658: (Solo) You're Posting Everywhere — But Do You Know What's Actually Driving Revenue?

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0:39Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey, Founder fam, Nathan here. Welcome back to another solo episode. These are me sharing all the lessons I've been learning as I've been building Founder for the past 13 years, interviewing some of the greatest founders of our generation. I hope you're enjoying these episodes. If you are, shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to connect further. So today I want to talk about something I'm seeing more and more, and it's actually hurting a lot of founders without them even realizing it.

1:15We're posting on more platforms than ever before. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, email, podcast, like sometimes all in the same day. And if you ask right now, which one of these are actually driving results for your business, not likes, not impressions, not reach, but actual revenue, would you be able to answer that confidently? Because the reality is most founders can't.

1:37Nathan Chan:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. for a long time a founder our advice has been simple and we've spoken about this too be everywhere more platforms equal more visibility but you want to focus on mastering one platform at a time so if you're busy in the weeds and you're doing doing doing you're spreading yourself too thin it's most likely not effective and even when i look at founders that are absolutely crushing it, doing super well, they usually only master one to two channels.

2:21And what's actually working, you need to know. And if you don't, that's a problem. So if I'm asking you this question right now and you are listening going, what channel is your most successful channel? You should not. Maybe it's Facebook ads. That's a good one, right? But you can't just grow a brand off paid advertising. Maybe it's Instagram. Maybe it's TikTok. I don't know. But you cannot trust a platform's reported data at face value either. Every platform wants to tell you they're the one driving your results. Instagram, they're going to claim the sale or Instagram ads or Facebook ads, they're going to claim the sale.

2:55TikTok is going to claim the sale. Google is going to claim the sale. But the real question isn't how did this platform perform? It's how are my channels working together to drive revenue? Because your customer journey actually isn't happening on one platform. It's happening across multiple touch points. So let me give you a real example from us at Founder. We've built an audience of millions across social platforms over the years. But one thing we've been spending more time thinking about recently is what channels actually driving real value, not just growth, not just engagement, not just email subscribers, actual revenue.

3:27And what's been interesting is we're seeing that our best members, our best students come from this podcast. And it's been incredibly valuable because it builds a different level of connection. It creates trust. It brings in a much more engaged person. If you're listening to this right now, I don't know how long you've been listening, but it might feel like you know me, right? So in a way, that short form content sometimes doesn't get the cut through in a way that long form can. We're also starting to look closely at platforms like Reddit because there's strong intent there. That's a place where a lot of people do their research about a brand.

4:01You know, yeah, we've got a trust pilot with healthy reviews and all that good stuff. But like people are going to Reddit because people trust Reddit more. Reviews, a lot of companies, they just engineer them. So people are actively searching for solutions, having real conversations and engaging in a different way compared to traditional social platforms. Guess where all of these LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT, all these AI platforms get a lot of their answers. It's actually Reddit. It's actually these forums. Isn't that crazy? Like we had somebody join founder operators the other day and I said, well, how'd you hear about us?

4:32And she's like, funnily enough, I found you on AI. Isn't that crazy? So if you're listening to this, you might be stuck in this cycle of if you couldn't confidently name your best performing channel your budget split hasn't changed in months you're spending more time creating than analyzing and your answer to what's working starts with i think that's the case it's not a content problem it's a clarity problem so this is what you need to do first you need to audit your channels look at where your traffic is coming from go to your shopify store you can work that out but remember all the platforms are going to claim success have a look at where your conversions are happening where your highest value customers originate.

5:07Don't just measure, focus on outcomes, not activity. Don't just measure likes, views, and reach. We've fallen in that trap. That's a vanity metric. Measure revenue, leads, email growth, conversion. And then three, double down on what's working. Once you find the signal, go deeper, not wider. Oftentimes when it comes to scaling a brand, it's not doing more of different things. It's just doing more of the thing that's already working. It's one of the biggest traps that founders fall into when they're trying to scale their brand, when they've got product market fit, when they've got traction. So instead of posting everywhere, scale the channels that are already driving results.

5:42But remember, it is a double-edged sword. I did that with Facebook ads. At Founder, we were spending anywhere between 700 grand to a million dollars a month, and then it broke overnight. I lost half a million dollars in a month, and it was crazy. It's a fine line balance. Don't go all in eggs in one basket to the point where it's so risky, right? You need to build that engine. You need to have a de-risking process as well. So treat marketing as an ecosystem. Your channels don't work in isolation. Think about how social drives the email, how content drives your site, how your site converts. It's all connected.

6:14So here's the big takeaway. Being everywhere might feel productive, but without knowing what's actually driving results, it can quietly be holding your business back and you're doing many things, but you're not mastering a couple of them. And usually that's what good strategy is. That's one of the things that one of my business mentors taught me around approaching the year. Usually it's not about how many things you do. It's about doing one or two things and executing on them really, really well. So instead of asking, how can I do more or trying to be mindful of your strategy of thinking of more as the answer, look at what's actually working and build from there.

6:47If this episode helped you think about your marketing strategy in a different way, please share it with another founder who might be stuck in the same cycle we are here we want to help you grow however we can and i hope you enjoy this episode please leave us a review wherever you're listening i'll see you in another one