Things you should consider

Acquiring customers

Nick Shacelpole talked about educating the market. In their first month, they doubled advertising spend from $25,000 to $50,000, and they continued doubling month over month. They had to spend to educate the market and build understanding. It really doesn’t matter how much money you need to start if you can impact the first metric. For them, clicks were cost-effective, and this differs depending on the niche. I’ll share something I did myself: I ran an ad on Meta in 2025 for $5. I didn’t plan to run the ad for days because it was my first time, so instead it only lasted 24 hours. I had one problem: I didn’t know the age of my target audience. My initial plan was to target the country (Zambia). After a day, I settled on the 35–45 age range. I got 1,000 views and 5 link clicks, which led to two successful leads. For those who want to watch the full interview, it’s here.

Content

A lot of people try to do what big brands do from the start. Instead, I think it’s about sticking to something you can manage consistently. And again, I’ll keep referencing some of the best voices. Caleb Raston talks about choosing a content medium—there are four types. If you choose written content, you have to be passionate about it; it must be something you already enjoy doing. What is meant by medium are platforms like Medium, Substack, LinkedIn, and so on. These platforms give you room to write long-form content. e.g.. a Substack newsletter gives a creator an opportunity to build a community. It even allows you to schedule posts (articles) so that, say, every Thursday at 11am, people will anticipate the drop. For a deeper dive on content mediums, I suggest you watch Caleb Raston’s full course on branding here.

Joining a book club

I think this is one of the best decisions an individual could make. A community like this helps in many ways, such as accountability, book suggestions, and sharing resources. It’s a place with people who have different perspectives on different topics. The chances of making friends who share good taste in books are high.