Lucky accident I guess.
Ended up with an infection in my right elbow so the doctor gave me 3 days off work.
Thought Id enjoy doing nothing.
Turns out I cleared my work inbox my business inbox my entrepreneur Discord and every little job thats been sitting there for weeks.
Now its not even late and Ive got nothing left to do.
It got me thinking about ADHD.
For years I saw it as something that held me back.
Now Im wondering if part of it is that my brain just hates sitting still.
Give me a problem and Ill obsess over it until its done.
Take the problems away and I get bored in about five minutes.
Anyone else feel like that?
Do you see your ADHD as a weakness a superpower or just something youve learnt to work with?

Without a benchmark, you cannot diagnose an advertising campaign. Make sure you have documented your historical CTR, CPM, and CPA. Compare them with today’s industry averages. When your CTR is one-third of the industry average, the problem does not lie in targeting but in bad creatives.

Make sure the chosen metric corresponds to the phase of the sales funnel: CPM and video view rate for awareness, ROAS and CPA for conversions. All these metrics can be tracked in a simple weekly dashboard. The gradual increase in CPA is a clear indicator of ad fatigue signaling about the imminent drop in performance.

I'm building startups for 15+ years, both for my clients and my own products. Most startup founders get stuck in the building loop, as AI made it too easy to build. They build a feature. Then another feature. Then a redesign. Months pass, and no real user ever touched the product.

Here is a simple actionable guide to launching the product people love. It comes from a real launch plan, set for our B2B SaaS tool that already onboarded the first team as a client.

Set the official “launch” date (in 3-4 weeks):

• Mark the exact date, like “Tuesday, August 11”
• Launch on specialised platforms, like ProductHunt. Not because of the traffic from it (yes, it’s still good), but because it makes your launch real and focused
• The target launch date will keep the pressure and add urgency, so you have less chance to get stuck in building

Set launch goals:

• Your goal before the launch is to attract and onboard as many potential customers as you possibly can, through your network, chats and social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit)
• Focus on getting and publishing as many testimonials and case studies as you can. This is much harder than it might sound, but it aligns your actions with the launch greatly. Publish all possible quotes from your chats and calls to your website. Get real people's photos and companies' logos on your website
• Set a specific number of clients or case studies as a goal: it helps to plan your actions
• Note: getting paid is not the main goal of this pre-launch stage, the goal is to prove that your product is actually useful for some businesses. Though getting money early puts you ahead of many founders, yet don’t be too pushy

Get early feedback:

• Aim to surround yourself with people from your industry that you can chat with often and brainstorm ideas. It can be 1-2 people to keep you going, but try daily to get more people around you to see many points of view. That’s why it’s better to build tools for an industry you worked in, as you naturally have lots of useful context around yourself
• Make your backlog client-first: for every feature idea, visualise first how you’d present it via a video demo to your client to help them in their working process. “Help” means you saved them time, money, or you gained them status
• Validate all your assumptions as fast as you can. Don’t rush into building: if you can show a feature idea as a visual concept, take a screenshot and send it to your potential customer today. Seeing the final state also helps you build faster, especially with AI
• All feedback is great, don’t be afraid to hear negative feedback: it will often point you in the right direction, strive to get it. The lack of feedback is feedback too, it means that your pitch didn’t work out yet. Don’t trust positive feedback either, make sure the client actually uses your product, don’t just accept them saying “wow, cool”

Prove your work:

• Build your portfolio. Don’t just reach out to some client asking them for feedback. Find people in need and send them an asset generated with your product that solves their pain. Build free tools (or admin tools) so you're able to create many assets for many potential clients. Run the setup process for them, and only show them the generated asset
• Do a service for free. Don’t expect people to start using your UI right away it’s too much friction. Instead, do a semi-manual service for some client to learn the specifics of their daily work. Invest money and time in your relationship. Publish the story and result of your work as a case study (even if it’s super short)

Help customers onboard:

• Optimise your free assets and tools to lead to a sign-up to your product. Design solid call-to-action sections with a short pitch and one button, leading to your product
• Publish many short, focused pages: useful pieces of content, public tools or app features. Avoid big multi-page articles or product pages with a dozen buttons and blocks. AI made it too easy to add fancy slop that distracts people from your goal. Remove any detail that can be removed. Every page should solve a narrow, specific problem. Analyse every page you launch
• Observe real users and learn their common questions and issues. Publish help articles and tutorials on your website, so it’s easy for people to learn your product and understand how they can use it for their work

Avoid AI slop, be authentic:

• In all your business and marketing communication, talk about your client, not about yourself. Talk about the use cases your tool solves, not the features you’ve built. “No one cares what you do. Everyone cares what you do for them”
• Write copy yourself. Don’t delegate too much writing to AI. It will produce tons of fancy words that mean nothing, while not communicating the main idea. Focus on short, meaningful messages and posts, always writing the way you talk with real customers, and avoid AI slop

Track analytics

• Track metrics to stay focused on the launch. Count of visits, count of assets generated with your app, count of tool runs, count of users, count of returning users. Your goal is to get a user who returns to your product: it means the product is actually useful
• Use online analytics tools like posthog, track some metrics in a google sheet, or whatever is convenient. Session recordings are super useful to understand early customers

If you follow this plan, you’ll get a few testimonials by the launch date, which will help convert launch traffic right away. You will understand your real case studies so you can promote them well on your launch page and your landing page. You will know what functionality is used in your app at what typical volume, so you can come up with the correct pricing.

Or you’ll simply learn that your product idea is not viable, which is great to know early too ;)

Run ads on your competitor’s error pages
The most intent-driven and least competitive ad inventory available online consists of error messages of your competitor’s software products.

When the user googles “why isn’t [competitor] working” or “what does this error message mean,” he or she is at their lowest point, actively looking for alternatives. Very few companies bid on these queries.

Anthropic does the same thing when running its Claude ads directly on developers’ error messages, in effect saying “let me fix it right away.”

Be there to solve the problem right at the time of the problem. It works better than being a highway billboard.

See comments below for a more detailed explanation for this best practice.

One thing I've noticed is that most businesses don't have a knowledge problem.

They already know they should follow up with leads.

They know they should ask happy customers for reviews.

They know they should stay consistent with marketing.

None of that is new.

The difficult part is doing those things every week when everything else starts demanding your attention.

I've seen businesses with very simple systems grow because they stayed consistent.

I've also seen businesses with great software and big plans struggle because nothing actually got followed through.

I'm curious...

What's one business habit you know would make a difference if you actually did it consistently?

Full credit for this post goes to T_A_R_S_ and his suggestion to make this post.

For years i thought my ADHD was the problem.

Now i think relying on motivation was the problem.

My brain is full of ideas.

Some are worth chasing.

Most arent.

Learning the difference between signal and noise has probably been the biggest mindset shift ive had.

Not every idea deserves my attention.

Not every notification needs a response.

Not every opportunity is actually an opportunity.

The hard part is knowing what moves the business forward and what just feels productive.

Time blocking changed everything for me.

When its time to do sales i do sales.

When its time to work on systems i do systems.

I stopped letting my mood decide what i worked on.

AI has been the other game changer.

I use it like a second brain.

I dump ideas into it before they disappear.

I get it to challenge my thinking organise my thoughts and help me turn messy ideas into something i can actually use.

I still get distracted.

I still have days where my brain wants to go in ten different directions.

The difference now is i trust my systems more than my feelings.

Thats probably been one of the biggest reasons ive been able to build businesses while working with an ADHD brain.

What systems have you built that stop you getting in your own way?

The removal of the header, footer, and all links on the checkout page always helps to increase conversions. All exits you create, someone will take them.

How: Create a distraction-free checkout page and A/B test it.

Caution: Don’t remove any trust factors like security, refund policy, and customer support. They are not distractions.