✈️ How I Stacked 5 Growth Levers to Grow My Newsletter to 10,000 Subscribers in 8 Months

Plus: Traditional HoldCo vs. Personal HoldCo

Author

Yong-Soo Chung
November 01, 2023

First-time traveler? Welcome aboard, Jetsetter! 👋🏼

Before we take-off, there’s one thing you should do:

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

Before we begin… a quick word from our sponsor.

📢 Sponsor: Castmagic

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Growing a newsletter? Trust me, it's not as easy as it sounds.

So, how did I manage to grow my newsletter to 10,000 subscribers in just 8 months?

Today, I'm going to lay it all out – the tactics I relied on, the blunders I committed, and most importantly, the invaluable lessons I picked up along the way.

On today’s episode, you’ll learn:

  • 🕰 The Power of a Referral Program

  • 📈 5 Growth Levers of Digital Businesses

  • 🏆 Mastering the Art of Cross-Promotions

  • 💻 How to Create Your Own Growth Flywheel

Here are a few juicy excerpts from today’s episode to get you flowing:

Growth Lever Strategies for Digital Businesses: "The key is to know when to use which growth lever." — Yong-Soo Chung (04:14)

The Power of Incentives in a Referral Program: "Incentivizing your subscribers to bring in more subscribers is a great way to rapidly increase your subscriber numbers." — Yong-Soo Chung (20:34)

Here’s the Hyper-Visual summary for today’s episode.

(Click the visual below to enlarge it.)

I promise you this episode is full of incredible insights!

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✈️ First Time Listener? Here’s What You Missed…

🏷 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!

📝 Yong-Soo’s Weekly Journal

Each week, I reflect on lessons learned growing my Personal Holding Company — the good, the ugly, and everything in-between in raw, unfiltered, free-form writing.

Traditional HoldCo vs. Personal HoldCo

Holding Companies are all the rage right now.

And for good reason.

Smart entrepreneurs are realizing that they don't need to risk it all on one startup, sacrificing 10 years of their life.

Instead, they can build a portfolio of businesses.

But nobody knows the difference between a Traditional HoldCo and a Personal HoldCo.

In my opinion, the Personal HoldCo is the new wave of entrepreneurship.

So today, I'm going to break it down for you.

Let dig in…

Can you guess the single biggest factor that changes the entire dynamic of a Traditional HoldCo vs. a Personal HoldCo?

I’ll give you a hint.

It has to do with stakeholders, or decision-makers.

With a Traditional HoldCo, you typically raise funding from investors.

And investors typically look for an efficient return on their investment.

I have nothing against this.

But this changes the dynamic of the entire HoldCo. How?

It changes the investment philosophy.

Traditional HoldCos place a higher emphasis on healthy, higher-margin companies, regardless of the industry they’re in.

Swimming pools, HVACs, laundromats… all sorts of boring companies.

But, what about Personal HoldCos?

Things get a bit more… personal. (Pun intended.)

With a PHC, we’re turning hobbies into businesses.

So the companies within a Personal HoldCo have more focus on YOUR interests.

Of course, you want all your businesses to be highly profitable with high margins. But, that’s not the core focus here, unlike a Traditional HoldCo.

As you construct your very own PHC, each company might even serve a different function.

For example, I have a dog boutique called Spotted By Humphrey that I run with my wife and two French bulldogs. This brings me a lot of joy. We travel to all sorts of fancy destinations and stay for free.

I have other businesses that are designed to bring in more cashflow.

How you construct your PHC portfolio is entirely up to you.

This is the beauty of a Personal Holding Company.

Thanks for reading!

Yong-Soo

📢 Sponsor: Audience Builder X

All right, everyone… listen up!

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🎛 Metrics Dashboard

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

Newsletter:

  • Subscribers: 10,069

  • Open Rate: 43.16%

  • Click Rate: 5.2%

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

Podcast:

  • 90-Day Downloads: 9,899

  • 30-Day Downloads: 3,648

  • 7-Day Downloads: 732

👍🏻 Recommendation: Best hosting platform for your podcast? I use and recommend Buzzsprout. Get $20 when you sign-up using this link.

💺 Jetsetter of the Week

Principles Friday is a newsletter that discovers the guiding principles of extraordinary individuals and unlocks the wisdom of legends.

Here's the pitch:

"Welcome to Principles Friday, where I share one principle that can help you in your life or business, one thought-provoking question, and one call to action toward that principle."

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 content each week

  2. Get In Front of My Audience:

    • 25k+ Twitter followers

    • 12k+ Podcast subscribers

    • 10,000+ Newsletter subscribers

  3. Work with Me:

    • Broader strategies on a particular topic

    • Dig deeper into specific tactics on a topic

💬 Final Word

Hey all, I have an exciting announcement to make!

I am now available to book on Intro.

What is Intro?

It’s a platform where you can book calls directly with experts.

Folks like Alexis Ohanian, Justin Welsh, and Sahil Bloom are available to book on Intro.

If you want to chat with me, now you can.

Thanks for another great week.

See you next time!

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

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