Borrowing Other People’s Audiences: A Smarter Way to Grow Your Platform
This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 56. You can listen in here!
There’s a moment most writers hit after they’ve been “doing the right things” for a while. You’ve posted. You’ve shared. You’ve created resources. You’ve tried to be consistent. And still, building an audience can feel like an exercise in futility—churning out content and hoping that one new person subscribes.
Bryan Harris has a name for that feeling: the content hamster wheel of death.
Bryan is the founder and CEO of Growth Tools, and for more than a decade, he’s helped clients build marketing systems that reliably bring in customers under the budget they actually want to pay.
He’s worked with well-known names like Amy Porterfield, Michael Hyatt, and Jerry B. Jenkins. But what makes his message especially relevant for writers is this: after years of teaching traditional list-building, he came to believe there’s a simpler, faster path for most people—especially those who don’t want to become full-time content machines.
That path is borrowing other people’s audiences.
Two fundamentally different ways to grow
Brian makes a distinction that immediately brings clarity.
One approach is building your own audience. It works, and he’s done it for years. But it comes with a cost: it optimizes you to become a world-class marketer. If you choose that path, you have to publish constantly, become a better copywriter, build funnels, do launches, and keep feeding the machine. It can be effective, but it’s also a lot.
The other approach is borrowing an audience instead of building it from scratch.
Brian calls this approach Borrowing Other People’s Audiences (BOPA)—a strategy that shifts the focus away from endlessly creating content and toward sharing your best work with people who already have the attention and trust of your ideal readers.
Brian doesn’t claim this is the only way or that it’s morally superior. His point is simpler: these are two different business models, and they require different actions. He wishes he had seen the distinction sooner, so he could have chosen intentionally instead of accidentally.
The story that made him rethink everything
Brian’s first experience with BOPA happened early in his career, almost by accident.
He had cobbled together an email list of about 100 people. In his world at the time, that milestone mattered—because like many of us, he believed the universal rule of online marketing was “build an audience, sell to the audience.”
He shared the milestone in a Facebook group run by Noah Kagan. Noah had an email list of about 50,000 people and asked Brian to teach his audience how he went from zero to 100 subscribers.
Brian created a simple resource outlining what he had done. Noah sent it to his list.
The next day, Brian gained around 1,000 subscribers. Over the next few months, that exposure led to over $100,000 in sales.
Not because Brian had a large audience. He didn’t.
Because he borrowed Noah’s.
That single experience became the seed of a new model Brian didn’t fully understand until years later, when he began reverse-engineering what had actually happened.
The Oprah principle
Brian uses a pop-culture example most people instantly recognize. Oprah was the singular megaphone of daytime TV, and she invited experts into her world. Dr. Phil had no audience of his own until Oprah repeatedly interviewed him and introduced him to hers. The trust transferred. The audience followed. A new career was born.
Brian’s point is not that you need an Oprah. It’s that you need a trust bridge.
When someone who already has trust with an audience introduces you, you are not starting cold. You are starting warm.
The three things every sale needs
Brian simplifies marketing down to three essentials that apply whether you’re selling books, coffee, coaching, or anything else.
Eyes
People have to know you exist. BOPA gives you immediate visibility.
Hearts
People have to trust you. Trust is transferred through the host.
Wallets
Only then can people buy. Conversion is easier because trust already exists.
Most people try to jump from eyes to wallets and skip hearts. That’s where the “icky” marketing feeling often comes from. The trust isn’t there.
One of the reasons BOPA works so well is that it naturally supports Brian’s “eyes, hearts, wallets” framework. BOPA gives you instant visibility, borrowed trust, and a much clearer path to meaningful conversion.
What this looks like for writers
BOPA can sound like “podcast guesting,” but it’s bigger than that. Brian describes a handful of ways writers can use the strategy in a life-giving, repeatable way.
Podcast interviews that actually convert
A podcast appearance is a borrowed audience moment. The host has trust. The listeners are paying attention. You are introduced in a context where people can hear your voice and understand your message.
But Brian points out something most writers miss: many people go on podcast tours without a clear call to action. They do the interview, hope listeners remember them, and then wonder why nothing happened.
A borrowed audience moment needs a clear next step.
A simple example is a dedicated landing page tied to the interview. People hear you, they go to one link, they enter an email address, and they receive something valuable. That’s the bridge from attention to connection.
Resource swaps
This is one of Brian’s favorite options because it’s easier for many people than being on camera.
You find another writer with a similar audience and swap resources. You share theirs with your list. They share yours with theirs.
For nonfiction, a resource might be a checklist, guide, or chapter sample. For fiction, it might be the first chapter, the first three chapters, a character backstory, a prequel scene, or even a reader freebie that naturally leads into the book.
The point is not only growth. The point is engagement. Your list gets something interesting, and the other author’s list does too. Everyone wins.
Give away the best thing you have
Brian’s mindset shift is simple and surprisingly freeing: instead of asking, how do I get 1,000 people to join my email list, ask, how do I give away 1,000 copies of my best thing.
That “best thing” might be your lead magnet. It might be your book sample. It might even be a PDF copy of the book for a limited campaign if you’re self-published and can make the economics work.
The goal becomes generosity, not grinding. And generosity is a far more sustainable fuel source than fear.
Are these subscribers higher quality?
This was one of the most important parts of the discussion, especially for writers who have been burned by cold growth tactics.
Brian’s answer is yes.
When someone comes from a borrowed audience source—like a podcast they’ve listened to for an hour—the trust factor is already higher than someone clicking a random ad. They come in warm, with context and interest.
In other words, they’re not just adding their name to a list. They’re choosing to connect.
The part people think is hard is actually easy
Most writers assume the hardest part of BOPA is convincing someone to promote them.
Brian says the opposite.
In his experience, about 50 percent of partnership outreach results in a yes, as long as you use a basic, respectful structure. People like sharing good work. They like highlighting valuable resources. They like helping their audience.
The harder part is making sure borrowed attention turns into meaningful action.
That usually comes down to one thing: the path from the borrowed moment to the next step is clear.
Simple and easy, compared to what?
Brian is careful not to sell fantasies. When he says BOPA is simple, he means compared to the alternatives.
Compared to paid ads, it’s dramatically simpler. Compared to becoming a full-time content publisher, it’s lighter. Compared to systems with dozens of moving parts, it’s harder to break.
The underlying idea is reassuring: if you do a B-minus job, you can still win. The worst-case scenario is not catastrophic. The upside is real.
A closing encouragement that feels almost too practical
Brian ends with a question that a lot of writers don’t give themselves permission to ask.
What sounds fun?
Not because fun is the goal of life, but because joy is a sustainability strategy. Most writers have been grinding for so long that they subconsciously assume hard equals right, and miserable equals faithful.
Brian pushes back on that.
When you’re lit up about what you’re doing, you become more creative. People can feel it. They trust it. They’re drawn to it. That light matters, not only spiritually, but practically.
And if you already have the work ethic—and most writers do—then the invitation isn’t to work harder. It’s to choose a growth method you won’t abandon in three months because it drains you.
BOPA doesn’t require you to become a constant content creator. It asks you to be generous, to build relationships, and to offer something genuinely helpful. For many writers, that’s not just more effective.
It’s more life-giving, too.
This post was reformatted from our original transcript by ChatGPT and edited for accuracy by Sandy.
