Why You Can't Describe Your Substack Without Sounding Vague

You can't find the right words when you haven't answered the one true question.

You know that feeling when you’re at a party, and someone asks you what you do?

You know it’s coming because you’ve been asked this a hundred times. And you should have a good answer by now.

But instead, what comes out is something like: “Well, um, I write online. I have a newsletter to, like, help people be more intentional with their lives.”

And as soon as the words are leaving your mouth, you can hear how vague it sounds. You can see the polite nod. And when they say, “Oh...cool...” you know they’ve mentally moved on.

But that’s not even the worst part. And neither is the fact that they don’t get it.

The worst part is that you don’t really get it either.

Because if you had a crisp, clear answer that makes someone lean in and say, “Whoa, that’s legit,” and immediately ask you more, you would have said it.

You didn’t fumble because you’re bad at talking. You fumbled because you don’t actually have the answer yet.

And if you can’t answer it out loud to a stranger at a party, how are you supposed to build a brand around it?

How are you supposed to write content that attracts the right people, or figure out what to sell, or convince anyone that you’re the person worth paying attention to on your topic?

I honestly don’t understand why nobody talks about this. Everyone’s focused on growth tactics, engagement strategies, and content frameworks. But underneath all of those shiny hacks, there’s a more basic question most creators still haven’t answered:

What are you actually building here?

Why Your Message Falls Flat

Most creators I talk to know they can’t clearly explain what they do or who they help.

And no matter how hard they try, they keep ending up with something vague. There are a few big reasons this happens:

First, some people genuinely don’t know what their thing is yet. They have skills and experience and things they care about, but they’ve never figured out how to point all of it in one direction.

So everything they say about themselves comes out broad because it IS broad. They’re describing a general territory instead of a specific destination.

Second, some people kind of know, but they’re reaching for something bigger than they can back up.

They’ve absorbed this idea that you need to lead with the dream outcome, like, “Build a 6-figure business in 30 days.”

And when they look at themselves honestly, they don’t feel like they can credibly promise that yet.

So instead of saying something specific that they can’t quite back up (because they don’t have a 6-figure business yet), they say something vague that nobody can challenge, like, “I help people achieve their goals.”

It feels safe because nobody’s going to ask you to prove that.

And third, some people tried to “pick a niche” because everyone said they should, and nothing felt right (or they hated the idea of feeling boxed-in to start with), so they stayed general and hoped it would click eventually.

Regardless of your reason for lacking specificity, you get the same result. You’re vague, and vague is invisible.

People see your bio, read your content, or hear your answer at the party, and they can’t picture a specific person you help with a specific problem.

So they nod politely and move on.

You’re Solving This Backwards

Here’s what I think is actually going on underneath all of this.

You’re starting from the wrong end and trying to figure out the big picture first:

• What’s my niche?

• What’s my brand?

• What’s the transformation I offer?

• What do I want to be known for in five years?

Essentially, you’re trying to work backward from that into something you can actually say to people.

And that’s paralyzing, because the big picture requires a level of clarity and credibility that most people don’t have yet, ESPECIALLY if you’re early.

You haven’t done the thing enough times to know exactly what your thing is, and you haven’t helped enough people to know exactly who you help.

And that’s FINE (as you’ll soon realize). But the answer isn’t to keep staring at the big picture until it comes into focus.

That’s like trying to map out the exact path through an untouched forest before you take your first step. Of course it’s hard, because it’s simply not possible.

Think about it this way. If someone wants to get in shape and they’ve never worked out consistently, and you tell them, “You need to figure out your ideal physique, your training split, your macros, your VO2 max, and your long-term periodization plan...”

They’re going to freeze.

That’s not where they are. They just need to go to the gym tomorrow, and everything else comes after.

But that’s exactly what creators are doing to themselves. They’re trying to pick an entire transformation and be the solution for every stage of that journey.

And since they can’t possibly describe the whole journey clearly, they try to squeeze it all into one line, and end up saying nothing specific, while building nothing with confidence.

Start from Where You Are

There’s actually a move that’s perfect for where you’re at. And it seems like nobody’s doing it. And it actually works.

Start at the beginning of the journey.

Stop asking, “What’s my big vision?”

Instead, ask the one true question that will tell you where to start:

“What’s one specific problem I’ve already solved, who did I solve it for, and can I picture that person?”

And I don’t mean a broad category of people.

I mean a specific person, in a specific situation, dealing with a specific frustration.

Someone you’ve actually helped, or someone you used to be, or someone whose situation you understand so well you could describe their Tuesday afternoon.

Here’s a real example. Say you got into fitness three years ago, lost 30 pounds, and completely changed how you feel.

The instinct is to go big with something like “I help people transform their bodies and their lives.” And that sounds like a thing, but it’s also what ten thousand other people are saying. And you don’t have the track record of a professional trainer to back it up.

But you know what you DO have credibility for? You know exactly what it feels like to get home from work at 6 PM, exhausted, knowing you should go to the gym, and not going. You lived that for years. And you figured out how to beat it.

THAT’S a specific problem that a specific person is dealing with right now. You could talk about it with total conviction because you’ve ACTUALLY been there.

And here’s what happens when you start there. That person — the one who keeps skipping the gym after work — they hear you describe their exact situation and they think, “This person gets it.”

They trust you, not because you promised them a six-pack, but because you understood the thing they’re actually stuck on right now.

And once you help them with that, they want your help with the next thing, and the next thing after that. You earn the right to help with the bigger stuff by actually solving the smaller stuff first.

That’s the opposite of how most people are approaching this. Most people are trying to promise the big outcome first and hoping their credibility catches up later, and it won’t.

But if you start from where your credibility already is — THE SPECIFIC THING YOU’VE ACTUALLY DONE, FOR THE SPECIFIC PERSON YOU CAN ACTUALLY PICTURE — everything else starts to click.

Your content has a direction because you know who you’re talking to. Your message gets sharp because you’re describing something real. And people can actually picture themselves in what you’re describing.

That’s when the person at the party leans in instead of nodding politely.

Here’s what you need to remember:

You don’t need more credibility to get started. You need to stop reaching past the credibility you already have.

The big vision, the full transformation, the dream outcome...you’ll get there.

But you get there by solving real problems for real people, one at a time, starting from where you are instead of trying to name the destination before you’ve earned the right to promise it.

If you’ve been going back and forth trying to figure out what your thing is, or you know you’re being too vague but can’t seem to fix it, you’re not alone. Drop a comment or DM me. This is basically all I think about these days.

-Rob