I Built It. They Did Not Come. So I Kept Building.
I had a plan.
And in hindsight, it was adorable.
I had spent years learning about nutrition, health, habits and what it actually takes to feel better in real life. I had my diploma in holistic nutrition. I had my own experiences. I had made mistakes, figured things out, changed things, learned things and accumulated years of information I genuinely thought could help other women.
So I decided to build something with it.
Giselle Everyday Nutrition.
GEN.
I built a website. I wrote programs. I created guides. I started a blog. I made social media accounts. I spent ridiculous amounts of time creating posts about things I thought people might find useful.
And somewhere in the back of my mind was this wonderfully naïve little belief:
If I create something good, people will find it.
Not millions of people.
I wasn't completely delusional.
But... you know.
People.
Turns out, that's not quite how the internet works.
I Thought the Hard Part Was Building It
When you start something like this, you think about everything you need to create.
The website.
The programs.
The recipes.
The articles.
The graphics.
The message.
The brand.
The hundred tiny decisions nobody else will ever notice.
And you assume that once all of those pieces exist, you've done the hard part.
You open the doors.
You flip the imaginary OPEN sign.
You sit behind your little internet counter.
And...
Hello?
Anyone?
Apparently there are approximately 97 billion other little internet counters.
Who knew?
Knowledge Is Not an Audience
This might be the biggest lesson I've learned.
Knowing something doesn't give you an audience.
Neither does being helpful.
Neither does caring.
Neither does spending three hours creating something thoughtful, useful and beautiful.
You can pour your heart and soul into a post—research it, write it, rewrite it, design it, stare at it for so long that you never want to see it again—finally hit publish...
3 views.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the internet, someone points at a cucumber and says:
“YOU'VE BEEN EATING THIS WRONG YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.”
2.3 million views.
Wonderful.
I'm very happy for the cucumber.
😂
That's the internet we're building businesses in.
Good information and good intentions matter.
But they don't guarantee attention.
And that was something I didn't fully understand when I started.
I Thought Helpful Was Enough
I genuinely believed that if I shared useful information consistently, eventually the right people would stumble across it.
And technically, that's not entirely wrong.
The part I misunderstood was the word eventually.
Eventually can take a while.
Because before someone buys something from you, hires you, downloads something, signs up for something—or even remembers your name—they generally need to know you exist.
Then they might see you again.
And again.
Maybe they save something.
Maybe they read one of your articles.
Maybe six weeks later another post appears and they think:
Oh yeah. I like her stuff.
And eventually something much more valuable than a view starts forming.
Trust.
The journey might look something like:
Stranger → viewer → repeat viewer → saver → reader → follower → trust → maybe someday, client.
And here's the really strange part:
You can't see most of it happening.
There Are People in the Room You Can't See
This has probably been one of the hardest things for me to understand about building something online.
You don't know who's quietly paying attention.
Someone can read your posts for months and never like one.
Someone can save a recipe and never follow you.
Someone can read three blogs and never leave a comment.
Someone can discover you today, forget about you for two months, see you again and slowly begin to understand what you're about.
From your side of the screen?
Silence.
And silence is very easy to interpret as failure.
But silence doesn't always mean nobody is listening.
I've also learned to appreciate the people who are here—the people who follow, read, save, download, encourage me or simply keep coming back.
Maybe the crowd I imagined didn't magically appear when I opened the doors.
But some people did.
And that matters.
Reality Had Other Plans
GEN was part of a bigger dream for me.
I imagined reaching a point in my life where I could work less, live more freely, maybe spend winters somewhere warm, and earn a little money doing something I genuinely enjoyed.
Helping people.
Writing.
Creating.
Sharing what I've learned.
It sounded pretty good.
And I still think it sounds pretty good.
But my original timeline and reality have not exactly been on speaking terms.
I thought if I worked hard enough for a year, I would know whether this could become something.
Instead, I've discovered that building an online business isn't one big launch.
It's hundreds—probably thousands—of tiny bricks.
One post.
One blog.
One person who follows.
One person who comes back.
One email subscriber.
One download.
One conversation.
One idea that works.
Five that don't.
Another post.
Another article.
Another brick.
And then another.
The Internet Makes This Look Much Easier Than It Is
We mostly see businesses after they've become businesses.
We see the creator with 80,000 followers.
The sold-out program.
The full client calendar.
The viral post.
The book deal.
The person announcing that they made $47,000 while sleeping Tuesday night.
What we don't usually see is Tuesday night four years earlier when they posted something they thought was brilliant and eleven people saw it.
We don't see the abandoned ideas.
The things nobody bought.
The websites rebuilt three times.
The awkward early videos.
The posts that went nowhere.
The months when growth was so slow you needed a magnifying glass and a positive attitude to find it.
Success is very visible.
Building is mostly invisible.
And comparing your beginning to somebody else's visible middle is a very efficient way to convince yourself you're failing.
And Apparently, There's a Formula for Everything
There is another reason I think I was naïve about how all of this worked.
The internet told me to be.
Spend enough time trying to build something online and your feed will eventually fill with people explaining exactly how easy it is.
Do these 5 things to get a million views.
Use these 3 hooks and watch your engagement explode.
Start a coaching business and get paying clients in 30 days.
Post this kind of content and gain 10,000 followers.
Apparently, I've been approximately three hooks and a Canva template away from retirement this entire time.
Who knew?
😂
And to be fair, some of these people probably have genuinely useful advice.
There are better ways to write a headline. There are strategies that help people find you. There are things you can learn about marketing, storytelling, search, social media and what makes someone stop scrolling.
I've learned a lot from them.
But what often gets lost is the enormous space between:
“This worked for me.”
and
“This will work for you.”
Because there are variables nobody can package neatly into five steps.
Timing.
Luck.
Your niche.
Your personality.
Your existing audience.
The platform.
The algorithm that particular Tuesday.
Whether the right person happens to share something.
Whether you're entering a crowded market.
Whether your content solves something people are actively looking for.
Whether anyone knows you exist yet.
And perhaps most importantly:
Trust can't be hacked.
You can improve your chances of being seen.
You can learn how to communicate better.
You can become smarter about how you build.
But you can't make thousands of strangers trust you by next Thursday because somebody sold you a seven-step formula.
That part still takes time.
I think we need more honesty about that.
Not because people shouldn't start.
Quite the opposite.
I think more people might keep going if they knew that slow doesn't automatically mean they're doing it wrong.
Maybe 200 views isn't evidence that your idea is terrible.
Maybe your first month without a client isn't evidence that your business can't work.
Maybe you don't need another secret formula.
Maybe you're just building.
And building takes longer than the sales pitch.
And Then There Are the Trends
The internet also constantly tells you what you're supposed to do.
Use this hook.
Say these seven words.
Post at this time.
Make this kind of Reel.
Use this trending audio.
Don't write long captions.
Actually, long captions are back.
Video is everything.
Carousels are everything.
Be educational.
No, don't be too educational.
Show your face.
Don't show your face.
Post three times a day.
But also protect your peace.
Excellent.
Very helpful.
😂
Of course I've learned from trends. I've experimented. I've watched what people respond to. I've changed things when something clearly wasn't working.
You have to.
But somewhere along the way I realized something else:
If the price of building an audience is turning GEN into something I don't even recognize, what's the point?
I don't want to build a copy of whatever happens to be popular this month.
I want to build something that feels like me.
Maybe the Goal Isn't to Go Viral
Would I object if 2 million people suddenly discovered GEN tomorrow?
Absolutely not.
I am principled, not ridiculous.
😂
But I'm starting to understand that going viral and building something valuable aren't necessarily the same thing.
I'd rather have someone find GEN and think:
This makes sense to me.
This feels realistic.
I can actually do this.
I don't feel judged here.
I want to come back.
That's harder to measure than views.
But I think it's worth more.
So... Did I Get It Wrong?
Yes.
And no.
I was absolutely naïve about how quickly good information would find its way to the people who might need it.
I underestimated how difficult it is to get noticed in a world where everyone is publishing, selling, teaching, entertaining and competing for the same few seconds of attention.
I underestimated how long trust takes.
I underestimated how much patience this would require.
And I definitely underestimated how emotionally invested you can become in a tiny number underneath an Instagram post.
But I don't think I was wrong about the most important part.
I still believe I have something worth sharing.
I still believe our experiences can become useful to somebody else.
I still believe there is value in taking what you've learned over decades—through education, work, mistakes, successes, aging, changing and simply living—and turning it into something that might make another person's path a little easier.
Maybe I just misunderstood how long it takes to build the road between having something worth sharing and having people there to hear it.
Brick by Brick
So that's where I am.
Not writing the triumphant ending from the other side.
Not telling you GEN became an overnight success.
Not pretending I've cracked some magical social-media code.
I'm still building it.
And strangely, I've made peace with that more than I expected.
Because maybe there's something worthwhile about building slowly.
It gives you time to figure out what you actually believe.
To find your voice.
To experiment.
To change your mind.
To discover what people need.
To get better.
To create something that isn't simply optimized for an algorithm—but shaped by an actual human being.
So if you're building something too—a business, a creative project, a second career, or a completely different life—maybe this is the part nobody tells you about.
Reality probably won't meet your expectations exactly where you thought it would.
Some things will take longer.
Some things won't work at all.
Some things you were absolutely certain would be brilliant will get three views.
The cucumber will get 2.3 million.
Life will continue.
Keep building.
Create something you love.
Share what you've learned.
Use the experiences you've collected throughout your life instead of assuming they don't matter anymore.
Learn from other people without becoming them.
Follow trends when they're useful.
Ignore them when they're not.
Make something that sounds like you, looks like you and feels like you.
Put down a brick.
Then another.
And another.
Maybe one day you'll look back and realize the thing you were waiting to see wasn't suddenly built at all.
It had been taking shape underneath you the whole time.
One person who came back.
One thing you created that you were proud of.
One lesson learned.
One connection made.
One little piece of trust earned.
Brick by brick.
I don't know exactly where GEN will lead yet.
And for once, I'm okay saying that.
Because I'm still building something I believe in.
Something that's mine.
And maybe that's enough reason to put down the next brick.
