Building your brand: How I reached 10k subscribers in 6 months
Building your brand: How I reached 10k subscribers in 6 months
Becoming a better software engineer, learning more, and building connections
Hey everyone, Jordan here 👋
A big THANK YOU for 10,000 subscribers on the newsletter. When I started this 6 months ago, I thought just 100 subscribers would be a good goal.
To reach 10,000 is just surreal to me. So thank you.
This is a special edition where I share how I did it and how you can too.
⭐️ Main takeaways
Why you should build a brand and the benefits you get.
The 3 biggest steps you can do to build up a brand and potentially reach 10,000 subscribers in 6 months.
Note: Your goal may be something else (YouTube, podcast, work relationships, etc.). These lessons should still broadly apply to building a brand.
🤔 Why you should build a brand
This could be a whole newsletter topic alone, so I’ll share the top 3 reasons.
In short, the benefits are endless.
Sharing what you know or are learning helps you learn better.
“If you want to master something, teach it” - Richard Feynman. The more you write, the better you learn about what you’re writing and the better you become at writing—both incredibly important skills for software engineers. Ryan Peterman has an article on this: “Why engineers need to write.”
You talk to people with different perspectives. Many times I share something on LinkedIn and people share what they know and have tried. I’ve learned so much from other’s experiences that I never would have if I kept to myself.
Connections, sponsorships, and interviews.
These are added bonuses to me. I get so much value already just from knowing I’m helping people with my writing and the self-benefits of writing. It goes without saying though—you end up with a bunch of connections that can refer you to your dream job, recruiters are more likely to offer interviews, and sponsorships that will offer you money.
It’s not as hard as you might think.
Looking at big YouTubers and creators, I looked in awe thinking I could never do what they do. But I’m doing it now, in just 6 months, and I’m just a normal person like you. I’m just sharing my experiences and learnings.
There are many low-friction ways to get involved and write more: Write a weekly summary of what you learned, write an occasional LinkedIn post commenting about something interesting, share your learnings within your team at work, etc.
💡 Learn in public
Learning in public is the number 1 thing that has kept me motivated and led to the growth this newsletter has had.
Nearly every post was because I wanted to solidify my knowledge in a topic more.
In the How to give presentations your teammates love post, I had the motivation because it was right after a demo I did that I thought went well.
In the How to be the mentor you wish you had post, I wanted to write this because I was ramping up coaching and mentoring and wanted better frameworks for myself to think about how to be a good mentor.
In the early-on What The Mandalorian can teach you about difficult conversations at work post, I wrote about it after reading the book Crucial Conversations and wanting to solidify my learning further.
In each article, I tie the learnings back to my personal experiences for 2 reasons:
Personal examples make these articles unique, enjoyable, and memorable.
Connecting where the advice worked and didn’t work to my personal experience helps me and you as the reader relate and understand the advice that much more.
For example: I could tell you that you should have growth conversations with your manager OR I could tell you that when I had growth conversations with my manager on a regular basis, it led to us being constantly in sync with each other leading to back-to-back promotions. The latter is more interesting, memorable, and helps both of us learn better.
To do this step right, you just have to start sharing what you’re learning and tie it back to your personal experience where you can.
🤝 Build connections
6 months ago, I thought networking meant… being fake or having an ulterior motive.
Now, I realize it’s more about making friends than anything.
Since starting, I feel like I’ve made so many friends and connections just from finding people who have shared goals.
We interact through comments and DMs, exchange ideas, do events and posts together, recommend each other, share feedback, mentor each other (shoutout to Anton Zaides, Dariusz Sadowski, Alex Chiou, Nicola Ballotta, and Casey Dai to name a few), and more.
While learning in public has been the motivation that keeps me going, the connections built are the number 1 reason for the newsletter growth.
But you might be wondering how to get started with this.
How you can “network”
The best way to network is: Help other people achieve their goals and be supportive.
Here’s a set of things I regularly do to build connections:
Shout-outs: One way I give shout-outs is through monthly newsletter posts. This shout-out post got 330k views and led to 500-1k+ subscribers for many of the people listed. I also try to connect my advice to other creators’ posts that share similar advice (I did this earlier in this post linking to Ryan Peterman’s article).
Give thanks: I do this whenever someone shares an insightful comment or becomes a paid subscriber. I also give thanks in overabundance whenever someone goes out of their way to help me. I try to express how much their help means like, “You have no idea how much this means to me. I really appreciate the time you took to help me with this.”
Comment, like, repost: On YouTube, I passively watch because the time-to-value of commenting is low since creators mostly just see you as “viewers” rather than “people to connect with.” On LinkedIn, that’s different. I feel like I’m interacting with people and building connections, so I try to comment and like at least 5 insightful posts I saw that day. I notice it results in many of those people being more interested in my posts too.
Give free resume reviews: When many of the layoffs were happening, I offered free resume reviews and interview prep sessions. While this took a lot of time, it led to many new connections and testimonials I could put on my reviews site.
Organize events and make it easy for everyone: In the Everything you wish you could ask your manager event, I tried to make it as easy as possible for everyone coming. I wanted them to just be able to come, talk, and have fun. So I put together a Google doc with a bunch of premade topic questions, made the event banner and LinkedIn event, etc. I’m not taking 100% credit by the way. Everyone helped with advertising, preparing questions, and more. I’m just saying the goal is to make it easy for others to say yes now and in the future.
Exchange advice and strategies: I’ve found people with similar goals to me, met up for 1:1 as an intro chat then discussed common goals and how we can help each other. Start with a genuine compliment and go from there. Here’s a snippet of something I’ve sent before: “Hey {name}, I hope you’re doing well! Been loving your posts recently. I can tell you are really going the extra mile with everything and it's super impressive.” From there, you could ask to meet for a virtual coffee.
Meet over coffee or lunch and pay: Continuing on the above, one thing I like to do when I ask someone to 1:1 chat is offer to pay for lunch. It goes such a long way to give someone a $25 or $50 UberEats if it’s within your budget. Random aside: I’ve also seen managers and directors do this for their employees (like after product launches) and I assure you they get much more value and appreciation back than the $25 gift card cost them.
This form of networking is so much more enjoyable to me than what we generally think of networking as.
This is all genuine appreciation, support, and common goals.
Doing this has led to the following for me:
37 newsletters recommending me.
Being shared in many other popular newsletters
Being shared on others’ LinkedIn posts leading to 500+ subscribers.
And more.
To do this step right, find people with the same goals as you. You can help each other out. As you do, you’ll grow and keep building more and more connections exponentially (especially since people will start reaching out to you).
💫 Be consistent (and healthy)
Do what lets you be consistent. Not overwhelmed.
For me, it’s writing a LinkedIn post every day about what’s on my mind. Friends of mine enjoy planning out their posts for the week.
For my newsletter, I usually write the day before I send it out on whatever is giving me inspiration. I jot down ideas and thoughts during the week then write the post during my blocked-out time on Saturday.
Whatever it is, find your minimum barrier to entry.
This applies to building a newsletter but to anything you want to achieve.
Let’s say it’s a new goal of reading more books. You find that you don’t have time to read but you want to. When you tell yourself you don’t have time, what is the minimum amount required so you can start? What if all you did was read 1 page instead of thinking about “reading a whole book.”
The same thing goes for something massive like writing a book. What if you broke it down like this:
Week 1: Write down all 12 chapter titles
Week 2-6: Jot down random ideas under each chapter title as your life goes on.
Week 7-18: Each week, flesh out the random ideas into ~10 pages of content.
And with something like that, you’d have most of the work done to become a book author in just ~4.5 months.
Taking it back to newsletters, the below post was my first entry into content creation.
At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about creating a newsletter. I was just thinking, “Let me see what happens when I share something I know on LinkedIn.” I kept my expectations low and was blown away by the 30 likes.
I kept on going and soon enough on day 3 had a post with 150 likes and 20k views.
So eventually, I just kept doing it. There have been days where I haven’t been up to it though. Life was hectic, or I wasn’t inspired to post. And I’d rather have a day without posting than a post where I’m feeling 20%. I do recommend listening to your body and not pushing yourself too hard. It’s not worth burning out.
To do this step right, find what allows you to be consistent without burning out.
📖 TL;DR
Benefits of building a brand
Connections: Can give you referrals, advice, mentorship, free products
Opportunities & money: Sponsorships + having an audience. You can share a book, course, app you’re building, or anything else at any time.
Jobs: Recruiters are more willing to give interviews since you stand out.
Learn in public
Building a brand is all about sharing what you’re learning and what you know. Tie it back to your personal experience and you have a recipe for success.
Build connections
Find others doing similar things to you and help them achieve their goals. The more you give, the more you get.
Here’s a list of some things you can do: Support their content (like, comment, share, shout-out), thank everyone who supports you, exchange advice on growth, schedule a coffee chat offering to get lunch on you, and exchange newsletter recommendations.
Be consistent (and healthy)
Find what works for you and stick to it. Slowly work in more of what you’re comfortable with as you can.
For example: While I’ve wanted to get into video creation for a while, I’m slowly working myself up to it. I have a camera and mic setup and I’m currently working myself over the “editing” time hump I worry about. But I’m also in no rush. Progress over perfection.
💭 Closing thought
Writing in public is not mandatory and there is nothing wrong with you if you choose not to. There are plenty of successful, highly-paid engineers who don’t write in public at all. In fact, they are probably the majority.
This post is just inspiration and advice for something to consider and an option for you to get into. I hope you enjoyed 🙂.
🔔 If you are interested in learning more about how to grow your newsletter, answer this 10-second form. I’m considering doing a workshop, course, or cohort.
📣 Shoutouts of the week
I’m trying this out—giving shout-outs to interesting articles or insights I saw during the week.
Level up engineering: The ultimate guide to whether you should join a startup
Engineering Leadership: The importance of well-being as a software engineer
Thank you again for helping reach 10,000 subscribers. It truly means so much to me.
Before closing out, here’s a clip of my “Axe throwing celebration night” which I scheduled the night I saw the 10,000 number.
No bullseye in that clip but was still close 😅.
- Jordan
P.S. If you’re interested, I’m accepting the following:
New coaching clients: See Mentorcruise for rates
Newsletter sponsorships: Feel free to reply to this email to reach me.
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