Where to Start When Building a Business

(From someone who’s done this more times than they’d like to admit)

If you’re building a business and wondering where to start, the answer isn’t branding, websites, ads, funnels, or social media - It’s words.

Everything in a business starts with the words you use.

• How you sell.
• How you market.
• How you explain what you do.
• How your team talks about the business internally.
• How you present in meetings.

Before design. Before tactics. Before tools.
You start with language.

Start With Pen and Paper, Not Platforms

Marketing today shows up everywhere: social media, video, LinkedIn, email, sales decks, presentations. But all of those channels are just delivery systems. What actually makes them work is the language inside them.

Most businesses skip this step. They jump straight to execution:

• “We need a website”
• “We need content”
• “We need ads”

But if you haven’t clearly defined how you talk about:

• what you do,
• who you help,
• how you’re different,
• and why it matters,

then all you’re doing is spreading confusion at scale.

Your business needs a codified language - a consistent way of speaking about your services, your products, and your value. That language should work internally with staff and externally with customers.

And no - it’s not easy.

Being Literal Isn’t Enough

You can be literal:

• “We build websites”
• “We fix roofs”
• “We do marketing”

But literal explanations rarely land.

People don’t connect with services. They connect with meaning, context, and story.
That’s where storytelling comes in - but that’s a topic for another day.

The key point is this: clarity comes before creativity.

Why You Should Start With Long-Form Writing

When I work with clients, I always start in the same place: long-form content.

• Not social posts.
• Not taglines.
• Not clever headlines.

A long-form document.

You sit down and write — properly — about:

• what your business actually does,
• how you do it,
• who you sell to,
• the problems you solve,
• the examples, edge cases, and nuances,
• how you want the business to be understood.

You get it all out. Messy. Honest. Detailed.

This document is not marketing.

No one is meant to read it.

It becomes your foundational source document - the blueprint, the reference point, the “Bible” of how your business is described.

You return to it. Refine it. Sharpen it. Argue with it. Improve it.

This Is Where AI Can Actually Help

With tools like ChatGPT, this step has become even more powerful.

Once you’ve done the hard thinking - once the words are yours and carefully chosen - you can use AI to:

• refine it into a clean blog post,
• turn it into LinkedIn posts,
• generate video scripts,
• create email sequences,
• adapt it across platforms.

AI doesn’t replace the thinking.
It multiplies it.

But it only works if the source material is strong.

Why This Is the Hardest Part (Even for Experts)

I’m starting a new business myself right now, and I’m doing exactly this.

Writing out my services.
My positioning.
My market.
My angle.

And I’ll be honest - it’s hard.

In some ways, I find it harder because I have experience in this world. When you know more, it’s tempting to overcomplicate. One of my favourite sales books, Obvious Adams, makes the point perfectly: your language should be so simple that anyone, from any walk of life, understands it immediately - with that “why didn’t I think of that?” obviousness.

Let me offer a very real example.

A Real Example: Why “I Offer Email Marketing” Isn’t Clear At All

I’ve been a marketer for 20 years. These are my services. I know what I’m selling. I know how I help people.

So why is it still hard to write them down clearly?

Because the moment you name a service, you realise it isn’t a service at all - it’s a tangled web of decisions.

Take “email marketing.”

On paper, it sounds simple: I offer email marketing services.

But what does that actually mean to the person reading it?

Email Marketing for Who?

For a local business, email marketing might mean:

• Creating a lead magnet to get people onto a list
• Writing a short welcome sequence (3–12 emails)
• Sending a monthly newsletter
• Warming leads and funnelling them into a sales pipeline

But notice what happens immediately.

Before I can write a single email, I need to understand:

• what the business sells,
• who it sells to,
• what offer would persuade someone to hand over their email address.

That’s not “email marketing.”

That’s strategy.

And here’s the irony: if a business already had all of that nailed, they often wouldn’t need me. It’s rare someone says, “Our email marketing is already working brilliantly - can you just take it over?”

Most people come in at the messy stage:

• “We’ve never used email properly.”
• “We’ve tried it but it doesn’t work.”
• “We don’t know what to send or why anyone would sign up.”

So email marketing quickly becomes positioning, offer creation, lead capture, and distribution.

Now take a larger firm - Email Marketing Gets Even More Complex

They may already have 10,000–20,000 people on their list. That creates an entirely different set of problems:

• What platform do we use to send at scale?
• How do we protect the main domain from deliverability issues?
• Do we need subdomains and separate sending infrastructure?
• Who manages replies and routing?
• Do we integrate into an existing CRM or build a new one?
• Who approves wording, tone, and brand risk?

At this level, email marketing becomes technical, administrative, and PR-heavy.

It moves a long way from “I write emails.”

So What Am I Actually Selling?

This is where the real issue shows up.

If I simply say I “offer email marketing,” I haven’t actually said anything useful.

I still need to decide:

• Am I selling to small local businesses or larger firms?
• Do I position this as a service or as an outcome (more sales)?
• Do I niche it (e.g. email marketing for plumbers) for clarity and traction?
• How do I package it? Price it? Onboard it safely?

Every one of those decisions changes the message.

That’s why writing down your services is hard - if you’re doing it properly.

Clarity isn’t listing what you do.

Clarity is choosing:

• who it’s for,
• what it includes,
• what result it creates,
• and how you describe it in a way that feels obvious.

If you think you can sit down and state your services in five minutes, you’re not thinking deeply enough about your messaging, positioning, packaging, and pricing.

That’s why you start with long-form writing.

You write.
You refine.
You simplify.

Until the language becomes so clear it feels inevitable.

Need some help? Get in touch today.