Big News: Changing email platforms

Moving from Kit to Substack

Hey there!

You may have subscribed to my newsletter when I was launching The Startup Book, during a webinar with Olga Bondareva, or one of my various other webinars on book-writing.

Or you might have subscribed to download my book, “The Viral Genius Playbook.”

Or maybe you just subscribed because you’re my friend (well, everybody’s my friend…to me, subscriber = friend). Or you liked what I was sharing on LinkedIn, and decided to get more of it.

Or…you subscribed through my podcast, “The AI Marketing Case Studies Podcast,” which has now become “The Viral Genius Podcast.”

However you originally subscribed, I wanted to let you know that I am now using Substack.

The benefits are multiple:

• I have an archive of all my content on my Substack website: past podcast episodes, blog posts from my Startup Book page, and a few videos.

• All my newsletters will also be present as blog posts.

• I will also be making my books (Nearshore Marketing, The Startup Book, and The Viral Genius Playbook), available here.

• I will be writing a new mini-book every quarter, and as a subscriber you’ll get the chapters as I write them here in the newsletter, and on my Substack website.

• You are grandfathered in as a Founding Member of my Substack. Everybody that subscribes after Dec. 31, 2025 will have to pay $250 to become a foundering member, and they’ll get access to all my upcoming books, and my Fernie chatbot (in development). But these are all benefits you will get automatically.

Exciting stuff!

Feel free to unsubscribe if you feel you have to. I will understand.

And check out my Substack website

https://startupstrikes.substack.com

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Why I’ve Turned Against Content Marketing…for 2nd Act Founders

I know this sounds like sacrilege, but bear with me for a moment.

I’ve developed a nice little marketing agency servicing 2nd act founders: founders with more experience than most of us.

They’ve been through the corporate wringer. They’ve managed P&Ls. Sales teams. Development Teams.

They’ve been serial entrepreneurs. Maybe this is their first startup after 30 years in the corporate world. Or maybe this is their 5th startup after a life as a company founder.

Either way, they’re starting a company in their late 40s, 50s, 60s or even 70s.

And they don’t have time for the slow burn of content marketing to work.

They don’t have time to wait the 18-36 months to establish thought leadership through:

• Daily LinkedIn posting

• Weekly newsletter and blog publishing

• Monthly webinars

They need to establish their founder-led brand NOW.

Between health scares, the coming AI-pocalypse (maybe it’ll come, maybe it won’t - but let’s not take our chances), and the breathtaking pace of innovation and life, the slow burn doesn’t work for 2nd act founders.

But strike marketing does.

(My friend Chris Stanley - the Mini Book Guy - was instrumental in helping me go down this path. Visit his Substack here).

I’ve decided to pivot and go all-in on the concept of strike marketing. It’s a concept the Category Pirates call lightning strike marketing.

• Think Felix Baumgartner’s 2012 Space Jump, by Red Bull

• Or Twitter’s 2007 South by Southwest takeover.

• And of course you remember Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl Ad

Those were lightning strikes.

But what I’m talking about is strike marketing, a more approachable, low-cost type of lightning strike.

I have used virtual summits successfully in the past. They cost me nothing. I helped my client Ed Ortiz, CEO of We Are The Robots (WATR) generate 904 leads through their “AI Smart Summit” virtual summit lightning strike (I talk about it here).

I’m publishing the mini-book on Strike Marketing

I’m writing it publicly here on my Substack.

I’ve already written the Strike Marketing Manifesto, which I’ll post here shortly.

And over the next few weeks I’ll be posting the chapters as I write them here.

These will be rough chapters, so don’t expect some super-polished finished draft. But with your feedback I’ll refine it, and ultimately publish it on Amazon and other book sites.

I’ll be organizing my own Startup Strike

Finally, I’m planning my own lightning strike - the Strike Marketing Summit - in the next few months.

I’ll organize it in public here as well.

Let me know what you think! And don’t hesitate to unsubscribe if you feel this will be too much for you.

Best,

Fernando Labastida