How Jan Thyen Quietly Outperforms Bigger Creators

How Jan Thyen Quietly Outperforms Bigger Creators

I did not expect a Group CFO with 2,800 followers and 0.4 posts per week to beat out a high-energy Gen Z creator with 11,477 followers and a marketing-focused AI podcaster with 5,618 followers. But here we are. And honestly, it is kind of fascinating.

I wanted to understand how someone like Jan Thyen, who is not posting that often and is not building a loud personal brand, can still pull a Hero Score of 1100.00, slightly ahead of Yanni Pappas (1055.00) and clearly ahead of Jacob Zangel (926.00). So I pulled their numbers side by side and started looking for patterns.

Here is what stood out:

• Jan is getting a lot of mileage from relatively few posts
• Yanni shows how volume and broad appeal play together
• Jacob is building around a hot theme (AI + marketing) but still trails Jan on efficiency

---

Jan Thyen's Performance Metrics

Here is what is interesting about Jan's numbers: they scream efficiency. With 2,800 followers and 0.4 posts per week, he is not trying to flood the feed. Yet his Hero Score of 1100.00 puts him in clear top-performer territory relative to his audience size. In plain English: when Jan shows up, people care.

Key Performance Indicators

---

Side by Side: Jan, Yanni, and Jacob

Before talking content, it helps to see the three of them on the same board.

What jumps out? Jan is the smallest account by follower count, but he is sitting at the top in terms of Hero Score. That is the classic "punching above your weight" pattern. Yanni has the bigger audience and a huge total view count, but on a per-audience-member basis, Jan is slightly ahead. Jacob is in the middle in size and behind in efficiency, even though he works in a very clickable space: AI and marketing.

Now here is where it gets interesting: Jan is an executive first, creator second. That usually means less time, fewer posts, and more risk-averse content. But the numbers suggest that when he does post, it hits the right people hard enough to outscore creators who live and breathe content every day.

---

What Makes Jan Thyen's Content Work

We do not have full post-by-post breakdowns here, but just from his profile, role, and the numbers, a pattern starts to form. Jan is likely winning on four simple but powerful things:

1. Clear executive positioning
2. Relevance to a very specific audience
3. Trust-heavy interactions instead of vanity reach
4. Timing and consistency that fit his reality, not some hustle myth

Let us unpack those.

1. Executive positioning that feels grounded

The first thing I noticed is Jan's headline: "Group Chief Financial Officer bei Giesecke+Devrient | Member of the Supervisory Board of Secunet AG." That is not a snappy creator tagline. It is straight-up credibility.

So here is what likely happens: when he posts, the right people stop scrolling. Other executives, finance leaders, and decision makers see someone who is in the arena, not just talking about it. That alone changes how people read and respond to his content.

Key insight: If your real-world role is strong, your content can be simple. Your title does a lot of the heavy lifting.

This works because LinkedIn is still a trust-first platform. A CFO sharing one thoughtful post per week can get more attention from senior people than a daily poster with a vague "thought leader" branding. Jan is playing that card very well, intentionally or not.

Strategy Breakdown:

2. Relevance over raw reach

Yanni's headline screams reach: "Creator | Gen Z Marketer | Writer | Social, brand, content, & culture | B2B SaaS | 5M+ views." That is classic volume and visibility energy. Jacob's setup around "AI & Marketing" and a podcast with big names points toward wide appeal too.

Jan, on the other hand, feels like he is aiming at a niche: senior stakeholders who care about finance, governance, security (given Secunet), and long-term decisions.

So while Yanni might win on raw impressions, Jan likely wins on relevance per impression. Fewer people see his posts, but a higher percentage actually matter to his goals.

Comparison with Peers:

This is powerful if you are busy and do not want to live in your content calendar. You can accept being "smaller" on paper because every meaningful view is actually meaningful.

3. Trust-building over constant posting

Jan posts about 0.4 times per week. That is maybe 2 posts in 5 weeks. Old-school social advice would call that a mistake. Yet his Hero Score suggests those posts outperform.

Want to know what surprised me? That low frequency combined with a top-tier score usually means his posts get strong engagement relative to his follower base. People remember him between posts.

He is probably leaning heavily on:

• Thoughtful, experience-based insights instead of hot takes
• Content that reflects real decisions, tradeoffs, and numbers
• Occasional, but meaningful interaction with his network

Comparison with Industry Habits:

So no, you do not have to crank out content every day. You just have to be worth listening to when you do speak.

4. Timing and structure that fit busy leaders

We know Jan performs best when posting in late mornings (around 09:30-10:30) and early afternoons (around 14:00-15:00). Those are exactly the windows when many professionals pause between deep work blocks or meetings.

If you are a CFO, you are not writing threads at midnight. You are sharing something between calls, or after a board prep session, when an insight is fresh. Jan seems to lean into that natural rhythm instead of fighting it.

For a reader, that probably means his content feels like "a quick, sharp thought from someone who just came out of a real decision" instead of theory written in a vacuum.

---

Their Content Formula

We do not have full post text for each creator here, but you can still reverse engineer a likely content formula from their positioning and results.

• Jan: lower volume, high-authority, insight-heavy posts
• Yanni: higher volume, trend-aware, narrative-driven posts
• Jacob: AI-oriented, curiosity-heavy, future-facing posts

Content Structure Breakdown

The Hook Pattern

Jan probably is not starting posts with viral-style clickbait hooks. He does not need to. His best hooks are likely simple but precise statements that make a specific type of leader stop.

Template:

"When you are responsible for [high-stakes responsibility], you can not afford to ignore [unexpected risk or lesson]."

You could adapt that as:

• "When you are responsible for a multi-billion-euro balance sheet, you can not afford to ignore your cyber risk exposure."
• "When you are responsible for long-term capital allocation, you can not afford to chase every shiny tech story."

Why does this work? Because the right reader sees themselves in the first half of the sentence. And once that happens, they are almost forced to read the second half.

The Body Structure

Executives tend to think in stories, decisions, and tradeoffs. So I would expect Jan's better posts to follow a simple pattern: setup, decision, lesson, implication.

Body Structure Analysis:

You can plug almost any leadership or finance story into that frame. It is simple, it is fast to write, and it respects the reader's time.

The CTA Approach

Jan is not a "smash that like button" kind of creator. His CTAs are probably closer to:

• "Curious how other CFOs think about this."
• "What would you have done in this situation?"
• "How do you balance this in your company?"

That kind of close works because it flips the spotlight back onto the reader's experience. Instead of begging for engagement, it invites peers to weigh in.

Psychology-wise, senior professionals love being asked how they think. It signals respect and drives thoughtful comments, which is exactly the kind of engagement you want if you care about real relationships, not vanity metrics.

---

Comparing Creator Styles

Here is a quick snapshot of how all three compare from a content-strategy angle.

So if you are closer to Jan - an operator, executive, or specialist - you probably do not want to copy Yanni's or Jacob's playbook one to one. Jan's numbers show you can grow influence with a quieter, more targeted approach.

---

3 Actionable Strategies You Can Use Today

You do not need a CFO title to steal Jan's best moves. Here are three things you can copy immediately.

1. Lead with your real-world role - Put your clearest, strongest role in your headline so every post sits on a foundation of credibility.

2. Aim for the right 1,000 people, not the next 10,000 - Define the exact type of person you want reading your posts and write directly to them.

3. Post less, think more - Instead of forcing daily content, commit to one or two genuinely thoughtful posts per week and see how your engagement quality changes.

---

Key Takeaways

1. Jan wins on efficiency, not volume - His Hero Score of 1100.00 with 2,800 followers shows that the right content in front of the right people beats big, unfocused reach.
2. Your offline authority still matters online - Senior roles, real projects, and concrete experience can outshine fancy creator labels when your audience cares about results.
3. You can build influence on your own terms - Posting 2 to 4 strong times per month at smart times of day can be enough if you are intentional.

So here is the bottom line: you do not have to act like a full-time creator to win like one. Take a page from Jan's playbook, experiment for a month, and see how your own numbers shift.

---

Meet the Creators

---

This analysis was generated by ViralBrain's AI content intelligence platform.