Building Without a Blueprint: Creating a Category of One [E57]

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Creating your own category is lonely. And every day you're going to question if you're crazy.

This episode is for entrepreneurs building things on the edge—things that are misunderstood, things without models to follow. 

The essence: turning shit into wisdom. Following signs like The Alchemist. And understanding that when you've been through enough, you become dangerous.

Relevant or Mentioned Episodes:

3 Line Episode

Manifesting Generators

Misfit Manifesto

Keywords: creating your own category, being a visionary lonely, Leo King astrology business, episode 25 milestone, beta mode by design, proof of concept, The Alchemist following signs, alchemy turning shit into wisdom, trusting yourself pioneer

Transcript

Welcome back to Claire Signal. Today we drop in another gem from the archives. This is another foundational piece. The themes of season two were foundations, clarity, feminine flow, and backwards to go forwards. This episode was recorded just like some of the other episodes you're gonna hear soon as we were entering to the peak of summer.

If you don't know what summer is, it's considered the full moon of the year, maximum clarity. Number two, backwards will go forwards. That's obvious. 'cause let me tell you, looking outside my window doesn't look like summer Number three, feminine flow. Femin flow is this intuitive ability that I have to just find things randomly and just feel it calling me.

Feminine flow. Is that intuitive hit like, people out here need to hear this, or this is the right time to drop this in, or whatever. And number four foundations.

I don't care what the name is, I don't care how many names we've had. When you listen to what the essence of the podcast is, I think you're gonna feel that in the way that I communicate. No matter what the title of the episode is, no matter what I'm actually talking about, it's about unfiltered business clarity for entrepreneurs done with a noise, and a lot of entrepreneurs done with a noise.

Entrepreneurs in my world are building things on the edge. They're building things that are misunderstood. I am facing that right now, and I am seeking the right guidance to help me build what I wanna build, because I don't look to the left and the right of me and find anybody that's of interest in terms of guidance for that.

When you are creating categories, what you wanna do does not exist. It's very difficult being a pioneer. We talked about Aries a lot, sexy sounding, being a visionary. People love that term. It's usually people who have done the most boring ass fucking shit ever on LinkedIn have visionary in their title, let's just call it what it is.

Being a real visionary is lonely. It's difficult. It takes a lot of money, and it is lonely because you can't find people to guide you. That's been my experience. Your experience might be different, whether or not you consider yourself a visionary, whether or not you consider yourself, anyone who's done anything of note.

The people who have to date come into my world, a lot of them who are the most aligned have been people who were pushing the envelope in an industry. People with deep layers of experience in what they do, and they're using it to create change in whatever they do.

They are somewhat of heretic in their own way and they're attracted to my heretical point of view. This episode was recorded around the same time as an episode I recorded last summer on Niche, so that episode's gonna drop in soonish, and I mentioned two episodes in this. I will refer to them in the show notes.

One is an episode I did where it had James Clear as a quote. Some lessons have to be experienced to be learned. I think I changed it to an episode on the three line link that in the show notes. And then another one is an episode I did on manifesting generators and I referenced the Leo King.

So he comes up a lot. So those are in the show notes. What I love about some of this early content is I was just starting to work with people. How was I attracting people? Were they resonant people?

Were they bees? Going back to my Summer Bees episode, a lot of episodes. I did in summer of 2025. If you're new to the podcast, I talked a lot about resonance based marketing and I use bees in as example . 

I couldn't drop this in the future because once I go to the next level, it's you do have a website and you do have SEO, and you do have this. You do have targeting. You scale through doing that, but you don't find your most resonant people by doing that. And that takes a lot of discipline and that takes a lot of trust in yourself.

And that's what this episode is about, because that trust in yourself is also that trust that's gonna help you when you're creating something new. I.

Today is a little bit of a inspirational push reminder. For those of you who are doing something in uncharted territory, you are in an industry where you're carving a path that doesn't exist. You're bringing in modalities into your field that are not socially acceptable.

You are looking for models around you that don't exist, and you're questioning yourself. We talked about manifesting generators, and I brought up an example of the Leo King, and he was a pioneer in the industry. I'll give him that. My God, he was well ahead of where online astrology was and he carved his own damn lane.

This was 10, 12 years ago where I was aware of what he was up to and. Yeah, he's an mg So yeah, he brought in all of his tools, but I think what made him successful is that he did it unapologetically. He found the medium for him where he was going to thrive, which was YouTube, and he was early and he probably was told that he was nuts.

He created a whole studio for it. He was making serious bank. He was unapologetically killing it in an industry, which applauded being this like.

Spiritually poor healer type where it's like a reader who's charging like a hundred dollars and that's what people are expecting. And he was like, yeah, I am a business owner. I'm treating this like a business. I'm not like whittling wood out in the forest. And he made a comment. And he got a lot of backlash from the industry.

And I remember his video where he came on there and he was like, I apologize. And I was thinking, dude, don't apologize. You're, you are your loud and proud attitude. You're unapologetic. Like I'm doing this my way is why I watched your videos. 'cause I'm an astrologer. I didn't need to watch his astrology stuff, which was kind of surface.

It was meant for the masses. I wasn't there for his insights. I was there for his vibe. . I share that with you because every time you are creating a category you're gonna go through, am I crazy? Is this working? Maybe I should just go do whatever else does. And I am very upfront about the fact that this is in the beta phase,

this is the 25th episode, so I just wanna share that. I'm gonna get a little badge from Buzzsprout, which is my current hosting provider when I do that. And why are they gonna gimme a badge? It's because. Yeah. Most podcasters quit right around the 20 mark. Somewhere between the 20 or 25 mark. They quit.

So they have this carrot they put out to get you to that line, and then maybe you're more motivated. This entire thing has been beta. If you've been witnessing it, it's been beta and I've been taking you along on the. A little bit, and as we go,

I will be giving absolutely more tips and behind the scenes and lessons learned on my email list. In the footer of every show note, there is an email list that is just an interest list right now that tells me when I start my email, you wanna be on it. Any client of mine's gonna get on there automatically.

Anyone who's ever signed up for an interest list is gonna get on there automatically, and you can always unsubscribe. It's not like this daily deluge of fucking sales tips because I get daily emails and I unsubscribe from daily emails because it's too much already.

But that's what that is. But until I, shift out of beta mode into more build mode. I've been taking you along behind the scenes and I've been sharing stuff that is not polished. And if you're a long time listener of this, like if like at a year or whatever, you're still a listener and this show still exists, I want you to remember this episode

but here's the thing, I did this to have proof of concept. That's the point of this. And I have proof of concept. People reach out to work with me without a website, without testimonials. I've worked with lots of clients, I have testimonials and that all come on my website. And when there's polish, prices go up, things are less customized, it's more polished.

You pay for Polish, right? But now everything is customized to folks. People are reaching out to me and more importantly. One of the things I love about people reaching out to me via email versus like a landing page where you just book a time on my calendar is one, I know you're serious because if you can't like DM people right now or do something wicked easy, then you're gonna detract people who are just like, I'm curious, like I want people who are actually interested.

I don't be having conversations with people who. , Just wanna figure some stuff out. I'm always happy to have a conversation if you're interested, but I want you to be really curious, not curious. And I'm getting a lot of insight from people who email me because they're just, they have some positive things to say.

So whether or not we decide to work together, whether or not I'm a fit for them is not the point. The point is is that it's given me directional feedback that my crazy ways of doing things is actually not that crazy. And any innovator is gonna go through this. You may not. Identify as a pioneer, you may not see yourself as an innovator in your industry.

People who come to me tend to be innovators in their industry, even if they don't see it that way. They're pushing the boundaries of what's possible. So they struggle because either their mind is gonna tell them they have to do things that everybody else does, monkey see, monkey do. We are animals.

Or they've hired people who don't know how to think outside of the box. And. Those people are going to force them to do things like everybody else is doing. So it, it's a mind fuck. Because what happens is when you pay people for advice, if you don't listen to their advice, you think you're crazy.

And we're told isms like, success leaves clues. We get isms like that. , And all of the above. And there are certain areas of life where you don't need to reinvent the wheel. When I had talked about the trial and error in that I talked about, you have to of fuck around and find out your way. Not everyone can hand everything to you on a silver platter. Some lessons have to be experienced to be learned, which was the James Clear quote. And what I meant by that is you don't have to not take guidance. But I wanted to make sure that that was very clear that I was not saying, don't take mentorship, don't hire people to teach you stuff. Don't figure everything out on your own.

No one's successful is figuring everything out on their own. There is somebody who's watch listening to every podcast trying to figure everything out around their human design, marketing and business, watching every YouTube video. They're not reaching out to me. I'm not working with them. That's a nice way to stay stuck and waste your time on things that are not relevant to you. I don't think there's any , benefit to just being like, oh, I figured everything out on my own. That's not what that episode was about. When I said some lessons have to be experienced to be learned, I hope that was obvious, but I wanna make that very explicitly clear . So people have been reaching out to me without the fancy landing pages, without having all the bells and whistles.

And they directionally are just feeling the vibe. And this podcast is directional right now by design. That is why it's not marketed. That is why it's not a video podcast. That's why it's doesn't even have a website with SEO optimization. You think that's because I don't know that's needed to grow a podcast.

No, that's by design. So if you guys have found this podcast, some of you guys know me. Some of you guys are curious from something I posted on threads. Some of you guys are looky-loo checking me out because you take my information and then use it with your clients. I get it. I see you.

However, for those of you who actually have found me because you like just organically found me through the app. This isn't advertised anywhere. You're just in the right place at the right time. So the people reaching out to me who are getting customized support at a fraction of what I'm gonna charge in the future, they're just in the right place at the right time.

There's time for Polish. There's times for systems, there's times for marketing, there's times for visibility, and there's times to just play the game that you wanna play and. I think that is the toughest part. That is when your mind is gonna play the trick on you, that is when you're gonna tell yourself you're crazy, because you've gotta rely on the universe to give you those directional posts, just like , the Alchemist, just like what this brand is based off of.

He was on, he just followed his gut and the signs and the synchronicities showed up from the universe to nudge him that he was on the right track. When you're in a stage where you're just in creative mode versus visibility mode, especially when you're creating a category of one, you gotta rely on those signposts, that random text from a fan, that random email from somebody, not because they wanna work with you.

It's not about the money, it's about the words that they use When they reach out to you, that signal you're on the right track. To me, everybody is a messenger in everybody else's life. I firmly believe that. I don't think there's any coincidence in life. I don't think we meet anyone. We're not supposed to meet.

I don't think we work with anybody we're not supposed to work with. I don't think we experience anything in life that we're not supposed to experience, which is a controversial statement because sometimes we go through some pretty dark stuff. And to me, if you were to take the macro circle of the brand, the Alchemist, the aligned Alchemist.

Which is following your north star, which is following the signs, the synchronicities, the omens.

Then you add in the layer of what is alchemy. Alchemy is turning lead into gold. What is alchemy? Alchemy's turning shit into wisdom. What is alchemy? Alchemy is turning pain into poison. And what I mean by poison, I mean like you're fucking dangerous because you've been through so much. No one can touch you.

That is a big message of the brand. And then within that, there's the podcast that has specific topics which are listed in the description, and that is about, as you're navigating in that alchemical process, in that uncertainty, honoring the journey, navigating in the dark, not getting influenced by others.

Trusting yourself, honing that gut instinct, honing that body wisdom, working with your subconscious, using your subconscious as a rudder instead of your worst enemy. That is what the essence of this podcast is.