✈️ How to Build a Million Dollar Audience

Welcome to First Class Founders, your favorite destination to learn proven strategies to grow your business.

Today, we’re joined by David Hooper, a podcast legend who has worked with big clients including AT&T, RunDMC, Victoria’s Secret, and Fedex to grow their audience.

This episode is particularly special for me personally because I bought David’s book on podcasting long before I met David. And now, I’m interviewing him on my podcast… how surreal!

David and I went down a deep rabbit hole into building an audience through your authentic voice and how your audience evolves with you as you grow as a person.

This is a masterclass in audience building from someone who’s worked with celebrity musicians, artists, and creative entrepreneurs to grow their audiences.

I speak to David about a wide variety of things:

• 💵 How to Increase Your Sponsorship CPM

• 🚗 Be Open & Flexible in Your Creative Journey

• 🎤 From Radio to Music Conference to Podcasting

• 📷 Winning by Twinning: Be Relatable, Yet Aspirational

• 👥 Lessons for Founders: Pivoting for Audience Engagement

Jetsetters, you know what time it is... let’s get down to business!

🏷 Lost & Found

Did you miss these? Each week, I round up all sorts of interesting things I found on the internet that you missed. Enjoy!

• ❓ Question: Biggest Lie Told Being a Creator?

• 💊 Read: Stop Finding Your Niche — Find Your ‘Red Pill’

• 📰 Read: 39 Punchy Lessons On Writing Newsletters People Love

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

I'm building First Class Founders in public. Each week, I share my numbers exclusively through subscribers of this newsletter only.

→ Want to get in front of my audience of founders & creators?

Podcast:

• 90-Day Downloads: 6,568

• 30-Day Downloads: 2,180

• 7-Day Downloads: 491

👍🏻 Recommendation: Best AI tool for podcasters? I use and recommend Castmagic for show notes, transcripts, and excerpts.

Newsletter:

• Subscribers: 3,210

• Open Rate: 35.6%

• Click Rate: 5.0%

👍🏻 Recommendation: Thinking of starting a newsletter? I use and recommend Beehiiv with powerful features like boosts, recommendations, segmentations, automations, and detailed subscriber metrics.

💺 Passenger Spotlight

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I know, I know. There are a ton of AI newsletters but I promise you, this is a really good one specifically for entrepreneurs and founders.

Here's the pitch:

“Neonpulse is a newsletter read by entrepreneurs, investors, and AI founders, and is like a daily briefing of everything important happening in AI (including the best new AI tools) sent straight to your inbox each morning.”

You can subscribe here.

✈️ Travel Further With Me

Here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Join First Class Founders Membership:

   • Early access to new episodes each week

   • Uncut extended guest interviews that never aired

   • Private ad-free podcast with bonus episode segments

2. Get In Front of My Audience:

   • 17k+ Twitter followers

   • 12k+ Podcast subscribers

   • 3,200+ Newsletter subscribers

3. Work with Me:

   • Broader strategies on a particular topic

   • Dig deeper into specific tactics on a topic

💬 Final Word

Based on the analytics, it seems like many of you enjoyed the new “Lost & Found” segment of this newsletter!

I got this idea from my interview with Matt McGarry, newsletter expert, who helped grow The Hustle, Milk Road, and more.

I’ve already implemented strategies into my own newsletter.

And the best part?

I’ll share them with you in a future podcast episode.

(I love podcasting, can you tell?)

Meanwhile, enjoy this behind-the-scenes shot of our recording:

Until next time… onwards and upwards!

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster