What Works

This month, we’ve explored finding customers and building an audience—which are not the same things. Every business needs to find customers. But not every business—not even most businesses—needs to build an audience. Yet, so many small business owners get hung up on building their following counts or email lists instead of doing the things that actually lead to sales. The drive to build an audience partially comes from the false belief that “scale” is the universal goal for all businesses. Many successful businesses never scale—or they don’t scale in terms of serving thousands of people instead of tens of people. They might scale in terms of efficiency or price or team—but scaling up one or all of those things does not require you to build an audience. But everywhere you look on social media, someone is telling you that you have to scale. As Maggie Patterson put it, they’re serving you poison and then selling you the cure. Now look, if you’re excited about scaling up or you’ve found success with scaling up, wonderful!! I personally love the idea of serving at scale and enjoy speaking to an audience. But I also recognize that this is the best way to build a business for only a teeny tiny segment of the business owner community. A stronger, more sustainable, more effective way to build a highly profitable business is to… wait for it… Stay small and do things that don’t scale. Today, I have 3 more stories of people who are serving and building in a really impactful ways without building an audience in the way you might have been taught. You’ll hear from messaging consultant Dr. Michelle Mazur, branding expert Amy Walsh, and leadership consultant Nancy Hess.