How to Grow an Audience if You Have 0 Followers

people are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up in the beginning 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better I got a DM the other day somebody who was like yeah it's easy for you to build this brand because you already have this big audience I was like dude just start he was discouraged by the fact that he had no following he had no audience Etc 99% of people who are watching this do more cool and then you'll have cool to talk about rather than regur shating other people's stuff but for everyone who sees the overnight success right what I want you to do is go to my podcast and look at the timestamp on my first episode it's 2017 5 and 1 half 6 years ago it just now hit the top 10 and in that six-year period I did not miss every week 1 to three podcasts for six years and so people are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up when the reality is that you're finding your voice for the first year you're figuring out what way you communicate you're learning how to teach how to entertain how to present you're Lear Lear how to speak and you're also learning about the stuff that you're learning meantime right like in that period of time I might not have had as much stuff that was as cool in the beginning that applied to as many people cuz the first 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better right around 150 I started talking about Marketing in general because that's what I was into at the time and then I start talking about sales and I start talking about business in general and m&a and things as they've evolved over time and so the subject matter as well as my skill in delivering it both improved over that period of time and now the podcast is top 10 on entrepreneurship and very high ranked in business next to names that I I looked up to my whole career I'm like holy cow I'm like we're wait we just went above this guy that I've been looking up to my whole life it doesn't take 90 days it takes years if you think in days the time's going to pass no matter what but if you can think in decades when you make your goals when that decade does pass it'll show that you were thinking that way right not the outcome of the goal make the action the goal if the action is did I make the post did I make the reach outs every day then you're a success you check both boxes I want to tell you a quick story so there was a guy who started at the first gym with me same day all right and we've been friends since then and I started my gym and then he started his gym and he started chain of gym so we went in parallel all right and he ended up selling those gyms and he wanted to go online he was like dude I need to build like a brand and I was like dude you just need to start posting you know short form stuff making stuff that's valuable he posted every day for 6 months and then one video took off and then the next video took off and the next video took off and then all all of a sudden now he's making $100,000 a month from the content that he was making he'd already been doing business for 9 years and then all of a sudden it took off and he and he messaged me he was like I'm super grateful that that you told me to do that and so he did the post and he did the reach outs and what ended up happening is that earlier on he would he would have videos that would start taking off he would start doing reach outs you start making sales and then you'd make some money and then you would slow down and then all of a sudden you get in scarcity mode once he was like oh shoot there's no money coming in there's no money coming in and then you start making content start doing rots again and you make money again and he was like dude how do I break the cycle and what we did was we shifted what he was focusing on because he was focusing on the sales he was making he was focusing on the money he was making rather than focusing on the process you are not successful in my eyes because whenever you see some outcome you stop the activities which means you don't have the trait of consistency I was like the reason you aren't where you want to be is because you can't do things repeatedly and so most people can't do one thing over and over again you need to be able to do the doing without seeing the result of your doing and you have to keep doing it and if you can keep doing things independent and this is both ways if it goes really well you keep doing the thing that got you there and if it's not going well comma yet you keep doing the thing so that you get good enough that one day it will and that's the shift that most people don't make and I think that's why most people just stick war and the reality is that if you can commit to the actions and the behaviors and the traits that you will grow through doing then at the end of this process a decade later you will be the type of person who can do something for a long period of time and wait and I promise you that if you have that trait money will never be a constraint in your life and this is from Atomic habits every winner and every loser have the same goals so when you measure Yourself by having this external thing and people are like set goals everyone wants to be rich everyone wants to have a six-pack your goals don't make you unique it's the activities that you do that make you unique the goal of the winner is to commit to the activities the goal of the loser is to commit to the goal 52% of 18-year-olds High School seniors think they're going to be millionaires by 25 the world is going to be shook many of you will fail and that's because most of you have the same goal 50% of you think you're going to be a Millionaire right that's just math but only a small percentage will because if you want to be a millionaire you're not going to focus on making the million dollars you're going to focus on the stuff that makes a million dollars and so when you can divorce the activities from the outcome then you can focus on the doing which whether your income does this over that period of time your self-esteem Remains the Same because you're committ to what you can control if you can make that shift it will change your life so I started making podcast 6 years ago I committed to that process when I signed on with a a YouTube vendor a few years ago on the first call I said I'd like to have this channel be something in 5 to 10 years I was like We'll look at it then and see if it was worth continuing to do I was like but I'm in for a decade and he stopped me afterwards he was like I've literally never had a client say that to me ever he's like they're all like how can I get leads in the first 90 days from YouTube and like blah blah blah I was like if we're making progress I'm good I will commit to that I think that if you can think that way you will get what you want and then people will ask you a decade from now man how did you have this overnight success and blah blah blah blah blah and aren't you like don't the followers and the fans like how does it not get to your head and you're like cuz it was never the goal and so I feel just as good at year one as I do at year eight because the activities that I committed to were remain the same if you can think that way and you can shift your perspective persective it will it'll decrease your emotional ups and downs and I think we all need ways to decrease our emotional ups and downs in the game of business because like we need to have second lives and third lives and fourth lives and the way to do that is to not put your life your game playing life in something that you can't control but putting all your game playing life in the things you can right now we just crossed our 400th episode 400 episodes like if I did one a week that's 52 four eight one a week for a year that would be eight years of doing that if I had 400 episodes I'm at like year six if you make 400 long form pieces of content I guarantee you that your following would be bigger than it is today well how long is that going to take as long as it takes because the goal was never the outcome the goal was to do it thing

Download your free scaling roadmap here: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap-yta230 The easiest business I can help you start (free trial): https://www.skool.com/hormozi Business owners: Want to scale faster? We provide in-person advisory for companies doing at least $1M per year: https://www.acquisition.com/workshop-yta230 If you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Hormozi. I'm the founder and managing partner of Acquisition.com. It's a family office, which is just a formal way of saying we invest our own money into companies. Our 10 portfolio companies bring in over $250,000,000+ per year. Our ownership stake varies between 20% and 100% of them. Given this is a YT channel, and anyone can claim anything, I'll give you some stuff you can google to verify below. How I got here… 21: Graduated Vanderbilt in 3 years Magna Cum Laude, and took a fancy consulting job. 23 yrs old: Left my fancy consulting job to start a business (a gym). 24 yrs old: Opened 5 gym locations. 26 yrs old: Closed down 6th gym. Lost everything. 26 yrs old: Got back to launching gyms (launched 33). Then, lost everything for a 2nd time. 26 yrs old: In desperation, started licensing model as a hail mary. It worked. 27 yrs old: "Gym Launch" does $3M profit the next 6 months. Then $17M profit next 12 months. 28 yrs old: Started Prestige Labs. $20M the first year. 29 yrs old: Launched ALAN, a software company for agencies to work leads for customers. Scaled to $1.7mmo within 6 months. 31 yrs old: Sold 75% of UseAlan to a strategic buyer in an all stock deal. 31 yrs old: Sold 66% of Gym Launch & Prestige Labs at $46.2M valuation in all-cash deal to American Pacific Group. (you can google it) 31 yrs old: Started our family office Acquisition.com. We invest and scale companies using the $42M in distributions we had taken + the cash from the $46.2M exit. 32 yrs old: Started making free content showing how we grow companies to make real business education accessible to everyone (and) to attract business owners to invest or scale their businesses. 34 yrs old: I became co-owner of https://Skool.com, which is a platform for people to build communities online, making a living doing what they love, with people like them. 36 yrs old: I did a $106M book launch selling 3.6M copies of my $100M Money Models book, in 72 hours, breaking the Guinness world record for the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time. Today: Our portfolio now does $200M/yr between 10 companies. The largest doing $100M/yr the smallest doing $5M per year. Our ownership varies between 20% and 100% ownership of the companies. Many of them we invested in early and helped grow (which is how we make our money - not youtube videos). To all the gladiators in the arena, we're all in the middle of writing our own stories. The worse the monsters, the more epic the story. You either get an epic outcome or an epic story. Both mean you win. Keep crushing. May your desires be greater than your obstacles. Never quit, Alex DISCLOSURE Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies, and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2025.