Aggressively Human: Online Business in the Age of AI, Algorithms & Automations The stories that get shared: Community-Forward Media with Lex Roman
In this episode, we talk with Lex Roman, founder of Revenue Rulebreaker, about why solopreneurs and micro-business owners are almost invisible in mainstream business media—and what happens when someone actually builds a platform for them. Lex shares how Revenue Rulebreaker grew out of a personal experiment in becoming a full-time creator and turned into an independent media publication focused on indie businesses, real revenue experiments, and work that doesn’t fit the venture-scale mold.
We spend a lot of time on what’s broken in business media: pay-to-play outlets, thought leadership that’s really just a sales funnel, and the absence of honest stories about what it’s like to run a small, durable business. Lex explains why journalists aren’t filling that gap, why solo businesses have a hard time surfacing interesting angles, and why so much valuable knowledge stays trapped in private conversations instead of becoming public learning.
The conversation also gets practical. We talk about subscriptions versus memberships, why Revenue Rulebreaker is a media brand and what does that mean, and how sponsorships, subscriptions, and community-adjacent networks can coexist with (or sit alongside) client work. Underneath it all is a bigger question: what would business culture look like if we treated podcasts, newsletters, and blogs as media—not just marketing?
* How Revenue Rulebreaker started as a personal experiment and became an indie media publication
* Why solopreneurs and micro-business owners are ignored by mainstream business media
* The collapse of traditional journalism and what it means for business coverage
* Why pay-to-play outlets distort whose voices get amplified
* Why having an “angle” is how stories get platformed
* The difference between thought leadership, marketing content, and media
* The problem with content that always has to sell something
* Subscriptions vs. memberships—and why Lex is intentionally avoiding a membership model
* How sponsorships and subscriptions actually fund indie media
* Why private experiments inside small businesses are some of the most valuable stories we never see
* The role of community, networks, and stewarded spaces in a post-algorithm internet
“Journalists previously who would have been sourcing those stories don’t know a lot of business owners, but they know the woman who started Spanx.
So they’re just not that working that hard to find stories. So if they don’t know any business owners, and you don’t pitch them a compelling story, that story’s not getting told. I think also business owners have a really hard time understanding what’s cool and interesting about their own business.
Like, you know, they’re like, “I’d like to have my business platformed.” Of course you would, but you don’t have an angle? What’s your perspective? Why are you doing this interesting thing? You have to really dig at them to find those interesting things.” - Lex Roman
About our Guest
Mentioned Resources
Cal Newport - Can Substack Save Journalism?
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