✈️ Harnessing the Power of Habits to Compound Success

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

• Newsletter as a Startup

• How to automate success

• Using DMs as growth engine

• Content Battle: LinkedIn vs. Twitter

• Breaking down my most viral content, ever. 🤯

Step right on in. (Watch your step!)

✈️ Episode Itinerary

Imagine a single droplet of water hitting a slab of stone every minute.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

What will happen in one day? Not a lot.

But what about in 100 years?

These single droplets of water can pierce a hole through the stone.

Now, look at this from a different angle.

What would happen if you took a large bucket of water and poured it onto the same slab of stone all at once?

Did you even make a dent in it? Probably not.

Habits work the same way.

It's not one large action that will make a significant impact on your life. It's about the tiny smaller actions repeated over and over again that will cause a lasting impact.

And the scariest part is... if you do this right, habits can automate our behavior.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The Importance of Habits (1:32)

• My Own Daily Habits (6:25)

• How to Break Bad Habits & Create Good Habits (13:09)

• Compound Life-Changing Habits (17:17)

📝 Weekly Reflections

How to Increase Email Open Rates:

I've been enjoying Twitter a lot lately. Why?

It's like crowdsourcing information from experts.

I asked my audience how I could increase my open rate from 44% to above 50%.

This tweet had some VALUE BOMBS from successful creators like Josh Spector, Justin Moore, Abhishek Shah, and Kevon Cheung.

Check it out:

💡 Lesson: Leverage your audience to crowdsource the best ideas. (Share this on Twitter)

Using DMs as Growth Engine:

I've been using Hivoe to auto-DM each new follower with the following message:

And I'm getting responses like this back:

Auto-DMs can be effective, when done right.

I also do this on LinkedIn working with a Virtual Assistant I hired from the Philippines.

LinkedIn is notorious for blocking bot activity so my VA and I coordinate times so neither of us are trying to login at the same time.

Your followers will be your highest quality pool of potential subscribers.

So if you can, convert them into newsletter subscribers.

💡 Lesson: Looking for high quality subscribers for your newsletter? Ask your followers to subscribe through valuable organic content. (Share this on Twitter)

Growth Rate > Subscriber List:

I recently had a chance to speak to Matt McGarry, an email growth expert.

The biggest takeaway?

When it comes to cross recommendations through platforms like Beehiiv or Convertkit, list size doesn't matter.

It's more important to focus on growth rate since new subscribers coming onto their list will see your newsletter recommendation, and subscribe (if they want).

💡 Lesson: If you're looking to swap newsletter recommendations, list size doesn't matter. It's the growth rate that counts. (Share this on Twitter)

LinkedIn vs. Twitter:

Now, this was unexpected.

I posted a Twitter thread and it was a complete dud.

In fact, I DELETED the thread 30 minutes in because it was getting zero traction. Nada.

Then, I improved it (based on feedback), re-posted it, but still, not much engagement:

I posted the same thread as a carousel on LinkedIn, and I hit a grand slam.

In fact, this was my most viral post ever on any social platform:

285,830 impressions, 341 reactions, 18 reposts. In just 4 days. Wow.

You just never know which channel your content will perform well on.

💡 Lesson: Cross post your high-quality content onto other social media platforms. You never know what will happen. (Share this on Twitter)

Newsletter as a Startup:

This week, I realized that I'm treating my newsletter as a startup.

The product is the content of each newsletter and the distribution channels are how you acquire users (subscribers).

I wrote a massive thread on Twitter last week about all the newsletter growth strategies I'm using for my newsletter.

I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't!

Full disclaimer: I have not set up a referral program yet. Stay tuned.

Here's the thread:

💡 Lesson: For a newsletter, your content is the product and your distribution is the user acquisition channel. Master content + distribution and you'll be unstoppable. (Share this on Twitter)

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

Why am I sharing these numbers?

Because I love you all. No, really. I love sharing what I'm doing to build First Class Founders in public. So each week, I share my numbers exclusively through the 'Brief' newsletter.

Come on in, step inside the cockpit...

Podcast:

As I mentioned in past newsletter editions, we're still bottoming out from the sponsorship I ran with Player.FM between 12/26 - 1/8, which boosted download numbers temporarily for 2 weeks.

You can see the 30-Day Downloads declining drastically as we phase out of the sponsorship numbers.

The good news is, it seems like we've found our local bottom judging by the slight increase in our 7-day numbers. (Finally!) 

Also, I'm curious to see if the growth of this newsletter will impact 7-day downloads (if at all). Something to monitor...

Here are the download numbers:

• 90-Day Downloads: 12,194 (+1,279)

• 30-Day Downloads: 8,168 (-1,858)

• 7-Day Downloads: 1,166 (+36)

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

Newsletter:

I added a pre-roll to my latest podcast episode to join the newsletter. I'll keep an eye out if there's any traction here.

An effective strategy so far has been organic content with DM'ing new followers with a link to the newsletter.

But the most effective strategy?

Newsletter swap recommendations through Beehiiv, which brought in 45% of new subscribers.

Open rates and click rates have also gone up!

My goal is to get above 50% open rates.

Let's look at the numbers:

• Subscribers: 360 (+155)

• Open Rate: 47.6%

• Click Rate: 15.5%

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

LinkedIn:

I'm adding LinkedIn this week because this is where my biggest growth has been. I'll share impressions and engagement, which are private to me only. (And now, you!)

Two posts went viral for me within the past 10 days which boosted my impressions and engagements.

You can check out my two viral posts here and here.

Now, check out this graph:

That initial jump on Jan 21 was my first viral post.

The second, bigger jump on Jan 25th was my second viral post.

I had 116,194 impressions on Friday Jan 27th, alone.

If you want to know why I think these posts went viral, I wrote about it here.

Let's look at the 7-Day metrics:

• 7-Day Impressions: 352,110

• 7-Day Engagements: 851

We'll see if I can sustain these numbers. I'll report back next week!

🤝 Connect: Are you on LinkedIn? Send me a request with a note that says you saw it on this week's newsletter. Let's connect!

🔍 Community Spotlight

This week, I'm highlighting Jamie Northrup's Minimalist Hustler.

If you want a deeper look into Jamie's newsletter business, Ciler Demiralp did a deep dive on this post.

Here's the pitch...

"Join 1300+ online hustlers in receiving a daily email with 3 valuable resources that will help you make more money online."

Subscribe to Jamie Northrup's Minimalist Hustler.

💬 Final Word

I did it — I finally bought my ticket to Creator Economy Expo (CEX)!

This will be my first time attending.

I'm so excited to meet so many of you in person.

If you're going, please reply and let me know. Would love to say hi!

Have a great 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.