What I’d Do Differently If I Were Starting From Zero Today

I wouldn’t spend the first six months trying to be everywhere. I wouldn’t chase every platform, every trend, every “this is how you grow fast” video. I wouldn’t post content with no foundation underneath it and wonder why nothing stuck.

There’s a specific order to this. Nobody told me, so I found it the slow way — through trial, error, and a lot of content that went absolutely nowhere. This is the order I’d follow if I were starting today.

Why most people start in the wrong place

Almost everyone starts with social media. It makes sense — it’s free, it’s immediate, and everyone tells you that’s where the audience is. So you open an account, you start posting, and you wait for something to happen.

The problem is that social media is rented land. Every post you write lives inside someone else’s algorithm. If the algorithm changes, your reach changes with it. If you take a break, your visibility drops. None of the work compounds in a way that’s truly yours.

What I’d do instead is build the foundation first — the parts of this business that are actually mine, that compound over time, and that don’t disappear if a platform changes its rules overnight. Then social media becomes a tool for driving people to that foundation, rather than the foundation itself.

“Social media is where people find you. It shouldn’t be the only place you exist.”

Step one: set up a website and start blogging

Before anything else, I’d build a website. Not a perfect one — a real one. And I’d start a blog on it immediately.

This feels like the least exciting place to start. There’s no instant feedback, no likes, no immediate sense that anything is happening. But a blog is the only piece of content you create that keeps working for you months and years after you publish it.

Every blog post is a chance to be found on Google by someone searching for exactly the problem you solve. Unlike a social media post, which has a lifespan of hours or days, a well-written blog post can bring in new visitors every single week, indefinitely, with zero ongoing effort.

It takes time to show up in search results — usually a couple of months before Google starts surfacing new content properly. Which is exactly why this has to be step one. The earlier you start, the earlier that engine starts running in the background.

Step two: share your story, journey, and feelings — not just tips

Early on, I thought the way to build trust was to prove I knew things. Tips, frameworks, quotes, advice. All of it technically useful. None of it particularly memorable.

What actually built trust — what got people messaging me, replying, feeling like they knew me — was when I started sharing what was actually happening. The moments that were going well. The moments that weren’t. How it felt to be figuring this out in real time, not from some imagined position of having already arrived.

Tips tell people what you know. Story tells people who you are. And people don’t build relationships with what you know. They build relationships with who you are. The expertise matters — but it lands completely differently once someone already feels like they know you.

• Tips get saved. Stories get remembered.
• Tips position you as a source of information. Stories position you as a person worth following.
• Tips can be copied by anyone. Your story can’t be copied by anyone.

If I were starting again, I’d lead with the real, specific, sometimes unglamorous truth of what building this actually looks like. Tips would come second — and they’d land better for it.

Step three: understand and use Pinterest

This one surprises people. Pinterest isn’t where I’d expect to find my audience — and that’s exactly why it works.

Pinterest isn’t really social media. It behaves more like a search engine, and the content you post there has a lifespan measured in months and years rather than hours. A pin created today can still be driving traffic to your blog a year from now. That is almost unheard of anywhere else.

The learning curve is real — Pinterest SEO, pin design, boards, all of it works differently to other platforms and takes a bit of time to understand. But once it’s set up, it becomes one of the lowest-effort, highest-return traffic sources available. Each pin is essentially a small advert for a blog post, sending interested people directly to your content, for free, on autopilot.

If step one is building the engine, Pinterest is one of the most efficient ways to feed it traffic without having to constantly create new content just to stay visible.

Step four: grow your list and set up email sequences

This is the step that ties everything else together — and the one most people leave far too late.

Every platform you don’t own can change overnight. Algorithms shift, accounts get restricted, reach disappears for no clear reason. Your email list is the one audience that is genuinely, permanently yours. Nobody can take it away, throttle it, or bury it under someone else’s content.

An email sequence means that once someone joins your list — through a blog post, a Pinterest pin, a freebie, a quiz — they automatically receive a series of messages that build trust, share more of your story, and gently introduce what you offer. All without you lifting a finger after it’s set up.

This is where the earlier steps start to compound together. The blog brings someone in through search. The story-led content makes them want to stay. Pinterest brings more people in behind them. And the email sequence nurtures every one of them, automatically, toward trusting you enough to buy.

“An email list that is yours. That no algorithm can touch.”

Why this order matters

Each of these steps makes the next one work better. A blog without story is just information — useful, but forgettable. Story without a blog has nowhere permanent to live. Pinterest without blog content has nothing to send people to. An email list without any of the above has no way to grow.

Build them in this order and each one multiplies the value of what came before it. Build them in the wrong order — or skip steps entirely, which is what most people do — and you end up working much harder for much less.

This isn’t a fast process. None of it happens in a weekend. But it’s the kind of slow that compounds. Six months in, the things you built in week one are still working for you, quietly, in the background, while you’re focused on whatever comes next.

If I were starting today

I’d build the website first. I’d start writing before I felt ready, and I’d write like myself rather than like an expert. I’d learn Pinterest earlier than I did, because it’s been one of the most underrated tools in this entire toolkit. And I’d set up my email list and sequences far sooner, because every person who left without joining the list is someone I can never reach again.

None of this is complicated. It just isn’t what anyone tells you to do first, because none of it looks impressive in the first thirty days. But thirty days was never the point.