If you’ve been reading Entrepreneur Office Hours for a while, you know how much I believe in the power of audience. I’ve been shouting it for years: audience building isn’t a side activity for entrepreneurs — it’s the foundation. The stronger your audience, the easier everything else becomes. Whether you’re raising capital, launching a product, or building a career, the ability to capture and hold attention is the ultimate unfair advantage.
As those of you who’ve been reading for a while know, I believe in the value of audience building so much that nearly every entrepreneurship class I teach at Duke these days is about it. I’ve also taken a few swings at teaching audience building to all of you — community coaching, live sessions, small group consults. My goal has been to translate, at scale, what I teach inside my classrooms.
But, let’s be honest, it never worked.
The content was good. The systems were good. But the execution wasn’t. I couldn’t scale it in a way that maintained the quality and depth my research deserves. And the truth is, I’ve always been a little embarrassed by that. I knew I was teaching something valuable, but I never felt like the experience matched the quality of the ideas.
As of today, that’s finally changing.
After years of trying, experimenting, and failing, I — alongside some amazingly talented collaborators — have built something I’m genuinely proud to share. It’s called Audience Academy. It’s a complete, beautifully produced online course for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and business professionals who want to use social media to grow their audience, credibility, and impact.
To be clear, this isn’t a “how to go viral” or “how to become TikTok famous” course. It’s also not my “Learning to Fail” course everyone keeps asking for. (Stay tuned on that… we’re working on it!).
This course — Audience Academy — is a practical, structured, research-backed system for building sustainable audience growth around your career. It’s based, partially, on what I teach at Duke, but it’s been refined by my partners and expanded to help support people in the professional world like you: People who aren’t trying to become influencers, but who understand that attention is oxygen for modern entrepreneurship.
If that’s you, check out the course here. At the very least, go watch the video. You’ll see… this isn’t some filmed-on-my-phone-in-an-afternoon schlock. It’s the real deal, and I couldn’t be more proud of it.
The official launch price when it starts selling publicly in the next month is $997, which is significant and reflects the quality and depth of the material. But because you all have been part of this community for so long, and many of you have participated in my other attempts at making this type of knowledge available, I’m giving the Entrepreneur Office Hours community early access for $197 using this private link.
So… yeah. That’s the news this week. No hype. No tricks. Just a direct sales pitch for something I’m very proud of and I know will create genuine value.
— Aaron
This week’s new articles…
The One Thing Nobody’s Talking About With Startups and AI
Somewhere between all the grand proclomations and the depressing doomsday scenarios is the actual truth.
The Silence That Should Terrify Founders
Even the best entrepreneurs spend way too much time obsessing over the wrong kind of criticism.
Office Hours Q&A
QUESTION:
Hi Dr. Dinin,
I’ve been slowly trying to build a following on social media. I’ve got a couple hundred followers on Instagram and TikTok, and I post pretty regularly. But I feel like I’m stuck in that early phase where everything I post just disappears into the void. I know audience building takes time, and I’m not expecting overnight success, but how do you get through this part where it feels like no one’s listening?
Appreciate everything you share — it helps more than you probably realize.
- Benji
This will surprise nobody, but I’ve actually been saving this question.
Not because I didn’t want to answer it — in fact, I think it’s one of the most important questions any creator or entrepreneur can ask. But because I knew I’d eventually be announcing the launch of my new Audience Academy course, and I figured this would be a great place to explore an aspect of it.
What’s being described in this question is the hardest part of audience building.
Not the algorithms. Not the tech. Not figuring out when to post or what hashtags to use. No — the hardest part is doing the work while it feels like nobody’s watching.
It’s the emotional toll of the early days.
You show up. You post. You put care into your content. And then… silence. No comments. No feedback. No confirmation that any of it mattered. And even when our rational brain knows this is normal — knows audience building is slow and compounding and long-term — it’s still hard to ignore the quiet.
What everyone has to remember about audience building is that it feels like shouting into a void at first. But if you’re doing it right — if you’re being consistent, if you’re learning with each post, if you’re starting to sound more and more like you — then you’re not in a void. You’re in a tunnel.
And the tunnel has a direction.
That’s the part people miss. The point isn’t to keep shouting louder. The point is to keep moving forward. Each post is a small step. Each iteration sharpens your voice. Each week teaches you what connects and what doesn’t. And eventually, if you keep going, you start to hear something back. Not a roar or a standing ovation. Just a tiny echo at first. But then another. And another. Until one day you turn around and realize there’s a crowd behind you. And they’re walking, too.
The key isn’t to be perfect. Or popular. Or viral. The key is to be in motion.
Keep going.
Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer.