How I’m Building a Business in Public (One Post at a Time)

It's been a busy but great week over here. I’ve written about alignment before, and it’s something I keep coming back to — because when you’re truly aligned with what you’re working on, that area of your life just starts to feel easier. More exciting. More fulfilling.

That’s exactly where I feel like I am right now, and it’s a great feeling.

I've been working a lot here on Creator Diaries and just something that I want to improve in my business and things I want to do in Q2. So anyway, I want to share kind of one area that I have been working on and also share a little bit more of tools and recommendations below.

My biggest goal in Q1 was to build my personal brand.

And I actually feel like I did that. Not just through consistent posting, but by creating what I now think of as my personal content ecosystem — a system for capturing the ideas I have in everyday life, refining them, and turning them into content that drives connection and growth.

It’s now the engine behind everything I publish: newsletters, LinkedIn posts, and even conversations that turn into new offers or ideas. And the coolest part? Once I start writing about a topic, I get 10 more ideas. It really is a flywheel.

I broke it down more in this post on LinkedIn and shared a quick behind-the-scenes in this TikTok video, if you want to see how it works or try it for yourself. Would love to hear what resonates.

This is also a bit of a meta example of how I repurpose all of this content because I took this idea, wrote an essay, put it on LinkedIn. Then I created a video and then I'm using all of that content to put right here in my newsletter. All from one idea!

Scroll down for more tools and recs I’m loving this week.

As I said above, once I started writing and reflecting on all the things I'm working on, it's unleashed an endless stream of ideas. I've been writing almost every single day about various things, from industry insights to projects I'm working on with clients.

What’s emerged from all of this is a clearer through line in my work: I’m drawn to the stories of builders.

From solo freelancers carving their own paths to early-stage founders shaping something from scratch, there’s a shared mindset — a drive to create, experiment, and build something meaningful. That’s the thread that runs through Creator Diaries, the client work I love most, and even my own business experiments like Pub & Property.

It’s helped me step back and realize that that’s the story I want to tell — the builder’s journey, in all its scrappy, imperfect, inspiring glory.

So if this is something you're interested in, you can read the full essay here.

What’s the mark of the world’s best, most growth-minded newsletter creators? They’re all on beehiiv.

Why? Our entire platform exists to help serious content creators scale faster. We’re built for those who are ready to take their content and build it into a behemoth. 

It’s why we offer a no-code website builder. It’s why our ad network matches you with global brands like Nike and Netflix. It’s why we never take a dime of your subscription revenue. And it’s why Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ashley Graham trust us to connect with their huge fan bases. 

It’s all to put your hard work in front of more people. So if you’re ready to build, ready to grow, and ready to make the world take notice, beehiiv is ready for you.

Get started for 20% off with code BUILD.

I’m obsessed with voice-to-text tools — and Wispr Flow is the best one I’ve found lately.

I’ve been using it to brain-dump ideas, draft posts, and even start newsletter sections like this one. It’s so much easier to talk through what I’m thinking instead of typing everything from scratch.

I’ve found it to be super accurate and easy to use across platforms. I’m definitely adding this to my core tech stack moving forward.

Check it out here → https://ref.wisprflow.ai/taylordcromwell

I’ve been a longtime listener of the Tropical MBA podcast — their approach to business and life has always really resonated with me. They speak from a perspective that prioritizes freedom, travel, and designing a business around the kind of life you actually want to live. It never feels like hustle-culture fluff or performative entrepreneurship.

In a recent episode, they revisited the idea of the “lifestyle business” — a term that often gets dismissed but is actually something so many of us aspire to.

A lifestyle business is about building something sustainable, profitable, and aligned with your values. That’s exactly the kind of business I want to build, one that gives me flexibility, fuels creativity, and allows me to explore all the other parts of life that matter just as much (if not more) than work.

You can listen to the episode here:

That’s all for this week!

Taylor