Pieter Levels (aka Levelsio) had just launched a browser-based 3D flight simulator. Nothing unusual there – except he built the entire thing in just three hours using AI tools like Cursor.

Within days, this little "toy project" had 89,000 players, with 26,000 people playing simultaneously at its peak.

This quickly cobbled together game made $1,270 in just a few days. He sold nine F-16 planes as cosmetic upgrades at $29.99 each (about $270) and a $1,000 ad blimp. This number is still going up as Levels continues to build.

Now, was this a get-rich-quick scheme? Hardly. I’m not telling you we’re building flight simulators in this Playbook! Imagine!

The money isn't even the point here. What's fascinating is HOW this happened.

Levels didn't need to run ads. Didn't need to beg influencers for shares. Didn't need to hire a PR agency. He simply built something interesting that he thought was cool, shared it with his audience, and they showed up in droves – bringing their wallets with them.

That's the power of having an audience. When you build publicly over the years and genuinely connect with people, even your "fun" side projects can take off. An audience changes everything.

Let's get started

The Business Case for Audience

Building a business without an audience is playing the game on hard mode. Unnecessarily hard.

I should know. It’s the way I’ve been doing business for a decade plus. And it’s been much harder than it had to be!

Think about the traditional business approach: You create a product or service, then spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money trying to find customers. It's like throwing a party and then desperately trying to convince strangers to attend. It’s kinda arse-end backwards (that’s the technical term I learned during my MBA…).

Now flip that around. When you have an audience first, it's like having a group of friends who are just waiting to see what you'll do next. They're already interested in you and what you have to say. When you eventually offer something for sale, you're not selling to cold prospects – you're offering something valuable to people who already know, like, and trust you.

It’s a bunch of people waiting eagerly for that party invite. Hell, maybe you don’t even have enough invites to go around!

This fundamentally changes the dynamics of business

1. Your customer acquisition costs (CAC) plummet. When someone from your audience becomes a customer, you've already done the (very!) expensive part of marketing – building awareness and trust.

2. You get instant feedback. Launch something new, and your audience will tell you – often within hours – if it's hitting the mark.

3. You develop genuine relationships. This isn't about manipulating people; it's about building real connections that benefit both sides. You actually get to know your customers which is such a cool feeling.

4. You create an appreciating asset. Unlike ad spend that stops working the moment you stop paying, an audience continues to grow in value over time. The audience is the asset - and a very powerful one.

But wait, I'm not an influencer, you might be thinking. Good news: you don't need to be. No dancing on TikTok required!

Audience ≠ Influencer

This is crucial to understand. Building an audience isn't about becoming an influencer or a celebrity. It's about becoming known for something specific and valuable.

An influencer sells their audience's attention to brands. That's their business model. The product is attention.

When you build an audience for business purposes your product is not attention. Instead you drive that attention to your products and services - which can be anything.

It’s a subtle but very important difference. Being an influencer is a very particular business model - and not one we are talking about.

Instead we’re becoming expert authorities. Known voices.

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs with audiences aren't household names. They're not doing dance challenges on TikTok or posting glamorous lifestyle photos. They're sharing valuable insights, solving problems, and building trust with the specific group of people they can best serve.

Very different to being an influencer.

Finding Your Focus Area

This brings us to the million-dollar question: What should you be known for?

The answer lies at the intersection of three things

• What you're knowledgeable about (your expertise)

• What you're interested in (your passion)

• What a significant group of people need help with (market demand)

Too many people make the mistake of being too broad ("I help businesses grow") or too narrow ("I help left-handed golfers improve their putting in rainy conditions in Scotland").

The sweet spot is specific enough that people can immediately understand what you do, but broad enough that there's a substantial audience who needs your help.

For example, "I help e-commerce store owners automate their customer service using AI" is specific, valuable, and addresses a real problem for a sizeable market.

Here's an prompt to help you find your focus area

You are an expert in market positioning and audience building. Your task is to help me identify the optimal focus area for building my authority and audience online.

I'll share some information about myself, and I want you to analyse it to suggest 3-5 potential positioning angles that would be specific enough to stand out but broad enough to attract a significant audience.

My background and expertise:
[List your professional experience, skills, and knowledge areas]

My interests and passions:
[Share what you genuinely enjoy doing/talking about]

Markets or audiences I'm familiar with:
[Describe groups of people you understand well]

For each suggested positioning angle, please provide:
1. A clear statement of what I would be "known for"
2. The specific audience who would value this expertise
3. The core problems I would help them solve
4. Why this positioning could work better than alternatives
5. Early content themes I could explore to establish this positioning

Be brutally honest and precise - I need positioning that's genuinely distinctive, not generic "social media expert" type suggestions.

Either fill in your details before submitting the prompt or submit the prompt and the AI will ask for the missing details. Either works.

Take the suggestions and refine them until you have a positioning statement that feels right – specific enough to be distinctive, but broad enough to support a business.

Be aware though that this will always be a work in progress. You’ll adjust what exactly your pitch is as you start to build your audience. And that’s fine. We just need a starting point for now so we don’t get hung up.

Becoming Known for Something Specific

Once you've identified your focus area, you need to consistently demonstrate your expertise in that space. This isn't about claiming to be an expert – it's about showing that you are one through the value you provide. Very different!

And it’s all about education. And giving giving giving.

The formula is simple but requires commitment

1. Create content that solves problems or provides insights related to your focus area.

2. Do this consistently over time (we'll talk more about consistency in Part 4).

3. Engage with others in your space, both audience members and peers.

4. Refine based on feedback and performance.

What's critical here is aligning everything you do with how you want to be perceived. If you want to be known as the go-to expert on AI productivity tools for freelancers, then your content, conversations, and interactions should consistently reinforce that positioning. We’ll talk about exactly how to do this in this Playbook.

Setting Realistic Expectations

Now, let me be transparent about something: building an audience takes time. There's no way around it.

It’s taken me a year to build an audience of 250,000. And the first 6 months or so basically nothing happened. You need to be prepared this. You'll likely be publishing content for 6-12 months before seeing significant traction. It's the classic "overnight success that took years to build" scenario.

The early days are particularly challenging because you'll feel like you're shouting into a void. I mean - you kinda are! At least initially.

You might get a few likes, maybe a comment here and there, but it won't feel like you're making an impact. It’s frustrating.

This is where most people quit. They post consistently for a few weeks, don't see immediate results, and decide it's not working. We’re not going to do that. Are we?

Audience building is a compound game. It's not linear growth – it's exponential. That means it starts slowly and then accelerates. Basically your benchmarks are the first 1,000 and then the first 10,000 and then 100,000.

Your first 1,000 followers are the hardest to get. But they're also the most valuable because during that time you’re going to your message and build momentum. Basically it’s a practice period to work out what the hell you’re going to talk about.

That first 1,000 is the focus of this week.

What's Next?

Now that you understand why building an audience is so crucial for your business and have started thinking about what you want to be known for, we need to figure out where and how to reach these people. The nitty gritty HOW.

Here's what we'll be covering in this series

Part 1: Why Building an Audience Changes Everything - The fundamentals of audience-building and finding your focus area

Part 2: Platform Choice & Content Format Strategy - Where to find your audience, the Dream 100 approach, and why short-form video is king

Part 3: The Content Funnel - Wide, Middle, Deep - Creating authority-based content that attracts and engages your audience

Part 4: Consistency Wins - Building habits, maintaining volume, and simplifying production to stay consistent

Part 5: Off to the Races - Engagement & Refinement - Boosting algorithm performance and refining your approach based on data

Keep Prompting,

Kyle