Launching With Intention: Why Building Relationships Might Be Your Greatest Business Strategy
From seven-figure launches to starting again with just two subscribers, entrepreneur and founder of The Launch Room, Virgil Brewster, joins Sarah Stone for an intentional conversation about why the most successful launches begin long before you have anything to sell.
There’s something really cool about meeting somebody who reminds you why you fell in love with entrepreneurship in the first place, particularly when you’ve spent almost two decades building businesses, navigating the highs, lows and everything in between.
For me, Virgil is one of those people. If you’ve spent any time in his corner of Substack, you’ll probably have noticed his infectious enthusiasm, his willingness to engage with almost everybody who crosses his path and his rather refreshing approach to marketing, which somehow manages to combine the commercial confidence of somebody who has helped build a seven-figure business with the generosity of somebody who genuinely wants to see other people succeed.
As the founder of The Launch Room, Virgil works with coaches, creators and entrepreneurs who are looking to bring their ideas into the world, helping them develop offers, position their expertise and build businesses around products and services that people actually want to buy.
His background includes building a successful business with two partners, working behind the scenes on launches for other personal brands and, more recently, stepping into the spotlight himself after a period of reflection about what he wanted his next chapter to look like.
It’s a journey I found particularly interesting because, although our backgrounds are different, there are some striking similarities in the way we’ve both arrived at Substack in this particular moment.
After almost 20 years of running businesses, from photography and branding to publishing, marketing and media, I’ve found myself approaching Substack with the curiosity of somebody who is starting something completely new, while bringing along a rather substantial collection of experiences, successes, mistakes and lessons gathered along the way.
And I think that’s one of the most interesting things about Starting From Zero, because the number of subscribers you have, the size of your audience or how recently you’ve arrived on a particular platform doesn’t necessarily reflect the knowledge, experience or potential you bring with you.
Sometimes you’re not starting from nothing at all. You’re simply starting somewhere new…
A conversation that began with two subscribers
One of the things that made me smile during our Live was discovering that I had been the first person Virgil ever sent a direct message to on Substack.
He had arrived on the platform just over 100 days earlier, was still trying to understand how everything worked and had been watching my The Substack Live Series with a mixture of curiosity and surprise, particularly because he had assumed Substack was primarily a place for writers rather than somewhere people were building communities through live conversations.
At the time, he had just two subscribers, and although he admitted to wondering who he was to approach somebody he didn’t know and suggest collaborating, he decided to send the message anyway. I am so happy he did!
It was a simple invitation to do a Substack Live together, and while we didn’t immediately make it happen, here we were several months later, having a conversation that had grown quite naturally out of that initial introduction.
I loved hearing this because it perfectly illustrated something that became a recurring theme throughout our discussion, which is that we often place far too much importance on having everything in place before we allow ourselves to participate.
We convince ourselves that we need more subscribers before approaching somebody for a collaboration, more experience before sharing our opinion, or a more established reputation before introducing ourselves to people whose work we admire, when in reality some of the most interesting opportunities begin with the smallest and simplest of interactions.
I have experienced this throughout my career, whether bringing people together through Intentional Living Magazine, creating events that have led to unexpected business relationships or introducing two people who might never otherwise have met, and I have become increasingly convinced that the ability to connect with others is one of the most valuable skills we can develop.
Not every introduction will lead somewhere, of course, and nor should it need to, but there’s something liberating about approaching a conversation without knowing exactly what might come from it.
The launch is rarely where the story begins
When I invited Virgil to join me, I wanted to explore the idea of launching with intention, partly because I think the word launch has become so closely associated with complicated marketing campaigns, elaborate sales funnels and enormous expectations that we sometimes forget what we’re actually trying to achieve.
For many people arriving on Substack, publishing their first article or announcing their new publication feels like the launch itself, but Virgil encouraged us to look at the process from a much broader perspective, explaining that the moment we open enrolment, introduce a product or invite somebody to purchase something is often only a very small part of the work that has made that opportunity possible.
He spoke about how the foundations of successful launches can be established years before anything is officially offered for sale, not necessarily through formal marketing campaigns, but through the relationships, experiences and trust that develop as people become familiar with who we are and what we stand for.
It’s a perspective that immediately took me back to launching my book, Live What You Love, when I spent approximately six weeks sharing excerpts, ideas and quotes before its release, allowing people to become familiar with the message and feel connected to the thinking behind it before I invited them to purchase a copy.
I’ve always believed that asking somebody to invest in what you offer should feel like a natural progression of a relationship rather than an unexpected request from somebody they barely know, and the same principle has influenced the way I’ve approached editorial partnerships, events, brand collaborations and business development over the years.
What I particularly appreciated about Virgil’s explanation was his acknowledgement that there isn’t one universal launch strategy that everybody should follow, because the approach that works beautifully for somebody with an established audience and years of credibility might be completely unsuitable for somebody who has only recently begun sharing their work.
The important thing is understanding where you are, who you’re speaking to and what kind of relationship you’ve developed with the people you hope to reach, because those factors should influence how you introduce your offer rather than simply copying somebody else’s campaign because it appeared to be successful.
And this is where Substack becomes particularly interesting, because the platform gives us an opportunity to develop those relationships through writing, conversations, comments, Notes and Live sessions, creating an environment where people can discover not only what we know, but also how we think, what matters to us and whether they feel connected to our perspective.
Nobody else has lived your life
During our conversation, Virgil made a point about uniqueness that I think is especially relevant in a world where we have access to an almost overwhelming amount of business advice.
He explained that while everybody can learn the same marketing tactics, download the same templates or follow the same launch frameworks, nobody can replicate the collection of experiences that makes another person who they are.
I found myself thinking about this long after our conversation ended, because when you’ve been in business for a considerable amount of time, it’s easy to underestimate the value of the experiences you’ve accumulated, particularly when they don’t fit neatly into one category or job description.
Over the years, I’ve moved between different industries, created businesses that have evolved into entirely new opportunities, worked with people from extraordinarily different backgrounds and learned just as much from the projects that didn’t work as I have from those that exceeded my expectations.
For a long time, those experiences existed in separate parts of my professional life, but arriving on Substack has encouraged me to look at them collectively and recognise that the connections between them are often where the most interesting insights can be found.
Virgil described this as discovering your uniqueness, which isn’t necessarily about finding an entirely original subject or developing a business idea that nobody has ever considered before, but understanding how your particular combination of knowledge, experience and perspective influences the way you help other people.
It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one, because when we become too preoccupied with what everybody else is doing, we can gradually lose sight of the very things that make our own work interesting.
I see this happening frequently with people who are building personal brands or launching publications, particularly when they begin comparing their writing, design, subscriber numbers or commercial offers with creators who have been established for much longer.
The temptation is to borrow whatever appears to be working elsewhere, when perhaps the more valuable exercise would be to look at the experiences that have shaped our own thinking and consider how those might become the foundation of something genuinely distinctive.
After all, the people who connect most strongly with our work are rarely interested in discovering another version of somebody they already follow.
They’re interested in discovering us.
The decision to begin is more important than the perfect strategy
Although I had invited Virgil to share his experience of launches, one of the most valuable parts of our conversation had very little to do with marketing tactics and considerably more to do with the decisions we make about what we’re prepared to pursue.
He spoke about how everything begins with a choice, although not necessarily the dramatic kind of decision that entrepreneurial culture sometimes encourages, where we’re told to abandon everything, take enormous risks and commit ourselves completely to an idea regardless of what else might be happening in our lives.
Instead, he described the importance of making a conscious decision to pursue something because we genuinely believe in it, recognising that without that belief even the most sophisticated marketing strategy is unlikely to compensate for our reluctance to move forward.
I found this particularly relevant because there have been numerous occasions throughout my own career when I’ve developed an idea, invested considerable time in bringing it together and reached the point where everything was almost ready, only for another responsibility, an unexpected challenge or simply the realities of everyday life to interrupt the process.
And I suspect I’m not alone in that experience.
For anybody balancing business ambitions with family responsibilities, personal commitments or significant life changes, there are inevitably times when the things we want to create have to compete with the things that need our immediate attention, and the difficulty is often knowing whether we’re making a sensible decision to postpone something or allowing uncertainty to prevent us from moving forward.
Virgil’s perspective was reassuring because he wasn’t suggesting that we should ignore those realities, but rather that we should understand the difference between making an intentional decision and continually postponing something because we’re waiting for a moment when everything feels completely comfortable.
He also spoke openly about the challenges that continue to exist even after you’ve experienced commercial success, including those familiar nights when you’re lying awake wondering how you’re going to resolve a problem or whether you’ll be able to repeat something that previously worked.
It’s an important reminder that experience doesn’t necessarily eliminate uncertainty, and that confidence is often something we develop through participating rather than a prerequisite we must possess before we’re allowed to begin.
Why an unsuccessful launch might be exactly what you need
One of the questions I was particularly keen to ask Virgil concerned the moment when a launch doesn’t go according to plan, because I think this is an experience that can be surprisingly difficult to talk about openly, especially in an online environment where we’re constantly exposed to other people’s announcements, milestones and apparently extraordinary results.
What happens when you’ve spent weeks preparing something, finally introduce it to your audience and receive very little response, or when circumstances prevent you from completing a project that you’ve already invested so much energy into creating?
Virgil encouraged us to reconsider the way we interpret those experiences, explaining that every attempt provides information about the relationship between an offer and its intended audience, whether that information comes from the response people give, the questions they ask, the objections they raise or the practical difficulties that become apparent during the process.
He shared examples from his own experience of working with entrepreneurs who had gone through numerous unsuccessful launches before discovering an approach that produced meaningful results, emphasising that the process often involves repeated adjustments rather than one extraordinary campaign that changes everything overnight.
What struck me was the importance he placed on understanding the audience rather than simply repeating the same strategy with greater intensity, because a launch that works for one creator might fail completely for somebody else, even when the offer appears similar, simply because the relationships, expectations and levels of trust are different.
I think this is where we can be unnecessarily hard on ourselves, particularly when we’ve invested so much emotionally in an idea that a disappointing response begins to feel like a personal rejection rather than useful information about something we’re still developing.
And while I wouldn’t suggest that every unsuccessful project should be pursued indefinitely, there is enormous value in being able to review what happened with curiosity rather than embarrassment, identifying what might be improved and deciding whether the idea deserves another opportunity in a different form.
Sometimes the message needs to change, sometimes the offer needs to evolve and sometimes we simply need to recognise that the people we’re hoping to reach haven’t yet had enough time to understand why what we’re creating might matter to them.
The challenge is learning to distinguish between an idea that genuinely isn’t working and one that hasn’t yet been given the right opportunity to succeed.
The importance of having the right people around you
As our conversation moved towards confidence, self-doubt and the fears that can accompany putting ourselves into the spotlight, Virgil introduced the distinction between what he described as the inner and outer worlds of entrepreneurship.
The outer world contains all the practical things we associate with running a business, including developing products, creating content, building sales pages, managing systems and communicating with customers, while the inner world involves the beliefs, expectations and uncertainties that influence whether we’re actually prepared to do those things.
He suggested that one of the most common concerns among people who are just beginning isn’t necessarily a fear of becoming successful, but the much more immediate question of whether they’re good enough to do what they’re hoping to achieve.
It’s a question that can surface regardless of how much experience somebody has, particularly when they step into a new environment where the familiar markers of credibility are no longer immediately visible.
One of Virgil’s recommendations was to surround ourselves with people who are either navigating similar experiences or have progressed a little further along the path, because those relationships can provide something considerably more valuable than reassurance alone.
They can provide perspective.
We both spoke about our experiences within the same Write • Build • Scale Substack Accelerator Community, where receiving feedback from Sinem Günel, Philip Hofmacher and Jari Roomer, having our publications reviewed and learning from other creators have helped us recognize opportunities that might otherwise have been difficult to see.
I shared how much I value constructive feedback when it comes from somebody who genuinely wants to help, because although it can sometimes feel uncomfortable to have your work examined by other people, there is a significant difference between criticism that simply makes you question yourself and thoughtful advice that gives you something useful to act upon.
Virgil also explained that he has invested in coaching from the best not because he lacks marketing knowledge, but because having somebody listen to his ideas, understand what he’s trying to achieve and offer an objective perspective can be enormously valuable.
I think that’s a distinction worth remembering, particularly for those of us who are accustomed to being the person other people turn to for advice, because no matter how experienced we become, there are times when we benefit from somebody helping us see our own work from a different angle.
What Virgil learned from his first 100 days on Substack
Towards the end of our conversation, I wanted to bring everything back to the practical experience of building a publication, particularly because Virgil had achieved a remarkable level of visibility and engagement during his relatively short time on the platform.
I asked what he would recommend to somebody arriving today with no subscribers, no established network and very little understanding of how the platform works.
His response was wonderfully simple: make noise.
Of course, he wasn’t suggesting that we should become louder, more aggressive or constantly interrupt other people’s conversations in an attempt to attract attention, but rather that we should make a conscious effort to become visible through meaningful participation.
For Virgil, that means responding to comments, engaging with other people’s work, sharing his own opinions and making the effort to develop genuine relationships with the people who interact with him.
He also challenged the idea that publishing more articles is necessarily the most effective way to grow, suggesting that direct messages and individual conversations can be particularly valuable because they allow us to understand what people are interested in, what challenges they’re experiencing and how our knowledge might eventually be useful to them.
I found his perspective on smaller audiences particularly refreshing, because it’s easy to look at a publication with 50 or 100 subscribers and feel that those numbers are insignificant when compared with creators who have thousands.
But as Virgil pointed out, if you imagined those same people gathered together in a room, listening because they were genuinely interested in what you had to say, you might begin to appreciate the opportunity in front of you rather differently.
And perhaps that’s something we could all benefit from remembering, because the constant pursuit of larger numbers can sometimes distract us from the relationships that are already developing within our existing communities.
I’ve experienced firsthand how a conversation on Substack can lead to something unexpected, whether that’s a new friendship, a collaboration or simply an introduction to somebody whose perspective changes the way I think about a particular subject.
In fact, Virgil himself has influenced the way I’ve been thinking about the future of Starting From Zero, encouraging me to recognize that although much of my previous work has focused on supporting women in business, the conversations we’re having here are relevant to a much broader community of people who are building, creating and beginning again.
It’s been a lovely reminder that sometimes the audience we imagine when we begin isn’t necessarily the only audience that might connect with what we’re creating.
And being open to those possibilities can lead us somewhere rather more interesting than the original plan.
Learning to feel comfortable with selling
We finished our conversation by discussing something that many creators find particularly uncomfortable, which is the transition from generously sharing ideas and information to confidently inviting people to invest in a product or service.
Virgil was refreshingly unapologetic about the commercial side of entrepreneurship, explaining that he believes in making people aware of what he offers because he genuinely believes those products and services can help them achieve something they might otherwise struggle to do alone.
I appreciated this because it’s a perspective I’ve developed over time, particularly after years of working with people who have extraordinary knowledge and experience but feel uncomfortable placing a commercial value on what they know.
When we’re confident that something we’ve created can help somebody solve a problem, develop a skill or move towards a goal, there’s no reason why introducing that opportunity should feel disconnected from the relationships we’ve been building.
The important thing, of course, is that the offer is relevant, the communication is respectful and the person receiving it has the freedom to decide whether it’s right for them.
Virgil challenged the audience to begin having more direct conversations about the things they’re planning to create, rather than waiting until every detail is perfect or assuming that people will somehow discover their offers without ever being invited to explore them.
He even encouraged viewers to challenge themselves to generate $1,500 in the following seven days, a deliberately ambitious suggestion intended to move people away from endless preparation and towards taking practical action.
Whether or not that particular financial target is realistic for any individual creator will depend on their circumstances, audience and offer, but I think the principle behind the challenge is worth considering.
Because sometimes we become so absorbed in preparing to do something that we forget the importance of actually doing it.
And perhaps the most useful outcome of putting an offer into the world isn’t always the immediate revenue it generates, but the opportunity to discover whether the people we’re hoping to help are interested in what we’ve created, what questions they have and what we might need to change.
Five takeaways from our conversation
If you’re developing a new publication, preparing to launch a product or simply trying to become more confident about sharing your work, these are the five ideas from my conversation with Virgil that I think are worth putting into practice.
1. Start building relationships long before you’re ready to launch. Rather than waiting until you have something to promote, begin developing genuine connections with people who share your interests or might benefit from your expertise, because the trust that grows through regular conversations, thoughtful engagement and a willingness to help others can become one of the most valuable foundations for whatever you eventually decide to create.
2. Recognise that your experience is part of your advantage. Take time to consider the experiences, challenges and lessons that have shaped your perspective, particularly those that might seem unrelated at first, because the way you bring your knowledge together is often far more distinctive than any individual marketing tactic, and the people who connect with your work are likely to be interested in the way you think as much as the information you share.
3. Use every launch to understand your audience a little better. If something doesn’t achieve the result you hoped for, resist the temptation to immediately abandon the idea or interpret the experience as a personal failure, and instead look carefully at the response you received, the conversations that followed and the assumptions you may need to reconsider before deciding whether to refine, reposition or relaunch what you’ve created.
4. Become an active participant in the community you want to build. Make time to respond to comments, engage thoughtfully with other people’s work and begin conversations with creators whose perspectives interest you, remembering that meaningful visibility doesn’t necessarily come from publishing more frequently, but from allowing people to discover who you are through the way you participate and contribute.
5. Give people the opportunity to invest in what you offer. If you’ve developed something that you genuinely believe could help somebody, practise explaining who it’s for, what it offers and why it might be valuable, then begin having respectful conversations with people who may be interested, because selling doesn’t need to feel uncomfortable when it grows naturally from understanding somebody’s needs and offering a relevant solution.
Where one conversation might lead…
What I enjoyed most about this conversation wasn’t simply the advice Virgil shared about launching, marketing or growing an audience, although there was certainly plenty of practical insight to take away.
It was the reminder that building something meaningful is rarely a straightforward journey from one carefully planned milestone to the next, and that some of the most interesting opportunities emerge when we’re willing to participate, experiment, learn from one another and remain open to possibilities we hadn’t originally considered.
After almost 20 years in business, I still find myself learning from people whose experiences challenge my assumptions, introduce me to different ways of thinking and remind me that there’s always something new to discover.
And perhaps that’s why Substack has become such an interesting place for me, because it brings together people at very different stages of their professional and personal journeys, creating opportunities for conversations that might never otherwise have happened.
Virgil arrived with two subscribers and the confidence to send a message.
I arrived with almost two decades of business experience and a desire to explore what the next chapter might look like.
And somewhere between those two starting points, we found ourselves having a conversation about relationships, confidence, entrepreneurship and the importance of giving our ideas an opportunity to become something more.
Which seems like a rather lovely example of what launching with intention can look like.
Continue the conversation
If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to learn more about developing offers, building relationships with your audience and launching products or services with greater confidence, I’d encourage you to connect with Virgil and explore his publication, The Launch Room, where he shares his experience of helping creators and entrepreneurs turn their expertise into commercially viable opportunities.
Subscribe to Virgil Brewster’s The Launch Room
And if you’re new to Starting From Zero, I’d love to welcome you into my community, where I share the experiences, insights and conversations that come from almost 20 years of entrepreneurship, along with everything I’m learning as I explore new opportunities, develop ideas and navigate the next chapter of business and life.
Subscribe to Starting From Zero with Sarah Stone
I’d also love to hear from you in the comments, particularly if there’s something you’ve been thinking about launching but haven’t quite found the confidence, time or opportunity to bring into the world.
We hope this is the conversation that encourages you to revisit it, make that introduction or finally take the next step.
After all, you never know where one conversation might lead.
