Gotta Keep The Family Close

Happy Sunday! 

I hope you had a relaxing and fun July 4th. 

I hope you’re surrounded by incredible energy today. If not, let’s change that. I’m Julia, and every week in this newsletter, I break down marketing insights I’ve learned building software and consumer products (bootstrapped + VC-backed) and lean into the organic, creator, and paid strategies that fuel viral growth. 

PLUG: One of my good friends, Jason, built a killer applicant fraud detection tool used by top VCs and their portcos (M13, Bessemer, Redpoint, etc) — it cuts out 99% of the B.S. traffic you’re getting inbounded with, flags people who lie on their resume/impersonate others, and helps you avoid any engineers doing 15 jobs. HMU if you want a direct intro + check it out here.

Onto the fun stuff….

If you find smart people who execute for you, keep them in your orbit forever. Together, you can bring greatness into this world (with the best byproducts being making a strong impact and, of course, capital + resource aggregation). 

In the startup world, you’re likely an owner of your company. Thinking like one is critical.

When the cards fall, you want your business to be in the most solid place possible, and that means making killer decisions on who you build with. After talking with good friends, everyone from owners of AI startups with $MMM raised to owners of family businesses with $75M+ AUM, cracking the below formula is key to longevity.

Here’s a how to keep people hooked on building with you long term:

Trust = Radical Transparency × Business Performance × Legacy

If any factor is zero, trust collapses. If all are high, you have unbreakable, compounding trust with customers, teams, and the market. 

Today, I’ll lean into this topic from the POV of being an owner and high-level operator, and what you should do.

You should be brutally honest about the state of your business. Inflating opportunity and focusing on metrics outside of the core (which should almost always be revenue), will cost you growth. 

I saw my favorite band, The Lumineers, play last night and am always shocked at how long musicians try and fail before ultimately succeeding. How can people be so okay with failure over and over (for ~1 decade), but still stick it out together? 

It’s because they are radically transparent with each other about the state of their business, partnership, and long-term vision. 

Secrets are shady af, and people don’t benefit from them. Your core metrics should be reported on among key stakeholders at a minimum weekly (if not daily). 

Concrete owners (usually 1 stakeholder) should be responsible for driving specific business goals that all translate into the overall top-down goal of the company (again, usually revenue).

As an operator at a business, it’s critical for you to be radically transparent about your business performance and what you think about the overall state of the business.

If you think one business function is not working properly, how do you want to address that with the key stakeholders? Is it a function of their work or is part of the business machine not working correctly? 

This is where you need total clarity before wasting hours, weeks, or years trying to fix something that will always be broken.

Before pouring in effort/time, be confident:

Don’t get stuck optimizing a dead-end. Redefine the inputs, reshape the system, and ensure your time is spent where it actually moves the business forward.

Legacy is a competitive advantage and strategic asset, but if you don’t inherently have a legacy as a startup, how do you build it?

Part 1: Building Legacy Now

Building with the smartest, highest perseverance people dedicated to solving a shared mission. From this, you build extreme customer loyalty (the best moat of any business) and a working product.

Example: My friend, whose family owns a regional automotive chain ($MM/revenue), has customers who wait 6+ hours to get their cars serviced during peak times. This is because the transactional relationship is underlined by something deeper: a personal relationship with the customers built on trust, value, and crystal-clear communication. 

There are automotive chains everywhere, but people have been coming back here for 30 years because of the level of care and service they receive.

Brand credibility starts with internal alignment (built on radical transparency + business performance). Your vibe bleeds out to your customers and the market. 

Part 2: Maintaining Legacy 

This is where your business turns generational. 

How many times can your company grow and reinvent itself without losing its soul?

Legacy is a fine and tricky line to walk. The most successful companies treat legacy like an opportunity to take bolder actions and outpace themselves, but know the infrastructure they have and can make the right calculated bets.

Example: Sears vs. Amazon – Sears is a cautionary tale of a company that sold off its core identity (Craftsman tools) for short-term cash during its decline. Sears purchased the Craftsman brand in 1927 for $500 and built it into a powerhouse which created brand loyalty (with part of their brand being lifetime warranties).

When they sold the brand (for ~$900M, with only $525M paid at closing) to try and avoid bankruptcy (which inevitably happened a short year later), they shorted customers, destroyed the trust they spent generations to build, wrecked their legacy…ultimately leading to customers choosing other retail venues.

This crazy Reddit thread from 1 year ago asks former Sears employees when they knew it was failing (and the answers are so wild & cautionary for the signals founders/companies send)

​​Many businesses lose their shot at building a legacy by also expanding into products or markets that dilute their core identity. They chase growth at the cost of what made them trustworthy in the first place.

On the other hand, businesses that make the right bets can reinvent the world.

This is exactly why you gotta keep your people and identity (known as assets/products) close. Anyone and anything you can have clarity and conviction in is a standout. 

Build with those who align on radical transparency, execute relentlessly, and care about the legacy you’re creating.

It’s the trust you’ve built with your people, and the trust they’ve built with your customers, that keep you standing. 

It’s so exciting to see so many of my nearly 1K readers building incredible things. You know who you are, and I’m soooo proud to live in a world that you’re part of! 

Have the best week until next Sunday. 

Julia

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