---
title: 'How to "Listen to Your Audience" When You Don''t Have One'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=UOO4EjQrFgE'
video_id: 'UOO4EjQrFgE'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 671
---

# How to "Listen to Your Audience" When You Don't Have One

> Source: [How to "Listen to Your Audience" When You Don't Have One](https://youtube.com/watch?v=UOO4EjQrFgE)

## Summary

In this video, Gillian Perkins addresses a common challenge for new content creators and entrepreneurs: how to understand and listen to your audience when you have no audience yet. She shares four practical strategies, ranging from using your past self as a target market to studying competitor audiences, and includes a brief sponsor segment for Uscreen.

### Key Points

- **Strategy 1: Use Your Former Self as Target Market** [00:29] — Think about who you were in the past, your struggles, questions, and what you wanted help with. Create content as if your former self is your audience. This works best for those who chose their topic because they once struggled with it.
- **Real-World Example: Gillian's YouTube Origin** [01:37] — Gillian started her channel after struggling with how to start an online business. With no audience initially, she used her former self as the target market, addressing the questions and fears she had when she was a beginner.
- **Strategy 2: Listen to the Tiny Audience You Do Have** [02:17] — Even without followers, you have a tiny audience of friends and family. Reach out to them casually, ask for feedback on your idea, and follow up with those who show genuine interest to learn about their struggles and goals.
- **How to Get Feedback Casually: The Annie Example** [03:27] — Gillian's friend Annie tested her business idea by texting a few friends: 'I'm thinking about starting this business... what do you think?' People love giving opinions, so she received valuable feedback without a formal pitch.
- **Strategy 3: Work on Growing Your Audience** [06:58] — Start growing your audience from day one. Even with a tiny following, you can listen to them. Reply to comments genuinely, engage in conversations, and move them to DMs to deepen relationships and boost loyalty.
- **Strategy 4: Listen to Other People's Audiences** [08:35] — Study similar channels and brands: read comments, check likes, and identify what their audiences love or still question. Engaging with those commenters can also bring them to discover your content when you launch.
- **Earning Money From Zero: The 100K Method** [09:46] — Gillian claims you can start making money online in as little as 2-3 months and reach a full-time income in 6 months. She details her $0 to $100k/year journey in her podcast 'The 100K Method'.

### Conclusion

The video delivers four actionable ways to 'listen' to an audience before you have one: tap into your past self, use friends/family for micro-feedback, engage early followers, and mine other creators' audiences. These strategies help beginners create relevant content and grow from absolute zero.

## Transcript

about them later on when you're creating content online you want to make sure audience will love or if you're creating make sure that you're creating a product that people will actually want to buy
have an audience how can you listen to people who aren't even there well today I'm going to answer that question and share with you four strategies to listen to your audience even if you don't have any followers yet let's get right into
into this the first strategy is to use your former self as your target market so for this strategy what you're going to do is you are going to think about who you were in the past what you were struggling with what questions you had
about this topic that you're creating content about what you really wanted to help with and you are going to create content like your former self is your audience now this isn't going to work for everyone because some people are
marketing to a crowd that is nothing like their former self maybe you are a lawyer who went to school and now you are going to practice as an attorney helping people with the adoption process and maybe you've never been a parent who
wanted to adopt a child yourself so you don't really know how to put yourself in their shoes but I find that that's actually the less common situation most people when they start a business or when they start creating content online
they have chosen the topic that they did because it's something that they used to struggle with it's a goal that they used to want to reach that they have since reached and if that's the case for you then this strategy will work for you a
real world is me when I started this YouTube channel I had really struggled with knowing how to start an online business knowing how to start making money online and everything related to
that and once I finally figured those things out I really wanted to share it with people so I started this channel to teach people strategies for starting online businesses strategies for making money online of course at first I
started just like everyone else with no audience at all so I just used my former self as my target market I thought about those questions and fears and concerns that I had had when I was struggling with starting an online business and I
and to help out with those things I've been struggling with the second strategy you can use to listen to your audience when you don't yet have an audience is to listen to the tiny audience that you do have now I know what you might be
thinking you might be thinking no Gillian you don't understand I don't have an audience like at all I promise you even if you think you don't have an audience at all you have a tiny audience I'm talking about just your first-degree
connections your friends and family the people who you know those people are in a sense a tiny tiny audience but now are you rolling your eyes at me and saying have a few friends and family but those people aren't interested in what I'm
account or what I'm doing with my new business well I want you to try a little bit harder okay so here's a great example of this my friend Annie she was she essentially was doing a kind of
could have just you know decided to start this business and gone and announced I'm starting this business but instead she did something really smart she thought of a few of her friends who might be interested in the service that
she was offering she didn't know if they'd be interested but she didn't let that stop her she just sent us all a text and said hey I'm thinking about starting this business I would be doing this and this in this thing would is
in why are I not like basically what do you think of my idea she kept it really casual and she was basically just asking for feedback and here's the thing everybody loves giving their opinion and so of course everybody sent her a
response and told her what they thought of the idea she wasn't saying hey do you just asking us what we thought and you want you to think of the people you know who are most likely to maybe be
interested in the content that you are thinking to create or the product that you're thinking to create reach out to them texting is great for this because idea just like you tell them about anything else you might be telling them
about and ask them what they think about it you will get some invaluable feedback and if you have some people who seem pretty interested I would recommend you follow up with those people and ask them a few more questions about what they are
struggling with most about this topic what their goal is relating to this with those sorts of things because that is going to give you a ton of content ideas and help you to know exactly how to create your product if you're doing
that or how to create the content to be most helpful to them now since you're interested in this topic of listening to your audience my guess is that you are creating content online or you want to create cont content online if that is
the case then I've got to clue you in about uscreen if you haven't heard of uscreen before it's this online platform that allows you to create a video-based subscription platform for your own business so with uscreen with very
minimal effort you can have your own subscription platform you can have your own membership you just create the content and put it on you screen and make a few little branding decisions and they make it look super good super
professional all and they also handle all the back end of like managing the subscriptions managing the payments all of that they even have an amazing Community feature that allows all of your members to interact with each other
which really helps your membership to be a lot more sticky it really reduces your churn rate as they say in the industry which in short means that your members stick around for a lot longer because they are invested in the community
relationships and of course they're loving your content especially because uscreen allows you to have your own app so people can actually put your app on their phones and then they can access your videos on the go uscreen will make
your platform and your app looks so professional so polished so seamless and so easy for you to put together if you want to learn more about hu screen then a great way to do so is to sign up for a free class that they are offering this
month about how to use YouTube to drive people to your paid membership communities in other words how to use your videos here on YouTube to get more members for your membership site this class is free right now and you can sign
class is free right now and you can sign up at gilan perkins.com uscreen trining again just go to Gillian perkins.com uscreen trining to sign up for that free class and learn more about how uscreen
can help you set up a profitable membership site okay so now let's talk your audience when you don't have an audience and that is to work on growing your audience right even if you don't have an audience yet to listen to
starting to do some small things today can really help your audience to start growing quickly so that you have people there to listen to and as per my last even when you have a tiny tiny audience as soon as your audience starts to grow
at all you can start to listen to those people don't feel like you have to wait until you have thousands of followers before you can listen to them yes you might not get very many responses to a poll on YouTube if you only have a
couple hundred subscribers but the more connected you are with your audience the more you'll be able to listen to them even when it's a very small number of people so this means that as your audience starts to grow and you start to
get a few comments on your YouTube videos or a few comments in response to your posts on YouTube or a few comments on Instagram wherever it is that you're posting content make sure that you reply to those comments and not just with uh
thanks for the comment sort of reply but really engage those people in conversation even move those conversations to the DM when possible and appropriate so that you can deepen those relationships because that's going
to get those people to talk to you even more in the future and that is what really Fosters a lot of Engagement even when your audience is Tiny now finally your audience when you don't have an audience is to listen to other people's
audiences so even when you don't have an audience at all even when you are just YouTube channel or starting a business or anything like that you can be studying other people's audiences and listening to those audiences so for
example before I started this YouTube channel I found other channels that were looked at what content they were were creating and I studied the comments
under those videos what did people think of those videos was the reaction to them positive or negative did people still have questions also looked at the likes that those videos got to see which ones the audience had given the most thumbs
up too to indicate that they were especially excited about the process of starts with identifying some other brands that are similar to what you want to create and then going in there and looking at the comments on their content
of course you can also engage with those commenters too which can potentially lead them to discovering your content when you start creating content now one that you know is that you do not have to wait until you have a big audience to be
able to start making a living online in fact even if you are starting at fact even if you are starting at Absolute Zero you can start making money within as little as two to three months and be making a full-time living in as
little as six I recently recorded a short podcast Series this is a standalone podcast that only has 10 episodes It's called the 100K method and episodes It's called the 100K method and in it I break down my process for how I
went from earning nothing online to earning $100,000 a year in just about a year so by the end of the year I was earning over $110,000 a month so I break down that story in the podcast I also share what I call the 100K meth method
for how you can do the same thing and how you can build a business that how you can build a business that consistently generates $10,000 per month or more so that you are earning six figures online I'm going to leave the
link to that new show in the description below or you can find it on whatever podcast app you prefer like I said it's called the 100K method up next I'd recommend you check out this video right here where I teach you how to Market
your business online this is The Ultimate Guide to digital marketing and you are trying to figure out how to create content online how to get people to consume your content online and how to grow your online business