✈️ My French bulldog was filmed on set. 🎬

Welcome to the 'Brief', your favorite newsletter where we unlock the hidden growth levers in your business one week at a time.

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First, let's say hello to 105 new jetsetters who joined us on our flight this week. 👋🏼

Here are some juicy highlights we've got for you today:

• Twitter shop hack

• Surprising viral tweet

• How to go viral on LinkedIn

• Drool-worthy podcast guests

• When my dog was invited to film on set

Put on your seat belts. We're about to take off! ✈️

✈️ Episode Itinerary

I pulled into a parking lot with my wife and our French bulldog.

The gravel parking lot and old, rustic trailers seemed like a scene out of a movie set.

We were invited down to Los Angeles by Shopify to film a show for their YouTube series showcasing e-commerce brands.

As we entered the large, old warehouse, we were surprised to see a large set with an entire film crew. They even had make-up artists backstage.

Just last week, they had filmed a commercial for Google.

Today, they were here to film Humphrey, our French bulldog.

Here's what the set looked like, in case you're curious.

My wife, Sandy, along with Humphrey, run Spotted By Humphrey, an online dog boutique selling playful dog goods for good dogs.

This week, she appears as our first-ever guest on the First Class Founders podcast.

I'm very excited to share this conversation I had with Sandy about why a strong brand is so important to stand out in today's crowded digital world.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to Identify Your Brand Values (2:38)

• How to Live Your Brand Values (8:53)

• Should You Ever Evolve Your Values? (13:28)

• How to Audit Your Values (17:48)

📝 Weekly Reflections

Surprising Tweet:

I had a surprising tweet that went semi-viral. It was completely unexpected. I asked my followers if anyone knew any other Beehiiv newsletters to recommend. It was retweeted by Beehiiv (of course) and Tyler Denk, Co-Founder & CEO of Beehiiv.

This was my best-performing tweet. Better than my threads.

This tells me that your network is just as important (maybe more?) when you're building an audience.

Your content might be amazing, but if you don't have great distribution, then no one sees it.

✅ Lesson: Your network is more important than you think — Keep building meaningful relationships. (Share this on Twitter)

Optimizing for Newsletter:

Prior to this week, I was plugging in the website for First Class Founders podcast in all my link in bios and comments.

But I made a big change this week. Instead of asking people to listen to the podcast, which requires a bigger commitment, I asked people to subscribe to this newsletter.

I updated all my link in bios to the newsletter instead.

Since then, I've more than doubled my subscribers in one week. Yup, you read that right.

It turns out, subscribing to a newsletter is far easier to convince than listening to a podcast. Lesson learned.

✅ Lesson: Choose the next action for your audience that requires less friction. (Share this on Twitter)

Twitter Shop Hack:

With Twitter shutting down Revue, there's no way to spotlight your newsletter in your bio, right?

That's what I thought, too.

Well, it turns out there's a work-around for this. Check it out here.

Big shout to Sara Loretta for this one. She's part of Jay Clouse's Lab group (which I'm also in!) and she shared this hack with the entire group.

If you want to learn how to do this, just hit reply and ask!

👍🏻 Recommendation: You can find tips like this and more in Jay Clouse's Lab. It's like a mastermind on steroids. Let's be Labmates! You can join here.

Cracking LinkedIn's Algorithm:

This post was my best-performing post, ever, on LinkedIn.

Take a look at my total number of impressions over the last 28 days:

And now, take a look at this last post:

Here's why I think it did so well:

I used a carousel, a great hook that's aspirational, and received great engagement early on from other larger accounts that triggered the almighty algorithm.

The post was very specific, tactical, and actionable.

I also responded to every single comment as quickly as I could drumming up even more engagement.

Then, I went on a commenting rampage on other creators' posts because I wanted to take advantage of my most successful post to bring new followers in.

I went from 1,275 followers to 1,414 in less than 3 hours.

To give you an idea, on average, I get 5-10 followers during an entire 24-hour period.

As I write this (Sunday afternoon), I have 1,908 followers.

I'll continue to experiment on LinkedIn and report back next week.

✅ Lesson: Create content that's clear, aspirational, and most importantly, actionable. (Share this on Twitter)

Newsletter Cross Promotions:

I started doing some cross promotions with a few other creators that I spoke to via Beehiiv Recommendations. It's too early to tell how effective this is. So I'll keep monitoring!

I also added a new section starting this week: Community Spotlight.

This is a chance for me to showcase another creator that I think deserves more recognition.

👍🏻 Recommendation: Interested in starting a newsletter? I highly recommend Beehiiv.

Podcast:

Very excited to announce two more confirmed guests for First Class Founders: Arvid Kahl and Jeremy Enns!

When I first began my creator journey, I looked up to these two creators.

And now, they're coming on as guests! Super stoked.

I'd like to bring on more thought leaders from the creator space who have a clear, actionable framework they can share with our audience.

Stay tuned for more amazing guest appearances on the podcast!

👍🏻 Recommendation: Starting a podcast? I love using Buzzsprout.

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

Why am I sharing these numbers?

I'm building First Class Founders in public so each week, I share my podcast and newsletter numbers exclusively through the 'Brief' newsletter.

Come along for the ride each week!

Podcast:

The aftermath of my sponsorship with Player.FM continues. My 90-Day and 30-Day download numbers continue to "trend up" because of my 2-week sponsorship. However, my 7-Day numbers are declining.

After the the initial spike, I suspect that we'll settle somewhere in the low 1,000s for the 7-Day numbers. I'll continue to monitor and keep you posted.

Also, I haven't been promoting the podcast as much since changing my strategy to focus on newsletter subscribers instead, which will hopefully generate more podcast downloads in the long-run.

Here are the current podcast download numbers:

• 90-Day Downloads: 10,915 (+2,409)

• 30-Day Downloads: 10,030 (+2,286)

• 7-Day Downloads: 1,134 (-2,194)

Newsletter:

This is where my focus has been for the past 2 weeks.

As I mentioned above, I had my best-performing LinkedIn post last week which generated the majority of my new newsletter sign-ups.

We had 105 new subscribers, DOUBLING our subscriber count total from last week. 🤯

Let's look at the subscriber metrics:

• Subscribers: 209 (+105)

• Open Rate: 44%

• Click Rate: 15.2%

Tune-in next week for updated metrics!

🔍 Community Spotlight

This week, I'm highlighting Alex Llull's The Steal Club.

Alex is part of Jay Clouse's Lab and we started chatting more on Twitter after I saw this monster value thread from Alex about how to grow your newsletter.

It's no surprise that his newsletter is filled with value.

Here's the pitch...

"The Steal Club is a free newsletter for creative entrepreneurs. We learn how the best creators use content to grow their audience and businesses. And how you can do the same by stealing their tactics and strategies."

Subscribe to Alex's newsletter The Steal Club.

💬 Final Word

For those who celebrate Chinese New Year, happy new year!

Here's your red envelope in emoji form:🧧

It's been a crazy first couple weeks of launching this newsletter.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

As always, if you have any feedback for me to improve this newsletter, just hit reply and let me know.

If you enjoyed this, feel free to share it on Twitter with your audience.

Have a great week!

Cheering for you,

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

🤝 Let's Work Together

When you're ready, here are 3 ways we can work together:

1. Want to work directly with me? Book a 1:1 session.

2. Want to cross-promote your newsletter or podcast? Email me.

3. Want to join our community? Join our First Class Founders Membership.