You need to get loud. Really really loud 📣

You need to get loud. Really really loud 📣

Adrian Cole July 31st

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Hey Reader, in This Issue:

📢 Why Staying Quiet Is Killing Your Startup

🛠️ A tool that turns ideas into slides in minutes

💡 The wild idea that could change event sponsorship

🙏🏾 How giving can be your best growth strategy

🚀 Big news: We’re now building MVPs for founders

🌟 30 Days of Product Founder spotlight: Allyse Carter, CPA launches DayTrax

🧠 A moral question about using tech to fuel human addiction

💡Today’s Big Idea: Be Loud or Be Forgotten

Why Staying Quiet Is Killing Your Startup

In today’s noisy world, good marketing isn’t enough.

You have to be loud, digitally yelling every single day.

Not with spammy ads. Not with generic social posts. But with your voice.

The modern economy rewards founders who step out from behind their products and become the public face of their startup.

The Harsh Truth: Great Products Get Ignored

Most early-stage founders hide behind their product. They believe if we build something great, the market will find us.

It won’t.

If you’re not telling your story, someone else’s will take over.

Your startup will be invisible.

The New Growth Engine You Can’t Ignore

This isn’t traditional startup marketing.

Founder-led growth is about turning your personal brand, thought leadership, and category expertise into your company’s unfair advantage.

People follow people, not logos.

Think Brian Chesky from Airbnb, Sam Altman from OpenAI, Stewart Butterfield from Slack, and Rahul Vohra from Superhuman.

These founders built massive followings not for ego, but because being the voice of their product was essential to their growth.

Why This Is Actually Good News for You

Founder-led growth works even if you have a tiny budget.

You don’t need a marketing team, expensive gear, or months of planning.

You already have the most powerful tool, the device you’re reading this on.

I wasn’t comfortable speaking at the start either. I bit the bullet and started small with a podcast. That led to hosting events, then speaking at summits and conferences, and eventually creating video content.

Each step built my confidence.

The wins stacked up.

You don’t have to start with a camera in your face. Start somewhere and grow from there.

When you are ready, turn the camera around.

Share your journey.

Educate.

Entertain.

Guide your audience toward success through your product.

“But I’m Not That Kind of Person…”

Not a natural speaker? Start with written posts until you find your voice.

No time? Block 30 minutes once a week to batch content and repurpose daily.

Don’t want to be an influencer?

You’re not.

You’re a founder telling your story so your company can survive.

Worried no one will care?

They won’t… until they do.

Consistency is the game.

Your 6-Step Founder-Led Growth Playbook

Choose the platform where your audience hangs out —> LinkedIn, X, TikTok, Instagram. Go where they are, not just where you are comfortable.
Set your content pillars —> behind-the-scenes, industry insights, customer wins.
Batch and repurpose —> record a short video, turn it into posts, pull quotes.
Engage daily —> reply to comments, join discussions, connect with your audience.
Tell one story a week —> something real, human, and connected to your product.
Track and double down —> keep what works, drop what doesn’t.

The Opportunities Waiting for You

Once you establish your founder brand, the doors swing open.

Speaking gigs.

Consulting work.

Investor interest.

Faster startup growth.

If you are ready to build your founder-led growth strategy, I can help you map it out so it works for you. Grab time to chat.

The best time to start was yesterday.

The second-best time is now.

⚒️ Toolstack Drop: Gamma AI

If you need a fast way to turn ideas into beautiful, visual slides, Gamma AI is your friend.

You can use it to generate decks in minutes and customize pitches on the fly, perfect for when you need to move fast.

The caveat: don’t just accept what it gives you. AI decks can become generic and boring if you don’t add your own voice, polish, and personality.

Pro tip: Gamma isn’t just for pitches.

Use it for personal brainstorming to give your ideas a visual and textural feel while you think through strategy and execution plans.

🤪 Crazy Product Idea of the Week: The Event Sponsorship Marketplace

Every week, thousands of events happen across the country, festivals, conferences, pop-ups, meetups, tournaments, you name it.

For brands, the question is always the same: which of these should we sponsor to actually connect with the right audience?

Right now, the process is fragmented and full of guesswork. Brands rely on personal networks, cold outreach, or luck to find good fits.

Event hosts, on the other hand, are constantly hunting for sponsors, sending endless emails, and hoping someone bites.

The Idea 🧠

A platform where event hosts sign up, list their schedule, describe their audience, and share reach metrics.

Brands can search by date, location, budget, audience type, and even category (sports, tech, food, music, etc.) to find events worth sponsoring.

The result:

Brands can sponsor events at scale and discover new, high-fit audiences without endless research
Event hosts can monetize their events more easily, attract sponsors faster, and focus on delivering great experiences

Think of it as Airbnb meets LinkedIn for event sponsorships —> a matchmaking platform where both sides win.

Why This Could Work

The events industry is massive and only getting bigger post-pandemic. Sponsorship dollars are already being spent, this just makes them flow faster, smarter, and more effectively.

Someone needs to build this!

I'll help :)

🏁 Challenge of the Week: Give Before You Get

This week, I want you to reach out to a founder in your circle and offer help based on your expertise.

No strings attached. No fees.

Maybe you can review their pitch deck, brainstorm growth ideas, test their onboarding, or introduce them to someone valuable.

I do this often. And while it starts from a place of genuine generosity, I’ve found that the opportunities it creates are massive.

Partnerships. Speaking invites. New clients. Investment conversations.

When you lead with value, you position yourself as someone worth knowing. And you build trust faster than any cold outreach ever could.

Sometimes the best strategy is to give.

⚡️ What’s Launching: 30 Days of Product is now building MVPs.

Big news!

Why?

Because I got tired of hearing the same story from founders I’ve been consulting with.

They hire a dev agency. The product becomes bloated. The launch keeps getting pushed back.

Months turn into years.

Costs balloon.

And they’re still stuck in development.

I decided that needed to change.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve pulled together a solid team with a proven track record. And now, Phase 2 of our flagship program is here, we don’t just help you strategize and design your product, we actually build it.

The focus isn’t to keep you in development forever. It’s to get you live fast so you can validate, get feedback, and start generating revenue or securing funding.

We’ll use AI builders, no-code tools, or traditional code depending on what’s right for your product, but always with the goal of speed, clarity, and launch readiness.

And here’s the best part: we do it for a flat fee.

No endless billable hours.

No surprise invoices.

No founder wallet drain.

It’s the MVP build process I wish existed for every early-stage founder.

Book time so we can chat about your MVP build.

🌟 30 Days of Product Founder Spotlight: Allyse Launches DayTrax

Article content — DayTrax launches to support tax professionals.

Another 30 Days of Product founder just shipped their MVP. Allyse came to us just over a month ago with an idea for a problem she wanted to solve for herself as a tax accountant.

She quickly discovered it was a much bigger opportunity. She went through our blueprint process and now has shipped her MVP and is already preparing to raise investment.

Meet Allyse Carter, CPA. She is a licensed CPA with more than a decade of experience advising small business owners and high-net-worth individuals on strategic tax planning and financial management. A proud West Palm Beach native, Allyse brings a hometown passion for community growth and sustainability to every engagement.

The Product: DayTrax is a web application that helps tax professionals and their clients simplify travel-related tax documentation. The MVP focuses on automating trip logging, alerting users to potential residency risks, and giving tax professionals a read-only view of client travel data. The initial launch is free, with premium features to follow.

For frequent travelers, staying under residency thresholds in different states can be complex and expensive if ignored. DayTrax alerts users before they cross those lines, helping them avoid overpaying taxes or triggering audits. For tax professionals, it eliminates tedious back-and-forth and scales accurate data collection, especially during tax season.

Ready to launch like Allyse?

Grab time to chat.