Are you talking to everyone and reaching no one?
Describe ONE person to build your business
What I’m Seeing
There is a version of this problem I see constantly.
Someone builds their Credibility Line. They figure out what they want to be known for. They start posting. The content is good. The ideas are sound. The experience is real.
And nothing happens.
Not because the content is bad. Because it is aimed at nobody in particular.
“I help professionals grow online”: who is that for? Every professional? In every industry? At every stage? The moment your reader has to wonder whether this is for them, you have already lost them.
Dollar Shave Club did not launch by talking to “men who shave.” They made a $4,500 video talking to one specific guy fed up with overpaying for razors, tired of the locked glass cases at the pharmacy, thought 10-blade vibrating handles were ridiculous. It crashed their servers in an hour. 12,000 orders in the first 48 hours. Five years later, sold for a billion dollars.
The old razor ads made men think “I want to be him.” That video made one guy think “he is me.” That is the difference between talking to everyone and talking to someone.
The same principle applies to your LinkedIn post, your newsletter, your video. Specificity does not shrink your audience. It is what makes your audience feel like you are talking directly to them.
One Framework: Point A to Point B
Your audience is not a demographic. It is one person standing on one side of a bridge.
Point A is where they are right now. Point B is where they want to be. Your content is the bridge. Your products, if you ever build them, accelerate the crossing.
The exercise is simple but most people skip it because it feels too specific:
Describe ONE person.
Point A - where they are now: What is their job? What are they frustrated by? What keeps them up at night? What have they already tried that did not work? What words do they use to describe their situation?
Point B - where they want to be: What does their ideal Tuesday morning look like? What would change if they solved this problem? What words do they use to describe what they want?
I will show you mine.
My person is a marketing manager in her early 30s, working at a tech company in a European city or any English-speaking market. She is good at her job, genuinely good. But she is watching the ground shift. Layoffs hitting profitable companies. AI handling tasks that used to need her. Middle management roles disappearing.
She has thought about building something of her own. She has probably started and stopped twice. She follows people online who seem to have figured it out but their advice feels disconnected from her reality, either “quit and follow your passion” or “just network harder.”
Her Point A in her own words: “I know the writing is on the wall but I feel trapped because I need the paycheck and all the advice I find is either reckless or irrelevant.”
Her Point B in her own words: “I want to build something that is actually mine. Not dependent on some CEO’s quarterly targets. Real skills, real clients, geographic freedom.”
Every piece of content I write, I ask: does this help her move from A to B? If it does not, I do not publish it.
The reason most professionals post to silence is not that their ideas are bad. It is that their ideas are not aimed at anyone real.
The Build Update
I rebuilt parts of Showrunner this week around this exact principle. The tool now starts by asking you to describe your person before it lets you do anything else. Not your niche. Not your content pillars. Your person. It’s called Brand Blueprint, and it’s free and downloadable.
Everything else, what to post, how to position yourself, what to offer, is downstream of that one description.
If you want to try it: showrunner.one.
One Thing to Try This Week
Open a blank doc. Describe your person.
Not a demographic profile. Not “professionals aged 25-45.” One human being. Give them a situation. Give them a frustration. Give them a desire. Write it in their words, not yours.
Then look at your last post. Would that person read it and feel like you were talking directly to them?
If not, now you know what to fix.
Reply with your person if you want feedback. I will tell you if it is specific enough.
Francesco