🚦 Before You Add Another Feature

I have to confess something…

When I launched QuickSign earlier this year, I was so excited about what we could do with AI-powered production that I ignored one really important part of launching a new product.

Distribution.

QuickSign is a functional and clean DocuSign alternative with built in waivers, AI & more I built, from the ground up.

It solves a legitimate problem.

I use it internally all the time.

But outside of my own ecosystem and some early, loyal users it stalled.

Yes, it's a boring business - but plenty of boring businesses do great.

Why would such a great product be so hard to get off the ground?

Because I treated distribution as something we could solve later.

AI has reduced the cost and time required to build products, publish content, and package expertise.

We can move from idea to functional product in days.

But that creates a false sense of progress.

The scarce advantage is no longer production capacity, it's the ability to reach the right people, earn their attention, and bring them back repeatedly.

Today I have a breakdown of how you can rethink distribution when attention is the most expensive thing on the internet, so that you don't end up in the same position.

👩‍🔬 The Distribution-before-build Test.

A working product without traffic or trust or an acquisition loop is an unfinished business.

The reality is that customer acquisition costs jumped roughly 40% to 60% between 2023 and 2025. 🔗

Meanwhile, it costs 5 to 7 times more 🔗 to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

The question is no longer whether we can build it.

We need to ask ourselves how the right people will repeatedly discover, try, buy, and return.

Before you build anything new, you have to pass the distribution-before-build test.

It's the test I wish I'd run before I built QuickSign.

If you cannot answer these questions clearly you need to pause the build.

Who are the first 20 likely buyers?
Where do they already gather online?
Who already has their trust?
What event or behavior indicates immediate intent?
What is the smallest experience you can sell or test?
What will bring a user back after the first interaction?

For me, I pushed these down because I was so fired up to bring a new startup to life. But if you have an incredible ‘thing’ and no one to show it to, you have a personal treasure - and that's NOT a business.

It's not even a hobby.

🧭 Build, Buy, or Borrow

There are three ways to get attention.

You can:

build organic content
buy ads
borrow audiences through partners and podcasts.

1️⃣ Building an audience means separating creation from publishing.

Your contribution should be the irreplaceable piece, which is your judgment, your stories, and your voice.

Delegate the formatting and the posting.

Go inch wide and mile deep because hyper-specific content finds the right niche.

2️⃣ Buying an audience is getting harder.

You need locked-in attribution and enough cart value for the economics to work.

Do not buy more traffic until you understand why your current traffic fails to convert.

3️⃣ Borrowing an audience is where the real leverage lives right now.

And it is exactly how we are building the moat for Casthouse.

🎙️ Podcasting Needs a Moat

Let's look at the podcasting industry.

The global podcast economy generated $9.2 billion in revenue in 2025, 🔗 which is up 23% from the year before.

But there is a dark side to that growth.

For every three people who start a podcast, one stops.🔗

The production burden is crushing.

Recording is the fun part.

Then there's the editing… clipping … formatting … show notes …

and the distribution… that's the grind that breaks creators.

Not to mention video content, which adds massive complexity to workflows.

The Partner Advantage

The partner advantage is basically the idea that a product scales faster through existing distribution channels than a competitor could ever copy the underlying tech.

With Casthouse, I'm not making the same mistake twice.

I'm designing Casthouse with distribution built in from day one.

I'm pairing our operational and product capabilities with partners who already reach podcasters and can lead the sales conversation.

My team and I are also designing the demo flow so a prospect can process their own episode and see the review link first to understand how it works with their own show before every asking for more than an email address.

No upfront studio setup.

Revisions happen before payment.

Approval triggers checkout.

We remove the friction before they experience the value, and we distribute through voices they already trust.

That is a moat.

And this is working.

📬 Renting vs. Owning Attention

Followers are rented ➡️ Email addresses are owned.

Social content should create an identifiable next action that moves the person into a direct relationship.

I use ManyChat to automate this.

Someone comments a keyword on a tutorial post, the DM asks for an email, the lead magnet is delivered, and the follow-up begins.

Easy.

Email is the journey and not just the newsletter.

Remember that every purchase or opt-in needs a logical successor.

Audit your welcome sequence quarterly.

If your nurture system never mentions your new offers, they will not convert.

Remember that engagement is a liar.

Likes are not purchases.
Survey answers are not purchases.

Waitlists show interest; payment shows commitment.

→ Use a checkout page to test demand before building a full landing page.

→ Use an audit or scorecard as the entry offer to reveal the buyer’s actual problem.

The strongest product marketing lets the prospect experience the result before requiring commitment.

🤖 How AI Changes Distribution

This is where AI stops being a toy and starts being a distribution engine.

A lot of people think you should use AI to write your posts for you.

When actually, you should use AI to find the distribution gaps in the content you already have and present it to you, to make your own.

You can feed your existing ideas into a model and have it build the exact sequences that move people from rented attention >>> owned attention.

✍️ Prompt You Can Use This Week (Steal This)

"I am pasting my latest newsletter below. I need to turn this into a distribution engine. Extract the core thesis and write a 3-part welcome email sequence for new subscribers who opt in to learn about this topic. Email 1 must deliver immediate value based on the thesis. Email 2 must share a specific failure or lesson related to the topic. Email 3 must pitch a paid diagnostic or consultation based on what you know I like to offer my clients. Write all three in a conversational tone with short paragraphs and no corporate buzzwords."

🤝 I'm Here to Help

AI makes knowledge abundant, which makes judgment and lived experience more valuable.

Technology should increase the quality of human interaction rather than just increase content volume.

👉 If your product were finished tomorrow, where would the first 100 customers come from?

Before you add another feature, build one repeatable path from attention to email, and from email to experience, and from experience to payment.

Build your moat.

If you want to run the distribution-before-build test on your own product before you build it, that's a VIP day
If you have a podcast you HAVE TO test Casthouse
If you're getting started with Claude, download my skills stack