Over a 8 month period I met with dozens of owners & directors and asked them the same question. What work problem keeps you awake at night? 

EVERY CEO said a version of the same thing, "We need more sales!" Digging a bit deeper, they wanted more, better sales leads. They wanted their revenues to be as guaranteed as their expenses.

Sales Higher identifies well-financed companies that need your solutions. You get fresh opportunities sent to your inbox every week, so your sales pipeline is always full.

We provide an entire prospecting team at 'coffee money' pricing.

If you sell B2B and want to meet decision makers that need your solutions then visit our website. Or book a meeting at: https://saleshigher.com/thanks

Matthew Murray

Most early-stage founders don’t have a marketing problem.
They have a systems problem.

You see it when:
■ Growth looks good on paper but feels fragile.
■ Every new channel adds noise, not clarity.
■ Dashboards are full, but decisions are still gut-driven.

My work sits at the intersection of systems, story and signal.
I help founders:
■ See the structure underneath their marketing, not just the outputs.
■ Build simple systems that can survive speed, hiring and pivots.
■ Turn scattered activity into a coherent story customers can follow.
■ Use numbers as a learning tool, not a panic trigger.

I’ve led marketing and growth inside health and wellness brands and now co-build at Rawdify with founders who want calmer, clearer, more repeatable growth.
​
If you want hacks or “one more channel”, I’m not the right person.
If you care about thinking, systems and honest growth, my inbox is open.

Natasha Kohli

Amul spent ₹0 on influencer marketing for 60 years.

No celebrity face. No trending audio. No paid collab.

And still became the most recalled brand in India.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Because every early-stage founder I meet is chasing the next campaign. The next reel. The next viral post.

But Amul never chased virality.

They built a system.

One creative format - the topical billboard - run consistently for over six decades.
One voice - witty, sharp, never off-brand.
One promise - "taste of India" - never diluted, never pivoted.

That's it.

The genius wasn't the idea. It was the discipline to repeat it.

Most founders I audit have the opposite problem.

They have 10 ideas. 6 channels. 4 agencies.
And zero consistency in any single direction.

Their brand sounds different on Instagram vs LinkedIn vs their website.
Their messaging changes every quarter.
Their "core offer" gets repositioned every time they read a new marketing book.

Amul didn't get famous because of one great ad.
They got famous because of 3,000 consistent ones.

Here's what I've learned working with early-stage founders:

You don't need a better campaign.
You need a system you're willing to repeat for 3 years.

The founders who win aren't always the most creative.
They're the most consistent.

What's the ONE thing your brand has done consistently for more than 6 months?

Drop it in the comments. I'm curious what's actually working for people.

#RawdifyDigitals

The best marketing advice I ever gave a founder was: Stop marketing.

For 30 days.

They thought I was joking.

They had been posting daily for 9 months. Running two ad campaigns. Working with a content agency.

And getting 1-2 leads a month.

I told them: before you spend another rupee on marketing, I want you to call 15 past customers. Not to upsell. Not to get testimonials.

Just to ask one question:

"Why did you actually buy from us?"

Not "what did you like about us."

Why did you BUY.

What they heard in those 15 calls rewrote everything.

Customers weren't buying because of the content.
They were buying because of one line on the website that spoke directly to a very specific fear they had.

A fear that wasn't even the focus of their marketing.

That single line was buried. Treated like filler copy.

We moved it to the hero section of the website.
Made it the opening line of every ad.
Built three posts around it.

Cost: ₹0.

Result in 6 weeks: 19 inbound leads.

Here's what I've realised after working with dozens of founders:

Most founders don't have a marketing problem.
They have a listening problem.

They're so focused on publishing that they've stopped paying attention to what's actually working and WHY.

The answer to better marketing is almost always sitting in your past customers' words.

You just have to stop talking long enough to hear it.

When did you last sit down and really listen to why people bought from you?

Not a Google Form. An actual conversation.

I told a client their content was "good enough" last year.

I was wrong. And it cost them 6 months.

Here's what happened:
They were posting consistently. 4x per week.
Decent engagement. Growing follower count.
On paper, everything looked fine.

But when I asked, "How many inbound leads did this content generate last quarter?" the answer was 2.

Two leads from 16 weeks of content.

That's when I realised I had made the same mistake I warn founders about:

I optimised for activity, not outcomes.

Their content was "good" by vanity metrics (likes, comments, shares).
But it wasn't converting because it wasn't designed to.

Every post was:
→ Inspirational, but vague
→ Relatable, but not specific
→ Engaging, but not actionable

People loved it. But no one knew what to do next.

The shift:
We didn't post more.
We changed the structure:

✅ Every post now had a clear "who this is for" line
✅ Every post ended with a specific next step
✅ 70% educational, 20% story, 10% offer

Result after 8 weeks:
23 qualified leads. 7 discovery calls. 3 closed deals.

Same posting frequency.
Different intent.

The lesson I learned:

"Good enough" content keeps you busy.
Outcome-driven content gets you customers.

If your content feels like it's "working" but you're not seeing pipeline impact, the problem isn't volume. It's structure.

Have you ever kept doing something in marketing just because "it looked good" even though it wasn't converting?

Can you draw your customer journey in 60 seconds without Googling or checking notes?

Try this right now:

Open your notes app (or grab paper).
Set a timer for 60 seconds.

Draw the path someone takes from:
"I've never heard of you" → "I just paid you"

Include every step.
Every touchpoint.
Every decision point.

Done?

Now answer these 3 questions:

1. How many steps did you draw?
If it's more than 5, your funnel is too complicated. Complexity kills conversion.

2. Can you name the specific content/offer at each step?
If not, you have gaps. People don't convert through gaps-they leave.

3. Is there one clear "next step" at every stage?
If someone has to guess what to do next, 70% won't do anything.

Here's what I see when founders do this exercise:

→ 40% realise they have no clear entry point (Awareness problem)
→ 30% realise they have no nurture system (Trust problem)
→ 20% realise they have no clear offer (Conversion problem)
→ 10% realise their funnel actually works (but still have optimisation gaps)

Post your journey map in the comments (screenshot, drawing, or just write it out).

I'll reply with the 1 thing you should fix first based on your funnel structure.

(This is how I audit every founder setup. Takes 3 minutes. Reveals 80% of leaks.)

For the first year of working with founders, I was measuring the wrong thing.

I'd send a monthly report full of numbers.

Reach. Impressions. Follower growth. Engagement rate.

And every month, the founder would nod, say "looks good," and nothing would change in their business.

I thought I was doing my job.

I wasn't.

I was giving them a false sense of progress.

The real signal — qualified conversations, pipeline movement, revenue attribution — wasn't even in my reports.

Because I didn't know to look for it. Or maybe I was afraid to, because those numbers were harder to move and harder to explain.

There was a moment with one client where they said to me, very quietly:

"Natasha, we've been growing our follower count for 8 months. But I still can't pay myself a salary from this business."

That hit me harder than any missed KPI ever did.

From that day, I changed what I measure. What I report. What I celebrate.

Vanity metrics feel good.
Pipeline metrics build businesses.

Every founder I work with now starts with one question:

"What would tell you - in 90 days - that this marketing is actually working for your business?"

Not "what would look good."

What would actually work.

The answer to that question is the only metric that matters.

I wish someone had pushed me to ask it sooner.

What metric did you chase too long before realising it wasn't moving your business forward?

A founder called me last month, frustrated.

"We're posting 5 times a week. Running ads. Have a 10K following. But zero inbound leads."

I asked one question.

"Can you show me your last 30 days of content and next to each post, tell me how many leads it generated?"

Silence.

Then: "I... don't track that."

That's when I knew the problem wasn't the content.
It was the absence of intention behind it.

Here's what I found when I dug in:

→ Every post was designed to get likes. Not to start conversations.
→ Every ad was optimised for clicks. Not for qualified traffic.
→ Every caption ended with a hashtag. Not with a reason to reach out.

They were creating content for the algorithm.
Not for their customer.

We didn't change the frequency.
We didn't redesign the creatives.

We changed one thing:

Every piece of content now had a job.

→ This post is for awareness.
→ This post is for trust.
→ This post is for conversion.

6 weeks later: 14 inbound DMs. 6 discovery calls. 3 closed clients.

Same budget. Same team. Same posting schedule.

Just a system with intention behind it.

Here's the uncomfortable truth I've started telling every founder I work with:

Content without a conversion architecture is just noise with good aesthetics.

How many of your last 10 posts had a clear, intentional job to do?

Be honest. I was in the same place too, not long ago.

Blinkit delivers groceries in 8 minutes.

And most early-stage founders are still reviewing their marketing performance once a month.

Something doesn't add up.

I've been thinking about this since I read about how Blinkit's dark store model works.

Every store tracks sell-through rates hourly.
If a SKU isn't moving, it's pulled within 24 hours.
If a locality shows demand for a product, it's stocked within 48.

Their feedback loop is ruthless. And it's fast.

Meanwhile, in founder marketing:

→ Run an ad for 3 weeks without checking if the landing page converts.
→ Post on LinkedIn for 2 months without asking who actually messaged after reading it.
→ Pay an agency retainer for 6 months without a single honest performance review.

Blinkit would've shut that store down in a week.

The business model is different, I know.

But the principle isn't.

The founders who scale fastest aren't the ones with the best ideas.
They're the ones with the fastest feedback loops.

Here's what a quick-commerce-speed marketing review actually looks like for an early-stage brand:

✅ Weekly: What content drove the most conversations (not just reach)?
✅ Bi-weekly: What's the CAC from each active channel?
✅ Monthly: Which channel, if cut today, would hurt revenue?

That's it.

Not a 40-slide deck.
Not a quarterly brand review.

Just three honest questions asked consistently.

The brands I've seen grow fastest in the last 2 years weren't the ones who spent the most.

They were the ones who learned the fastest.

What does your marketing feedback loop look like right now?

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Matthew Murray

Natasha Kohli

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The Battle

Matthew Murray

Natasha Kohli

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Natasha Kohli's LinkedIn Performance

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