When I launched Beyond Aligned Books, I spent nearly three months building what I thought a legitimate business needed. The website, service pages, offers, intake forms, branding, and all the supporting pieces that would allow me to confidently tell people I was open for business. By the time everything was ready, I felt like I had accomplished something meaningful.
Then I started networking.
And the thing I expected to happen wasn’t happening.
I wasn’t getting clients. Looking back, I can see why. I had skipped the most important step — understanding customer needs — and built everything else on top of assumptions that hadn’t been tested yet.
Why Solopreneurs Build Before Understanding Customer Needs
Most solopreneurs don’t intentionally build businesses backwards. In fact, many of us are following advice that sounds perfectly reasonable. Build a professional website. Establish your brand. Create content. Network consistently. Develop an offer.
None of those activities are wrong.
The problem is that they often happen before we have clarity around the decisions that need to come first.
The buyer journey is rarely as straightforward as we imagine. People don’t wake up one morning and decide they need bookkeeping, coaching, consulting, marketing support, or whatever service we happen to provide. They wake up frustrated by a problem. They feel stuck, overwhelmed, uncertain, or dissatisfied with their current situation. Our job is to understand that experience well enough to help guide them toward something that actually helps.
Who exactly has the problem we’re solving? How are they describing it? What have they already tried? What outcome are they actually looking for? What language resonates with them and what language falls flat?
Without those answers, every decision is built on assumptions. Some assumptions will be correct. Others won’t. The challenge is that we usually don’t discover which is which until we’ve already invested significant time and energy building around them.
That’s where the real expense begins to show itself.
It took me months to fully understand this. The shift started when I began working with a marketing strategist, but it wasn’t until I completed several months of sales coaching—supplemented by an AI tool built around the neuroscience of selling—that I started to see what was really happening.
The shift was helpful, but it wasn’t complete. In many ways, I’m still learning it today.
The Price of Assumptions: What Happens Without Customer Understanding
The website itself wasn’t the expensive part.
The expensive part was the rework.
Every change in messaging. Every adjustment to the offer. Each time I revisited something I thought had already been finished. Looking back, I can see that I was repeatedly trying to solve downstream problems that were being created by upstream uncertainty.
The strategic guidance I received was valuable, but the biggest benefit wasn’t being handed a better plan. It was being challenged on the assumptions I had been operating from. Those conversations forced me to step outside my own perspective and look at the business through the lens of the people I hoped to serve.
What surprised me was how often the same pattern appeared when I talked to other solopreneurs. Different industries. Different services. Different levels of experience. Yet many of us were encountering the same obstacle.
We were trying to improve before we understood.
At one point, I realized I wasn’t just marketing the wrong way.
I was building the wrong business.
That was not a comfortable realization.
When the Market Points You Somewhere Else
I had invested time, money, and a significant amount of identity into what I was building. Admitting that the market was pointing me somewhere else meant admitting that the original plan — the practical, sensible, low-risk plan — hadn’t accounted for the most important variable.
What people actually needed.
Not what I had assumed they needed. Not what seemed logical from the outside. The thing that kept coming up, unprompted, in real conversations with real people who were trying to build something of their own.
I didn’t pivot because I gave up on the original idea. I pivoted because the evidence became impossible to ignore.
I had chosen bookkeeping because it was a skill I already possessed and a service I knew could be delivered remotely. It seemed practical. Sensible. Low risk.
But the more conversations I had with business owners, the more I discovered that the challenges they were struggling with weren’t the ones I had built the business around. The conversations kept returning to isolation, uncertainty, accountability, business growth, and navigating the realities of building something alone.
The more I listened, the more I found myself drawn toward those conversations. They aligned with my own experiences, my values, and the kind of impact I wanted to have.
What started as bookkeeping eventually led me toward building something entirely different.
What Changes When You Start With Understanding Customer Needs
The breakthrough wasn’t a new tactic.
What changed was where I started.
Instead of beginning with the service I wanted to provide, I started paying closer attention to the problems people were trying to solve. I listened to how they described their frustrations. I listened to what they had already tried. And I paid close attention to what success looked like from their perspective rather than my own.
Once that became clear, many of the decisions that had felt difficult suddenly became easier.
The messaging improved because it reflected real conversations. The content became easier to write because it addressed real concerns.
One small example that stayed with me: I stopped writing about what bookkeeping does and started writing about the moment a business owner realizes they have no idea if they’re actually profitable. That one shift changed who responded, what they said, and how the conversation started. The content didn’t get longer or more polished. It got more specific. And specific is what people recognize themselves in.
Networking felt more natural because I wasn’t trying to convince people they needed what I offered. I was trying to understand whether what I offered actually helped.
From Pitching to Listening
I also learned to listen instead of pitch.
When I was focused on making a sale, my attention naturally drifted toward what I provide, how I help, and what I can offer. But when I slowed down and listened, I heard something entirely different. I heard what they were struggling with. I heard what support looked like from their perspective. And underneath all of it, I heard what they hoped life or business would feel like once the problem was solved.
Something happens when that shifts.
It stops being a pitch and starts becoming a dialogue.
And dialogue is where trust is built.
The work itself didn’t disappear. Running a business still requires effort. But the effort started compounding instead of constantly being redirected.
The Question That Puts Understanding Customer Needs First
For a long time, I kept asking myself what I should do next.
Looking back, a better question would have been:
What information am I missing before I decide what comes next?
Those are not the same question.
One pushes us toward activity. The other pushes us toward understanding customer needs before we build anything else.
Most solopreneurs don’t struggle because they’re unwilling to work. If anything, many of us work too hard. The challenge is that hard work cannot compensate for missing information forever. Eventually, stopping long enough to learn becomes non-negotiable.
Looking back, I don’t regret building the website.
I regret how long I spent perfecting answers before I fully understood the questions.
That’s the real price of building a business backwards.
You don’t just lose time.
You slow down your path to the clients, conversations, and opportunities that would have taught you what needed to be built in the first place.
If this resonates, learn more at thrive.beyondalignedbooks.com.
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