Startups can't compete with established leaders on credibility, but they have a unique advantage: access. Position your offer not as being "better," but as providing direct contact with the founder, contrasting it with the impersonal, multi-layered support of a large corporation.
For high-ticket offers, the most effective call-to-action on TikTok is not a link in bio, but telling users to "DM me on Instagram." This leverages TikTok's massive reach while funneling prospects to the more mature sales conversation infrastructure on Instagram.
Allocate a fixed percentage of income to a learning budget and spend it every month. Expect 9 out of 10 investments (courses, agencies, tools) to yield zero ROI. The one that succeeds will deliver a 10x return, making the entire portfolio profitable.
Businesses often limit content output fearing audience burnout. In reality, organic posts only reach a tiny fraction (1-2%) of followers. The real bottleneck is the team's ability to produce enough high-value content, not the audience's capacity to consume it.
To learn a critical skill like ad buying, don't just hire an agency to do the work. Instead, pay them their full fee but mandate that all work is done on live calls where you control the computer mouse. They direct you, you execute, and you learn the skill firsthand.
When ad performance breaks at scale, the problem isn't your bidding strategy; it's that you've saturated the 3% of the market ready to buy now. To grow, you must target the other 97% with broader, less direct hooks and lead magnets that educate them first.
For new creators without revenue milestones or case studies, credibility can be built through demonstrating immense effort. Instead of saying "I made $100M," say "I created 35,000 pieces of content." This shifts the proof from outcomes you can't control to inputs you can.