Tag: founder playbook

  • Product Launch Strategy: A Founder’s No-BS Playbook

    You shipped the product in your head a hundred times already. You've pictured the signup spike, the kind replies, the first paying customer, the friend texting “this is slick.” But when the actual launch gets close, your brain stops playing the movie and starts running disaster drills. What if nobody cares? What if people click…

  • Outsource E Commerce: A Founder’s No-BS Playbook

    You're probably in the same spot I see over and over. Sales are coming in. Orders are moving. Your store looks healthy from the outside. But behind the scenes, you're answering support tickets at night, fixing product listings on weekends, chasing a warehouse for updates, and checking ad accounts before breakfast. You don't have a…

  • Early Stage Companies: Master Metrics & Traction in 2026

    Most advice about early stage companies is built for a tiny slice of founders. It assumes you're raising VC, building software, and chasing the same milestones as everyone on startup Twitter. That's bad advice for many founders. If you're building a product brand, an ecommerce business, or a practical service company in Chicago or the…

  • How to Create a Referral Program That Attracts Givers

    Most advice on how to create a referral program is built for brands that sell socks, software, or meal kits. It tells you to slap a discount on a page, send a blast, and wait for “growth.” I think that advice is wrong for community-first founders. If you’re building around trust, taste, and actual relationships,…