Founders commonly over-index on distribution and tactics before getting their core message right, but distribution is merely a multiplier that amplifies whatever message — good or bad — you put into it.

30:17first one is it can be very easy to do this too. It's a trap to fall into because the timeline feels so addicting, but a lot of founders really over index on distribution and tactics before actually getting the message right. Distribution is really just a multiplier on the message. And so if the message is wrong, now you've amplified something that is either irrelevant for your business or not the thing that your

30:44audience needs to hear or like as we've talked about, maybe worst of all, it's uninteresting. And now you've told everybody that you care about that you're not very interesting. So in practice, a lot of founders would come to us and say, you know, how do we go viral or how do we get on Joe Rogan? And if you actually think about it, you could get on Joe

31:00Rogan and then not say the right thing. And this is maybe the worst thing ever. And this is important because it applies not just to old media, but to new media, right? Like you could go on Bloomberg or Fox and get the message wrong and you could also do the same thing with new media or going direct. And so uh that the first mistake is not actually

31:19spending the time to get the message right. And that's the highest leverage, most important thing to get right. And then from there, I guess the next mistake is actually just figuring out how to do that. Um and the way that I saw that is you can get the message wrong if you focus too much on the inputs as opposed to the outputs or the outcomes that you want to

31:39drive towards. And this is sort of paradoxical because the companies that are very successful struggle with this the most because there are a lot of interesting things that you could say about your company, right? There's like so many milestones, the mission is really compelling, there's like a lot of different things that you would want to say, but depending on what you're trying to achieve, the thing that you want to say

31:58should probably be different, right? Just because everything is true doesn't mean it's all relevant or strategic for your business. And so instead of starting with the inputs of here's this huge massive everything that we could say. Let's just say it all right now and hope people remember potentially the thing that we think is most interesting, but we haven't identified that thing. Start with the outcome, right? Do we want to sell to a