Read time: 5 minutes

Most founders think growth comes from publishing more content.

The companies that grow consistently build assets instead.

I recently came across a startup hiring its first Growth Associate.

The founder wanted someone to consistently publish content, grow the company’s social media presence, maximize community engagement, and generate inbound B2B leads. At first glance, nothing about the job description looked unusual. Every startup wants more customers, and content has become one of the cheapest ways to reach them.

Then I realized something.

The company wasn’t hiring someone to build a growth engine.

It was hiring someone to produce more content.

Those aren’t the same thing.

That nuance might sound small, but I think it’s one of the biggest strategic mistakes early-stage founders make. They confuse marketing activity with growth infrastructure. More social posts may increase visibility, but visibility alone doesn’t create a business that compounds.

Growth comes from building assets that capture attention, deepen relationships, and make every future marketing effort more valuable than the last.

Posting more content doesn’t create growth if there’s nowhere for interested people to go.

Social media is great at creating discovery.

A great post can introduce thousands of people to your business, your product, and ultimately who you are and what you’re all about in a matter of seconds.

Sounds great in theory but that attention is incredibly fragile.

Tomorrow’s feed replaces today’s conversation, forcing you to earn that attention all over again. While posts on LinkedIn linger on the feed for 2-3 weeks you shouldn’t bank on that being the outcome you want.

That’s why every piece of content should point toward something your business owns. An educational email course, newsletter, benchmark report, assessment, calculator, webinar, or playbook all accomplish the same objective.

They give interested people a reason to continue the relationship after the scroll ends and preferably off platform so you have 100% control once you have their contact information (e.g. name, email, phone number etc).

Posting content on social platforms attracts attention. Having assets captures it.

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The real value of a growth asset isn’t collecting leads. It’s identifying intent.

Anyone can get followers.

But only people who genuinely care about solving a problem will complete an assessment, finish an email course, or attend a webinar. Every additional step tells you something about how serious that person is.

Greg Isenberg (internet-business guy) does this well.

His social content reaches a broad audience, but it consistently leads people toward educational resources that go deeper than a single post. The goal isn’t simply collecting email addresses. It’s identifying the people actively looking to build a business and giving them a structured way to learn.

Followers measure attention. Growth assets measure intent.

That’s a much more valuable signal.

The best marketing investments become more valuable every time you use them.

Most content has a short shelf life.

A LinkedIn post might generate high engagement for a day before disappearing into the feed. The next opportunity depends on creating another post, and then another after that.

A growth asset works differently.

One educational resource can be promoted through dozens of posts, podcast appearances, founder interviews, partnerships, and speaking engagements. Every new piece of content strengthens the same system instead of creating a new one from scratch.

That’s the difference between activity and leverage.

Publishing content without building a growth asset is like carrying buckets of water.

Every day starts the same way. Pick up the bucket. Walk back to the well. Deliver the water. Repeat tomorrow.

Growth assets are different. They’re pipelines.

Building them takes more work upfront, but once they’re in place, every future piece of content becomes more valuable because it’s feeding the same system instead of starting over.

Social media should drive discovery. Your website should build relationships.

Many founders treat their website like a digital brochure that explains what the company does.

The better websites do something else.

They help visitors take the next step.

Someone arriving from social media shouldn’t have to wonder what happens next. They should immediately find something useful that helps them better understand a problem, evaluate themselves, or move closer to a solution. That’s how borrowed attention becomes an owned audience.

Social platforms will always change.

Algorithms will always evolve.

Owning the relationship is what creates stability.

Great founders don’t just create content. They build systems that teach for them.

Buying decisions rarely happen after one interaction.

Customers need time to understand the problem, evaluate alternatives, and develop confidence before they’re ready to buy.

Author James Clear understands this well. His free email course introduces readers to the core principles behind Atomic Habits through a structured learning experience instead of asking people to piece everything together from social media posts. The system educates every new subscriber in the same thoughtful sequence without requiring his personal involvement each time.

That’s leverage.

The founder teaches once.

The system continues teaching.

The takeaway

I’m not arguing founders should stop investing in social media.

Discovery, distribution, and visibility all matters. But none of those things become sustainable advantages unless they’re connected to something your business owns.

Content is not the growth engine.

It’s the entry point. The question is what do you do with it to build leverage?

The growth engine is the system that captures attention, qualifies interest, builds trust, and turns that relationship into customers over time.

🗣️ PSA to all founders:

You don’t need to publish more. Build something every post makes more valuable.

Work hard AND work smart.

Make sure your hard work is building a pipeline, not carrying another bucket.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Take free quiz: Let’s unpack your strategy and find the blind spots holding you back from growth

• Join my 5-day email course: Fix the 5 go-to-market mistakes early-stage founders make that cost them customers and keep them from being the obvious choice

I’m Wadnes. Welcome to my newsletter on building culture-driven go-to-market strategies and how founders can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, stay relevant, and win customers consistently. I've been heads down building lately, so it's nice to come up for air and share a lesson I've been thinking about.

Read time: 2 minutes

Let me guess you’re a founder who doesn’t want to pay for strategy because you think AI can do it for free.

But if your strategy was so good, why are you still struggling with the same problem?

At some point, you gotta be real with yourself.

How does the saying go?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I’ve been advising startup founders and creators for four years.

I can promise you this:

Most founders think they have a winning strategy when they actually don’t.

The key to building a winning strategy is having a clear set of foundational principles to guide your decisions.

We’re past the halfway mark of 2026. If you’re still struggling to build the right strategy, you’re in for a long year.

Here are three reasons why you’re confusing tactics for strategy and how to fix them.

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1. You haven’t identified the real problem

If you have not thought about second-order consequences, you are still thinking at a surface level. It is like failing a class and blaming the course content, when the real problem is that you had the wrong study material all along. The best way to identify the real problem is to use system-level thinking. Diagnose your challenges by asking “why” until you reach a root cause you can no longer unbundle.

2. You don’t know what winning looks like

You’re doing a lot of work, but it’s not producing meaningful impact for your business. It is like doing all your homework and volunteering for extra credit, but still failing the class. You’re hustling backward.

How can you expect to win if you don’t define what winning looks like?

Here’s how to fix it:

• Write down your ideal outcome.

• List what needs to be true for that to happen.

• List the specific action steps needed to execute.

3. You’re not making trade-off decisions

Have you zeroed in on the specific options that will help you achieve your goal?

You can’t execute a strategy if you have not weighed the pros and cons of the options in front of you. You have to make the most of the cards you have been dealt.

Strategy is the set of choices you make to reach an outcome. The winning strategy is the one that provides the clearest path to your goal with the least resistance.

Strategy is both art and science

The structure is the science. You can’t fight the principles. The art is the creativity you use to get it done.

Don’t just be an artist. Don’t just be a scientist.

Be a strategist who blends both disciplines to create something new.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Take free quiz: Let’s unpack your strategy and find the blind spots holding you back from growth

• Join my 5-day email course: Fix the 5 GTM mistakes early-stage founders make that cost them customers and keep them from being the obvious choice

Read time: 8 minutes

A few days ago, a friend told me he’d spent more than $700 on New York Knicks merchandise.

Not tickets.

Merchandise.

Jerseys. Hats. Sweatshirts.

At first, I thought it was irrational. Then I remembered all the people I know who spent hundreds of dollars on Haiti World Cup jerseys, including my sister. Not because they needed another jersey. Not because it was the cheapest option. Because it meant something.

Identity. Belonging. Pride. Connection.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn’t really about sports. It was about value.

For years, I thought pricing was mostly an economics problem. The better the product, the higher the price. The bigger the ROI, the easier the sale. But the more I paid attention to how people actually spend money, the more I realized something deeper.

People don’t buy based on value alone.

They buy based on what that value means to them. Two products can create similar outcomes and command very different prices because customers aren’t only evaluating utility. They’re evaluating trust, status, belonging, aspiration, and what choosing that product says about them.

That realization changed how I thought about pricing.

And eventually how I thought about positioning.

Most Founders Don’t Have A Pricing Problem

When founders struggle to justify their pricing, they often respond the same way. They lower prices, offer discounts, add more features, or try to prove they’re cheaper than competitors. The assumption is that customers aren’t seeing enough value, so the answer must be to make the offer more attractive.

Most founders don’t have a pricing problem.

They have a positioning problem.

Customers don’t buy based solely on what something costs. They buy based on what it’s worth, and worth is determined by more than functionality. It’s determined by meaning.

If customers don’t understand why you’re different, price becomes the easiest thing to compare.

When that happens, you’ve already lost. The moment customers compare only on price, you’ve become a commodity. The challenge isn’t convincing customers your product is worth more. The challenge is helping customers understand why it matters in the first place.

Positioning And Pricing Are The Same Decision

Most founders treat positioning and pricing as separate activities. First they build the product. Then they create messaging. Then they decide what to charge.

Customers don’t experience them separately.

Every price communicates a position.

Every position implies a price.

A $29 product communicates something different than a $299 product because customers don’t just evaluate what something does. They evaluate what it means.

Positioning determines why someone chooses you.

Pricing determines what that difference is worth. By the time someone reaches your pricing page, they’ve already formed opinions about who your product is for, what makes it different, and whether it’s relevant to them. Pricing doesn’t create those perceptions. It builds on them.

One shapes perceived value.

The other captures it.

“But My Customers Only Care About ROI”

This is usually where founders push back, and it’s a fair objection. Most customers do care about results. The problem is assuming results are the only thing customers evaluate.

If customers only cared about ROI, every category would have one winner.

The highest-performing product would dominate. Instead, multiple companies often succeed while delivering similar outcomes. That’s because customers don’t just evaluate outcomes. They evaluate approaches, beliefs, experiences, trust, and the way a solution makes them feel.

People often justify purchases with logic.

They prioritize purchases based on meaning.

Two products can promise the same result and still attract different customers because each product means something different. The ROI matters, but meaning often determines which products customers pay attention to, trust, and recommend in the first place.

Why Customer Identity Comes First

Last week, I introduced the Customer Identity Map. The core idea was simple: most founders know what customers do. Far fewer understand who customers are trying to become.

That distinction matters.

Every buying decision is ultimately a vote for an identity. People buy products that help them become the person they want to be. The founder seeking freedom buys differently than the founder seeking status. The executive seeking security buys differently than the executive seeking innovation. The startup founder trying to impress investors buys differently than the founder trying to maximize efficiency.

Same category.

Different motivations. Different positioning. Different pricing.

This is why positioning should never start with your product.

It should start with your customer.

Traditional positioning asks:

Who is the customer?

Culture-First positioning asks:

Who is the customer trying to become?

That’s a very different question.

Because every purchase is ultimately a vote for an identity.

And identity shapes value.

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The Positioning & Pricing Foundation Canvas

So if positioning isn’t about describing your product, what is it?

It’s about helping the right customers understand who this is for, what transformation it creates, why it’s different, and why it’s worth paying for.

To help founders answer those questions, I use a framework called the Positioning & Pricing Foundation Canvas.

The purpose of the canvas is simple.

To move pricing from guessing to strategy.

Most founders jump straight to pricing. But pricing is the result of a series of strategic decisions. Before you can confidently set a price, you need to understand who you’re serving, what problem you’re solving, what value you’re creating, why customers should choose you, and whether those assumptions are actually true.

The canvas helps you answer those questions in the right order.

Section 1: Customer

Who is this really for?

Not everyone who could buy. The goal is to identify the specific people most likely to benefit from your solution and receive the most value from it. The more specific you are here, the easier every decision becomes downstream.

Ask yourself:

• Who gets the most value from this?
• Who experiences this problem most intensely?
• Who is most likely to act?

Output: Ideal Customer Statement

Section 2: Problem

What problem is the customer trying to solve?

Most founders spend a lot of time talking about their solution and not enough time understanding the problem. But customers rarely buy because a solution exists. They buy because a problem feels important enough to solve.

Ask yourself:

• What is costing them time, money, growth, status, or peace of mind today?
• What happens if they do nothing for the next 12 months?

The stronger the problem, the easier the sale.

Output: Problem Statement

Section 3: Value

How does your solution help?

This is where many founders default to features. Customers don’t buy features. They buy outcomes. Your job is to clearly articulate what becomes easier, faster, cheaper, safer, or more effective because your solution exists.

Focus on the result.

Not the functionality.

Ask yourself:

• What outcome does this create?
• What becomes possible after using it?
• Why does that outcome matter?

Output: Value Statement

Section 4: Positioning

Why should customers choose you instead of the alternatives?

Alternatives aren’t just competitors. They’re also workarounds, spreadsheets, consultants, internal processes, and doing nothing at all. Positioning is about helping customers understand why your approach is different and why that difference matters.

Your goal is clarity.

Not cleverness.

Ask yourself:

• What makes our approach unique?
• Why does that difference matter?
• What do we believe that others don’t?

Output: Positioning Statement

Template:

Unlike ______,

we help ______

achieve ______

through ______

because we believe ______.

Section 5: Pricing

What is the value of the outcome you’re creating?

This is where most founders want to start. In reality, it’s where you should finish. Pricing becomes easier once you’ve established who you’re helping, what problem you’re solving, and what value you’re creating.

Ask yourself:

• What would it cost the customer to continue living with this problem?
• What are they paying today to solve it?
• What alternatives are they comparing us against?

Pricing becomes easier when value is clear.

Output: Value Justification Statement

Section 6: Validation

How confident are you that your assumptions are true?

The purpose of this section is to force honesty. Every statement in the canvas should be supported by evidence from customer interviews, research, observation, or real-world testing. The goal isn’t to be right.

The goal is to reduce guessing.

Ask yourself:

• What evidence supports this assumption?
• What evidence contradicts it?
• What still needs validation?

Output: Validation Score

The Founder Mistake

Most founders start pricing conversations too early.

Before they understand:

• Who they’re serving
• What problem they’re solving
• What value they’re creating
• What alternatives customers compare against
• What makes them different

Without those inputs, pricing becomes guessing.

And guessing usually leads to underpricing.

Not because founders lack confidence.

Because they lack clarity.

The clearer the position, the easier the price.

Your Action Step

Complete the Positioning & Pricing Foundation Canvas.

By the end, you should have:

✓ An Ideal Customer Statement
✓ A Problem Statement
✓ A Value Statement
✓ A Positioning Statement
✓ A Value Justification Statement
✓ A Validation Score

Those outputs become the foundation for your positioning, messaging, pricing, and go-to-market strategy.

If you can’t complete them confidently, don’t change your pricing.

Improve your understanding first.

If there's one lesson worth taking away, it's this:

Most founders spend their time trying to justify their price.

The best founders spend more time understanding what customers value.

The Knicks merchandise wasn’t really about sports. The Haiti World Cup jerseys weren’t really about fabric. People were paying for what those purchases represented: identity, belonging, pride, aspiration, and connection.

Price matters.

Value matters.

ROI matters.

But before customers compare pricing pages or evaluate feature lists, they decide whether the outcome feels relevant to them. That decision shapes how much value they assign to a solution before they ever consider the cost.

That’s why the strongest companies don’t compete on price alone.

They compete on meaning.

People don’t buy what things cost.

They buy what things mean.

This is the second asset inside the Culture-First GTM System I’m building publicly.

Last issue we explored how to understand customers through the Customer Identity Map. Next week, I’ll break down how positioning becomes communication through the Messaging & Narrative Kit.

If you’re building a SaaS or AI company and want to become the obvious choice for the right customers, join the waitlist for the Culture-First GTM System.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Fix the 5 mistakes early-stage founders make that cost them customers and keep them from being the obvious choice in their market

Read time: 8 minutes

Most founders think they understand their customers because they’ve done enough research.

They’ve reviewed analytics dashboards, studied competitors, created personas, and collected survey responses. They’ve built spreadsheets, documented insights, and talked to customers. On paper, they feel informed.

A founder recently told me exactly that after I shared an early version of my Customer Identity Map.

They felt they already knew their audience deeply because they had spent months researching the market and talking to customers. And honestly, most startup advice would probably agree with them. Customer research has become almost synonymous with collecting more information.

Then I asked one simple question.

“What does your customer actually believe?”

The conversation stopped.

Not because they weren’t smart. Not because they hadn’t done the work. The question caught them off guard because most startup advice teaches founders how to collect customer information, not how to understand customer identity.

And that distinction changes everything.

Because personas describe customers.

Identity predicts behavior.

Most personas flatten people into categories. Age. Income. Location. Job title. Company size. Useful information, but incomplete. Those details tell you what someone looks like on paper, yet they rarely explain why one person buys immediately while another ignores you completely.

Identity tells you how people move through the world.

It explains what they aspire to become, what they fear, what they value, what they reject, and what choosing a product says about them socially. Those forces shape buying decisions far more than most founders realize.

Take growth, for example.

Two founders can both say they want growth while meaning completely different things. One founder wants freedom and flexibility. The other wants status and proof they’ve made it. Same category. Same goal. Completely different motivations.

And different motivations require different messaging.

One founder responds to language about independence and control. The other responds to language about ambition, achievement, and recognition. If you treat them as the same person, your positioning becomes generic before you’ve even written the first sentence.

Most positioning problems are actually customer understanding problems in disguise.

The best marketers don’t study audiences.

They study self-perception.

The Internet Made Identity Visible

The internet changed how people express identity.

People are no longer just consumers. They’re curators, communities, and public signals of what they believe and value. Every repost, creator they follow, podcast they recommend, and product they buy says something about who they are and who they want to become.

Identity is constantly being performed online.

Scroll through someone’s saved posts long enough and you’ll often learn more about how they see themselves than you would from most traditional personas. The internet created an environment where people voluntarily reveal their aspirations, fears, beliefs, and status signals every single day.

The internet made identity visible.

Yet most founders still market as if customers are static demographic profiles instead of dynamic identity systems shaped by culture.

That’s why so much startup messaging feels interchangeable.

Everyone sounds optimized for a category.

Very few sound aligned with a worldview.

Someone spending time on Indie Hackers, listening to operator podcasts, and documenting their startup journey online probably sees themselves differently than someone consuming hustle-culture clips all day. Both might technically fall under the category of startup founder, but the similarities often stop there.

One may value independence, craftsmanship, and thoughtful execution. The other may value speed, visibility, and social proof. Those differences shape what messaging feels authentic, which brands they trust, what tone feels credible, and ultimately what makes them buy.

A wellness creator obsessing over optimization isn’t just talking about health.

They’re signaling discipline and control.

A streetwear enthusiast buying limited releases isn’t only buying clothes.

They’re buying cultural fluency.

Why did HYPEBEAST become more than a media company?

Because people weren’t just consuming content. They were signaling taste, identity, and belonging.

The behavior matters less than what the behavior means.

That’s the part most founders miss.

Communities Reveal More About Customers Than Personas Ever Could

Think ComicCon.

The strongest brands don’t just understand customers as buyers.

They understand them as people (fans) trying to become someone literally.

That’s why some brands feel magnetic while others feel forgettable. The difference usually isn’t effort. It’s depth of understanding.

Surface-level insight creates surface-level marketing.

Founders then try to solve weak resonance the same way they solve most startup problems: more content, more ads, more posting, and more distribution.

But more reach doesn’t fix confusion.

It exposes it.

The brands that consistently win understand something deeper about the people they serve. They understand identity, aspiration, belonging, emotional meaning, fear, trust, and the signals customers use to navigate the world.

And once you understand those things, your messaging naturally becomes sharper.

Because you stop speaking to demographic categories and start speaking to how people actually see themselves.

That’s when customers stop feeling targeted.

And start feeling understood.

People Buy Products That Reinforce Identity

Kanye West talked about this years ago in All Falls Down.

The song wasn’t really about shopping.

It was about insecurity, status, validation, and the emotional meaning attached to what people buy.

As he put it:

“Cause they made us hate ourself and love they wealth.”

The song resonated because people recognized themselves in it.

Not their demographics.

Their identity.

And that’s what most founders miss.

Buying decisions are rarely just rational.

People buy things because of aspiration, insecurity, belonging, identity, status, and self-perception. Products often become emotional signals for who someone wants to be or how they want to be perceived socially.

Two people can buy the exact same product for completely different reasons. One buys for utility. Another buys for status. A third buys because the product reinforces who they want to become.

The product stays the same.

The meaning changes.

Products are often purchased emotionally and justified rationally.

Identity usually makes the decision before logic explains it.

Why This Matters For PMF

Most founders think Product-Market Fit (PMF) is a product problem.

Often, it’s a customer understanding problem.

If you misunderstand who your best customer is, you’ll build for the wrong people, collect the wrong feedback, and write messaging that resonates with nobody.

That’s why the Customer Identity Map matters.

It helps founders identify who feels the pain most intensely, who is most likely to buy first, and what makes the product feel relevant enough to choose.

Because the fastest path to PMF is rarely reaching more people.

It’s understanding the right people more deeply.

What Makes This Different From A Persona?

Most customer frameworks tell you what someone looks like.

The Customer Identity Map helps you understand how they see the world.

A persona might tell you:

• 35 years old

• SaaS founder

• 10 employees

The Customer Identity Map tells you:

• what they believe

• what they fear

• what they value

• what they distrust

• what choosing your product says about them

• and what identity they’re trying to reinforce

Those insights are often far more useful when making product, positioning, messaging, and growth decisions.

Here’s what the framework looks like:

Go beyond demographics and pain points to uncover the beliefs, identities, and influences shaping customer decisions.

How To Actually Map Customer Identity

At this point, most founders assume customer identity research requires months of interviews and complicated research projects.

It doesn’t.

In fact, many of the signals you’re looking for are already visible in customer conversations, communities, content, language patterns, and buying behavior.

The goal isn’t to become a psychologist.

The goal is to understand people deeply enough to make your product feel relevant.

The Customer Identity Map gives founders a simple way to do that.

Step 1: Start With One Real Person, Not A Broad Segment

Most founders begin with categories.

“SaaS founders.”

“Gen Z consumers.”

“Small business owners.”

But broad categories hide nuance.

Specificity creates insight.

The founder posting every day on LinkedIn while quietly wondering why nothing is converting. The wellness consumer obsessed with optimization because discipline has become part of their identity. The creator who cares deeply about aesthetics because taste functions as social currency in their world.

That level of specificity reveals emotional context.

And emotional context creates better messaging.

Step 2: Look For Identity Signals, Not Just Behavioral Data

Most research focuses on what people do.

Better research focuses on what behavior means.

Pay attention to the creators they follow, the communities they join, the language they repeat, and the brands they admire.

Identity leaves clues everywhere.

Most founders are already surrounded by customer insight.

They just haven’t been taught how to interpret it strategically.

Step 3: Identify The Emotional Drivers Behind Decisions

Features matter.

But emotional meaning creates momentum.

People buy products that reinforce identity.

That’s why the best questions are usually emotional ones.

What are they trying to become?

What are they afraid of?

What identity are they protecting?

What status are they chasing?

What makes them feel smart, respected, safe, or understood?

This is usually where the deepest messaging insights appear.

And once identity becomes clear, strategy becomes clearer too.

Messaging sharpens. Positioning strengthens. Partnerships align more naturally. Content resonates faster.

Because customers feel emotionally recognized instead of generically targeted.

That’s the real purpose of customer mapping.

I Filled Out The Customer Identity Map Myself

After that conversation with the founder, instead of debating the framework further, I decided to fill out the Customer Identity Map myself using information already visible through their startup, messaging, audience behavior, and positioning.

What surprised me wasn’t that I could fill out the map.

It’s that most of the answers were already public.

The founder had been revealing customer identity signals the entire time through positioning, audience reactions, creator overlap, language patterns, community cues, recurring themes, and what customers consistently responded to emotionally.

The insight wasn’t hidden.

It was just disconnected.

That’s why I recorded the process.

Because most founders already have more customer insight than they realize. They just haven’t learned how to connect the dots.

The goal wasn’t to prove the founder wrong.

It was to demonstrate that customer identity is often already visible if you know where to look.

Most founders see these signals separately.

The best strategists learn how to connect them together.

Customers Don’t Want To Feel Analyzed. They Want To Feel Understood.

Most founders are still trying to profile customers.

The next generation of brands will map identity instead.

Because people rarely buy products only for utility. They buy products that reinforce who they believe they are and who they want to become.

The founders who win won’t be the ones with the most data.

They’ll be the ones who understand people deeply enough to make the right customers feel seen.

Because when people feel understood, trust compounds faster.

And when trust compounds faster, growth does too.

The best brands don’t just understand what customers do.

They understand who customers believe they are.

When You’re Ready. Here’s how I can help

• Take the Culture-Market Fit assessment and find out exactly where the gap is between how you’re showing up and why customers aren’t choosing you. It’s free. It takes 5 minutes. And it’ll tell you more than 3 months of guessing at tactics.

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help

Read time: 5 minutes

If your GTM strategy sounds like a checklist, you’re already losing.

Most GTM advice focuses on channels, tactics, features, and growth hacks. But very little of it focuses on the question that actually matters:

Who are you trying to win?

I went ghost for a while because I was in the field working.

Talking to founders inside masterminds. At conferences. On strategy calls. And across almost every conversation, I kept hearing the same thing:

• Some had strong products

• Some founders were textbook smart

• Some were net-new learning as they were building

But underneath all the activity and credentials they had there was still confusion.

The messaging kept changing. Positioning felt unclear. Customer acquisition felt unpredictable. Growth depended too heavily on the founder.

That pattern stuck with me.

Because most founders don’t have a work ethic or a “I don’t know what tools to use problem” either. They have a GTM foundation problem.

Most early-stage startups are trying to scale tactics before building the foundational assets that make growth easier, clearer, and more repeatable.

So they end up:

• Testing random channels and spreading resources thin

• Rewriting messaging constantly to sound interesting

• Chasing too many customer segments

• Creating content without direction

• Confusing activity with progress

That’s why I started thinking about GTM differently to help these founders who clearly have the ambition but lack the direction necessary to achieve their goals.

Not as random growth hacks.

Not as random tactics.

Not as random marketing channels.

But as a system.

A system built on foundational assets that shape customer understanding, positioning, messaging, trust, lead generation, and conversion.

That idea eventually became:

The Divine 9 Asset Series

The name was inspired by the historically Black fraternities and sororities known as “The Divine Nine.” Organizations built on identity, shared values, structure, legacy, and long-term impact.

That idea resonated with me because the strongest GTM systems work the same way.

Not on trends.

Not on random tactics.

But on foundations that compound (they grow over time).

That is how I think about these assets.

Not as temporary marketing hacks. But as evergreen GTM foundations founders can continue using long after tools, algorithms, and trends change.

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to break down each asset:

• What it is and why it matters to founders right now

• The specific mistakes being made and why those mistakes happen

• How to fix it (actionable steps) with video breakdown

• And how it helps turn random marketing into a repeatable GTM system

Here are the 9 assets.

1. Customer Identity Map

A strategic customer map helping founders understand:

• Who their best-fit customer is

• What they value

• What frustrates them

• What builds trust and influence their buying decision

Because demographics describe customers. Identity explains decisions.

2. Early Customer Blueprint

A profile helping founders identify:

• Who is most likely to buy first

• Who has the clearest pain point

• And where early traction is most likely to come from

Because early-stage GTM is not about winning everyone.

It is about finding the people most likely to believe first.

3. Positioning & Pricing Foundation

A strategic foundation clarifying:

• Who the product is for

• The problem it solves

• Why customers should choose it

• And how pricing aligns with customer value

Because if pricing feels hard, your value story is usually broken.

4. Messaging & Narrative Kit

A messaging system designed to help founders create:

• Clearer positioning

• Stronger messaging

• More relevant content

• And stronger customer trust

Because most founders create “vitamin” messaging: nice-to-have language customers ignore. This asset helps founders create painkiller messaging tied to urgent customer problems and outcomes customers already care about solving.

5. Messaging Alignment Check

A checklist framework making sure your:

• Messaging feels clear

• Positioning feels believable

• And the message matches how customers actually think and buy

Because positioning is not what you say.

It’s what people assume.

6. Trust Environment Map

A strategic map showing:

• Where customer trust is built

• Which channels matter (e.g. LinkedIn, IG, TikTok, etc)

• What communities influence buying decisions

• And where customer attention already exists

Because customers trust environments before they trust products.

7. Cultural Insight Engine

A repeatable customer insight system for:

• Tracking customer conversations

• Identifying buying signals

• Spotting positioning opportunities

• And understanding the beliefs, behaviors, language, and trends shaping customer decisions

Most startups rely heavily on quantitative data (e.g. clicks, impressions, conversion rates). But numbers rarely explain why customers behave the way they do.

Cultural insight fills that gap.

And founders who deeply understand customer behavior, language, identity, and trust signals usually build stronger positioning and more defensible brands over time.

8. Signature Lead Magnet

A trust-building growth asset designed to:

• Attract qualified leads

• Educate prospects

• Build authority and support conversion

Because modern GTM is driven by trust and education (nothing overly complicated).

9. Culture-First Growth Loop

A repeatable GTM system connecting:

• Customer insight

• Positioning

• Messaging

• Content

• Trust

• Lead generation and conversion

Into a system designed to compound over time. Because founder hustle doesn’t scale. Systems do. The more I studied successful startups, the more I realized the companies that grow consistently usually are not “doing more.”

They simply understand:

• Who they are for

• What customers care about

• How to build trust

• And how their GTM system works together

That clarity changes everything.

It improves messaging, conversion, content, positioning, customer quality, and consistency over time. This is the system you need to win on purpose.

That is the purpose of this series.

To help founders stop treating GTM like random marketing activity and start building foundational assets that make growth more repeatable.

This is is the intro. Get excited. I’ll break down the first asset:

The Customer Identity Map

And why most founders don’t have a marketing problem.

They have a relevance problem.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Fix the 5 mistakes early-stage founders make that cost them customers and keep them from being the obvious choice in their market

Took a month off. Needed to get inspired. Now I’m back. Enjoy!

Read time: 6 minutes

Most founders aren’t struggling to get customers.

They’re struggling to be chosen.

There’s a difference.

And that difference is costing you more than you think.I learned this working at culture-defining brands like HYPEBEAST, Spotify, & TikTok. But the sharpest lesson didn’t come from a campaign brief or a strategy offsite.

In my first year at TikTok, I came across a case study that stopped me cold.

A 21-year-old grad student named Jennifer Le was watching her parents’ restaurant slowly die.

Lee’s Noodle House in Santa Rosa, California had been open since 2003. Her mom’s dream: authentic Vietnamese food, made with love, shared with the community. Then the wildfires came in 2017.

Then the pandemic. No government grants. No marketing budget. Just her father, alone at the counter in a red winter jacket, staring at the door waiting for customers who weren’t coming.

Jennifer filmed 7 seconds of that moment and posted it to TikTok. No production. No strategy. Just the truth: “It makes me so sad to see my parents just wait for customers to walk through the door.”

Over a million views. Lines out the door. Revenue up 30-40%. Jennifer flew home from grad school to help her parents serve the rush.

Nobody convinced those customers to show up. The realness did. The story of immigrant parents who built something with their hands and kept showing up already lived inside people who believed that kind of work deserves to be rewarded. Jennifer didn’t sell them anything. She just made it impossible to look away.

That’s when it clicked for me.

The brand wasn’t competing. It had already been chosen.

Here’s What Most Founders Do Instead

They post endlessly hoping something sticks.

They try every tactic to “cover their bases”: email, paid ads, influencers, SEO, all at once, all half-baked.

They hire marketers who know channels but don’t understand their customers.

It looks like effort. It is effort. But none of it answers the only question that actually matters:

Why should I choose you?

If you can’t answer that in one sentence, not a mission statement, not a value prop, one honest sentence, your customers can’t answer it either. And a customer who can’t answer it won’t choose you. They’ll keep scrolling.

The Real Problem Isn’t Effort. It’s Irrelevance.

Here’s the shift: You’re not losing customers because you’re doing too little. You’re losing them because you’re not obvious enough to the right people.

Think about what Lee’s Noodle House had before that TikTok. 20 years of operation. Authentic recipes. A mother who cooked every dish with intention. None of it was filling seats. Not because the food wasn’t good, but because the right people didn’t know it existed for them. The moment they did, they came running.

That’s what irrelevance actually costs you. Not customers who said no. Customers who never knew to say yes.

Every tactic you pile on without fixing that is noise. It makes you look busy. It doesn’t make you chosen.

The brands that win aren’t the loudest. They’re the clearest.

How Brands Become “Pick Me”

It’s easy. Just honor these four things. In order.

Start with culture.

Not demographics, not personas. How does your customer actually see the world? What do they believe is broken? What do they think is worth paying for? When your brand lives inside that worldview, you stop marketing and start confirming something they already feel. That’s the shift from buying attention to earning it.

Name the problem they already care about.

Not the one you invented to justify your product. First-time founders fall in love with their solution and work backwards. Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their pain. Find the specific thing keeping your customer up at night and say it out loud before they do.

Be clear on why you win.

Not your feature list. Your honest answer to “why you and not them?” If you can’t answer that in one sentence, your customer can’t either. Ask your best customers why they chose you. The answer is usually already there, waiting to be named.

Let your price reflect your clarity.

Price anxiety is a positioning problem, not a budget problem. When the brand is clear, the price feels like a logical conclusion. The customer stops asking “is this worth it?” and starts asking “how do I get it?”

When all four are aligned, something shifts. You stop chasing and start attracting. The best brands in the world figured this out. And you already know them.

What a “Pick Me” Brand Actually Looks Like

Think about these three.

Disney

Customers don't choose Disney. They return to it. It's the only brand where nostalgia, childhood, and parenthood collapse into one purchase decision. When a parent buys Disney for their kid, whether it's a toy, a movie, or an hour in front of a show, they're buying it for themselves too. The memory. The feeling. The version of themselves that grew up believing in something magical. Nobody asks "why Disney?" That question doesn't even form because the question answers itself.

Apple

The switch conversation is always one-sided. Android users explain themselves. iPhone users don’t. That asymmetry is the brand. Not choosing Apple feels like the decision that needs justification. Not the other way around.

Amazon

The “pick me” here is almost invisible, which makes it the most powerful of the three. Customers don’t feel like they’re choosing Amazon. They feel like they’re just shopping. Nobody deliberates. Nobody compares. They just go there. The same way nobody decides to use Google. They just search. When a brand becomes the default behavior for an entire category, the competition stops mattering entirely.

None of them removed friction from the purchase. They removed it from the loyalty. Customers defend all three without being asked because the brand doesn’t live in what they bought. It lives in who they are.

Disney owns emotion. Apple owns status. Amazon owns behavior.

They’re not competing. They’ve already been chosen.

Side note: These examples aren’t random. I invest in all three as part of my long term portfolio so I’m obviously heavily invested in their success hence the interest in analyzing them further.

You Don’t Win Customers by Doing More

You win by being obvious to the right ones.

That’s the whole game. Find the people who already believe what you believe, name the problem they already feel, show up consistently, and make the yes feel inevitable.

Jennifer (first-gen daughter who saved her parent’s business) didn’t have a strategy deck. She had clarity. She knew who her parents’ restaurant was for, what it meant, and how to show it. Those million people didn’t need convincing. They just needed to find it.

That’s what building a “pick me” brand actually means. Not begging to be chosen. Not shouting louder than everyone else. It means doing the work to understand your customer so well that when they find you, it feels like they already knew you. The product makes sense. The price makes sense. The story makes sense. Everything points to one answer: this was made for me.

That’s the standard. Not virality. Not a perfect funnel. Not the right influencer. A brand so clear about who it serves and why that the right customer doesn’t need to be sold. They just need to show up.

Your job isn’t to persuade everyone. It’s to be impossible to ignore for someone.

Here’s how I can help

• Take the Culture-Market Fit assessment and find out exactly where the gap is between how you’re showing up and why customers aren’t choosing you. It’s free. It takes 5 minutes. And it’ll tell you more than 3 months of guessing at tactics.

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help

Read time: 4 minutes

Chris Paul recently retired from the NBA. He’s one of my favorite basketball players because he’s normal. Not freakishly athletic, not super tall, just extremely talented with strong mastery of foundational basketball skills. That’s why he’s “the Point God”.

One of his most repeated pieces of advice is:

But stacking days only works if those days reinforce each other.

In the startup world, most founders don’t lose because they lack effort. They lose because their effort doesn’t compound.

This is GTM Law #5 in action: Growth isn’t effort. It’s a reinforcing loop.

Growth Isn’t a Test of Endurance. It’s a Design Problem.

Most founders treat growth like a stamina challenge.

• How long can I grind?

• How hard can I push?

• How much can I endure?

But growth is architecture, not stamina. High-performance systems are built on loops where one action naturally feeds the next.

Chris Paul didn’t build a Hall of Fame career on intensity. He built it on fundamentals that reinforced each other year after year.

Footwork improved decision-making.

Decision-making improved efficiency.

Efficiency extended longevity.

Every season made the next season easier.

That’s architecture.

Now look at your startup:

• If your onboarding isn’t helping more users win each month, you’re stacking effort

• If your product isn’t getting better from real usage, you’re stacking effort

• If your content isn’t making customer acquisition easier over time, you’re stacking effort

Not reinforcement.

Hard work is the fuel, but the system is the engine

Here’s a practical example:

Kevin Ford worked 27 years at Burger King without a sick day.

His reward was a small bag of candy. Hard work alone didn’t change his life.
A compounding loop of public attention, donations, and momentum did.

Effort Gets Things Done. Systems Create Momentum.

Effort can ship a feature. Close a deal. Launch a campaign.

But effort is a spark. Systems are engines.

When Popeyes launched the chicken sandwich, demand exploded. Employees worked double shifts. Stores sprinted. Inventory ran out in two weeks.

The moment died.

They had intensity. They didn’t have reinforcing infrastructure.

In SaaS, founders make the same mistake:

• Bring in more visitors before people stick around? You just lose more people

• Spend more on ads before more people buy? You just waste more money

• Build an AI product that doesn’t learn from users? It just stays stuck

Only reinforcing loops ensure that today’s action makes tomorrow easier, cheaper, or faster.

If you’re wondering where does this loop start in your GTM motion? The answer isn’t always obvious.

Burn Out or Build a System That Compounds Without You

Most landscapers trade labor for money. More hours = more revenue. Linear growth.

SB Mowing built something different. Their tagline: “transforming the craziest lawns.” They mow overgrown lawns for free. And film it.

The labor becomes content.

The content becomes reach.

The reach becomes inbound leads.

The leads become higher-paying work.

The same action compounds. Their effort turned into leverage.

They now have 3 million YouTube subscribers.

For SB Mowing, it was content. For your startup, it might be:

onboarding → activation → referrals.

Or product usage → insights → feature improvements → retention.

Your goal is to find where one customer action naturally creates the next.

Now apply that to your startup.

• If your content doesn’t build distribution automatically, you’re the distribution.

• If your product doesn’t drive referrals automatically, you’re the referral engine.

• If your onboarding doesn’t increase retention automatically, you’re the retention team.

• If each win doesn’t make the next one easier, you are the system.

And humans are unreliable infrastructure. That’s where burnout begins.

What Winning Actually Looks Like

Winning is not about random growth spikes.

It is about building a system where each part of your business strengthens the next. When you attract better-fit users, they activate faster.

Faster activation leads to stronger retention.

Stronger retention drives referrals and word of mouth.

More usage gives you better data, and better data improves the product.

As the product improves, retention strengthens again.

Over time, it costs less to acquire customers, customers stay longer, and each new group performs better than the last.

The product continues improving from real usage, and you don’t have to push as hard to grow. Growth stops resetting every month and starts building on itself.

That’s what continuous growth looks like.

Make Your Work Work For You

Most founders believe:

“If I push hard enough for long enough, it will click.”

The better belief is:

“If I build systems where each win makes the next one easier, it will compound.”

1. Chris Paul built fundamentals that reinforced each other year after year. Every season made the next one easier to build his Hall of Fame career

2. SB Mowing turned free jobs into content. That content brought attention. Attention brought inbound clients. Each job made the next one easier to land.

3. Popeyes created massive demand but didn’t have the system to sustain it. The cultural moment faded.

4. Kevin Ford worked hard at Burger King for 27 years. The loop that changed his life was not one he designed for himself.

Four approaches.

Two relied on working harder.

Two relied on building systems that worked harder for them.

Only the second path creates real momentum.

Ask yourself:

Does this create a reinforcing loop, or am I just the loop?

If the answer is “I’m the loop,” you’re building a job, not a business.

Your system works when each win makes the next one easier.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

Subscribe now

Read time: 6 minutes

This is Part 4 of a 5-part series breaking down the GTM laws founders must follow to build a repeatable foundation for attracting and keeping the right customers.

Watch and subscribe on Youtube to follow the series.

I’ve worked in AdTech for most of my career.

HYPEBEAST, Spotify, TikTok. One thing stays constant. New products launch, and someone has to explain them in a way that makes customers like, trust, and buy.

This is GTM Law #4

Positioning isn’t what you say. It’s what people assume.

And most growth problems start when those assumptions are wrong.

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Proper context prevents poor customer fit.

Context is queen.

And when it’s right, it creates an evergreen flywheel.

Context → Awareness → Evaluation → Conversion → Referral

This is how understanding compounds and how confusion spreads when you get it wrong.

People see your product through whatever lens they pick up first. If that lens is blurry or borrowed from something else entirely, you’re cooked before the demo even starts.

Context can completely transform how people think about a product without changing the product at all.

Remember the viral “what color is this dress?” debate?

Same dress. Same photo.

Some people saw white and gold. Others saw blue and black.

The dress didn’t change. The lighting context around it made all the difference.

Or think about Tity Boi rebranding to 2 Chainz.

Same rapper. Same bars. Completely different reception.

The context shift unlocked a whole new level of credibility and commercial success.

Same input. Different context. Totally different perception.

That’s positioning.

When you nail the context, customers evaluate your product fairly. They see what it actually does. They compare it to the right alternatives.

They understand the value prop without having to over-explain.

But when context is off?

That’s how you end up with the wrong leads showing up. Long sales cycles that drain your team. Customers who sign up, poke around, then dip saying “This wasn’t what I thought.”

Remember Bodega?

The startup that raised $2.5M to put vending machines in apartment buildings and offices. The product itself was fine.

A box that dispenses snacks and essentials. Could’ve been useful.

But they called it Bodega. Used a bodega cat as their logo. And positioned it as replacing corner stores.

The backlash was instant.

People assumed they were trying to kill small businesses owned by immigrants. The context they created made everyone evaluate the product through a lens of cultural insensitivity and tech bro arrogance.

Didn’t matter what the product actually did.

The positioning killed it before it had a chance. Even a world-class product, poorly positioned, can fail because people never evaluate it fairly in the first place.

The market doesn’t reward the best product.

It rewards the product that makes sense fastest.

Customers buy when they trust you cared enough to solve their problem.

Context gets you seen. Care is what gets you believed.

Founders care deeply about their product. I know you do. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.

But if customers don’t immediately get it, you end up in the sunken place of products they ignore.

Your POV on the problem doesn’t resonate. So customers assume you don’t really get it. And if you don’t get their problem, why would they trust your solution?

First impressions really matter in a world where everyone is selling and nobody is listening.

People aren’t asking, “Is this good?” They’re asking, “Did you build this with someone like me in mind?”

They’re scanning for signals.

Does this brand understand my day to day?

Does it speak my language?

Does it seem like the founders actually spent time with people like me, or did they just build what they thought was cool and slapped some marketing on it?

Customers won’t believe you unless you reflect the values they care about. No belief means no trust. No trust means no sale.

Resonance is everything.

Look at Alex Hormozi.

Love him or hate him, the man is painfully clear about who his content is for. Gym owners. Service business operators.

People who want to scale without venture capital.

That clarity is why people trust him. That trust is why he breaks sales records.

He’s not trying to be everything to everyone. He’s not hedging. He’s not using vague corporate speak that could apply to any business anywhere.

He shows up, speaks directly to a specific person with a specific problem, and proves over and over again that he gets it.

That’s what care looks like in positioning. Not fluffy mission statements.

Not “we’re passionate about innovation.” Real understanding of the problem, reflected back so clearly that your customer thinks, “damn, they get me bruv.”

Knowing what you’re not helps customers understand who you are.

Care without clarity still creates friction. This is where most products lose.

To be obvious, you have to know what you’re obviously not.

She was talking about herself, but it’s the whole game for products too.

You can’t be everything. So pick what you are and own it completely. Stop apologizing for what you’re not.

Every product makes a choice. Either you define your edges, or the market defines them for you. And trust me, the market is not kind when it gets to fill in the blanks.

Customers need to instantly understand three things:

• What your product is

• Why it’s different

• Why it matters to them

If they have to think too hard, they won’t think at all. They’ll move on to the next tab. The next pitch. The next solution that actually bothered (and cared) to be clear.

Most founders are scared of being too narrow. They worry that if they say what they’re not, they’ll leave money on the table. So they stay broad. Stay flexible.

Stay “for everyone.”

And that’s exactly how you become forgettable.

You’ll lose to products that are sub-par but do a better job explaining what they’re selling.

Look at Claude vs ChatGPT and the whole conversation around ads in AI. When Anthropic made it clear that Claude wouldn’t use your data for ads or training by default, that distinction mattered. The difference wasn’t just capability.

It was clarity around trade-offs and intent.

One chose scale and monetization through ads. The other chose privacy and trust. Both are valid strategies. But only one made the choice obvious enough that customers could decide which values aligned with theirs.

That’s the power of definition. When you clearly articulate what you’re not, the people who want what you are will find you faster. And they’ll stick around longer because they chose you for the right reasons.

Bottom line: Make Them Care or Stay Invisible

If customers assume the wrong thing about your product, that’s not their mistake. It’s yours.

Strategy is all about trade-offs. And yours didn’t make the right choice obvious enough.

Stop trying to appeal to everyone. Stop being vague because you’re scared of being wrong. Stop letting the market guess what you stand for.

Make it so obvious that customers get it without having to over-explain.

Give them the context that makes evaluation easy. Show them you care enough to actually understand their problem. Define your edges so clearly that the right people know instantly that you built this for them.

That’s positioning. That’s how products win.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

Read time: 6 minutes

This is Part 3 of a 5-part series breaking down the GTM laws founders must follow to build a repeatable foundation for attracting and keeping the right customers. Watch and subscribe on Youtube to follow the series. GTM Law #3: If pricing feels hard, your value story is broken.

People don’t buy products. They pay for the outcome the product can deliver.

This past week, I met with four founders.

Different business models.
Different stages.
Different monetization paths.

Some had customers. Some didn’t.

But the pattern was the same.

For the founders struggling most, pricing felt hard.

They were debating numbers. Second-guessing packages. Wondering if the market was just “price sensitive right now.”

What stood out to me wasn’t a pricing issue.

They were subject-matter experts, deeply knowledgeable in their space, but they couldn’t clearly communicate what their product actually changed for the customer.

When that happens, pricing becomes the scapegoat.

Pricing is one of the most talked-about topics in startups.

Go on LinkedIn and you’ll see there’s no shortage of resources:

• Pricing frameworks

• SaaS benchmarks

• Willingness-to-pay studies

• Discounting strategies

You’ll see them all. If you spent anytime on the entrepreneurship side of the internet, you’ve probably come across Alex Hormozi’s Value Equation from $100M Offers:

It’s a useful model.

Increase the desired outcome.
Increase confidence.
Reduce time and effort.

Value goes up.

But those founder conversations made something clear:

Even with the right pricing framework, pricing still feels hard when the value story isn’t clear. Stay with me because I’m going to break it down.

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Your pricing problem isn’t a market problem. It’s a meaning problem.

A lot of founders believe the same thing:

“The market is price sensitive. People just aren’t willing to pay.”

So they blame the economy.
Budgets.
Competition.

Some discount or underprice just to close deals.

But that’s not a pricing strategy. That’s low energy behavior IMO because you’re suffering from the discomfort you’re in.

When people don’t understand what they’re buying into, price becomes the only thing they can judge.

When value is clear, price feels obvious.
When value is vague, price feels aggressive.

Your pricing challenge isn’t about money.
It’s about meaning.

Price objections are a symptom of weak belief

Price resistance doesn’t come from cost.
It comes from uncertainty.

If a customer can’t clearly answer:

• What problem does this solve for me?

• Why is this better than what I’m doing now (status-quo)?

• What outcome should I reasonably expect?

Then price feels risky.

And people don’t pay premiums for risk.

They pay premiums for confidence.

This is where most founders misapply pricing frameworks.

They focus on increasing the Dream Outcome or reducing Effort.

But pricing pressure usually shows up because Perceived Likelihood of Achievement is weak. If people don’t believe the outcome will actually happen for them, no price will feel right.

The Draymond Green problem: expecting love you didn’t earn

Draymond Green said it best when Paul Pierce expected a Kobe-level farewell tour:

“They don’t love you like that.”

That moment stuck with me because it applies to how a lot of founders think about pricing.

Founders expect customers to:

• Pay more

• Commit faster

• Stop questioning the price

But that level of pricing power only exists when belief already does.

Paul Pierce wasn’t wrong to want respect.
He was wrong about how much belief he had actually earned.

NBA fans don’t see him that way. Sorry not sorry.

A lot of products are in the same position.

They expect main-character / superstar treatment in the market, but they’re still playing a supporting role in the customer’s story.

So when customers hesitate, negotiate, or push back on price, founders assume:

“The market doesn’t get it.”

But the truth is simpler.

They don’t believe it yet.

And until belief is earned, pricing will always feel challenging.

Your story lacks main character energy — so belief isn’t won

This is where it shows up.

Most products explain what they do.
They list features.
They compare pricing.

But they never make the customer the hero.

So belief isn’t won.

When customers don’t see themselves at the center of the story, they hesitate.
They negotiate.
They keep shopping.

Not because they don’t want the solution, but because your product feels optional, not inevitable. Main character energy isn’t hype. It’s clarity.

It’s when the customer immediately recognizes:

“This is for me. This solves my problem. This changes my outcome.”

If your story positions your product as a side character,
your pricing will always feel negotiable.

The customer is the hero.
Not the product.

Your product is the bridge that helps the hero move
from frustration to resolution.

When that bridge is clear, price feels like a fair toll.
When it’s vague, price feels like a gamble.

People don’t cross bridges they don’t trust.
They negotiate uncertainty.
They pay for clarity.

What winning actually looks like (and what founders can actually do)

In the words of American Business Mogul, Shawn Carter:

“We don’t believe you. You need more people.”

The value you promote has to align with the story you tell and the credibility you’ve built.

No one pays premium prices for a solution they’re unsure will actually solve their problem.

That’s why the most valuable products don’t just sell functionality.
They sell belief in a future their customer already wants.

People point to companies like Apple, NVIDIA, and Google and assume:

“That only works because they’re massive.”

But what they’re really doing is structural, not scale-dependent.

Here’s what the top tech companies did and what it can look like at an early stage.

What NVIDIA does — and the play founders can steal

NVIDIA doesn’t lead with chip specs.
It leads with what becomes possible because those chips exist.

They anchor themselves to a future customers already want: AI-powered progress.

Founder play:
Stop leading with features. Lead with the after state.

• Show the before → after clearly

• Frame your product as the unlock, not the novelty

• Tie your value to a future outcome your buyer already believes in

This strengthens Perceived Likelihood of Achievement — the most fragile part of pricing.

If customers can clearly imagine success with you, price stops feeling risky.

What Apple does — and the play founders can steal

Apple doesn’t win on technical superiority alone.
It wins by removing friction and decision fatigue.

Their products feel inevitable because the path is obvious.

Founder play:
Design your onboarding, demo, or offer so there’s one clear “right” move.

• Fewer choices

• Clear defaults

• One obvious success path

When customers don’t have to think hard about how to use your product,
they don’t think hard about the price either.

This reduces Effort & Sacrifice, which makes higher prices feel fair.

What Google does — and the play founders can steal

Google doesn’t ask for trust upfront.
It demonstrates value immediately.

Search works the first time you use it. No explanation required.

Founder play:
Let customers experience value before commitment.

• Free tools

• Transparent examples

• Immediate proof of usefulness

Shorten the distance between “interest” and “impact.”

This compresses Time Delay, which increases value without touching price.

The pattern across all three

None of these companies win by explaining harder.
They win by making belief easier.

That’s the real unlock.

When customers:

• See the outcome clearly

• Believe it will work for them

• Feel the path is low-risk

Pricing stops being the conversation.

Why this matters for your pricing

If pricing feels hard, the move isn’t to make the numbers up, steal competitors’s pricing, or skip steps by not doing customer interviews.

The move is to rebuild the value story so:

• The future is obvious

• Belief is earned early

• The path feels safe

That’s how you strengthen the real levers in the value equation.

Pricing doesn’t lead value. Value leads pricing.

A simple test

If a customer saw your pricing today, could they explain why it’s worth it?

Without you in the room?

If not, the problem isn’t the price.

It’s the story you’re telling.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

Read time: 5 minutes

This is Part 2 of a 5-part series breaking down the GTM laws founders must follow to build a repeatable foundation for attracting and keeping the right customers. Watch and subscribe on Youtube to follow the series.

GTM Law #2: More reach doesn’t fix confusion. It exposes it.

Reach doesn’t create growth. It reveals what’s broken.

That’s a bar! I know. [pats self on the back]

When I talk to founders about their challenges and what’s top of mind I always here the same thing.

“We need more reach!” or “distribution is everything”.

Yes, attention is an amplifier. Which is good…but it doesn’t fix problems. It makes them louder. Especially when you’re still in the early stages figuring things out.

Most founders don’t realize they’re scaling confusion. They do everything they’re told to do. Ship faster. Post more. Run experiments. Add channels.

Weeks turn into quarters.
Spend goes up. Energy goes down.

And the quiet panic starts to creep in:
We’re doing a lot but nothing is working.

That’s the trap.

Because reach doesn’t create clarity.
It reveals whether clarity was ever there to begin with.

Russell Brunson was right. One-to-many selling can drive growth.

If you don’t know who Russell Brunson, Co-Founder of Click Funnels is do your research on him. He’s considered the G.O.A.T of marketing for his use of funnels, storytelling, and psychology based tactics.

Brunson is a big proponent of one-to-many selling. Why sell one to one when you can walk on stage at an event and speak to thousands of people at the same time?

Logically, putting your message in front of more people can work. Funnels can work.
Automation can work.

But only when people already understand what you do and why it matters.

If the message is unclear, more reach doesn’t help. It just spreads confusion faster.

That’s where most founders get stuck.

They try to scale before clarity is locked in. They turn up volume before people actually “get it.”

So when results don’t improve, they assume the answer is even more reach.

But reach doesn’t create growth.
It reveals what’s broken.

These are the 5 false beliefs founders need to overcome if they want to build sustainable growth to win and keep customers.

False Belief #1:

Growth is a reach problem

Reach doesn’t create understanding.
It just puts misunderstanding in front of more people.

It’s like Space Jam when MJ stretches his arm halfway across the court to dunk.

The reach looks unreal.
The crowd goes wild.

But it’s CGI, computer generated, it’s not a realistic thing you can do.

Stretching your arm doesn’t fix bad positioning.
It just lets you score once by bending reality.

That’s what most founders do with reach.

If people don’t get what you do quickly, more exposure doesn’t help.
It just speeds up rejection.

If your message doesn’t land with 10 people,
it won’t land with 10,000.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

B2B
18,000 site visits a month.
0.6% demo conversion.
Sales calls start with: “Can you explain what you do?”

B2C
200k TikTok views.
No lift in purchases.
Comments say: “Wait… what is this for?”

B2B2C
New enterprise partners signed.
End users don’t activate.
The platform blames distribution instead of relevance.

That’s not a reach issue.
That’s confusion finally being seen.

False Belief #2:

More activity = more progress

It’s like playing a video game and smashing all the buttons.

The screen lights up.
Your character moves.
Something is happening.

But button-mashing isn’t mastery.
It’s reacting without understanding the game.

Sometimes you even get lucky.
But there’s no control. No consistency. No way to repeat the win.

That’s what “more activity” looks like for founders.

More content.
More campaigns.
More tools.
More Slack messages saying, “Let’s test this.”

Activity feels productive because it’s visible.
But it often hides a harder truth.

You don’t actually know what’s working yet.

Progress doesn’t come from motion.
It comes from resonance.

High-volume signals look good in dashboards,
but they only tell you people saw something.

Before scale, winning should be redefined as:

Understanding → Resonance → Repeatability

Not impressions → clicks → hope.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

B2B
Fewer demos.
Higher close rates.
Buyers say: “This feels built for teams like ours.”

B2C
Smaller audience.
Higher saves, shares, repeat usage.
Customers explain the product better than the brand.

B2B2C
Partners onboard faster.
End users adopt without hand-holding.
Usage spreads organically inside partner organizations.

That’s what real progress looks like.
Even when it’s quieter than you expected.

False Belief #3:

If people hesitate, we need better traffic

Have you ever been to Costco and held a product in your hand for a while to read the label? When you’re doing this. You’re not ignoring it.

You’re trying to understand it.

If the packaging doesn’t answer the question
“Is this for me?”

The product goes back on the shelf.

Same concept applies.

People don’t hesitate because they’re the wrong customer.
They hesitate because they can’t tell if it’s meant for them.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

B2B
Buyers ask: “Is this a tool, a layer, or a replacement?”

B2C
The value sounds cool, but abstract.
Users don’t know when they’d actually use it.

B2B2C
The platform buyer understands.
End users don’t care.
Adoption stalls post-launch.

The fix isn’t better targeting.
It’s finding the moment of meaning.

The exact point where someone decides:
This matters to my life, my job, or my identity.

False Belief #4:

Strategy is doing more, faster

It’s like driving fast in the wrong direction.

The engine is loud.
The car is moving.
The speed feels impressive.

But none of it matters if you missed the exit.

Speed doesn’t fix the mistake.
It increases how far you’ll have to backtrack.

Without clarity, you don’t have a strategy.
You have motion and busy-work.

Real strategy forces uncomfortable decisions early.

You disappoint the wrong people now
so you don’t confuse everyone later.

Clarity comes from answering three questions decisively:

• Who this is for?

• What it replaces?

• What this isn’t?

Clarity first.
Amplification second.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

B2B
Four ICPs become one.
Sales, product, and marketing align on a single narrative.

B2C
The core use case gets defined.
Trend-chasing and feature sprawl stop.

B2B2C
Messaging is designed for end users first.
Platform value emerges from user pull, not top-down forcing.

That’s strategy.
Not speed.

False Belief #5:

Growth problems appear after scale

When you see a brick wall with cracks? What comes to mind?

The cracks didn’t appear because weight (pressure) was added. They were already there. Pressure just made them visible.

That’s how growth works.

Growth doesn’t create new problems. It removes the buffer that was hiding old ones. At small scale, you can explain. At scale, you can’t.

That’s why clarity has to come first.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

B2B
More demos.
Lower close rates.
The wrong buyers show up.

B2C
A viral moment.
High churn.
Expectations were never clear.

B2B2C
More partners.
Weaker adoption.
End users were never considered early.

Reach didn’t break anything.
It just revealed what was already fragile.

The Reach Multiplier Law

If people don’t get it at small scale, more reach just speeds up rejection.

Reach doesn’t fix problems.
It multiplies them.

At small scale, you can explain.
You can clarify.
You can jump on a call and fill in the gaps.

At scale, you lose that luxury.

People decide in seconds, without context, without you there to help.
Whatever they don’t understand becomes the reason they say no.

That’s why reach doesn’t persuade people to understand you.
It forces you to confront what they already don’t.

If clarity works, reach accelerates momentum.
If it doesn’t, reach accelerates rejection.

Before asking for more attention, ask the harder question:

What will someone understand the moment they see us without explanation?

Because whatever that answer is will only get louder from here.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

Read time: 5 minutes

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series breaking down the GTM laws founders must follow to build a repeatable system for attracting and keeping the right customers. Watch and subscribe on Youtube to follow the series.

Most startups waste time selling features, but customers don’t buy what you build.
They buy who they believe they can become through it.

That distinction sounds subtle.
It’s not.

It’s the difference between a product that gets politely acknowledged and one that gets chosen, adopted, and talked about.

Features describe utility.

Identity creates meaning.

Meaning is what actually moves people to act.

This idea clicked for me years ago in a place that had nothing to do with startups.

One of my favorite songs on To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar is How Much A Dollar Cost. Every time I listen to it, it makes me pause.

At first, the question feels obvious. A dollar costs a dollar.

But the more I listened, the more I realized that was the most surface-level way to hear the song. It is also how most people move through the world. We see what is right in front of us and stop there.

In the song, Kendrick describes traveling in South Africa and being asked for money by a homeless man. What starts as a simple request slowly turns into something heavier. The interaction forces him to confront his own ego, generosity, and sense of self.

The dollar stops being about money. It becomes a mirror.

Later, Kendrick summarized the message of the song in a way that stayed with me.
If you want to live forever, help as many people as you can.

That line reframed everything for me.

The real cost of the dollar was never financial. It was about what giving or withholding it said about who he was choosing to be in that moment.

Once I saw that, I started noticing the same pattern everywhere, especially in business.

Customers Don’t Buy Features. They Buy Identity Shifts

A purchase is never just a transaction.

Even the most practical buying decision carries meaning about confidence, status, progress, or control. When founders focus only on specs, pricing, or checklists, they miss the deeper reason people say yes or hesitate.

This is why products with nearly identical functionality can perform wildly differently in the market.

One explains what it does.

The other helps the customer see themselves differently for choosing it.

Take Oura as a B2C example.

People don’t buy Oura because it tracks sleep stages, heart rate variability, or recovery scores. They buy it because it helps them become someone who takes their health seriously.

Someone intentional.

Someone disciplined.

Someone proactive about longevity.

The ring is the product.
The identity shift is the value.

When your GTM only communicates what your product does, you’re underselling what customers are actually paying for.

Surface-Level Understanding Kills Connection.

Most founders believe they understand their customers because they understand the problem. But problems are surface-level. Identity is the real driver.

When you rely only on demographics, behavior, or funnel metrics, your messaging sounds logical but forgettable. It makes sense, but it does not move people to act. That is how you end up with messaging that is clear yet still does not convert.

Let’s use Google Workspace as a B2B example and why this works so well.

Companies don’t buy it because they’re excited about docs, sheets, or shared drives. They buy it because they want to become a team that’s organized, credible, and trusted internally and externally.

The emotional driver is not productivity.
It is professionalism.

Google Workspace doesn’t just sell tools. It sells a way of working teams want to live up to.

B2B2C Only Works When Both Buyer and User Win

B2B2C products are harder because you are not selling to one person.
You are selling to a business buyer while shaping the experience of an end user that buyer serves.

That means your product has to work on two levels at the same time.

Amazon gets this right.

For the business buyer, Amazon is a path to becoming a legitimate, scalable brand.

It offers instant distribution, built-in trust, and the credibility of operating on a platform customers already believe in. Selling on Amazon is not just about reach. It is about becoming a real player faster than you could on your own.

For the end user, Amazon represents convenience, certainty, and control.

I can find what I need, trust it will arrive, and move on with my day without friction or doubt.

The same dynamic shows up in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS sells to builders, startups, and enterprises. They are the buyers. But the value shows up for end users who never interact with AWS directly.

Faster apps.

More reliable services.

Products that simply work.

Amazon succeeds because both sides are designed intentionally.
The buyer feels empowered to build and scale.
The user feels supported without ever thinking about the platform behind it.

When B2B2C founders market only to the business buyer and ignore the experience and identity of the end user, adoption stalls. When both sides are aligned, growth compounds naturally.

The Takeaway Founders Miss

If you want your product to last, stop asking whether your features are impressive and start asking what identity they unlock.

People don’t buy products to own them. They buy products to become someone else.

More capable.

More confident.

More respected.

More in control.

So the real question is not, “What does my product do?”
It is, “Who does my product help my customer become?”

Answer that, and everything downstream gets a lot easier.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can’t give you

Share Cultural Growth Advantage

Read time: 4 minutes

Sir Issac Newton had laws and so do I.

But mine didn’t come from sitting under a tree. It came from my high school track & field days where I realized winners and losers have the exact same goals.

Captain obvious, I know. But that’s exactly the point.

If goals were enough, everyone would be successful.

The fact that ambitious, smart, and motivated founders get wildly different results proves something uncomfortable but true.

Having S.M.A.R.T goals doesn’t mean you’re setup to win.

Systems do.

After working inside and alongside fast-moving teams, I’ve seen the same pattern over and over.

Growth doesn’t stall because founders stop trying. It stalls because growth is built on beliefs that feel logical but don’t compound.

Those beliefs influence your messaging, pricing, positioning, and execution.
Left unchecked, they turn effort into noise.

Here’s my five laws that determine whether your GTM strategy becomes a system to win you customers or the reason you’ll struuggle to get them.

Subscribe now

👨🏾‍⚖️ GTM Law #1:

Features don’t make people move. Identity does.

The false belief: If people aren’t buying, the product isn’t good enough.

So founders respond by adding features, improving specs, and overbuilding to feel safer. This assumes people buy rationally.

What’s actually happening:
Buyers are not rejecting the product.
They are failing to see themselves in it.

People do not buy tools.
They buy what the tool says about who they are or who they are becoming.

Why this matters:
Stop asking what is wrong with the product.
Start asking who this product helps someone become.

Once identity is clear, features finally matter in context.

👨🏾‍⚖️ GTM Law #2:

More reach doesn’t fix confusion. It exposes it.

The false belief: We just need more traffic, ads, or distribution.

This assumes attention creates demand.

So founders chase new channels, platforms, and tactics.

What’s actually happening:
Reach doesn’t persuade. It forces a decision.

If people are confused, scaling only makes rejection more visible.

Why this matters:
Reach is an amplifier, not a solution.

Clarity comes first.
Distribution only multiplies what already works.

👨🏾‍⚖️ GTM Law #3:

If pricing feels hard, your value story is broken.

The false belief: The market is price sensitive. People don’t want to pay right now.

So founders blame the economy, budgets, or competition.
They discount, hesitate, or underprice.

What’s actually happening:
People do not resist price.
They resist misaligned meaning.

When value is clear, price feels obvious.
When value is vague, price feels aggressive.

Why this matters:
Pricing friction isn’t a market problem.
It is a meaning problem. Meaning people don’t get it.

Ask whether the price matches the story people believe about the product.

👨🏾‍⚖️ GTM Law #4:

Positioning isn’t what you say. It’s what people assume.

The false belief: Our messaging just needs to be clearer.

So founders rewrite copy again and again. You can’t keep revising your website and LinkedIn bio thinking this AI prompt will change things for you.

What’s actually happening:
People decide before they listen.

They pattern match.
They categorize instantly.

Positioning forms in the first second, not the first paragraph.

Why this matters:
Positioning is pre verbal.

It lives in context, category, signals, and cultural cues.

If people assume the wrong thing, no explanation will save you.

👨🏾‍⚖️ GTM Law #5:

Growth isn’t effort. It’s a reinforcing loop.

The false belief:
We just need to work harder and try more things.

So growth becomes hustle, launches, and constant pushing.

That leads to spikes followed by stalls.

What’s actually happening:
Effort creates activity. Loops create momentum.

Real growth happens when each customer makes the next easier.
When each action reinforces belief.
When each win compounds trust.

Why this matters:
Growth is architecture, not stamina.

Stop asking what to do next.
Start asking what is reinforcing what.

That is how growth becomes predictable.

This is why founders who rely on effort burn out, while founders who build systems compound.

If you remember one thing, remember this.

Not having a system to attract and keep the right customers is never a good thing.
It always costs you time, energy, or momentum.

The goal isn’t more reach.
The goal is to be undeniable to the people who should care.

In the words of James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

This is a 5-part series breaking down the GTM laws your growth will eventually answer to. Up next: Law #1 and how to apply it to build your GTM system.

When you’re ready here’s how I can help

• Book an intro call: 30 minute chat to see how I can help fix your GTM problem

• Sign-up to my 5-day email series: Learn how to turn attention into repeatable customers using insights AI can't give you

👋🏾 Quick plug.

I’m Wadnes. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on building culture-driven go-to-market strategies and how founders can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, stay relevant, and win customers consistently.

If you want to go deeper and learn the GTM systems I’ll be teaching inside my Q1 cohort, join my live masterclass. It’s the best way to learn my framework in real time and prepare for the upcoming cohort. → Save your seat

Read time: 4 minutes

Founders love insights.

They screenshot them.
Write them in Notion.
Tell their team, “We should do this.”

And then nothing happens.

I’ve seen this working at Hypebeast, Spotify, and TikTok.

I see it weekly advising early stage founders. I talked about it at SXSW in 2019 and most recently at Newark Tech Week.

Everyone thinks insights change the game.
But here’s the truth founders avoid:

Insights alone don’t win. Execution does.
And consistent execution wins even bigger.

Let’s break it down.

1. Insights mean nothing without consistent execution

Founders worship the “aha, light-bulb moment.”
The market doesn’t care.

An insight has zero value until it becomes something your customer can actually feel.

A landing page.
A product feature.
A narrative.
A message.
A timely moment that makes them stop, pay attention, and take action.

Until then the insight is just potential energy collecting dust.

If the insight never touches your customer’s world, it never existed.

2. If your insight never leaves your head, it’s worthless

You can understand your customer better than anyone in your category.

But if that understanding never shows up in your homepage, your emails, your product decisions, or your sales calls, nothing changes.

Founders rarely lose because they are wrong.
They lose because they never turn insight into action and then action into iteration.

Execution is the bridge.
Most founders never cross it.

3. Delayed execution is how competitors steal your cultural advantage

Here is the Bezos lesson every founder needs to internalize.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos discovered one insight:

The internet was growing at 2,300 percent per year.

Not 23 percent.
Not 230 percent.
2,300 percent.

He did not sit on it.
He did not wait for Q4.
He did not add it to a backlog.

He quit his job.
Drove across the country.
Started writing the Amazon plan in the passenger seat.

Then came his second insight:

Books had millions of titles and physical stores could not carry them.

The internet removed the shelf limit.
He found his wedge and moved instantly.

Bezos did not win because he had the insight.
He won because he acted before anyone else did.

Most founders today see insights every week but move too slowly.
Someone else ships first.
Someone else becomes the one customers remember.
Someone else becomes the one they trust.

4. Success loves speed and you’re moving too slow

Everyone grew up with the story of the tortoise and the hare.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Take your time.
Be patient.

That story is the wrong one for startups.

In this world, the tortoise does not win.
The tortoise gets ignored.

This is not a fairytale race.
This is a real market moving at real speed.
Culture shifts.
Beliefs change.
Customer frustration spikes and drops fast.

The hare is not napping.
The hare is shipping.
The hare is testing copy.
The hare is iterating.
The hare is learning in public and tightening the system with each lap.

Meanwhile, too many founders are moving like the wrong kind of tortoise.
Careful.
Slow.
Overthinking.
Waiting for perfect.

And I say this with full honesty.
I have caught myself doing the same thing.
I have watched my own ideas sit in Notion while someone else executed faster.
So I am applying this as much to myself as I am telling it to you.

But here is the real danger:

You do not lose because someone goes viral. You lose because someone becomes relevant at the exact moment your customer is ready to act.

If your speed is slower than the cultural moment, you are already behind.

5. Consistency is how you stay relevant in the moments that matter

Customers do not buy randomly.
They buy when a trigger moment hits.
And you only catch those moments if you show up consistently.

Here is what those moments look like in real life for you:

A belief cracks

You watch a competitor demo a feature you have been “planning” for six months.
Suddenly the excuses you have been telling yourself no longer feel valid.

A cultural tension spikes

A meme hits your group chat clowning founders who still have messy onboarding.
You feel the sting because you know the joke applies to you too.

An identity gets activated

Your friend announces a product launch on LinkedIn and racks up 500 likes in an hour. You feel the pressure. You want to be that founder, not the one still talking about what you will do “next quarter.”

A desire becomes urgent

You check Stripe in the morning and see flat revenue for the third week in a row.
Now the problem is no longer abstract.
Now it is personal.

A frustration hits peak pain

A deal slips away after weeks of back and forth. You know exactly why.
Your messaging is not landing. You finally start looking for a real fix.

These moments are not about going viral. These moments are about being relevant at the exact second the customer is ready to act.

The founder who stays present wins that moment.
The founder who disappears loses it.

Consistency builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. Trust determines who gets chosen when the moment calls for it.

This is why founders with average products but consistent signals often outperform founders with brilliant insights but inconsistent presence.

The truth most founders avoid

You don’t need more insights.
You don’t need another brainstorm.
You don’t need a better idea.

You need relevance.
You need consistency.
You need to show up when the moment matters.

This isn’t advice I’m giving from a distance.
This is something I’m actively working on too.

I’m tightening my own GTM, showing up more consistently, and applying the same principles I teach. I refuse to let insights sit untouched.
I refuse to be irrelevant at the moment my audience needs me.

Bezos didn’t win because he was smarter.
He won because he moved.

Founders today lose because they don’t.

So here is the truth:

Your product doesn’t suck.

Your inconsistency does. And inconsistency is what makes you irrelevant at the moment your customer is ready to buy.

If this stings, it’s because your customers needed you in moments you didn’t show up.

Here is how you stop missing them.

Every Monday I host a live masterclass for founders who are tired of being overlooked.

It’s for diverse and early-stage SaaS and AI founders who feel like:

• You have insights but no momentum

• Your messaging is not landing

• Your execution is scattered

• You’re not showing up consistently

• Customers are choosing competitors you know are not better

In one live session you will learn how to turn cultural insights into consistent, relevant execution that keeps you top of mind at the exact moments customers decide.

If you are tired of knowing what to do but not doing it, this is where things shift.

Save your seat for the next live masterclass and start becoming the founder customers remember when it matters most → Join the masterclass

Share Cultural Growth Advantage

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 5 minutes

In the early days, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were so broke they sold Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's cereal boxes for $40 each just to keep Airbnb alive.

When they later noticed that grainy, low-quality photos were killing bookings, they flew to New York City, hired a professional camera, and went door-to-door photographing hosts' apartments themselves.

The problem? Poor photos were destroying conversion rates. Instead of guessing what might work, they tested the obvious: better photos. By getting hands-on, they uncovered customer pain points, built empathy, and created what Chesky called an "11-star experience."

That scrappy experiment turned strangers' apartments into desirable listings and helped Airbnb unlock product-market fit.

Here's the lesson: Testing isn't about finding "the one" growth hack.

It's about learning faster than you spend.

The North Star of Learn & Iterate

The real goal isn’t to find a funnel that works. It’s to keep testing until you find the combination of copy, creative, placement, audience, timing, platform, and more that leads to the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Every big swing you take is a step closer to that north star.

And when it comes to your website, this is where Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) comes in. CRO improves what happens after people land on your site — so more of your hard-earned visitors actually become customers. Without CRO, you’re paying for traffic that leaks straight out of your funnel. Don’t burn money like Mr. Krabs. Be smart and test your growth systematically.

Why Big Swings Matter in the Learn & Iterate Loop

Early-stage founders waste most of their runway by optimizing the wrong things.

• Spending $10K on ads without testing the landing page

• Running 5 tiny ad variations that all flop

• Guessing at customer objections instead of asking directly

Small tweaks don’t teach you anything new. They bleed you.
Big swings, on the other hand, expose what works and what doesn’t — and each test adds a datapoint you can build on.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s to learn faster than you burn.

The 3 Big Swings Every Founder Should Test

1. Rewrite the Top Half of Your Landing Page

Most visitors bounce after glancing at your hero section. That’s your biggest lever.

• Test a totally different headline, sub-headline, and image combo

• Example: from “World-class AI productivity tool” → “Get 5 extra hours a week back with one click.”

• In one SaaS case study, that kind of rewrite lifted conversions from 3% to 5% — a change that nearly halved CAC

2. Run One Wildly Different Ad Format

Don’t waste time on 10 versions of the same ad. Test completely different creative types.

• Static image vs. product demo video

• Founder selfie vs. customer testimonial

• A meme vs. a polished explainer. In many campaigns, video ads deliver 3–4x lower cost-per-purchase than static. Even if that’s not your winner, you’ll learn which value prop + creative style actually resonates

3. Ask One Blunt Survey Question

Stop guessing why people don’t convert. Just ask.

• Example: “What almost stopped you from signing up today?”

• Deploy it as a short on-page pop-up (using Hotjar or Typeform) right after someone abandons signup or checkout

• A handful of raw answers can uncover the real objections: pricing, trust, or unclear messaging. Even a negative response is progress — you’ve eliminated guesswork

The Survival Kit Takeaway

Airbnb survived because their founders iterated faster than they burned.

You don’t need a massive growth team to do the same. All you need is a simple loop:

1. Take a big swing.

2. Learn from the result.

3. Kill what doesn’t work.

4. Double down on what does.

That’s how Airbnb’s scrappy photos turned into a billion-dollar growth engine.
Your big swing today could be the iteration that unlocks tomorrow’s scale.

And here’s the math that makes this urgent: a single 20% lift in conversion can cut your CAC in half. That’s months of extra runway bought back from just one smart test.

On the flip side, founders who never commit to testing die slow. They keep pouring money into ads and minor tweaks until the runway disappears. The difference isn’t who raised more — it’s who learned faster.

💡 Action step for founders: Before you spend money on ads, run these 3 big swings. Not to find a perfect funnel overnight but to accelerate your learn-and-iterate loop toward the lowest possible customer acquisition cost (CAC)

👉🏾 Bonus Freebie: I put together a simple The 90-Day Growth Testing Guide that shows you how to structure your testing cycles, know when a test is “done,” and build a system that compounds learning over time. Download it here.

How I Can Help When You’re Ready

• Sign up to my 5-day educational email course to learn the costly growth mistakes costing your customers and what you can do to fix it → wincustomersfast.com

• Take my 10 question Culture-Market Fit Assessment to find your biggest growth blocker and get a step-by-step checklist to fix what your strategy is missing to attract, convert, and scale your product

Get The Plan to Win Customers

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 5 minutes

It's August 2025. If you're reading this now, you still have time to avoid the most expensive mistakes founders make when choosing launch channels and use this framework to build real traction (customers finding and buying from you) before the year ends.

Most startups don't fail because of the product. They fail because they waste scarce time and money on the wrong launch channels.

Here's the pattern I see over and over: Founders post everywhere. They try LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, cold email, SEO (search engine optimization to show up on Google), even paid ads, hoping something will click.

The result? They burn runway (cash reserves that keep the business alive), drain trust, and still don't have consistent customers.

When I worked on TikTok's ad products, I saw the opposite playbook work at scale: growth comes from doing less, then obsessing. TikTok didn't dominate by being everywhere. It won because it gave advertisers something no one else could: cultural relevance that made people feel, "This is for me."

Your job isn't to do everything. It's to avoid the common mistakes, pick the right launch channels, obsess until they scale, and only then expand.

Here's how.

Mistake #1: Trying to Be Everywhere → The Fix: Focus on Where Your Audience Already Is

The mistake: Most founders spread across 6+ channels before they have message-market fit (when your message actually resonates with customers). That's how you end up with surface-level noise and zero depth.

The fix: Ask one question: What platforms does your audience already engage with?

• Developers go to GitHub, Discord, niche communities

• B2B marketers use LinkedIn, Slack groups, podcasts

• Gen Z consumers scroll TikTok, YouTube Shorts, follow influencers

If you don't know where your ideal customers (the people most likely to buy from you) spend time, you're not ready to launch. Do customer calls. Study competitors. Then double down.

The cost of ignoring this: A leaky funnel (customers dropping off at every step), wasted ad spend, and messaging no one remembers.

Mistake #2: Spending Before Your Message Resonates → The Fix: Validate Organically First

The truth: Channels don't fail. You do, when your message doesn't resonate.

Before you throw money at ads, validate your message organically (for free using unpaid content):

1. Post content where your ideal customers live

2. Use the High Value × Low Effort test: Double down on activities that create outsized impact (like founder-led posts on LinkedIn) versus time sinks with little return (like random tweets that get no engagement)

3. Watch what earns replies, shares, and inbound interest. That's proof of resonance.

Maximize organic before considering paid ads. Paid should amplify what's already working, not test random theories.

Why spend $10K testing a guess when you can validate for free in two weeks of focused organic content?

Remember: TikTok didn't sell advertisers features. It sold cultural relevance (messages that fit how people see the world). Until your startup has that level of resonance, ads are just expensive experiments.

Mistake #3: Dabbling in Too Many Channels → The Fix: Commit to Three for One Year

Every early-stage startup should anchor on exactly 3 channels:

• 1 Paid (Meta, Google, or TikTok Ads, but only once organic proves message-market fit)

• 1 Organic (LinkedIn, TikTok, SEO, or content marketing)

• 1 Direct (email, outbound sales, partnerships, community)

Channel Menu (Pick Your 3)

PAID CHANNELS

• Google Ads Get in front of customers already searching for your solution

• Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram) Reach broad audiences visually

• Amazon Ads Win visibility when people are shopping for your product type

• TikTok Ads Tap into culture and reach Gen Z/Millennial buyers

• LinkedIn Ads Target B2B decision-makers (people who make buying decisions at companies)

• Apple Search Ads Get discovered by users looking for apps like yours

• X/Twitter Ads Connect with niche communities (strong for fintech, crypto, AI)

ORGANIC CHANNELS (unpaid content that builds over time)

• Instagram/LinkedIn Build trust by showing up consistently where your customers scroll

• Content Marketing Create evergreen guides (content that stays useful long-term) that attract leads long after publishing

• SEO Rank for search so you're found when people look on Google

• Influencer Marketing Borrow credibility from creators your customers follow

• Product Hunt Build awareness with early adopters and investors

DIRECT CHANNELS (you own the relationship)

• Cold Outreach Go straight to ideal customers with personalized messages

• Email Nurture and convert your audience directly

• Partnerships Tap existing audiences that already trust aligned brands

• Community Build in sharing loops (referrals, invites) for organic growth

Your goal isn't to spread across all of them.

It's to commit to 3, validate quickly, and scale.

The Real Test: Can You Commit for One Full Year?

This is where most founders fail. It's easy to dabble in 5 channels for a few weeks. It's far harder to show up consistently on 1 to 3 for 12 months.

But traction comes from compounding (results building on results over time), not dabbling.

1. Paid (only once organic proves message-market fit)

• Google Ads If your customers are actively searching for your solution

• Meta Ads If your product is visual and benefits from interruption marketing

• TikTok Ads If your customers are Gen Z/Millennial consumers and culture is your edge

• LinkedIn Ads If you're B2B and deal size is high enough to justify the cost

2. Organic (where compounding happens)

• LinkedIn Consistency = authority in B2B (business to business). One founder post a day for 12 months beats $20K in ads

• TikTok/YouTube Shorts Perfect if you can lean into personality, stories, and culture

• Content Marketing + SEO If your category has high search intent (people actively looking) and you can sustain weekly publishing

• Community (Slack/Discord) If trust and peer validation drive adoption

3. Direct/Owned (your competitive moat)

• Email 12 months of weekly sends = 52 chances to nurture and convert

• Cold Outreach If you can systemize and personalize at scale

• Partnerships If you can tap aligned audiences and show up consistently

The commitment test is simple:

• Can you show up consistently on this channel for 12 months?

• Can you measure progress month over month?

• Can you repurpose content across formats so effort compounds?

If the answer is "no," it's not your launch channel.

The Bottom Line (Since I Know you Don’t Read) 😂

Most startups don't die from lack of effort. They die from lack of focus.

It's August 2025. You still have time to get this right.

If you want to attract and retain your ideal customers:

1. Choose the 3 launch channels that matter most to your audience

2. Validate your message organically before spending money on ads

3. Commit one full year to going deep on those channels

4. Only then scale with paid amplification

Narrative is strategy. Make yours irresistible.

• Sign up to my 5-day educational email course to learn the costly growth mistakes costing your customers and what you can do to fix it → wincustomersfast.com

• Take my 10 question Culture-Market Fit Assessment to find your biggest growth blocker and get a step-by-step checklist to fix what your strategy is missing to attract, convert, and scale your product

Get The Plan to Win Customers

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 7 minutes

Most teams don’t have a growth problem.

They have a relevance problem. This newsletter issue will serve as a guide and explain the seven assets that turn attention into customers, fast. It’s written for founders, marketers, and growth leads who want clarity, speed, and measurable wins.

I’ll use Calendly as a running example so you can mirror the same moves for your next project.

What you will get:

• The seven assets, explained simply

• A first-win onboarding pattern you can copy in under 10 minutes

• A landing page layout that removes confusion and drives action

• How to measure what matters, so you keep what creates progress and cut what does not

• Three ad angles and clear creative cues that earn the click

• A simple email sequence that nudges the next step

1) Onboarding: Deliver value fast

Point: Onboarding is the shortest path to a real result (not a welcome message).

What to do:

• Define the one First Win you can provide new users (1 sentence)

• Build a 3-step walkthrough (screens/GIFs)

• Show the after state, then invite them to take the next action

Why this matters: If the first touch-point doesn’t deliver a result, people will learn to ignore you.

Cultural lens: Make the first task look and feel like a real day‑in‑the‑life moment for your audience.

Pitfall: Explaining before showing real value. If you explain a lot before you make people want the outcome, they tune out.

Calendly example: Connect your calendar → create “15-min intro” → copy link.

User onboarding flow:

Landing page → Sign up → Connect Google/Outlook → Choose “15-minute meeting” → Set availability → Turn on Zoom/Meet/Teams → Copy link.

2) Copywriting: Start with truths your audience already believes

Point: Copy builds belief. It should make people want the outcome and trust you can deliver.

What to do:

• List 3 audience truths (jobs-to-be-done, pains, identity cues)

• Turn each truth into a clear value prop (why you, over the alternative)

• Write one outcome headline and a 2‑line explainer that says how it works

• Add one objection‑buster in a single sentence

Why this matters: Clear, specific copy lifts desire and confidence and lowers effort and confusion.

Cultural lens: Use the words your audience uses. Name familiar tools and moments from their everyday lives.

Pitfall: Slogans or clever lines that say nothing. Don’t try to be cool and clever.

Calendly example:

• Headline: Book meetings without back‑and‑forth

• Explainer: Connect your calendar, set availability, and share one link. Video details are added automatically

• Objection‑buster: “Sending a link feels rude.” → Your time is valuable. This saves both sides 10+ emails

Copy flow: Who it’s for → Outcome promise → How it works → Proof line → CTA

3) Landing page: Clarity beats clever, every time

Point: Clarity beats clever; skimmers should “get it” in three swipes

What to do:

• Layout: Hero → Proof → Benefits +Objection flips → FAQ → Big CTA → Footer

• Keep one primary CTA and repeat it where attention is highest

• Use product visuals that show cause → effect

Why this matters: A simple page reduces confusion and effort, so more people act.

Cultural lens: Use proof your audience respects (peer logos, titles, real outcomes).

Pitfall: Too many links, too much cleverness on your 1.0 version.

Calendly example:

• Hero: Book meetings without back‑and‑forth

• CTA: Create your first event

• Proof: Trusted by teams at [recognizable brands]

• Benefits: No ping‑pong scheduling, auto‑added video links, reminders reduce no‑shows

• FAQ: Works with Google/Outlook; free plan; embed supported

Page flow: Navigation bar → Hero + CTA → Logos/ratings → 3 benefits → Testimonials → 5-item FAQ → Big CTA → Footer.

4) Conversion tracking: Track the right signals

Point: Optimize by source (where they came from) and event (what they did).

What to do:

• Decide what counts as progress. Pick the few actions that prove someone is moving toward value (your “aha,” first use, purchase)

• Make origin visible. Know where people came from so you can connect source → progress

• Judge by progress, not clicks. Each week, keep what creates the “aha” and customers; fix or cut what doesn’t

Why this matters: You see what moves real progress and stop paying for noise.

Cultural lens: Track actions that signal commitment in your audience’s world.

Pitfall: Calling any interaction a “conversion”.

Calendly example:

• Events: Landing page view → Starts signup → Connects calendar (aha moment) → Creates a meeting type → Shares scheduling link → Gets booked → Turns on reminders

• Tip: Make sure Google Analytics is connected on the scheduling page or your embed so events fire

Tracking flow: Source labeled → Aha event observed → Weekly readout (keep what drives aha/customers; cut or fix the rest)

5) Ad Copy: Earn attention, and make it count

Point: People are scrolling; you need a hook that stops the scroll and delivers value fast.

What to do:

• Pick 3 angles: Outcome, Objection flip, Human POV

• Write 3 variants per angle using Hook → Setup → CTA

• Match the landing page promise so the click pays off

Why this matters: Relevance lowers CPA and improves CTR. Get customers at a cheaper price that actually convert.

Cultural lens: Match the platform’s voice and your community’s shorthand.

Pitfall: Feature lists and vague claims.

Calendly example (angles):

• Outcome: Stop scheduling ping‑pong. One link. Get booked

• Objection flip: Your link isn’t rude. It saves both sides time

• POV: “I cut 10 emails per meeting by sharing my link.”

Copy flow: Hook (outcome/flip/POV) → One proof line → CTA → Landing page that delivers the same promise

6) Ad creatives: Creative is the “new” targeting

Point: Algorithms handle targeting. Your (creative) edge is the idea. The first three seconds must show the “after” state or a pattern break that earns audience attention.

What to do:

• Produce five concepts: Outcome demo, Pattern interrupt, Social proof, Objection crusher, Product‑in‑use

• Show the “after” in the first 3 seconds. Caption for silent. Add on‑screen CTA

• Export in platform‑friendly lengths (Youtube, TikTok, LinkedIn etc. )

Why this matters: Strong concepts beat micro‑targeting. The right people will engage.

Cultural lens: Show real contexts your audience recognizes (inbox, calendar, video link auto‑added).

Pitfall: Long intros and logo slates. No one cares. Provide value quickly.

Calendly example (concepts):

• Outcome demo: Paste link → recipient books in two clicks → calendar updates with Zoom

• Pattern interrupt: “Stop the scheduling ping‑pong.”

• Social proof montage: Founders show instant booking on phone

• Objection crusher: “Link feels rude?” → Side‑by‑side inbox showing 10 fewer emails

• Product‑in‑use: Embed on site; booking flow in 3 taps

Creative flow: After‑state cold open → 2–3 proof beats → End card CTA

7) Email and automation: Create momentum before the pitch

Point: Send automatic, behavior-based messages that nudge progress without flooding inboxes.

What to do: Use a simple arc: Quick win, helpful tip, proof story, clear invite.

Quick win → Helpful tip → Proof story → Clear invite and add gentle nudges when someone stalls or half-completes.

Why this matters: Sequences catch stalls, reinforce value, and invite at the right moment.

Cultural lens: Use stories and tasks your readers recognize from their workday.

Pitfall: Pitching before a win or sending too many emails at once.

Calendly Example:

• “Connect your calendar (quick win)” → “Share your first link (tip)” → “Reminders reduce no-shows (proof)” → “Embed on your site (invite).”

A flow to follow: Triggered message → Short value → One action → Light reminder if stalled.

Build the right assets, earn belief, and the customers will follow

Conversion isn’t luck. It’s a system. Build these seven assets, track the right moments, and let relevance do the work.

Seven reminders to tape above your desk

• Onboarding: design the first win in under ten minutes

• Copy: speak the audience’s truths and make one clear promise

• Landing Page: clarity first, one primary CTA, real product visuals

• Conversion Tracking: optimize to the aha, not vanity actions

• Ad Copy: outcome, objection flip, human POV

• Ad Creatives: show the “after” in the first three seconds

• Email & Automation: trigger value, then invite

Your Challenge: Start this weekend

• Publish a simple landing page with your headline and a two-line explainer

• Identify your “aha moment” and “trial event”

  • The first moment a new user feels real value

  • The first buying step

• Launch two hooks with one 15 second demo cut each

• Turn on a four email sequence that follows quick win, tip, proof, invite

By Monday you will know what to improve.

Want help tailoring this to your product? Reply with your promise, the first win you can deliver, and the top objection you keep hearing. I will send a tightened hero, one ad angle, and four subject lines that fit your audience.

Ways I can help…

• Sign up to my 5-day educational email course to learn the costly growth mistakes costing your customers and what you can do to fix it → wincustomersfast.com

• Take my 10 question Culture-Market Fit Assessment to find your biggest growth blocker and get a step-by-step checklist to fix what your strategy is missing to attract, convert, and scale your product

  Get The Plan to Win Customers

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 6 minutes

Most early-stage founders are doing too much and seeing too little in return.

They chase growth hacks, launch cold campaigns, and post content that gets views but no conversions.

Here’s the truth:
You don’t need a full team, fancy tools, or a perfect funnel.
You need a strategy. One built on clarity, cultural relevance, and fast execution.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to craft a culture-first acquisition plan in just one weekend.

Whether you’re launching a micro SaaS or a digital product, this is your blueprint to build an acquisition strategy that actually works and wins you customers consistently.

The same growth fundamentals behind breakout startups like Notion, Duolingo, Figma, and Canva.

✅ No budget? No problem.
✅ No idea where to start? You will in 7 steps.
✅ Want to skip the fluff? Take the quiz at the end.

Let’s get you real traction fast.

What Strategy Really Means (Most Founders Get This Wrong)

Strategy isn’t motion. It’s precision.

“Strategy is a set of deliberate choices that move you from Point A to Point B in a way that helps you win.” - Shehraz Ishak, Strategy Consultant

It answers:

• Where are we now? (baseline)

• Where do we want to go? (future state)

• How will we win? (unique play)

• What must we do? (priorities + roadmap)

When you layer in cultural insight (shared beliefs, behaviors, and rituals) you stop sounding like everyone else. You start feeling made for them.

Step 1: Pick Your Growth Model

There are only two models that matter:

• Channel-Led Growth (CLG): Content, DMs, or paid to drive users in.

• Product-Led Growth (PLG): Let the product drive growth (referrals, viral sharing).

Example: Figma (B2B SaaS)

Growth Lever: Viral, Product-Led Growth + Outbound Sales
Fundamentals in action:

• Focused on collaborative design from day one → positioned against clunky legacy tools like Adobe XD.

• Used cultural momentum around remote work and real-time collaboration to drive adoption.

• Paired a free, shareable product with smart outbound to design teams.

Lesson: When your product naturally aligns with how your audience works and talks, growth compounds.

Step 2: Define a Tangible Acquisition Goal

❌ Bad: “Get users.”
✅ Great: “Book 20 demo calls from solopreneurs in 10 days via Twitter DMs.”

Example: Canva (B2C to B2B shift)

Growth Lever: Layered use cases across new segments
Fundamentals in action:

• Started with a clear target: non-designers who still needed high-quality visuals.

• Built a growth model around stacking use cases—social → presentations → teams.

• Created a content library that felt culturally current: memes, trends, templates.

Lesson: Startups grow faster when they build from a strong core and speak their audience’s creative language.

Step 3: Document Your Constraints

Constraints aren’t a weakness. They’re your creative guardrails. These case studies prove it:

Example: Notion (Productivity SaaS)

Growth Lever: Community + content-led acquisition
Fundamentals in action:

• Clear, flexible value prop: “Your workspace, your way.”

• Grew through cultural adoption within creator, indie hacker, and tech circles.

• Community templates and public docs = free distribution engine.

Lesson: Strategy becomes scalable when your early users want to share and remix what you build.

Step 4: Choose ONE Acquisition Lane

Pick one of the four acquisition lanes and commit.

B2B Choice (Outbound Lane):
Founder uses outbound DMs to reach solopreneurs with a pain-first hook:

“Built a CRM that doesn’t feel like admin work. Want early access?”

Example: Gusto, a payroll and HR platform for small businesses, used the same outbound play. Focusing on a tightly defined audience of small business owners and using human-first language to stand out in a crowded, boring category.

B2C Choice (Content Lane):
Instead of launching with ads, a founder shares a culture-driven quiz on TikTok to spark curiosity and capture leads:

“What’s Your Sleep Type? Find out in 60 seconds.”
Just like Duolingo’s viral personality content, this quiz format blends utility with entertainment and turns engagement into growth.

Example: Duolingo, the language-learning app, dominated the content lane by showing up where its users already were. It used humor, memes, and emotionally relatable short-form content on TikTok to turn cultural relevance into customer acquisition.

Step 5: Score Your Channel with the 7-Point Fit

Now that you’ve chosen a lane, use this simple scorecard to evaluate how strong the fit is between your customer and the channel you're considering. You can pick any channel just make sure it passes the test.

💼 B2B: LinkedIn DMs

Great for early-stage founders selling B2B tools, software, or services.
You can search by job title (e.g., “Growth Lead at SaaS Startup”) and send 10–20 personalized DMs a day to start real conversations.

Example:

“Hey [Name], I’m building a tool that makes CRM updates feel like sending a Slack message. Quick Question: how are you handling pipeline updates today?”

📱B2C: TikTok

Ideal for B2C startups where cultural relevance and emotional hooks matter.
Use short, relatable videos to drive curiosity and funnel views into email sign-ups or product trials.

Example:

“You’re not lazy. You’re a burnt-out night owl. Take our 1-min sleep type quiz and get a free reset plan.”

Pro tip:
Prioritize channels that rank high on contextual fit and intent.
These are the signals that actually lead to conversions—not just views.

Step 6: Launch Your MVP Campaign

Use constraints to spark fast execution:

• Figma: Launched early with free access and a shareable design interface.

• Duolingo: Used native humor and reactive content on TikTok to build virality.

• Notion: Built traction by publishing remixable public templates.

• Canva: Created meme-friendly templates that were easily shared by creators.

💡 Weekend Sprint Idea:

• Saturday: Publish or send your first outbound message, ad, or piece of content

• Sunday: Track engagement, follow up, and invite signups to test interest

Step 7: Measure for Signal (Not Perfection)

Here’s what signal looks like:

• DMs like “This is exactly what I needed”

• Quiz completions or email signups with no incentive

• People tagging friends or sharing unprompted

Look for resonance, not reach.
You’re not optimizing for scale. You’re validating strategic fit.

Cultural relevance turns more people into customers.

Anyone can launch a campaign. Culture-first founders build belief.

Make it feel built for your audience by:

• Naming their frustration using their own language

• Referencing values, rituals, and cultural cues from their world

• Creating offers that reflect identity (not just utility)

Here’s how these startups did it:

• Notion used aesthetic customization to reflect creative identity

• Duolingo used irreverent tone and streaks to build emotional attachment

• Canva helped users express themselves without needing “design skills”

• Figma embraced collaboration as a cultural norm (not just a feature)

Here’s Your Blueprint to Build Your Culture-First Acquisition Strategy in Just One Weekend

✅ Pick a growth model
✅ Set 1 clear, customer-backed goal
✅ List your constraints
✅ Choose ONE acquisition lane
✅ Score your top channel
✅ Launch MVP campaign
✅ Measure signal
✅ Infuse culture to build belief

Take my 10 question Culture-Market Fit Assessment to find your biggest growth blocker and get a step-by-step checklist to fix what your strategy is missing to attract, convert, and scale your product.

Get The Plan to Win Customers

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 7 minutes

“This is culturally inappropriate.”

That line echoes through Clipse’s new album, Let God Sort Em Out.

And honestly? It’s what comes to mind watching post-MVP startups try to scale without earning belief.

They launch. They get a few users.
Then they pour time and capital into growth—ads, hires, content, investor decks…

But nothing sticks.

Why?

Because they don’t have a product problem.
They have a message-market fit problem.
And your GTM strategy isn’t a real strategy unless it solves for that.

You Don’t Have a Growth Problem.

You have a foundation problem.

You got some early traction. But it’s not clicking.

• No repeatable conversions

• Low trial-to-paid

• Decks that don’t land

• Traffic with no traction

Growth doesn’t stall because your product sucks.

It stalls because your message doesn’t land, your pricing creates friction, and your buyer doesn’t experience the value (fast).

Product-Market Fit Gets You Users.

Message-Market Fit Gets You Belief.

Product-Market-Fit (PMF) = someone tries your product.
Message-Market-Fit (MMF) = customers say, “This was made for me.”

Without it:

• Your homepage sounds clever, not clear

• Your pitch decks are dense, not memorable

• Your product looks useful, but nobody says “I need this now.”

The market doesn’t reward potential.
It rewards clarity. And that comes from growth.

📥 Want to build while you read? Get the free Notion guide to audit your growth foundation, apply the 5-part framework, and build a GTM strategy that wins and retains the right customers.→ Get the Growth Foundation Notion Guide

The 5 Growth Foundations Every Early Stage Startup Needs to Scale

1. Market & Customer Research

2. Competitor Positioning

3. Messaging & Value Propositions

4. Brand Signals That Build Trust

5. Revenue & Pricing Model Fit

TL;DR Summary Table

The Growth Equation:

(Your) Message × (Your) Market × (Your) Business Model = Your Growth Foundation

Without all three? You’re scaling noise, not traction.

Deep Dive: The Growth Foundation Framework

Each section answers:

• Who does it?

• Where it shows up?

• What is it (and what it’s not)?

• Why it matters

• When to focus

• How to apply

For illustration purposes, I used a fintech product introduced to me by my financial advisor, Samuel Dean called Monarch Money.

1. Market & Customer Research

This is how you put your “market and customer research” foundation to action

• Who should do it? The founder

• Where does it shows up? Homepage, onboarding, sales calls, investor decks

• What does it look like? 1:1 interviews that reveal beliefs, fears, and triggers

• Mistakes to Avoid: Surveys, AI personas, guesswork

• Why do it?You can’t write copy or design growth loops around assumptions

• When should you do it? As soon as you’re post-MVP

• How to do it? Conduct up to 20 interviews. Look for patterns when you ask the following questions:

  • “What were you doing before this?”

  • “What frustrated you?”

  • “What outcome did you want?”

🔑 Takeaway: Most fintech apps assumed users wanted better budgeting. Monarch’s approach suggests they found something deeper. The real problem wasn’t tracking money. It was feeling out of sync with your partner. They didn’t sell a tool. They answered a shared tension.

2. Competitor Positioning

This is how you put your “competitor positioning” to action

• Who should do it? Founder or strategist / marketer

• Where does it shows up? One-liner, homepage, deck, cold outreach

• What does it look like? A distinct narrative your competitors aren’t claiming

• Mistakes to Avoid: Feature wars or copycat language

• Why do it? In a noisy market, if you’re not different, you're forgettable

• When should you do it? Once you’re being compared to anyone

• How to do it? Audit 3–5 competitors → Spot narrative gaps → Own a belief

🔑 Takeaway: While others leaned on “all-in-one,” Monarch chose a clear belief.
They positioned around collaboration, not complexity. In a crowded market, they claimed a space made for couples who plan life together.

3. Messaging & Value Props

This is how you put your “Messaging & Value Props” foundation to action

• Who should do it? You, using the words your best customers use

• Where does it shows up? Hero copy, sales pages, onboarding flows, ads

• What does it look like? Clear articulation of value that feels made-for-me

• Mistakes to Avoid: Clever taglines, abstract promises

• Why do it? If your message doesn’t hit, nothing else works

• When should you do it? Once you want cold strangers to convert

• How to do it? Pressure test your messaging by using the Before → After → Bridge formula. Would your ideal customer read your messaging and say: ‘This was made for me”?

🔑 Takeaway: Monarch skips the clever copy. “Track, budget, and plan your money together.” It sounds like something a real person would say. That’s why it works.

4. Brand Signals That Build Trust

This is how you put your “brand foundation” to action

• Who should do it? You, supported by design or marketing

• Where does it shows up? Site layout, visuals, testimonials, tone

• What does it look like? Consistent cues that build credibility before you speak

• Mistakes to Avoid: Logos, gradients, generic mission blurbs

• Why do it? People trust what feels polished, specific, and intentional

• When should you do it? Once you’re pitching beyond your network

• How to do it? Pick 2 fonts, 2 colors, 1 style. Speak your ICP’s language. Show real results.

🔑 Takeaway: Before people believe your product works, they need to believe you get them.Monarch leads with real-life visuals, focused copy, and social proof. It builds trust in five seconds or less.

5. Revenue & Pricing Model Fit

This is how you put your “pricing” to action

• Who should do it? Founder and early buyers

• Where does it shows up? Pricing page, upgrade flows, FAQs, investor narrative

• What does it look like? A model that reflects perceived value (not just feature usage)

• Mistakes to Avoid: A random price tag or “what others are doing” logic

• Why do it? Pricing communicates value. Confuse them, you lose them.

• When should you do it? Right before launch and again after early traction.

• How to do it? Test willingness to pay. Frame pricing based on outcomes.

  • If it takes a Notion doc to explain your pricing... it's broken.

🔑 Takeaway: In fintech, pricing often feels disconnected from value.
What stands out with Monarch is how the model supports the product’s core belief of making money management feel aligned and shared. The simpler the pricing story, the easier it is to trust.

I'm Not Stephen A. Smith But Here’s My Final Take

Startups don’t fail because they built the wrong product.
They fail because no one cared enough to try or stick around.

If you’re scaling before you’re clear,
that’s culturally inappropriate.

Fix the foundation.
Get sharp on your message, market, and model.
Then scale with conviction.

Bonus: Get the Free Growth Foundation Guide

Use the free Notion guide to audit your growth foundation, apply the 5-part framework, and build a GTM strategy that wins and retains the right customers.

Start Building Your Growth Foundation

Stop chasing customers and start attracting them. Learn the 5 costly growth mistakes keeping you stuck. So you can…

Start Winning Customers FAST

Likes & Views Doesn’t Win You Customers

If no one understands why your product matters, you’re just making noise.

You’re doing the work.
Posting. Launching. Grinding late into the night.
But your DMs stay dry. Conversions stay low. No one replies to your cold messages.

I’ve talked to 50+ founders from idea stage to VC-backed growth.
And almost all of them asked the same thing:

“Why isn’t this working?”

So I built something I wish they had sooner.

The Startup Founder’s Growth Blueprint

This free 5-day email course breaks down
five costly mistakes that keep you stuck with likes and views
but no sign-ups, no real customers, and no one saying “This is for me.”

Inside, I’ll show you how to go from random posts
to messaging that actually lands.

No fluff. Just practical gems you can apply right away
to start attracting the right customers.

This is my first time sharing it publicly.

I made this for the scrappy builder who’s tired of doing everything “right” and still feeling stuck.

If growth still feels like guessing, this is your cheat sheet.

wincustomersfast.com

Try it. Apply it. And if it helps let me know.
I want to see you win.

Hey, it’s Wadnes.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share insights on go-to-market strategy, achieving product-market fit, and how startup founders and marketers can use cultural insights as a growth lever to stand out, compete, and win customers.

Enjoy this week’s post.

Read Time: 5 minutes

Most startups don’t struggle because of bad tactics.
They struggle because they’re missing the systems that make growth work.

This playbook gives you the 4 growth systems that drive intentional, repeatable, scalable growth.

Plus the cultural signals that turn those systems into unfair advantage.

The 4 Growth Systems (and How to Audit Them)

These aren’t hacks. They’re the systems that compound.

1. Fit System: The Five Fits Framework

Growth is not a single problem. It's 5 systems working in harmony.

If even one is off, growth stalls. No matter how hard you hustle.

The 5 Fits Diagnostic:

• Market Fit – Are you solving a painful problem for a specific group?

• Product Fit – Does your solution deliver value they actually care about?

• Model Fit – Can you make money without burning out or going broke?

• Brand Fit – Do they trust you to solve the problem?

• Channel Fit – Can you reach these people repeatedly and profitably?

Breakdown Example

Quibi raised $1.75B, had top talent and a sleek product—yet flopped. Why?

No real Market–Product Fit. TikTok already owned that attention.

Fit Win Example

Patreon nailed Market–Product–Model Fit from Day 1.

It worked for creators, took a % of earnings, and scaled as creators succeeded.

Use this to: Find the real bottleneck. If growth feels hard, don’t guess. Audit your fits.

Culture-First Signal: Look for signs of Meaning, Connection, and Differentiation:

• Meaning → Are you solving a problem that feels personally or culturally urgent?

• Connection → Does your messaging sound like them (not just to them)?

• Differentiation → Does your brand feel like a clear “us” in a sea of “them”?

If not, it might not be a tactics issue. It’s a cultural resonance issue.

2. Flow System: The AARRR Funnel

Map the path from stranger → customer → evangelist. Then find out where they drop.

The 5 Funnel Stages:

*Acquisition implies awareness

1. Acquisition – How do people first hear about you?

2. Activation – Do they reach the “Aha!” moment quickly?

3. Retention – Do they come back? Or churn?

4. Revenue – Are you making more than you’re spending?

5. Referral – Are they sharing you with others?

Common Pitfall:

1,000 people visit… only 2 sign up?
It’s not a traffic problem. It’s an Activation or Product Fit problem.

Use this to: Spot and patch your leakiest funnel stage before you pour in more traffic.

Culture-First Signal: Look for emotional or social drop-off points:

• Meaning → Does the onboarding reinforce what they believe or aspire to?

• Connection → Are you using tone, visuals, and UX that feel familiar and trusted?

• Differentiation → Does your flow signal you’re not like everyone else?

The leak may not be in the mechanics—it could be in the vibe.

3. Scale System: Acquisition Loops

Funnels help you see. Loops help you scale.

What’s a loop? Input → Value → Output → Reinvest → Repeat.

There’s 3 types of scalable loops:

• Virality: Users invite users (e.g. Slack, Dropbox)

• Paid: $1 in → $2 out → reinvest (e.g. DTC brands)

• Sales: Rep closes → revenue → hire more reps

Not a Loop: PR, Product Hunt, TechCrunch. These spike… then fade.

Use this to: Build a self-reinforcing engine. If growth isn’t compounding, it’s a hamster wheel and this is what you don’t want.

Culture-First Signal: Great loops don’t just scale.

They spread because of identity:

• Meaning → Does sharing your product feel like sharing a belief or a badge?

• Connection → Are people inviting others who “just get it”?

• Differentiation → Does your loop look and feel different from the category norm?

Virality isn’t about buttons. It’s about belonging.

4. Longevity System: Stacking S-Curves

Growth doesn’t happen in a straight line. It follows an “S” shape: slow at first, then sharp growth, then a plateau.Most startups ride one growth wave and stall. Every product, channel, or audience follows this curve:

1. Start: Early traction

2. Lift-off: Find repeatable success

3. Saturation: Growth slows as channels get crowded or the market matures

The mistake? Waiting until the saturation phase to build the next wave.

Smart Founders Stack Growth Curves Early:

Each company didn’t rely on one wave of growth.
They layered new curves early—either by expanding what the product did (use case), where they reached people (channel), or who they served (segment).

• New use case: Canva → Social graphics → Presentations → Video

• New channel: Dropbox → Paid ads → Referral loop

• New segment: Slack → Dev teams → Enterprise orgs

Culture-First Signal: New S-curves aren’t just market shifts - they’re cultural moments:

• Meaning → Are new features/use cases aligned with a rising belief or unmet desire?

• Connection → Are you reaching new groups with shared identity or need?

• Differentiation → Are you jumping ahead of stale playbooks with culturally-tuned innovation?

The best new curves start where your category’s blind spots begin.

The Learning Loop: Growth’s True Engine

The fastest-growing startups aren’t the ones with the best ideas.
They’re the ones that learn the fastest.

Ask this on repeat:

• What did we test?

• What did we learn?

• What’s the next experiment?

Why it matters:

• Growth loops reinvest revenue

• The growth process reinvests learnings

• Together, they create a compound advantage

Use this to avoid random tinkering.

Build a culture of rapid feedback and confident iteration.

Culture-First Signals to Look For:

Ask yourself: Are you learning what actually moves hearts and minds?

• Meaning → What language or offers light people up (not just convert)?

• Connection → Are you testing against culture, not just copy?

• Differentiation → What are you learning that your competitors aren’t looking at?

Culture is a growth channel. Treat it like one.

Growth isn’t magic. It’s a strategic art and science

If your startup feels stuck. Remember this checklist:

• Don’t throw more tactics at the wall

• Audit your fits

• Find your compounding loop

• Stack your next S-curve

• Learn faster than the competition

• Build with cultural relevance (not just conversion) in mind

This is how you stop guessing and build a startup designed to grow.

Take my 10 question Culture-Market Fit Assessment to find your biggest growth blocker and get a step-by-step checklist to fix what your strategy is missing and how to fix it so the right people finally pay attention.

Learn What's Blocking Your Growth