If I Were Starting All Over In Business: Here's What I Would Do

If I woke up tomorrow and had to start my business all over again, no audience, no email list, no website, no Facebook community, I would be seriously annoyed. 😂

BUT I also know exactly where I’d start.

I’d go all in on Substack.

I wouldn’t start by rebuilding my website or trying to grow thousands of followers on Instagram. And after making a Reel every single day for nine months, I can promise you I wouldn’t start there either.

Here’s the thing: I’ve already built a business from scratch once. I’ve been doing this for 22 years. I built my audience organically, grew a Facebook following of around 15,000, filled programs through my content and speaking, and for years had a steady stream of clients coming into my business.

But this isn’t an article about how I built that business. It’s about what I’d do differently if I were starting today.

I’d spend a lot less time trying to get strangers to notice me and a lot more time building a place where the right people could actually experience the depth of my work.

Here’s exactly where I’d start.

The first thing I’d do is get clear on what I actually want to be known for. What is my stand?

Not content pillars that someone else told me to use. Not what’s trending. Not what I think will get the most engagement.

What do I stand for?
What do I know?
What do I want people to understand after spending time in my world?

Create your company magazine.

If your magazine was on the shelf at Barnes & Noble each month, what would the topics be?

Q’s to ask yourself:

• What do I believe that most people miss?

• What first hand experience do I have that can help other people?

• What do you believe about your industry that you can stand behind?

• What do your best clients understand differently after working with you?

• What do you want to be known for five years from now?

These are the topics for your magazine.

Your body of work.

When I did this, I decided to use my tagline, it’s been the core of my work for over 20 years:

Be Real. Take a Stand. Change Lives.

These are the topic my work covers.

Then I started writing articles, recording podcasts, going liveknowin exactly how it fit into my ecosystem.

Before I created a bunch of new content, I’d go back and look at my last five or ten posts.

Then I’d ask myself:

• Does this show the depth of my thinking?

• Does this help somebody understand my perspective well enough to trust me?

• Does this lead anywhere? Toward a relationship, a conversation, an offer, a next step?

Because if the answer is no, I don’t think the solution is more content.

This is where Substack got really interesting to me.

Instead of creating another feed where I have to keep showing up and hoping people see what I post, I can create a publication. Someone can come in and actually spend time with my work.

They can read.

Listen to my podcast.

Watch a video.

Come to a Live.

Subscribe for free.

Go deeper as a paid subscriber.

And if they want more, they can work with me.

It’s a path.

Social media is like trying to convince strangers in a busy bus terminal to stop and listen to you.

Substack is like a high end boutique.

People walk into a boutique on purpose.

The crowd may be smaller, but they’re there because they want to see what you have. They can spend some time. They can get to know you.

We don’t need to be churning leads to get clients. We need to be curating communities.

And if I were starting over today, that’s what I would build.

Day 1: The Opportunity, I take you inside the strategy and show you how to start turning what you already know into a Substack publication that becomes the home for your work, your community, and eventually your offers.

You’ll learn how to:

• Turn your expertise into a publication people can explore, instead of another feed of disconnected posts.

• Figure out what you want to be known for and begin turning that into the pillars of your publication.

• Use the magazine model to organize everything you know, especially if you have years of experience and too many things you could talk about.

• Build Substack as your home base, so Facebook, Instagram and other platforms can bring people into your world.

• Use writing, podcasting, audio, video and Lives together, so you don’t have to squeeze the depth of your work into one kind of content.

• Understand how followers, free subscribers and paid subscribers are different, and how each one fits into the bigger picture.

• Start thinking through the path from someone discovering you to eventually becoming a client, so your content isn’t just sitting there with nowhere to go.

• Audit the content you’re already creating to see whether it demonstrates your depth, builds trust and gives people a meaningful next step.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, Okay, but I have SO much I could talk about. How do I turn all of that into one coherent publication?

Good. That’s exactly where we start.