The “5am Boring Routines” that delivers 100s of Subscribers per day

Includes - My Podium Method, the Cold Start Problem, and “My 5am Boring Routines”

My Podium Method is one of the most useful prioritisation frameworks I’ve used working with founders for decades

The idea is simple—and ruthless.

Instead of juggling four or five “important” priorities, you choose three:

🏅Gold

🥈Silver

🥉Bronze

That’s it.

Gold gets 50% of your resources. Choose wisely.

The logic comes from Price’s Law:

Very few things actually pay off. Everything else belongs in the parking lot.

This matters in every startup.

It matters most in media.

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Inputs vs Outputs (and Why Media Is Different)

Most founders obsess over outputs:

Impressions

Likes

Content quality/Perfection

But platforms don’t reward effort.

They reward behaviour between profiles.

Especially early on.

This is the Cold Start Problem (Substack edition):

You could write the cure for a cancer. Years of research. Groundbreaking..

The algorithm doesn’t care.

So the real challenge isn’t writing content.

It’s being discovered.

Discovery comes first.

Content compounds after.

That’s not philosophy.

That’s mathematics.

Media platforms are mathematical by design.

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The Podium Question That Actually Matters

Early on, there’s only one question worth answering:

What gets me discovered?

Answer that.

Focus only on those inputs.

Put everything else aside.

That’s your podium.

Do this long enough and discovery scales. Substack rewards you. Compounding kicks in. People actually start seeing your work.

Yes—being discovered is more important than the content itself at the beginning.

Not because content doesn’t matter. But because unseen content has zero surface area.

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My 5am Boring Routines ☕🐕

Every morning at 5am:

3x cortados

Walk my two dogs

Company dashboards (500 investments, but I check ~5/day)

What am I looking for?

Inputs vs outputs. Always.

Specifically, my Substack podium:

🥇 Gold — Recommendations initiated & reciprocated

🥈 Silver — Restacks with comments

🥉 Bronze — Notes posted

Plus:

Thoughtful comments with collaborators (~15 mins/day)

That’s the system.

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🏅Why Recommendations Are Gold

Recommendations are asymmetric.

500+ Substackers recommend The Founders Corner

~100 new subscribers per day

Time cost: ~5 minutes per recommendation

A few DMs + reciprocation

That’s absurd ROI. Pays off every day from a past action

Gold deserves 50% of the effort.

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Silver & Bronze (Still Powerful)

🥈Silver: Restacks with comments

Most subs gained from a single one: 100

Time cost: ~5 seconds

🥉Bronze: Notes

~5 minutes per Note

Still valuable, just lower leverage early on

This is ruthless prioritisation in action.

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Acquisition + Engagement (You Need Both)

There’s a simple rule in media businesses:

Acquisition without engagement ❌

Engagement without acquisition ❌

You need both

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“So… Are You Saying Content Doesn’t Matter?”

No.

I’m saying discoverability comes first.

My content strategy combined with this distribution strategy has produced:

50m impressions annually on LinkedIn

On LinkedIn I'm a Top 10 VC influencer globally — Harry Stebbings #1, Mark Cuban #3, Gary Tan #9

On Substack we’re generating 400k monthly readers

~10% MoM compounding

Content matters. But content that’s discovered matters exponentially more.

Also “My 5am Boring Routines” don't involve content creation - they're all about turning the flywheel

Solve the Cold Start Problem first.

Then let quality do what it does best.

Follow me or subscribe to the-founders-corner.com - we publish 3x per week & so these tips and more value will keep on..

Flowing

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