Converting Text into a single shape

Hello, I'm not sure how to describe this because I keep seeing instructions on the internet for how to apply text to fit a shape.  I'm not trying to do that, I just want to take text that I applied an envelope distort to, and then I applied a very large stroke so that it becomes the background of a copy of the text that will sit on top of it, and turn the large stroke into one basic shape so that instead of the paths being the original text characters that instead the path follows the outline of what the text was.

I've done it before but can't remember how to now.  I tried selecting the distorted text, choosing Expand Appearance and then convert to shape, but I get error that nothing was converted.

Thank you in advance for any help.