Why your startup momentum keeps stalling
Fix the friction in visibility, delegation, and demand capture.
Most founders I talk to are stuck in one of three places:
They’re not posting, so they’re not visible.
They’re doing everything, so they’re burned out.
Or they’re getting interest, but their funnel kills it before it turns into revenue.
This week, we’re tackling all three. Because founder-led growth isn’t about doing it all—it’s about doing the right things in the right order. That’s what builds pipeline that lasts.
Today’s agenda:
🪴 Why LinkedIn is your first growth channel
🧑💻 Stop doing everything yourself—scale with a VA
⭐ How to design forms that convert
💼 Briefly: GPT-5’s personality shift, AI-powered pricing, & CAC missteps
⏱️ Up & coming: The future of visibility is being decided now
💬 Founder-led growth starts with showing up
If I were starting over with a small team and a tight budget, I’d do one thing first: I’d get active on LinkedIn. Not with ads or cold outreach, just with showing up and talking about the market we serve.
This quick clip from my appearance on the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast shows exactly why—and how—to turn LinkedIn into a lead gen engine for your startup 👇
💡 Key takeaways:
LinkedIn isn’t a resume graveyard anymore. It’s a real-time platform for building trust, sharing insights, and initiating conversations that lead to deals.
Just start sharing what you’re doing. Don’t worry about polished content. Document your process and share sharp takes about the businesses and industries you’re working with.
Be a guide, not a guru. Thought leadership doesn’t mean whitepapers—it means showing you understand your market better than most.
Use your content as a bridge. Add a CTA in the comments—newsletter, blog post, lead magnet—anything that gives folks a next step.
Conversations create pipeline. A like or comment is the beginning of trust. Follow up and keep the conversation going.
This is how you start building real traction without paid ads or fancy funnels. Just show up, share smart things, and give people a next step.
📈 Delegate the grind, focus on growth
Founders can’t be everywhere, doing everything, and still build momentum.
If you’re serious about showing up consistently, you need to get ruthless about what only you should be doing.
That’s where virtual assistants come in. VAs help you grow by taking the right things off your plate.
A great VA can take over:
Content support: editing, publishing, and optimizing posts
Sales ops: data entry, reporting, CRM hygiene
Outreach: drafting follow-ups, tracking engagement, managing inboxes
The point is to remove friction so you can focus on the work that actually moves the needle—talking to customers, shaping strategy, and driving growth.
If you're running founder-led demand gen, the volume picks up quickly. A VA helps you stay consistent, organized, and focused—without needing to build a massive team.
👉 Read the full breakdown on when to hire a VA, what to delegate, and how to integrate them into your process.
🧲 Turn interest into pipeline with smarter lead capture
Let’s say your content is working. You’re showing up on LinkedIn. People are clicking through. They’re interested.
So—how do you turn that interest into actual conversations?
For a lot of founders, the default is a basic “name and email” form. But in B2B, your form isn’t just for collecting info—it’s the beginning of the conversation. The right questions can make a big difference in how qualified and confident a lead feels coming into that first call.
🪝 Survey-style lead capture forms help you:
Show you understand their world—through thoughtful, relevant questions
Get context that makes discovery calls sharper and more productive
Deliver a smoother experience that sets the tone for working together
It’s a simple shift—but one that builds trust and accelerates momentum.
👉 Want help designing a lead capture system that converts? Schedule a Discovery Call.
Briefly
🤖 Have you tried the latest version of ChatGPT? OpenAI tweaked GPT-5’s personality to be “warmer and friendlier” after user backlash—but confusion and complaints haven’t slowed. Expect more volatility as AI models evolve toward broader personalization, not consensus.
📈 AI-powered pricing is shifting from optimization to survival strategy as dynamic, value-based, and personalized models become table stakes. Founders need flexible pricing systems that evolve in real time—or risk leaving revenue on the table.
📊 Most companies still miscalculate customer acquisition cost (CAC) by ignoring shared costs and multi-touch attribution. Businesses that get serious about true CAC make sharper budget calls and build more credible growth plans.
📱 Founders chasing TikTok growth are asking the wrong question—it's not about channels, it's about traction. Focus on what resonates, not where the algorithm sends traffic, and you’ll build a brand that outlasts any platform shift.
Up & Coming
AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity are reshaping how people search—and trust. Instead of scanning links, users are asking direct questions and trusting whatever answer shows up. That answer may not be you.
This shift is already siphoning traffic away from top-ranked content, and brands that aren’t cited in AI summaries risk total invisibility in the moments that matter most.
If your growth depends on organic discovery, it’s time to rethink your entire content strategy. Human-first, question-led content that earns citations will be the new competitive moat.