-touch membership without a high-ticket mastermind price, and it's very LinkedIn-specific. It's for people who are clear they want to grow on LinkedIn for their business and double down on it. With so much going on with AI, AI is using LinkedIn so significantly, so it's a good time to know that and leverage it.
I open the doors quarterly, and I'll be opening them in a couple of weeks and posting about it. You can find it linked on my LinkedIn. It's for female founders who are very clear they want to use LinkedIn. We do monthly trainings, content reviews, data days, and work days, and there's a community of other founders who are active and visible on the platform.
Naomi Haile
If you didn't catch that, LinkedIn is being pulled into a lot of AI search engines. If you are invisible on these platforms, you're missing out on a real opportunity to get pulled into what is effectively a new search engine. Thanks for being here, Molly, and thanks to everyone who listened to this episode of The Power of Why podcast. We'll catch you in the next one.
Molly Godfrey
Thank you.
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