You can brute‑force a business to six figures. You can’t brute‑force your nervous system. Founder Fit is the bit everyone ignores, right up until collapse taps you on the shoulder and says “we need to talk.”
Get Business Fit: No pull-ups, just validation for quick decisions
Hivemind Lessons: Why some of you haven’t heard from me in a while
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GET FIT THIS WEEK:
The 5 Fits for Founder Success
I was sitting in a lecture hall at a local community meetup earlier this year when I learned about the Four Fits framework for business growth.
A simple model for demonstrating the core 4 pillars that you need to function well together to grow a successful business.
Firstly, the simplicity of it really just stuck, how can you forget a 4-quadrant square?!
The Four Fits for Business Growth:
Product Market Fit: “when you build something that a meaningful segment of customers desperately wants.”
Product Channel Fit: “products must be built for the channels where customers discover them”
Channel Model Fit: “ensures your business model economics work with your chosen distribution channels.”
Model Market Fit: “your chosen business model aligns with how your target market prefers to buy and pay for solutions.”
*Definitions sourced on Reforge.com and informed by Brian Balfour.
And then it clicked; in a way that no other framework had for me up until then.
I had to find a way to make each of these business pillars work together in order for my business to “flow” and stop feeling so forced.
Building an audience (i.e. market) is great, but have I achieved Product x Market fit? What about Channel x Market fit??
And then I learned that I could run validation experiments to test different ways of making my pillars “fit” with each other.
But for me, there was still one element missing from this.
I realised this when I was diagnosed with Autism recently. There are rarely any business metrics for confirming that all of these things agree with what I want as a founder. Never mind for how my body/mental health is set up to handle them. 😅
So I’d like to propose:
The Five Fits for Founder Success:
Now including:
Founder Fit: How you personally align with your product, channel, market and model.
How to use it this week:
Pick one offer. Score each Fit out of 10. Be honest.
Circle the lowest two. Those are your leverage points.
Run one validation experiment per circled Fit in the next 7 days. Example: if Channel Fit is 4/10, trial two distribution tests your people will actually see. If Founder Fit is 3/10, cap delivery hours and raise price for the next three clients.
The rule of one: improve one Fit at a time, one experiment at a time, until your business runs without you white‑knuckling it.
Which "Fit" will you focus on this week?
- 🎁 Product Market Fit - I need to clarify my ideal customer
- 🚛 Product Channel Fit - I really need more leads
- 📲 Channel Model Fit - I'm not sure I'm showing up in the right places
- 🤙 Model Market Fit - I need to rethink how I sell/deliver to clients🤙
- 👌 Founder Fit - I want to rethink my own commitments now
VOTES FROM LAST WEEK:
Does your business depend on you?
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 100% of you are the bottleneck for almost everything in your business!
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% have some systems but the team still defaults to you. Really?? 🤯
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% have things mostly running without you, but we can dream right?
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% have achieved founder fit! Sad but true.😥
HIVEMIND LESSONS LEARNED:
My Biggest Fail of the Year
I have a confession. I've been running my newsletter since August 2025. And I've never been able to get my subscribers above 250.
Despite all my campaigns, despite all of the things I've run this year, I could not get above 250 and my team and I just could not figure out what we were doing wrong.
Every month, ~50 people would subscribe almost like clockwork.
Until last week, I realised like clockwork actually meant there must be an automation hidden somewhere that I didn't know about.
In fact, there was an automation that unsubscribed members from my list if they hadn't opened an email within 30 days.
I eventually corrected the issue and found all my subscribers again, but not before crying to myself softly about all the other times I cried this year that my friends unsubscribed from me, when they actually didn't. 🙈
I’m actually happy to report that my subscribers are actually closer to 600:
THANK YOU to all of you who follow me here, as this is definitely my candid portion of the internet. And apologies if I lost you there for a moment!
I also have to say that I’m grateful for the Founder Hivemind for connecting me with peers who helped me solve this without making me feel stupid.
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A rabbit hole for you…
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