Build with the End in Mind: The New Model for Media Businesses

Sponsored by

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how solopreneurs are becoming the new media companies.

Ten years ago, if you wanted to build a media business, you needed a team — reporters, editors, ad salespeople, distribution channels. Not to mention the fact that sales/marketing and the editorial sides did not speak to each other whatsoever.

You had to play by the rules of big media: get published, work your way up, and hope for a lucky break. You also had to rely on the big media players, like national news publications, to build a platform.

Today, that entire model has flipped. Now, one person with a newsletter, podcast, or digital brand can create a media company of their own.

But here’s the challenge: It’s not enough to just create great content. The old advice—“just start publishing, and the audience will come”—doesn’t work anymore. You have to think about monetization from day one. You need to know what makes money and why and then use these tactics to build a business.

This is something I think anyone with a journalist background struggles with a lot.

Most of us were never taught how things get funded or why things are profitable. Journalists wrote the stories, and someone else figured out how to make the money work. But now that so many people are becoming one-person media companies, understanding audience-building, revenue models, and monetization is essential.

The truth is that most people I know running creator business are making far more than we ever would have made with our measly journalist salaries. The opportunities out there are enormous; we just have to know how to get strategic about it.

This is why I’ve been thinking about what separates hobbyists from real media entrepreneurs. And one of the biggest shifts is learning to build with the end in mind.

📚 This week's lesson: Build with the end in mind.

Most people start media businesses the old way:

📌 Launch a website or newsletter.

📌 Hope for traffic.

📌 Figure out monetization later.

But that approach doesn’t work anymore.

I was recently listening to the Creator Spotlight podcast, where Francis Zierer interviewed Matt McGarry. One part of the conversation stuck with me. Matt said he never thought of himself as a “creator” because he always built with an end goal in mind. He didn’t just create for the sake of creating — he built things that were designed to monetize and grow from day one.

That’s the new media model. That’s the difference between hobbyists and those who build sustainable media businesses.

What does this look like in practice?

Instead of launching a newsletter and hoping for sponsorships down the road, Justin Welsh built The Saturday Solopreneur as a direct funnel for his digital products.

On YouTube, Ali Abdaal didn’t rely on ad revenue alone—he built a multi-million-dollar business by selling courses and books to his engaged audience.

Don’t just start a newsletter because you want to start sharing updates or industry thoughts. Have a deep think about what makes you unique, what type of audience you want to help, and what unique value you can offer to readers.

And until you can clearly state that value in one short sentence (ie “Practical tips guiding you from first-dollar to full-time solopreneur”), keep refining.

🔑 Key Application: How to Apply This Today

Before launching your next project, walk through these questions:

• Who your audience is — Who do you want to serve? What problems do they have? Decide how you will create content that will uniquely speak to this group.

• How you’ll build direct relationships — What’s your plan for email acquisition, engagement, and community? Do you have a community already that you can lean on or will you be starting from scratch?

• The monetization strategy from the start — Are you offering premium subscriptions, services, partnerships, or products?

All of these questions will give you a clear roadmap for how you can get to solopreneur/creator with a great idea to a sustainable media business owner. (Yes we’re dreaming big here!)

Pro tip: I also recommend brainstorming with Chat GPT for this. Copy and paste this newsletter into the prompt and ask it to help you refine your newsletter offer.

🛠️ Tool Spotlight: beehiiv

Morning Brew, Time Inc, LA Mag, and You

What’s the connection? beehiiv. 

Our founders engineered the growth machine behind Morning Brew. They're now bringing that expertise to media juggernauts like TIME and LA Mag, helping them build best-in-class newsletters.

And all of that support, all of those tools, and all of that expertise is available to you. In short: no gatekeeping here. 

When you work with us, just like Time and LA Mag, you’ll get:

• The industry’s most powerful no-code website builder

• Access to our ad network and sponsors like Nike and Netflix

• Growth tools that help you scale with ease

Stop limiting your growth potential. Let proven experts working with the world’s biggest brands help you scale your content.

Get started for free here.

How I’m using it: I’m running Creator Diaries on Beehiiv because it’s one of the few platforms that makes monetization easy from day one. If you want to run your newsletter like a business, it’s the best option — by far.

Try it here.

🎧 Read/Listen of the Week

🎙️ “The Creator Spotlight” featuring Matt McGarry

Why it matters: This episode breaks down how successful solopreneurs think about monetization before creating rather than hoping to make money later. If you want to learn from one of the experts in this space, Matt is your guy!

Top insight: The most sustainable media businesses are audience-first, monetization-first. If you’re not designing a business model from day one, you’re already behind.

Links I love 🔗

• Should the AI boom cause an existential crisis for writers? (David Perrell) — David is one of the most thoughtful voices on the art and craft of writing out there. I highly agree with some of his sentiment (and worry) here and what the value of true writers will be moving forward.

• A piece of advice I really love — and why only you can validate success for yourself

• A framework for thinking about building trust in the creator economy: the 7-11-4 rule (taken from this Diary of a CEO episode)

That's all for this week! Are you building anything exciting? I’d love to hear about it!