Everyone thinks they’re in the marketing business.

They’re not.

They’re in the attention business.

Attention has always followed people. Nobody walks into an empty restaurant because it looks exciting. Nobody wants to be the first person on the dance floor. Momentum creates momentum, yet most businesses are still spending thousands of dollars trying to manufacture it with advertising alone.

After more than twenty years working across events, hospitality, conferences and live experiences, I kept asking myself one question.

Why are businesses carrying all the risk?

Whether it’s agencies, media buying, digital advertising or traditional marketing, everyone gets paid before the client knows if anything actually worked.

That just never say right for me. . .

So I built Crowds Now to essentially disrupt the system.

Our platform is free for everyday people because I don’t believe someone should have to pay for the opportunity to earn an income.

We give people the chance to become paid brand ambassadors, attend experiences, support businesses and earn money without paying subscription fees just to participate.

For businesses, we’ve stripped away the traditional SaaS model.

They can use Crowds Now once, every week as they see fit, or set up repeated events all year. Either way; it is always pay as you go. There are no contracts; no subscriptions and nothing locking them in. They’re not forced into paying for software they’ll never fully use.

They pay for what works for their business, when it works for their business.

Most importantly, our success is directly tied to theirs.

If we don’t help create foot traffic, energy, engagement or outcomes, we don’t win either.

That’s a very different commercial conversation.

In a world where businesses are fighting to be seen and everyday people are looking for new ways to earn extra income, we found a way to solve both problems at the same time.

To me, that’s not just a marketplace.

That’s an ecosystem where everyone has a reason to succeed.

Relationships. Always relationships.

Technology has changed the way we buy almost everything, but it hasn’t changed why we buy.

We buy from people we trust.

Even today, a huge amount of our business comes from me literally walking through doors, sitting down with business owners over a coffee and having conversations. It comes from referrals. It comes from introductions. It comes from people who have used Crowds Now telling someone else they should too.

Ironically, I’ve even used Crowds Now to grow Crowds Now.

People often ask me why I still spend time doing that when we have an app.

Because software builds efficiency.

People build confidence.

Our onboarding takes about three minutes. We don’t store personal identification documents. We’ve intentionally removed as much friction as possible because nobody enjoys complicated onboarding.

But let’s be honest.

Just because something is simple doesn’t automatically make it trustworthy.

When you’re asking someone to try something they’ve never seen before, sometimes they don’t need another feature explained. They need to look you in the eye and decide whether they believe you.

That’s still incredibly powerful.

I’ve never believed momentum comes from one big breakthrough.

Momentum comes from hundreds of small things done consistently, especially the ones you don’t feel like doing.

The follow up.

The extra phone call.

Walking into one more business after you’ve already heard "no" six times that day.

Fortunately, years of running restaurants taught me something invaluable.

Rejection isn’t personal.

Most people aren’t rejecting you.

They’re rejecting something they don’t understand… yet.

So I just keep showing up.

One conversation becomes one customer.

One customer becomes one referral.

One referral becomes credibility.

Credibility compounds.

That’s how momentum is built.

Where do I hope our business comes from in the future?

From our customers creating that momentum for us.

There’s an interesting challenge with Crowds Now that most businesses don’t have.

Confidentiality matters.

Many of the brands we work with don’t necessarily want the world knowing they’ve used us to help launch a campaign, create atmosphere or build social proof. That discretion is part of the value we provide.

It means we don’t get to fill our social media with "Guess who just used Crowds Now?"

Instead, we’ve become something a little different.

Almost like the best kept secret behind some very successful brands.

And strangely, I quite like that.

Because if we’ve done our job properly, people remember the experience.

Not necessarily the company that quietly helped create it.

Building a two sided marketplace is a little like opening a nightclub.

Nobody wants to arrive first.

Businesses won’t come if there aren’t enough people.

People won’t stay if there aren’t enough businesses.

It’s the ultimate chicken and egg problem.

So we had to decide which side of the marketplace deserved our attention first.

We chose people.

If a business trusted us enough to run a campaign, I wanted to know we could deliver. That meant building our talent community before aggressively pursuing organisations.

We were onboarding around 250 people a month through conversations, referrals and good old fashioned persistence. By the second month we made the decision to start bringing businesses into the platform, targeting around ten organisations each month. It wasn’t based on a spreadsheet or some magical startup formula. It was based on judgement, constant conversations and watching the balance between supply and demand.

There was always a risk.

Bring in too many people and they’d become frustrated waiting for opportunities.

Bring in too many businesses and you risk disappointing clients because the talent pool isn’t ready.

There wasn’t a perfect answer.

There was only the next best decision.

I think founders spend far too much time trying to eliminate uncertainty before they act.

Sometimes you simply have to make the best decision with the information you have, listen carefully and adjust quickly.

That’s exactly what we did.

Those early months weren’t about scaling.

They were about listening.

Every coffee meeting.

Every phone call.

Every objection.

Every question.

They all became product development.

People often ask me when founders should automate.

I think that’s the wrong question.

The better question is, how long can you stay close enough to your customers to hear the questions your software hasn’t learned to answer yet?

Those conversations shaped almost every feature we’ve built.

Technology didn’t create Crowds Now.

Listening did.

This was one I wish I had done a little earlier. . .

Crowds Now can genuinely sit across almost any industry. Restaurants. Retail. Legal. Media. Film. Sport. Tourism. Wineries. Conferences. Hospitality. Anywhere people create experiences or need momentum.

The problem was… I was trying to explain all of that.

Imagine meeting someone for the first time and by the end of the conversation you’ve explained the history of civilisation, quantum physics and why pineapple belongs on pizza. Somewhere along the way you’ve completely lost them.

That was literally me.

I’d walk into meetings thinking, "This is exciting." They’d walk out thinking, "I need a lie down."

A good friend of mine who’d built a very successful business in health foods finally pulled me aside and said, "Adriana… pick a lane."

I honestly hated the advice.

I remember thinking… that’s like telling Netflix they can only stream comedy; or Airtasker they can only do lawn mowing.

It made no sense to me at all; that I would have to caveat what I do down to a single vertical.

The whole point was that the opportunity was so much bigger, and my fear was that if I diluted where it could be utilised; the value would be lost. The issue that I was perpetuating, was that the value wasn’t being seen initially because it was being convoluted by my own expansive vision. (Fancy way for saying noise)

But she wasn’t telling me to think smaller, she was telling me to simply communicate smaller.

And there within lies the difference.

People don’t need the whole universe on day one. (I know. . .what an awful notion?!)

But apparently they just need one constellation they recognise. (Felt like I was being told to walk, not run. . . but OK).

So I stopped trying to make everyone understand every application and component of Crowds Now and started leaning into the industries I’d spent twenty five years working in. Restaurants. Hospitality. Events. Wineries. Catering.

And that one vertical; allowed the conversations to flow a lot easier; and the marketplace to be more palatable overnight. And the business didn’t change; I just wasn’t cramming every element into one meeting

As founders, I think we can fall in love with the size of the vision; when fundamentally our customers just want to know whether we understand their world.

Once they trust you there, they’ll happily come on the rest of the journey.

I’d probably disappoint a lot of people because my answer isn’t very sexy.

I’d get out from behind the laptop.

There’s this idea that businesses are built through clever funnels, algorithms and the latest growth hack.

They’re not.

They’re built one conversation at a time.

I’d work out exactly who I wanted to help first, then I’d start knocking on doors. Literally.

I’d buy the coffees.

I’d ask the questions.

I’d listen far more than I’d talk.

People tell you everything you need to know about your business if you’re prepared to stop pitching long enough to hear them.

Secondly, I’d stop chasing scale.

Everyone seems obsessed with going viral.

I’ve never met anyone who built a great business from one viral post.

I’ve met plenty who built great businesses by showing up every day, doing the boring things consistently and following up when everyone else forgot.

Momentum isn’t glamorous.

It’s repetitive.

It’s making one more phone call when you’ve already heard "no" five times that day.

It’s walking into one more business when the little voice in your head says, "Go home."

It’s doing the things that don’t make great LinkedIn posts but build great businesses.

Finally, I’d remember that people don’t buy because you need a customer.

They buy because they trust you.

Trust isn’t built in a pitch deck.

It’s built in the little moments.

Turning up when you said you would.

Following through.

Doing what you promised.

Owning your mistakes.

Helping someone even when there’s nothing in it for you.

People often ask me what the secret is.

I don’t think there is one.

I think business is just lots of ordinary things done extraordinarily well, over and over again.

Do that long enough and people start opening doors for you that you could never have opened on your own.