Your Lifelong Distribution Engine

I’ll get straight to the point.

Your personal brand is your lifelong distribution engine.

Whether you choose to start a newsletter, build a social presence, or host a podcast, the medium is totally up to you.

But you have to start putting yourself out there.

Especially if you’re a builder, creator, or entrepreneur.

One of the biggest problems founders face is user acquisition.

Yeah, you can build an amazing product, but how do you get the word out?

Paid marketing is getting more expensive.

Growth marketers can be tough to hire (especially if you want someone with years of experience in your specific niche).

My recommendation is to keep an active, steadily growing personal online presence.

This way, you can funnel your audience to whatever projects you’re working on at any given time.

This will also deepen the relationship with your online community since they’ll see your progression over time.

I’ve been publishing online for nearly 15 years, and some of the of the people who follow me have seen me grow from the kid who just got into college, to landing my first real job, to working at LinkedIn, to going on a National DJ Tour, and all of the miscellaneous side projects along the way.

I’ve had countless job offers, reverse hiring pitches, and even helped my last startup raise nearly $1M in investment capital (long live Crave It).

I’ve also used my online presence to drive thousands of downloads for that startup, grow my podcast to 10k downloads in 4 weeks, and sell hundreds of tickets for DJ gigs (see photo below).

Having an online presence is a superpower.

I hope this short newsletter edition prompts you to get started (or double down if you’re already doing your thing).

Here’s a rough framework on how to get started

Step 1: Pick 1 social platform

Step 2: Publish daily content using prompts

Step 3: Set notifications for 10 creators who have the audience you want

Step 4: Study their content, engage with people in their replies, add value, be helpful

Step 5: Start a personal newsletter where you share monthly updates, insights, & stories

Step 6: Share newsletter insights via social (drive people to subscribe for more)

Step 7: Attend IRL events with peers or join online groups

Step 8: After each event or group joined, connect with people on social

Step 9: Send personalized messages to a handful of people

Step 10: Set follow-up calls with some of those people to get to know them

Step 11: Support them on social, cheer them on, amplify them when you can

Step 12: Ask your social audience if they have any questions for you (also see your DMs)

Step 13: Use feedback to guide some of your long-form writing

Step 14: Shout out the people who prompted your post

Step 15: Tease out the content on social

Repeat.

If you don’t want to do a newsletter, you can also host a podcast or start a YouTube channel.

I’d stick to newsletter or podcast — since it’s more of an owned audience than YouTube, where you have to rely on the algorithm to share your content to the right people.

You’ve got this.

But you’ve got to get started.

Cheers,

Ish

More content to help you get there: