Stop Building an Audience. Start Building a Business.
How long do you build before you make some money?
You’ve been posting for weeks. Or months. Or maybe since that one summer you decided you were “finally gonna take this seriously.”
You’ve changed your bio more times than you’ve changed your bedsheets.
You’ve tested Canva color palettes like they’re rare Pokémon.
You’ve Googled “best time to post” so many times you could teach the course.
…and you still don’t know what you’re selling.
That’s not me roasting you. That’s me telling you the thing I wish someone had slapped into my forehead way earlier.
Hey, it’s Josh.
We’re back on Solo Business Strategy. I put I Drink, I Think on pause because, honestly, 1800 of you showed up in the last two months and kept asking me the same thing in slightly different words.
“I feel stuck. Where should I focus next?”
Cool. Let’s fix that. And let’s start with the big one, the one that will quietly eat your entire year while making you feel busy.
Audience-first is a trap
Yeah, building an audience is fun.
It’s leverage.
It can bring in sales.
It feels good to get likes and little hits of dopamine every time someone you don’t know says “🔥.”
And that’s why it’s dangerous.
Because you can confuse “attention” for “progress” so easily.
It looks like momentum.
But really, you’re just a ’98 Chevy Cavalier revving in a Michigan winter, wheels spinning, going exactly nowhere, and wondering why your bank account looks like a sad before picture.
Here’s what happens…
You start optimizing for likes instead of money.
You make “what’s my next post” more important than “what’s my actual offer.”
You build a brand-shaped performance instead of a business that sells something real.
And the one thing that actually matters … figuring out what you sell … keeps getting punted to “later” like it’s some optional elective you can take next semester.
The painfully obvious part nobody wants to hear
If you don’t know what you’re selling, you do not have a business.
You have a content hobby.
If you opened a brick-and-mortar shop, would you…
Run ads? For what?
Pick a location? Based on what exactly?
Spend three weeks tweaking your logo? For a product you haven’t even picked yet?
Exactly. You wouldn’t.
So why are you doing it online?
You need the product before the storefront.
The offer is the foundation.
Everything else - audience, content, branding, marketing… it flows from that.
But Josh, everyone says to build a personal brand
Sure. And if you zoom in close enough you’ll see that most people yelling “build a personal brand” already have something to sell you about… building a personal brand.
Just saying.
Here’s the only thing that matters at the start
Before you post more content, before you tweak your bio again, before you take another photo holding coffee in a coworking space… figure out what you’re selling.
What problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? How do you do it?
If you can’t answer that in a sentence, that’s your entire to-do list for today.
I made a doc to help you do it… pulls from your skills, your experience, your interests, and turns that into problems people will actually pay to fix.
Stop building an audience like it’s the goal.
Start building the offer that makes the audience matter.
And please, don’t let another three months go by posting for a business that doesn’t actually exist.
See you next week,
Josh
“If you don’t know what you’re selling, you do not have a business.
You have a content hobby.”
This cut hard but true. Thank you!
It has me asking the question "What is the purpose."
If we don't know why we are doing something - then why are we doing it?
When I think about personal brand - what does that mean? - in terms of what is the benefit of creating one?
For me - the purpose of doing anything to add value - whether that is the purpose of developing skills or creating a solution for others.