✈️ Growing an Audience? Read this.

Welcome to the 'Brief', your favorite newsletter where we simplify business growth tactics one week at a time.

Each week, I share valuable lessons bootstrapping my companies: Urban EDC, Spotted By Humphrey, and GrowthJet.

Jetsetters, ready for flight FCF7?

Here's what we've got for you today:

• 📈 Going From Zero to One

• 🐝 Platform Cross Pollination

• 🟰 Equation for Business Success

• 🚀 Grow an Audience via PIERS framework

• 🤝 Secrets to Building Meaningful Relationships Online

We're closing the gates — last call for boarding!

✈️ Episode Itinerary

Imagine pouring all your energy into your new startup.

Countless late nights, long hours... and then? Your startup implodes.

You give yourself a runway of 6 months to build an audience to support your family (including a new born baby girl!). Could you do it?

That's exactly what Kevon Cheung did.

Today, he's built a successful online business making $10,000+ per month as a full-time creator. How did he do it?

Well, one thing is for sure: Kevon has the most authentic voice online that I've ever come across.

And today, he's revealing his secret for developing an authentic voice.

It's called PIERS framework:

• P — Principles

• I — Interests

• E — Exceptions

• R — Reluctance

• S — Strengths

Want to dig further into the PIERS framework?

Listen to my entire interview with Kevon.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Build An Audience? (1:40)

• How to Survive the Early Days of Building an Audience (4:13)

• Why Your Circle of Friends Evolves Over Time (6:15)

• How to Develop an Authentic Voice (8:34)

• Framework For Developing an Online Identity (11:04)

• Secrets to Building Meaningful Relationships Online (18:39)

• Benefits of Building in Public (21:26)

• Ask Me Anything (25:48)

🧠 Weekly Lessons:

In addition to my podcast, I share bite-sized lessons that I learned this week building my company. Hope you find these insights valuable!

Medium Cross-Pollination:

Each channel grows within its own ecosystem. For organic content to resonate, stick within the formats that each individual platform prefers. This increases the likelihood for that platform's algorithm to favor your content.

All of this is part of your discovery platform, which I'll talk about on next week's podcast episode.

Once you bring over an audience from another platform to your own via newsletter or podcast, it's important to cross-pollinate. What does this mean?

Let your audience know where else they can find you. You want them to follow you everywhere so you pop up in their feed wherever they are.

You have to meet your audience where they are. You can't force them to change their behavior. It's simply too much to ask.

💡 Lesson: Meet your audience where they are then cross-pollinate them across all the other mediums you're on.

Everyone Starts at 0:

When you start any new project, it's always the hardest at the start. As a new creator, it feels like I'm pushing a giant rock up a steep hill.

I felt the same way when I launched Urban EDC back in 2015. But guess what?

It's always the hardest going from 0 to 1.

Back in 2015, I was hustling to build partnerships and almost everybody rejected me. 'No' after 'no' after 'no'. I felt discouraged and came this close to giving up. So glad I pushed through.

Now, we have business partners lining up to work with us. They want to associate themselves with our brand. We have folks who initially rejected us coming back to us!

Funny how that works.

So here's a reminder:

• Don't give up.

• It will get easier.

• Everyone starts at 0.

Building a brand takes time.

💡 Lesson: Just keep going. Good things come to those who persevere through the beginning.

Growth Equation:

I've been around business long enough to notice a simple equation for business success:

Product + Distribution = Growth

That's it.

But it can't be that simple can it?

Surprisingly, it is. Everything you can think of either falls under Product or Distribution.

Product is the value that you're promising to deliver to your customers.

Distribution is how your product gets discovered.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately.

I'll explore this idea further, perhaps as a long-form solo podcast episode!

💡 Lesson: Master both Product + Distribution and you'll win the game of entrepreneurship.

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

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

Podcast:

We've settled in around 500 downloads for the 7 day period. It's easy to get caught up in short-term numbers but it's important to zoom out and see the growth over the past 90 days.

Starting this week, I removed the pre-roll that had a callout promoting this newsletter as I saw a big drop off of listeners after the first 20 seconds or so. Looks like it worked.

This tells me the first 20-30 seconds are critical for a podcast episode. I'm going to start adding in a "cold open" to build a curiosity gap with listeners.

Here are the download numbers:

• 90-Day Downloads: 13,287 (+379)

• 30-Day Downloads: 2,946 (-599)

• 7-Day Downloads: 518 (+14)

👍🏻 Recommendation: Thinking of starting a podcast? I love using Buzzsprout.

Newsletter:

Newsletter growth is way more predictable than podcast growth. And easier to grow, too!

Since focusing more on this newsletter, I've continued to see steady growth thanks to my organic content on Twitter and LinkedIn along with my recommendation swap partners.

Let's dig into the numbers:

• Subscribers: 550 (+47)

• Open Rate: 46.9%

• Click Rate: 13.3%

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

🔍 Community Spotlight

This week, we're giving Kevon Cheung the spotlight.... because why not? He's the star of the show this week.

Kevon is a big advocate for building in public.

But have you heard of learning in public?

I'll let Kevon explain what that means:

Go to 3:50 and you might see a familiar face. 😁

P.S. Kevon is welcoming his 2nd daughter into the world today - don't forget to congratulate him! 🎉

💬 Final Word

I gained a lot of new followers this week on Twitter so if you're one of them - hello! 👋🏼

I'm devoting more time to build out my organic content engine.

More threads on Twitter, more carousels on LinkedIn.

If you want to connect with me, send me a request and let me know you came from this newsletter!

That's all we have for this week.

Have a great rest of your week!

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

P.S. If you enjoyed this, I would LOVE it if you shared it on Twitter with your audience. 🙏🏼

🤝 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.