RBGT: Real Business Growth Tactics

HIDDEN LONGREAD FOR FOUNDERS/BUSINESS OWNERS ONLY

I’m so damn tired of all this content from so-called “expert experts”:

– Don’t even think about starting a startup until you’ve watched that YCombinator video
– Don’t run ads until you’ve taken that Instagram marketing course
– Don’t scale production until you’ve implemented the 6sigma-agile-TRIZ-figma-figaro methodology

I suppose I know my product, my industry, and my audience better than anyone else.

Not a single “expert” has ever proven me wrong on that in my 13-year journey as a startup founder (with 1 exit).

I (and every founder I know) think about our products 24/7

– NO ONE ELSE is scouting the market for best practices the way we are, looking for stuff we can adapt
– NO ONE’S obsessing over how our month-3 cohorts correlate with the emails we send
– NO ONE’S running as many “what if we tweak XXX, maybe it’ll improve YYY” loops in their head

Yes, I’ve got blind spots.
Every founder does.

And yeah, we all hit walls and sometimes fall for the shiny TED/YouTube/Instagram logic and easy advice like

1️⃣ Your unit economics don’t work? You’re just buying ads through the wrong channel

2️⃣ You’re burning out because you don’t know how to delegate and haven’t built a system (alt version: just hire an A-team)

3️⃣ Your ads aren’t converting? Just build a “user-first” product and the users will magically come

All with case studies, case studies, and more case studies. Posts, interviews, podcasts.
Success stories. Expert “expertise.”

Let me be straight with you

📌 You can’t change your behavior without therapy

📌 You can’t learn English without regular practice

📌 And you can’t build a big business by following YouTube-expert-from-a-podcast advice

What really works for me

Based on my experience working at a venture fund with an absolutely top-tier team that actually uses this approach to validate promising startups.

The idea behind the approach is super simple and straightforward: talk not to the ones shouting the loudest about themselves (like through ads), but to the ones actually doing the real work.

1. Let’s say right now, my current product’s biggest challenge is ad payback time

2. Let’s say we’ve been grinding on it for a while — some progress, but no breakthrough yet. (Every business always has that one key problem at any given time.)

3. So in Intch (we’ve got this side-product there, tailored for founders), I set up a request:
   “Weekly, intro me to someone who’s a specialist in paid acquisition/monetization for XYZ business types.”
   (Sometimes I just want to rub elbows with other founders — not competitors, but folks from weird adjacent spaces)

4. The algorithm picks the right person (sometimes from startups, sometimes from big corps), but always with 🟢 right experience and 🟢 someone I don’t know yet.

5. It messages them for me, sends them my profile.

6. Their motivation is obvious: talk to a founder, dig into a real problem, and if there’s a match (see below) — I might offer them a part-time role.

7. Once/week I hop on a call with someone new, give the full, raw context, and we tear into the problem together.

8. If the convo clicks and I hear something that resonates with everything I already know — I bring them on part-time. Not?
   “Great meeting you — let’s keep in touch.”

Is it a give-and-take? Yes.

But it’s:
a) Honest — no BS expert-for-the-sake-of-expert. If we can get results, we work. If not — thanks and goodbye. A team seat has to be earned.
b) Sharpens my blind spots, gives me fresh angles, but always grounded in my reality
c) Takes 1 hour/week — I don’t need to go hunting, DMing, pitching for a call
d) Only with people doing real work — no “I took a Coursera course, now I’m an expert” types.

And the kicker? It works.

Q1 2025 Results:

🔥 Churn: –20% drop in cancellations (first 40 days after signup)

🔥 Refund rate: from 0.65% to 0.225% (at our scale, it’s massive)

🔥 Launched Bing — new channel, and performance’s already close to our top one

❌ Could we have done it ourselves? Sure. But we didn’t.

❌ Could I have done it with ChatGPT? Nope — did thousand iterations = always  generic result.

Keep doing what you’re doing — just do it more effectively. Don’t fall for easy advice.

Want to do the same? Set up a steady flow of these kinds of meetings for yourself on a regular basis.

No time to search? Use Intch’s tool for business owners to find people like this.

It’s $39/month — honestly, I don’t know what could be cheaper.

Sign-up link with the product I mentioned above: https://try.intch.org/intch-pro/email