Turning raw attention into predictable growth systems

Welcome back to FTS!

After our last issue, a founder replied with the question almost every builder eventually runs into:

“I’m getting 200 likes on LinkedIn. A few thousand people are watching my YouTube videos. My product gets clicks. People tell me the idea is interesting …

But then what?”

This week’s issue gives you the strategies to solve EXACTLY that.

> How do you make people remember the brand after they scroll past?

> How do you know if an idea is worth building before spending months on it?

> How do you stop using AI like a pile of disconnected tabs and start turning it into a workflow for conversion?

We’re breaking down three founders that are documented experts at turning raw attention into trust, revenue, and foundational leverage for your business.

Let’s get building:

Matt Orlic knows what it takes to build a brand people actually remember.

He co-founded Qure Skincare with his sister and helped scale it to $90M+ in 4 years.

Along the way, Qure hit $1M in revenue in a single day, became one of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in Australia, and reached the 3rd fastest-growing skincare brand globally.

His edge came from making the brand easy to understand.

Because in a digital world, the story does not stay inside your ad account.

It travels.

> Customers repeat it.

> Creators remix it.

> Friends explain it.

> Reviews reshape it.

> Screenshots carry it.

> Comments simplify it.

So when the story is confusing, the market repeats it in a confusing way.

When the story is clear, customers know exactly how to talk about it.

Matt’s storytelling framework starts with a simple structure:

1. Problem

2. Solution

3. Proof

Before people care about your product, they need to understand the problem.

Before they trust your offer, they need to believe the solution makes sense.

Before they buy, they need proof that the brand can deliver.

Matt breaks this into a 7-step narrative framework:

To make this concrete, Matt applied the framework to Qure Skincare.

The World: Skincare is complicated.

There are hundreds of creams, conflicting opinions, expensive products, and no objective way to know what actually works.

The only place most people fully trust is a beauty clinic with professional tools and experts.

But how often can people afford that?

The Change: The category has become even noisier.

More products, online voices, conflicting advice dominates the space.

At the same time, skincare technology has advanced enough to bring professional-grade treatments into the home.

The Winners: The people who find a solution that actually works.

They stop product-hopping.

They stop guessing.

They stop spending hundreds on repeated beauty clinic visits.

The Solution: Qure brings the latest technology and scientific research into an at-home skincare device.

The LED mask works with corresponding creams optimized for the device, giving customers a more complete system instead of another random product on the shelf.

Reasons To Trust: The brand acknowledges skincare is complicated.

The product feels professional, functional, and science-backed.

Dermatologists are involved.

The education around the technology is clear.

Reasons To Choose: The LED technology is explained and branded.

The creams are designed to work with the device.

The product becomes a full treatment system, with every component working together.

Reasons To Act: The price comparison changes how the customer thinks.

Compared to cheap pharmacy creams, the device can feel expensive.

Compared to repeated beauty clinic visits, it becomes an investment.

Before trying to make your brand sound more polished, use this framework to make the story easier to repeat:

• Start with The World: What does your customer already feel, believe, or complain about?

• Name The Change: What has shifted in the market, category, technology, or customer behavior?

• Define The Winners: Who benefits the most from understanding this shift early?

• Introduce The Solution: How does your product solve the problem they now clearly understand?

• Build Reasons To Trust: What proof makes people believe you can actually deliver?

• List Reasons To Choose: What tangible details make your product different from the alternatives?

• Create Reasons To Act Now: Why should the customer move today instead of waiting?

Spend a few minutes with Matt’s framework and pressure-test whether your brand story is clear enough for someone else to repeat.

Because if people cannot retell your story, they cannot spread it.

And if they cannot spread it, your brand has to do all the explaining itself

Adam Robinson has built 3 software companies to over $35M in combined ARR.

So when he breaks down how he would start a new SaaS or AI company from absolute zero today, his playbook is worth studying.

His core point:

Most founders build before they know what people will actually pay for.

The smarter move is 50 customer discovery calls minimum BEFORE code.

The goal is to find people willing to pay for something before it exists.

From there, the launch playbook comes down to a few core moves:

1. Start with people who match your ICP

Adam says he would begin with his personal network on LinkedIn and focus on people who actually match the customer profile he wants to serve.

Founder Andy Mewborn uses this message for his company:

The point is to speak with people close enough to the problem that their feedback reflects real buying behavior.

Offer paid advisory roles to director-level people in the ICP, or go to industry events with just a notepad and talk directly to the people who understand the problem.

2. Lead with a sharp one-liner

For RB2B, Adam’s one-liner was:

“Person-level website visitor identification.”

It worked because the value was immediately clear.

Before RB2B, most tools focused on company-level visitor identification.

Person-level identification gave prospects a more specific, exciting, and tangible reason to keep listening.

The one-liner should make the right person understand the problem quickly enough to want the next sentence.

3. Ask questions that test real pain

Adam would use discovery calls to understand the customer’s pain as deeply as possible.

The questions he would ask:

1. Do you understand the problem I'm trying to solve?

2. Do you have this problem?

3. How are you solving it today?

4. Would you pay for this solution if I could get it to you tomorrow?

5. What else would it need for you to pay for it?

6. I'm thinking of charging X per month. Would you pay that?

These questions keep the conversation focused on the problem, the current workaround, the buying trigger, and the exact conditions that would turn interest into payment.

4. Stay manual as long as possible

Build only what is needed to deliver the core value.

Adam’s rule:

If the first version takes more than 4-6 weeks to build, the product is probably too heavy for this stage.

With RB2B, the team stayed manual for months by

> sending spreadsheets over email for 5 months.

> delaying building the full website.

> staying close to customer feedback.

> learning what people actually needed.

> avoiding automating the wrong workflow too early.

That manual process became an advantage.

It showed them what customers valued before they turned the workflow into a complete product.

5. Look for 3 product-market fit signals

Adam would look for three signals before scaling harder:

1. At least one referral per week from paying customers.

2. Customers would be genuinely upset if the product disappeared.

3. Organic growth without doing any marketing.

If those signals are missing, the focus stays on product-market fit.

Once those signals start showing up, the founder has stronger proof that the market is pulling the product forward.

6. Build in public from day one

Adam would post on LinkedIn from the beginning and share the building journey in real time.

Wins.

Failures.

Pivots.

Customer lessons.

Product updates.

This creates awareness before the product fully launches and gives the market a reason to follow the story as it develops.

With RB2B, Adam spent months building in public on LinkedIn before launch.

By launch, they had a 1,600-person waitlist and 300 meetings booked.

That early content helped RB2B hit $1M ARR in 6 weeks post-launch.

7. Activate the Magic Triangle after PMF

Once the product has real pull, Adam would activate 3 channels:

Together, these channels create a growth loop where attention, intent, and follow-up reinforce each other.

Before trying to scale a SaaS or AI company, use Adam’s playbook to prove people actually want the thing:

• Book 50 discovery calls with people who match your ICP.

• Lead with a one-liner that makes the problem easy to understand.

• Ask whether they would pay if the solution existed tomorrow.

• Look for prepayment as the strongest form of early validation.

• Build only what is needed to deliver the core value proposition.

• Stay manual long enough to learn what customers actually need.

• Watch for referrals, customer dependency, and organic demand.

• Build in public so the market understands what you’re creating before launch.

Spend time validating the problem before building the product.

Because the fastest path to $1M starts with finding a painful problem people are already willing to pay to solve.

Read Adam’s full AI company launch playbook here.

Greg Isenberg is the CEO of Late Checkout, a holding company that builds internet businesses from audiences and communities.

He’s created and sold companies like 5by, Islands, and WallStreetSurvivor, advisor at companies like TikTok and Reddit on product and growth, and now shares startup ideas with over 145,000 readers.

Recently, he brought on Imran Ye to explain Hermes Agent

Hermes is a personal AI agent that runs in your terminal.

Think of it like OpenClaw but with built-in memory, 40+ tools out of the box, and 90% cheaper token costs.

And its memory is nothing like we’ve seen before.

Every completed task can get saved.

Hermes can search past logs, remember previous solutions, and get smarter around your specific workflows over time.

That means you stop teaching the agent the same thing every time you use it.

And it comes preloaded with 40+ tools like:

> Browser

> Web search

> Image generation

> Cron jobs

> Apple Notes

> iMessage

> Find My

The money-saving piece is one of the biggest reasons founders are paying attention.

Imran said switching from OpenClaw to Hermes with OpenRouter took his token spend from around $130 every 5 days to around $10 every 5 days.

The reason is simple:

Once Hermes learns a recurring task, it can write code for it.

Then that code can run on a schedule without paying an LLM to rethink the same workflow every day.

It applies to things like:

> Daily reports

> Email triage

> Web scrapes

> Expense summaries

> Research digests

> Recurring business tasks

Hermes can also run through Telegram and Android using Termux, which means you can talk to your agents from your phone and treat them more like coworkers than one-off chat windows.

Before trying to build the perfect AI agent stack, use Greg and Imran’s walkthrough to find the workflows worth automating first:

• List the tasks you repeat every day or every week.

• Identify which tasks require memory, context, or past decisions.

• Connect Hermes to the tools where your work already lives.

• Use Obsidian as a clean home for notes, tasks, and daily planning.

• Add GStack if you are building a startup or technical product.

• Turn recurring workflows into code so you stop spending tokens on the same task.

• Separate personal and work agents if you want a cleaner setup.

• Ask Hermes what you are procrastinating, what matters today, and what should become a cron job.

Spend a few minutes with Greg and Imran’s walkthrough if you want a clearer view of where personal AI agents are heading.

The advantage is knowing which parts of your life and business are worth turning into systems.

Raw attention is everywhere.

> Customers are scrolling faster.

> AI tools are getting more powerful.

> Founders are building in public earlier.

> Products are easier to launch, easier to copy, and harder to make memorable.

This week’s issue comes down to one thing:

The founders who win are the ones who are able to turn attention into systems.

Here’s what to do this week:

1. Use Matt Orlic’s storytelling framework to make your brand easier to repeat.

Start with the problem your customer already feels.

Then clarify what changed, why your solution matters now, what proof makes you credible, and why someone should act today.

The goal is simple:

Make the story clear enough that customers, creators, friends, and even comments can explain it for you.

2. Use Adam Robinson’s launch playbook to validate demand before you build too much.

Book conversations with people who match your ICP.

Lead with a clear one-liner.

Ask whether they would pay for the solution if it existed tomorrow.

Then stay manual long enough to understand what customers actually need before turning the workflow into a full product.

The goal is to find a painful problem people are already willing to pay to solve.

3. Use Greg Isenberg and Imran Ye’s Hermes walkthrough to find the workflows worth automating.

List the tasks you repeat every day or every week.

Identify which ones require memory, context, or past decisions.

Then use an agent setup like Hermes to turn recurring work into systems that remember, organize, and run with less repeated effort.

The goal is not to install another AI tool.

The goal is to turn the right parts of your life and business into leverage.

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See you soon, builders.

The Mogul Media Team