I’ve been awake since 3:30 trying to decide if I should film a TikTok about gut health or finalise the supplier contract sitting in my inbox.
The TikTok would take maybe twenty minutes. Film it, edit it, add text, post it, watch it get 200 views and three likes from my friends or my husband being supportive.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
The contract affects whether the business exists in six months.
I’m probably going to film the TikTok first.
The Math Doesn’t Math
I’ve posted 14 videos so far. Average 200 views each.
Two hours per video. Filming, editing, refilming because the lighting was terrible, adding captions, second-guessing the hook, posting, checking if anyone engaged, realising nobody did.
28 hours. 2,800 views. Maybe 10 engagements that weren’t my mother or my husband being supportive.
I could have spent those 28 hours on supplier negotiations, formulation refinements, understanding regulatory requirements. Actually building the thing I left corporate to build.
But I didn’t. I made TikToks.
What the First One Felt Like
Every founder advice thread says the same thing: build in public, share your journey, create content, establish thought leadership, grow your personal brand.
The logic makes sense. People buy from people they trust. Trust comes from visibility. Visibility comes from content. Therefore: content equals customers.
So I tried. I filmed my first video about quitting my job and starting the business.
I was sweating before I even hit record. Not the kind of sweat from a workout. The kind that comes from doing something that feels fundamentally wrong for your nervous system. My voice shook. I refilmed the intro seven times because I kept forgetting what I was supposed to say, even though I’d written it down.
The editing took three hours because I’d never edited a video before and every cut looked jarring. The audio was uneven. The lighting made me look like I was being interrogated. I posted it anyway because everyone says you have to start somewhere and it won’t be perfect and just ship it.
It got 180 views. My mother commented “So proud of you!” My husband liked it. Two friends sent supportive messages.
I’m a strategy person from tech. I spent eight years in revenue optimisation, pricing models, commercial growth. I can dissect a P&L. I can build a go-to-market strategy. I can negotiate vendor contracts.
I cannot make a TikTok that doesn’t look like I filmed it in a witness protection program.
The Trust Problem
Here’s what makes it worse: nobody trusts founders on social media anymore.
People are exhausted by:
- 5am morning routine content
- “Crushing it” performance
- Motivational quote graphics
- Vague posts about “the journey”
- Sponsored content disguised as authenticity
The entire founder content ecosystem feels like performance art. Everyone’s building in public but nobody’s actually building. They’re just documenting themselves documenting themselves.
And when a founder hits 500,000 followers, the question becomes: are you still a founder or are you now an influencer who happens to have a product? The trust problem compounds when people can’t tell if you’re building the business or building the audience as the business.
I’m supposed to join this? Film myself looking pensively at my laptop with a caption about resilience? Post a carousel about “5 things I learned failing my way to success”?
I left corporate specifically to avoid performing productivity.
What People Actually Want
When I talk to people about gut health, they don’t ask if I have a TikTok. They ask:
- Does it work?
- What’s in it?
- How is it different from the seventeen other gut health supplements they’ve tried?
- Can they trust it won’t make them feel worse?
These are product questions. Business questions. Not content questions.
Nobody’s buying the supplement because they saw a relatable founder video. They’re buying it because they’ve spent thousands on solutions that didn’t work and they’re desperate for something that might.
And here’s the trap: the people who say “treat content like a hobby and it won’t work” are right. If you’re going to do it, do it properly. Post daily. Study the algorithm. Analyse what performs. Build systems. Treat it like a full-time job.
But doing two things properly means doing nothing well. Making content badly while the business sits in regulatory delays. Neither thing getting the attention it needs to work.
The content might get attention. But attention without a product is just noise.
The Alternative Nobody Talks About
What if I just didn’t?
What if I stopped filming TikToks and focused entirely on making the product real? Finalised formulation. Sorted regulatory compliance. Built supplier relationships. Got the first batch manufactured. Sold it to people who need it.
Let the product speak for itself.
Then, if it works, if people feel better, if the business is viable, maybe they’ll tell other people. Word of mouth. Actual recommendations. Not because they saw a video, but because the thing I built solved their problem.
That used to be how businesses worked.
The Paradox
The fear is that both choices are wrong.
Build an audience without a product and I’m an influencer with nothing to sell. Build a product without an audience and I’m invisible. Spend time on content and I’m performing instead of building. Skip content and the algorithm buries me before I start.
Maybe I’m confusing “I’m bad at this” with “this doesn’t matter” because it’s easier to dismiss something I’m failing at. Or maybe I’m wasting time on visibility when viability is what counts. Or maybe in two years I’ll have neither because I couldn’t commit to either.
The real question isn’t “should I make content or build the business?” It’s: which failure am I more afraid of?
What I’m Actually Going to Do
I don’t know.
I’m going to sign the supplier contract first. That feels more real than filming another video that seventeen people will watch.
But I’ll probably make the TikTok anyway. Because part of me still thinks I’m supposed to. Because I’ve internalised the idea that if I’m not creating content, I’m not serious. Because I’m afraid of being invisible.
I’m months into building this and I still can’t tell the difference between what I should be doing and what I think I should be doing because everyone else is doing it.
Maybe that’s the actual thing worth documenting. Not the polished “here’s what I learned” version. The version where I’m still figuring it out and getting it wrong and questioning whether any of this matters.
The supplier contract is open in another tab. The TikTok app is open on my phone.
I’ll let you know which one I finish first.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.