How I built an audience of 100k+ without going viral

I’ve been writing online since 2015.

I never had a huge viral moment. No post that broke the internet. No overnight explosion.

I still built a large audience.

I’m telling you this because most people carry the wrong model in their head. They think an audience gets built in one big moment. One viral video. One post that takes off. One lucky break that changes everything.

So they wait for it. They publish something, watch it get fourteen likes, and decide they failed. Then they quit.

I almost did the same thing.

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I was obsessed with money… then I found philosophy

found philosophy

Last week I was walking through town with my wife and our son in the stroller. We ran into a former high school classmate. We were both pleasantly surprised to see each other after so many years.

He looked at my wife and said: “He was always the cool guy in school.”

I laughed because it reminded me how much I cared about how I looked and what people thought of me back then.

For a sixteen-year-old, that’s probably normal. But at some point, you’ve got to stop living like that.

The thing is, most people don’t actually stop. They just trade one obsession for another.

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Your life matters (even if you’re not famous)

You sit down somewhere quiet. Maybe in a coffee shop. Maybe on your couch after a long day. And out of nowhere, a thought hits you.

Why am I not more successful?

Maybe you thought you’d have kids by now. Or a business that prints money. Or a name people actually recognize. Maybe you thought you’d own a house. And that you’d have it all figured out.

But none of that has happened.

So you start comparing.

  • This guy was a millionaire by 30.
  • She had a bestseller by 26.
  • He became a CEO at 40.
  • She retired at 48.

So what?

They are not you. But it still stings, right?

“Why not me?”

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How to deal with negative people and criticism

negative

My wife told me a story recently that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Her close friend works as a waitress at a restaurant. Hard worker, nice person. One evening she made a mistake at a table of seven people. She served six dishes and one had to wait a little longer.

One of those seven people went home and wrote a one-star review and named her specifically.

The boss saw it, and she was told she was no longer allowed to work as a waitress. Her salary was cut. She was moved to the kitchen.

A single negative review destroyed someone’s livelihood.

I know this isn’t rare. But it still makes me angry every time I hear it.

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