Listen to the companion podcast here.

81 hours and $170. That's the real number for getting Building to Rich standing upright, and a chunk of those hours went to a fight with DNS that I did not win quickly.

The domain and the socials
I bought buildingtorich.com, set up the email, and landed on @buildingtorich across every platform except TikTok, where the handle was already taken. So I'm @building.to.rich there, with periods. Oh well.

Branding, in one afternoon
I let Claude choose my brand colors and paid $25 for a squiggly line (true story). Now, I repurpose that squiggly line in PowerPoint for all of my cool designs.

Building the actual website, and the DNS fight that would not end
This is the part that broke me a little. Connecting the domain sounds like one click. It is not one click. Here's roughly how that went, barely edited:

Claude: "The domain should be connected to the site, once the DNS records propagate. Give it a few hours."
Me: "Still says unverified."
Claude: "Let's check what's actually sitting in your DNS settings. Paste the TXT and CNAME records you added."

Two hours of tedious back and forth of me pasting error messages later… and I think… maybe it is working? I still don’t know.

The podcast nobody planned
It got added because I like talking and I thought it would be a cool way for my 7 subscribers (possibly with ADHD) to avoid having to read. I think one of you have actually listened, so thanks for that.

Recorded on a voice app, converted through a sketchy free online source, and hosted through Beehiiv. I think it is also on Spotify and Apple, but honestly, I haven’t actually checked.

Picking Beehiiv and paying for a tier I wasn't using yet
Beehiiv is a newsletter and website platform. I wanted the newsletter and the podcast in one place instead of scattered across five tools, so I upgraded before I had the subscribers to justify it. Metricool (3rd party social posting platform) got added on top because its free tier only lets me post 5 videos per month.

What all of it actually cost

Two prompts, word for word, if you want them
So, I bought the tools, built the site, set the DNS, chose the branding, and finally, I had to figure out how to actually write the damn newsletters and film the videos. And of course I built a Claude skill to do it. I essentially instructed Claude to run a workflow where, based on my newsletter topic, it prompts me to idea dump via the ‘voice to text’ function, it writes a first draft (based on my ideas and a detailed voice and rule framework), and we go back and forth to finalize the newsletter copy.

example prompt 1:
"Read this whole draft like you're saying it out loud. Flag every sentence that sounds like a consultant wrote it instead of me. Kill 'delve,' 'navigate,' 'it's worth noting,' and any 'it's not X, it's Y' construction. If a line could pass as a LinkedIn post, rewrite it until it sounds like something I'd say to a friend over coffee."

Once locked, I gave it detailed instructions to plan video ideas based on research on viral hooks, what is trending, and more.

example prompt 2:
“From this newsletter draft, pull 5 short-form video hooks. One insight per hook, 60 to 90 seconds each, every hook ending on 'full breakdown in this week's newsletter, link in bio.' I want hooks that stop a scroll in three seconds, not summaries of what I already wrote."

It's all live now, DNS grudge and all. If you're building something like this, budget wayyyy more time than you think to do any of it. Track your hours from day one. You'll be shocked, and weirdly proud of the number.

Next issue: the monetization layer nobody talks about, affiliate rates, and referral programs.

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