Q&A: If I were starting today with no audience, what would I focus on first?

Every month, I publish an answer to a reader’s question. Here’s a transcript of my answer to this month’s thoughtful reader’s question about building a business.

Hey Lisanne, if you were starting today with no audience, what would you focus on first?

Thank you for reaching out. More than ever, it’s a very exciting time to be alive as an entrepreneur. The cost of starting a webshop, a website, or a social channel is close to zero.

Not long ago, reaching people usually meant going through a middleman—publishers, distributors, gatekeepers. Today, many of those barriers are lower or optional, even though the middlemen haven’t disappeared entirely.

But that abundance can also be a trap. When everyone can publish, the scarce resource isn’t tools—it’s trust.

If I were starting today with no audience, I wouldn’t start with a product. I would focus on building a community first and creating the product second. AI and modern platforms allow us to explore product–market fit in public, without large upfront bets that lock us into the wrong direction. We can listen before we build—and adjust as we go.

This is an incredible opportunity, and for most of human history it was the other way around. You had to commit resources before you knew if anyone cared. Today, the sequence has flipped.

So I’d begin by choosing a very specific group of people, small enough that I could genuinely understand them, and then commit to serving them consistently. I’d ask: What problem do they actually care about? What story do they tell themselves? What would make them feel seen?

From there, I’d focus on showing up with generosity—creating useful, honest work on a schedule I can keep, without chasing scale or virality. Just a long-term practice of contributing value and earning permission.

An audience isn’t something you accumulate. It’s something you build by making promises—and keeping them.

The best of luck!

• • •

» Explore more answers to readers’ questions