Michael Byrne

Build real connections

12th of June, 2025

Feed the algorithm until people notice, then try to sell them a course, ebook, coaching or some other product.

No! I hate that.

What if, instead, we focussed on building personal connections? Not collecting leads. Not reaching everyone, just the right people. Specific people.

Rather than asking, "How can I sell them something?" we ask, "How can I help them with something?" Could it better for business if we stopped being drawn to money like a shark is to blood in water?

I've never enjoyed producing (the dreaded word) content, then pushing it out on a mass scale to try to get people interested in buying something from me. It's not for a lack of trying. Writing on Quora was a weird experiment I'll never do again. So was Medium. X was particularly awful.

At the time I was tweeting, I was interested in the micro-SaaS space. There are a few ringleaders in this field, some of whom I deeply respect, all very active on X. Whenever one of them would post something, thousands of people with "Builder" in their bio would reply in a desperate attempt to get someone - anyone - to check out their landing page. It could get pretty sycophantic.

My hope is to find people to work with, share things and help out in a more organic way. I want to gather friends rather than an audience.