Sacred Business Stories: The Audience-Building Mistake Almost Everyone Makes скачать в хорошем качестве

Sacred Business Stories: The Audience-Building Mistake Almost Everyone Makes

You don’t need tens of thousands of subscribers to build a real business. You need 300 people who’ve actually talked to you. Jo Barnes (https://substack.com/profile/35351649...) has spent 15 years testing this idea across multiple six-figure launches, an e-commerce exit, and 45 countries traveled with a laptop. Her take: 30,000 passive followers who occasionally skim your content are worth less than 300 people who actually know your name. On this week’s Sacred Business Stories (https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/s...) , she explained why most people fail at audience building. It’s not a strategy problem. It’s a visibility problem. And fixing it is simpler than you think. The Real Reason You’re Not Growing Jo runs strategy calls with aspiring entrepreneurs. She keeps seeing the same pattern. “What’s blown me away is how much creativity and talent people have,” she told us. One client had 20 published books on Amazon. Solid work. Real effort. But the books weren’t selling. Jo asked the obvious question: Who’s your audience? Silence. “That seems to be the sticking point. I’ve got this creativity and talent to build stuff, create stuff, launch products. But I stop when I have to go and actually build an audience.” Creating products feels safe. You can do it alone, in private. Telling people about them? Being visible? That’s where people freeze. Here’s what Jo said next that stopped me: “I think people feel that they have to reveal themselves in some way in order to do that.” That’s the real barrier. Not strategy. Not tactics. The fear of being seen. The 300 vs. 30,000 Rule Jo’s been in online business since 2010. She watched Facebook go from a place where you could actually talk to people to a content farm where engagement means nothing. Her take: “You could have 30,000 people on your list. If you haven’t engaged with them, if you’re not connected with them, it’s 30,000 people who are just maybe reading your stuff every now and again.” Compare that to 300 people you’ve actually talked to. Responded to. Connected with. “That is so much more valuable than 10,000 people who you never speak to and who just occasionally watch a video.” I shared my own experience to back this up. My first online business generated multiple six figures consistently for years. The most I ever had on my email list? Fewer than 1,000 subscribers. Never broke that number. The difference wasn’t scale. It was clarity. Every person on that list knew exactly why they were there. The relationship was strong. The math isn’t about reach. It’s about depth. The 30-Day Challenge That Actually Works Most people sit around wondering what brilliant insight to post. What amazing note will make people subscribe? Jo’s challenge flips that completely. For 30 days, don’t post your own content at all. Instead: Find people whose work resonates with you. Comment on their posts. Restack notes you find interesting and add why it mattered to you. Share other people’s stuff. Respond to comments on your own page like a human being, not a content machine. “If you did that a couple of times a day for the next 30 days, you would start to increase that engagement and that relationship building without a shadow of a doubt.” This isn’t theory. It’s how Facebook worked in 2010 when Jo built her first audience. It’s how Substack works now. The platforms that let you actually connect with people are the ones worth your time. One more thing: don’t use AI to respond to comments. “You can tell it a mile off,” Jo said. “Don’t do it.” Nobody’s Watching Your First Videos (Use That) Jo shared a stat: around 935,000 videos get uploaded to TikTok every hour. Her point? When you’re starting out, nobody’s watching. That’s not a problem. That’s freedom. “Those first videos you do, nobody’s watching. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. Just do it.” She found a content creator named Simon Squibb (https://substack.com/profile/317615-s...) who’s now everywhere in the UK, doing street interviews, promoting his book. She went back and found his videos from four or five years ago. “They were terrible. Absolutely terrible. He was falling over his words. Talking about really boring stuff.” But he did two-minute videos every single day. For years. By the time anyone noticed, he was good. Now he’s got ads in tube stations. Nobody saw him practice. They only see him now. The Ego Trap for Experienced People Jo’s been doing this for 15 years. She’s had six-figure launches, sold an e-commerce business, built and rebuilt multiple times. And she still struggles with this: “I can’t look like a beginner again.” New platform. New rules. New skills to learn. Her ego says she needs to show up as the expert. That keeps her from being transparent about what she’s still figuring out. The shift came when she realized something: people don’t want to learn from untouchable experts anyway. ...