10 lies stopping you from building and monetizing an audience

Here’s what I wish I knew when I had zero subscribers and followers:

Most people fail to build and monetize an audience because of common myths and misconceptions they were told (or made up themselves).

The truth is most folks have the skills, expertise, and work ethic to be successful.

But people fail (or worse, never start) because of self-doubt.

Your self-doubt is justified by these myths.

Today, I'm going to show you why they're all lies.

Don’t pick a niche. Pick a problem!

Here’s the truth: Your niche emerges from doing the work. From writing, publishing, and interacting with people on one social platform.

From having conversations with people who engage with your content.

Don't waste time researching the perfect niche. There is none.

Instead, pick a problem (or a set of problems) to solve. Create content around that.

No one is an expert when they start. Even if they have decades of experience, no one cares until they prove it by publishing useful content.

Again, you'll become an expert by doing the work.

If you research and publish content on a set of problems for 2-3 months, it's impossible not to become an expert.

At first, you'll share what you're learning. You'll break down or analyze other peoples results. Or report on the news or trends.

You don't need to be an expert to do ANY of that. Eventually, you'll have enough knowledge to put together the dots and share advice with your audience.

Think about it this way:

If we were to measure Tiger Woods’ golf skills on a scale of 1 to 10, he would be a 10.

Most people who want to get better at golf are at a 1-4 out of 10. Do those people need a 10/10 golf pro to help them?

Hell no! A golf expert with at a 4-5 level would help them more than a 10/10 pro.

Then don’t. You don't need daily posts to grow.

Publish one great email newsletter a week. Then, use this framework to repurpose that content into 3-5 posts per week on one social platform

You can publish…

…And do it for 90 days, you will build an audience.

If you only monetize with sponsorships and ads, yes. But advertising is one of the worst ways to make money.

If you're starting out, don't be afraid to sell your time and services.

With 1,000 people on your list, you can:

Odds are, you are overcomplicating it and procrastinating by building tech you don't need for an audience you don't have yet.

To get started, you DON’T need a:

All that is a waste of time until you have an audience of at least 1,000 people.

You only need: A social profile, landing page, way to send emails, and a way to collect payments.

Your startup “tech stack” can be: LinkedIn (or any social account), Google forms, Gmail, and Stripe.

(Yes, you can send a newsletter with Gmail. BCC up to 500 people)

Later you can add beehiiv to create a better landing page and send emails at scale.

Me too, my writing and grammar sucks. I’m dyslexic.

But I write stuff that solves problems, so people overlook typos and mistakes.

Here's a lesson I learned the hard way:

The only way to become a better writer is by publishing. Not reading more books on how to write. Not editing. Not even writing.

Publish publicly and promote!

It’s the only way to find out what people love, hate, and ignore.

And don’t just publish a newsletter or blog. Early on, it’s easy to hide behind a newsletter or blog no one reads.

Publish once. Repurpose everywhere. Post on Twitter, LinkedIn, SubStack Notes, Medium, and online communities.

Get eyeballs on your words every possible way.

I felt this way when I started.

That’s dead wrong. People pay more attention to small accounts and new creators (when they find them).

If the content is good, audiences feel like they found a diamond in the rough. They discovered something new other people don't know about yet.

They’ll support your work more than you have a small audience.

You obsess over followers and subscriber count. Readers don't care. Only the quality of your content matters.

You won’t. People see thousands of ads and get dozens of marketing emails every day.

Just follow these rules for promotion and you'll be fine:

Fair! For me, this is the hardest part of publishing.

If I have a good topic and outline, I can get the work done. But even after publishing a newsletter 150+ weeks in a row, finding what to write about is hard.

Here’s what worked for me:

A) Talk to people

Readers, clients, your team. Surveys help too. Figure out the challenges and questions they have. Write content to solve their specific problem or answer a question.

B) AI

Share everything you know about your target audience with ChatGPT or Claude. Ask AI for audience pain points, FAQs, challenges, and goals. Prompts for this here.

C) Become an idea machine

You don't know what to write about because you haven't built up your “idea muscle” yet.

Write down 10 content ideas every day.

It doesn't matter if the ideas suck. Write them anyway. Do it with pen and paper. This builds your idea muscle. If you don’t, your idea muscle shrinks.

Make it a daily habit. Eventually, good ideas will come.

Showers and long walks help bring them out.

Save the good ones digitally in a “idea bank” with Notion or Apple Notes. Soon, you'll have more content ideas than time to write them.

This is a common concern I hear. It’s not exactly a myth, but I want to address it.

There are 4 reasons people say this:

A) You think your employer will fire you

Odds are your employer doesn't care, or actually would encourage it.

Just ask them!

“Hey, I want to publish content about this topic. The research and publishing process is going to build expertise and make me better at my job. Is that okay with you? Maybe in the future, I can use it to promote the company or help us improve our content strategy”

B) You're afraid of what friends, family, or colleagues might think.

Honestly, this is just something you have to get over. You can't let other people's opinions hold you back from building the business and life you want.

On some platforms you can hide them from seeing your posts.

C) You feel like you’re not an expert and you want to hide behind a pseudonym.

Again, no one cares about your background. They just want helpful content.

Anonymous accounts are trusted less than real people, so just publish from your name.

D) You want to build a business that doesn't rely on your name or face (so it could be acquired later)

You need to build up an audience and meaningful profit before you worry about this. You’re skipping to step 10 when you haven't even started on step 1 yet.

Good! Saturated markets have bigger audiences and more money in them.

Create content that's different, not better, than your competitors. There's always a market for new and unique content.

Everything worth doing takes years to reach its full potential.

That's why you need to start now.

You can build an audience and generate revenue in <90 days. Will it be a massive audience or life-changing money? Probably not.

But you've accomplished the hardest part, starting.

You can build an entire business on beehiiv, Substack, or Kit. It costs $0 to start then $50-$100 per month on a paid plan.

You don't need paid ads. In fact, paid ads could hurt you until you've found content market fit and a way to monetize.

If you're young, you may not have experience an expertise yet. But you have more energy, curiosity, and time than most older people. That's an advantage.

If you’re older, you may have expertise — or you may not yet. But you have more wisdom to share with the world.

If you feel like it's too late to build an audience, everyone has felt that way for the past decade. It's never too late

The truth is: No one cares about your age or when you started. They only care about how you can help them.

If you publish something useful every week and keep going, you'll succeed.