Next one will be here, promise.

Whats amazing is connecting with so many incredible people real time. Over 550 people have watched and it just keeps growing, which is fun.

Your growth on LinkedIn is more than just having a picture of yourself.

Its sharing who you really are behind the post.

We covered how do to this meaningfully in todays world of LinkedIn and social media generally.

How do we connect with our ideal customer and build a lasting relationship.

How to show up without making it ridiculously challenging.

How to build so many stories to work from it will solve your content problems.

Plus some tips on how to actually use AI to help bring those ideas forward, and not write AI slop that pushes people away.

Below is my claude prompt if you didn’t catch it before for capturing your stories:

You're helping me build a record of my own life, one day at a time.
Two things live here: my memories, and my story homework.

STORY HOMEWORK
Once a day, ask me one question: "What's one small story from today?"

What was one lesson from the day, or something I spent time learning about?

If I say nothing happened, don't accept it. Ask again, smaller:
"What's the last thing that made you stop?"

MEMORIES
Ask me about a memory from my past that came up today. What is a moment you remember and how did it make you feel. What decisions happened that helped shape who you are?

WHAT NOT TO DO
Don't tell me what a moment means. Don't turn it into a lesson.
Don't ask three questions at once. Ask one, wait, ask the next
one based on what I actually said.

I love meeting new people, but hopping on a zoom and meeting them for the first time was straight to business, which is rare with most of my clients.

A lot of people hop on a call and want to chit chat for a while, she didn’t and I knew this would be a different kind of call.

She shared more about her investment firm and the kinds of projects they were involved in. I felt like I was meeting Rebecca from Ted Lasso, except she’s American.

She was kind, but direct: “what exactly do you do and how can it help us with our brand placement?”.

I said, “We will position you as one of the top partners in the arena, while sharing exactly what makes your deal flow unique and position your deals themselves to grow off the back of what you’re doing. It’s showcasing your authentic self, not generic content”.

After that and some more specific of her business she agreed that it could be helpful.

30 min, in and out of the call.

Next step was to email her the invoice and readout of what we could do together.

Mind you I’ve worked closely with VC’s and investors during my time in the startup landscape. Its a different world and everything functions on different timelines and everyone has a different way of working.

I’ve pitched probably every major VC from Mary Meeker to A16z in Silicon Valley.

However when its just you offering a single service it hits different.

I took a couple days to get everything done and emails to her, mostly because I’m a dad to two kids and I have a life. (I might have golfed in there too).

To be clear at this point, I’ve undersold myself so many times in the past.

I scoped the work I would be doing, which would honestly be more substainsial than what I’ve done for other teams, but they needed that kind of depth to geo from 0 to 100.

My original pricing had me way under at $5,000.

Which honestly would have been a lot money. However, I felt off.

I pinged a friend of mine in the space and asked him to help me run through the workload required and price it out (I hope you have a friend like that in your corner).

Him and I redid the work and looked at the actual time required and repriced the work at $22k per month for the rest of the year.

I kind of sat with the number longer than I normally do.

I hadn’t put out a single offer quite that big for this kind of work. Its scary to ask for more money than you normally ask for.

It was scary to ask for my first $1,500 deal. Or my first $300 paid ad on LinkedIn.

Its weird and scary at every new level, but that discomfort is always there. Always.

I sent the deal in at 10am on a Tuesday.

By 10:30am on a Wednesday it was a go and no questions asked.

I had closed an $88,000 deal inside of 24 hours and for a single client who would need maybe 10 hours a week max.

How do you make this shift faster than I did?

Heres my lesson in running this down:

Read more

We covered:

→ Live audits to real peoples posts
→ What a good hook looks like in real life
→ How I would manage content in todays world
→ What reaches real people and where to send them

The Growth Code is a publication about building a visible, trusted, and paid business via socials, written by industry veteran, Ryan Yockey.

Everyone wants to add AI to their business.

Almost nobody is doing it in the right order.

If you’ve been in business for yourself or especially if you’re at a legacy company and you’re trying to adopt AI as fast as possible, you should take a look at the fundamentals of your business first.

The first $7M I cut had nothing to do with AI. It was deep in big data queries.

I took over data engineering at my last company and in the first week I found $750k in wasted queries. Long running queries that would literally take the business an entire day to get an answer.

It was scary.

I took a look at our invoices and realized where it was stemming from and started with first principles. Thats when we found the rest of the bloated queries and suddenly we’re saving $7M a year.

I’ve done the same thing twice now.

Years earlier at Learnist we saved about $10M a year from infrastructure, and it was the same story, misapplied ML workloads and bloated AWS services running way over what anyone needed.

Same pattern both times. And I think it’s on almost every person reading this, even the small business with less than 10 people. Or even one person (I routinely prune things I don’t need any more).

Money is just where it starts

When you take over running a company, your job is to own everything, including operating expenses.

When I come into businesses they are usually growing at insane rates and its my job to make that continue while keep costs the same or lower. The fun job.

It was a place where I said “welcome to chaos” at the start of every morning meeting.

You have new requests, a growing business, new people joining every day, and an aging software stack that is expected to manage the entire business functionality, from operations, finance, and customers.

The easiest place for me to look is the monthly bill and see whats popping out. A close second are things like uptime, load, and customer complaints.

In a high growth company its common to spend your way into the next level, but that only lasts so long.

AI won’t save you here. For instance, AI flagged a data system as a big driver of our data insights and spend. Turned out nobody used it for that at all. We lost weeks investigating something that didn't matter.

What to actually check, in order

This is the part I’d have wanted when I started.

1. Open the actual bill. (if you don’t have it, you have bigger problems) Not the dashboard. The real invoice, line items sorted by cost, biggest first. You will be surprised in the first ten minutes, and that alone is the finding. Question why a lot here.

2. Look at where your team spends an enormous time debugging. Its actually a big tell and the people working on it can tell you exactly whats painful to fix and maintain. Thats a morale killer and most likely the root of some serious cost problems.

3. Go looking for scheduled jobs nobody remembers setting up. Every company has jobs that were set up for a project that ended two years ago and never got turned off. Extra code and extra costs.

4. Find the wasted outputs. There are dashboards and tables no one has used. Thousands of rows of data that no one cares about anymore. If a report got generated and then sat stale, it is probably still useless. Kill that kruft.

5. Look at every failed job. There are usually a ton of failed jobs that just keep running and people ignore it.

6. Check retention. Not the customer side. Retaining records and files isn’t a hard requirement of the business usually. There can be massive amounts of unused data sitting in the wings ready to be removed.

7. Check environments. Staging and dev servers rarely need to be running at production levels. Similarly demo and testing environments left unchecked can cost a fortune.

8. Review contracts. Are the contracts current. Are they over leveraged. Do you need to renegotiate the contract for more favorable terms. Lots of questions, but worth looking through anything that might be stale.

None of that requires AI. Just some time and your diligence to review whats already there.

Heres what worth understanding.

AI can actually be useful. Before it can though, we want to make sure its fixing a good system thats been at least reviewed by leadership and understands the risks and rewards.

Otherwise you’re just dumping money into tokens that are never utilized.

We ran 75 engineers for a multi-billion dollar business. Deliberately lean, through better systems and aggressive early AI adoption. Theres no way it would work if the underlying spend is chaos.

Automate when things are working well. Not perfect, but well.

After we cleaned up the data side, I hired a VP of Engineering for Data to own the function day to day, because finding seven million dollars once is a story, and having it stay found is a system.

“We need AI for this” is the sign

Very very often teams haven’t maximized what they are already able to achieve with their current team.

We all love the shiny new object and what it can possibly do for your team and business. But, I promise AI is making sloppy decisions because the person showing it the right way hasn’t completely maximized their own space first.

I don’t think people do it on purpose.

The first sign of a great AI pick is what it will actually do to move the business forward. Did it reduce Customer Service requests? Did it make operations more aware of their gaps and latency? Did it find bugs and stack rank them by how much the customer was impacted?

Ideally AI is saving us time, money, energy.

Where to start

Find the biggest pain point in your company. Everyone complains about it.

Its all over the slack messages and team meetings.

But everyone just says “well thats how it is”. Life doesn’t just have to be that way.

Go back to first principles and you’ll see that almost any process can be made more efficient and the byproduct is a low cost and higher throughput.

I write about what it takes to be an effective operator in todays world every week. It’s free.

Subscribe now

The next newsletter goes a bit deeper in how you deal with this at the entry level point.

The idea was good and through her 10 years of experience as a D2C founder you would think it was going to immediately be a hit.

She had the courage to hit publish, which is more than most people sitting on a decade of value ever get to.

And the post was dead the minute it went live.

117 impressions. Two likes, both from people she went to school with. Zero comments. Zero inbound DMs. Zero of the thing she actually wanted, which was for the one right stranger to read it and think “I need to talk to this person.”

So she blamed the idea thought it was crap or that she blamed herself for not having enough followers yet. This is when most people quit. I sure as hell almost did when I first started.

Honestly though - it was the way the content was structured, not the idea itself.

What it actually looked like a big wall of text in one giant paragraph. The grey block is the enemy for the attention deficit economy.

You don’t have a knowledge problem. You have a structure problem.

You already know your stuff.

If you were at a dinner with friends and they asked you to explain it, you could.

You would probably take a couple minutes and it would include the exact story and the exact numbers.

The problem is we overthink it when it comes to writing or doing videos.

We have a big blank canvas and we could literally write as much as we want. On LinkedIn that is a pretty well oiled machine now, but we can still get stuck with how to structure it all.

What gets you unstuck is a template.

A good template collapses a two-hour post into ten minutes. You’re not creating from nothing. You’re doing a fill-in-the-blank you could finish on your phone in line for coffee.

The free one: the Text Story template

A text post makes a stranger feel like you’re a real person and not another creator in the sea of posts everyone sees. A pure text post these days is far more meaningful and truly feels like a standout.

It conveys a story you experienced and how the reader can learn and leverage your experience or lesson.

Here’s the skeleton. Replace the brackets with your own words.

[LINE 1: the claim. Six words or fewer. Something a little surprising
 or a little costly that you did or believe.]

[LINE 2: the stakes. What it cost you, or what was on the line.]

[Drop the reader into the moment. 2 to 3 single lines. What was
 happening, what it felt like. Sit in it. Don't rush to the point.]

[The turn. The line where it flips. "Then I realized ___." or
 "Here's what nobody tells you about ___."]

[The one idea. The single lesson this whole story exists to hand over.
 Say it plainly.]

[Optional: 2 to 4 short lines expanding the lesson, one idea per line.]

[The warm close. Leave them better than you found them. Never end on a
 gut-punch.]

[ONE ask, pulled straight from the story. "If you're [the person this
 story is for], that's who I write for. [the one next step]."]

Now here it is filled in, so you see exactly what “done” looks like.

My dad said I couldn't do both.

So I left a stable job with $300 in the bank to prove him wrong.

The first six months were ugly. I ate a lot of rice.
I second-guessed it every single morning.
I almost went crawling back twice.

Then I realized the fear was never about the money.
It was about being seen failing after I'd made a big claim.

What I wish someone had told me:

No one is waiting for you to be perfect.
They're waiting to see if you're honest about the hard part.

That's the whole social media idea. 
Show the rice-and-beans months.
That's what makes them trust you when you win later.

If you're standing at the edge of a big claim, that's exactly who I write for.
Hit follow and I'll walk it with you.

That’s ten minutes, not two hours. The big piece will be sharing something emotionally compelling and connecting with the reader, but the format here will help you get started much quicker.

Link to the post above

The part of being on LinkedIn or any social platform, is that you’ll vary what you post every day. Partially because not everyone is a monk capable of being on repeat every single day, and partially because the readers need variance in what they see.

I built the full set of post templates for every kind of day, whether you’re teaching or sharing life updates or just having a connecting moment. The bonus I threw in there were some DM templates, because the money conversation usually happens in the DMs and everybody I work with chokes there.

It’s the forty hours you were about to spend this month, already done.

Find the rest below:

Read more

There isn’t one. There’s a plan.

So here’s the real one. If I lost every follower tomorrow and had to start over from zero, this is exactly what I’d do in the first 30 days. Not “post and pray.” Not “go viral.” A sequence that takes a blank profile to your first paying client.

Most people starting out do a little of everything and none of it in order. They post before anyone knows who they help. They chase followers before they have anything to sell them. They build in five directions at once and wonder why nothing moves. By the way I’ve done all of these at one point.

Do it in this order instead.

Days 1 to 7: Make it obvious who you help

Before you post a single thing, fix the one line more people read than anything else you’ll ever write. Your profile headline.

If it’s your job title, you’re wasting it. Rewrite it as who you help and what changes for them. “VP of Engineering” becomes “I help engineers turn front end skills into clients and roles that come to them.” One line decides whether anyone reads the rest of what you have to say.

Then pick one person. Not “founders and coaches and consultants.” One. The person two years behind where you are now, standing in the exact spot you already climbed out of. From now on, you write to them. Take 5 minutes and really remember what that was like and write it all out.

By day 7, a stranger should land on your profile and know in five seconds who you help and what they’d get. That’s the foundation.

Days 8 to 14: Get seen (the hook is the whole game)

Now you post. And the only thing that matters in week two is the first two lines.

The average person reads two lines before they decide to keep going or scroll on. If those two don’t stop them, nothing else you wrote exists. 680 of the 750+ posts I’ve published lead with a two-line hook. Some days I write 40 versions of one hook to get it right.

So here’s your week-two rule: write your next hook 10 times before you post it. Often, the 10th one will be the keeper. Post once a day, every day. Not to feed the algorithm. To get your reps in on the one skill that decides everything.

Days 15 to 21: Build the list you actually own

An impression you don’t capture is gone forever. Followers are borrowed attention. An email list is what you owned.

So in week three you build the thing that turns a casual viewer into a lead. A simple free resource with a specific promise. Not “sign up for my newsletter,” nobody wants that. “The 5-minute audit that doubled my inbound,” or “the exact template I used to land my first $10k client.” Specific outcome, real result, something they’d have paid for if it wasn’t free. Think about delivering massive value.

Every post that week points to your lead magnet. The goal isn’t a big list. It’s the start of one you own, so you’re never one algorithm change or hacked account away from zero again.

Days 22 to 30: Make the first offer

By now people know who you help, they’ve watched you show up daily, and some of them are on your list. Week four, you make an offer.

Not a nine-day launch. Not a sales call to find out what you charge. A simple, clear offer that sells the result, priced for the transformation they will receive and not the hour. And when someone replies to a post or an email, you open a real conversation. “What made this one catch your eye?” The sale lives in that conversation, not in the link.

You will not have sold everything you can. That was never the point. The point is that in one month you went from a blank profile to a machine that produces conversations with the right people, on repeat and the ability to convert them to sales.

Why the order matters more than the effort

Most people fail here not because they didn’t work hard, but because they started posting without a plan before their profile was clear or they were chasing followers. They worked hard in the wrong order. Effort in the wrong sequence is just motion.

And the reason to run it in order I outlined above isn’t hustle, it’s the opposite. When the machine is built right, the business stops being a daily scramble and you get your time back. That’s why I cap my week at 30 hours and my evenings belong to my kids and wife. The plan exists so the work fits inside a life, not the other way around.

Over time you can get fancy and add more automation and fewer steps, but this is what starts the process immediately and builds a profile from scratch to making money for yourself.

Start today

You don’t need 30 days to start. You need the next 10 minutes.

Open your profile. Rewrite your headline as who you help and what changes for them. Just that one line. Post it, and you’ve started day one.

Subscribe now

Subscribe and I’ll walk you through the whole build, one week at a time, free.

And if you’d rather not run it alone, the cohort is this exact plan built with you over eight weeks. The profile, the content, the list, and the first offer, together. Founding price $497, and enrollment closes the day it starts on August 10. One member, an art director who’d just been laid off, ran this and made $14k in his first month instead of chasing another job and then $20k the next month.

Build it with me

Consistent work beats clever work.

Ryan

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” - Warren Buffett

He was talking about your calendar.

It’s just as true about your audience.

What Has My Attention - Find Your 35

Friday I taught 46 people live.

A hundred and fifty thousand follow me. Forty-six showed up. And here is the part that actually matters - I never needed the hundred and fifty thousand.

I’m happy with 35.

Let me show you the math, because almost nobody does.

Pick your number. The real one. The one that covers the mortgage and the school and still leaves the evenings alone.

Say it’s $10k a month. $120k a year.

Now divide it by what you charge. And charge for the problem you solve, not the hourly rate (honestly this is where people I work with really miss the mark and short change themselves hard).

Lets say $3500 to take one person to getting paid for doing what they love.

$120k / $3500 = 34 people (but i’ll round it up to 35).

That’s the whole business. Not 150k followers. 35 of the right ones.

The right 35 from 150,000 is the exact same business as the right 35 from 10,000. The crowd was never the asset. The 35 are.

So why does everyone keep optimizing for the bigger following?

Because the following is the number that goes up in public. The 35 is the number that goes into your bank account. The following feels like winning. The ones who pay you is the real winning.

Here is how you spot one of your 35. I look for all four filters.

1. They have the exact problem you solve. Not adjacent to it. Exact.

2. The problem costs them something. Money, status, sleep, time. A problem that doesn’t hurt never gets paid to go away.

3. They can actually pay. Wanting it isn’t a budget. You need the want and the means, or you have neither.

4. They are the decision maker. No committee. No “let me run it by” that never comes back.

If one of these is missing, you likely have a follower. Followers are amazing, but they don’t pay the bills.

Three Things That Actually Move the Needle

One - hunt where they already are.

You don’t need more reach. You need to look harder at the reach you already have. Read your DMs. Read the comments. Find the people who comment something real, not “great post.” or “love this!”

You might even have customers who already paid you once. Your next 35 are most likely goign to come from customers who have already paid you.

Make a list. Actual names. Twenty is plenty to start. That list is worth more than the next ten thousand followers, and it costs you nothing but paying attention to them.

Two - make your content a filter, not a megaphone.

Stop writing to impress a thousands. Write to get those 35 to say “thats me”. Name the exact problem, the exact person, the exact cost. The wrong people scroll past and that is the POINT. A post everyone applauds and nobody buys from worked for the algorithm and doesn’t help you sustain your life.

Repel on purpose. Precision is the whole job.

Three - talk to people. One at a time.

The crowd is a broadcast. Your 35 is a conversation. Five real conversations this week will do more than five hundred new followers. Ask what they are stuck on and be genuinely curious. Listen for the four filters. The one who hits all four isn’t a lead, it’s a client, and its on you to close them. This is the part everyone skips because it doesn’t scale. It doesn’t have to scale. It has to be 35.

It scales when you get really precise about those problems and you can sell them on a sales page because you understand them so well that they convert without you being there.

46 people showed up Friday. I am not measuring that by 46. I am reading the replies, the questions, the ones who were really engaged.

That is the real work this week. Not reach. Fit.

The lesson filled the room. Now I find my 35 inside it.

One More Thing

How many of your followers could you name?

Not the count. The names. The handful you could call right now who would actually pick up.

That number - the one you actually know - is sitting a lot closer to your real business than the one number on your profile.

Stop bleeding for a crowd that will never pay.

Find your 35, and then you can relax.

- Ryan

If you have the following and not the income, closing that gap is the whole thing I teach.

The LinkedIn Authority to Income Accelerator is where we build the whole stack together - the profile, the list, the nurture sequence, the one offer, and the system for finding and serving your 35 - it will be a live, small group, with people who keep you honest. Friday I taught part of the free version. The cohort is where you actually build it.

→ Join the next cohort: https://maven.com/ryanyockey/growthcode/ (registration is open now, or get on the waitlist for the next one)

Consistent work beats clever work.

“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.” - Seneca

Two thousand years ago, and he already had your number.

Twelve tabs. Four projects. A new idea every morning.

It feels like ambition.

It’s not.

What Has My Attention - The Finisher’s Tax

I almost didn’t write this one.

The piece about finishing sat half-done for three days.

I planned it. I outlined it. I told myself I’d get to it.

Then I started four other things instead.

That’s the whole point, right there.

My most expensive habit isn’t quitting. It’s starting.

There’s a high in starting something new. The blank page. The fresh idea. The plan that finally feels like the one.

It feels like progress.

It isn’t.

A plan to finish is not finishing. A shipped thing counts. The idea for it counts for nothing.

Every project has a last 20%.

The polish. The publish button. The second follow-up after the call went quiet.

No high in any of it.

And that’s exactly where the money is.

You’ve felt it. The diet at week three. The book at chapter nine. The launch that sat at 90% for a month.

Most people get to 80% and bail for the next clean start. They leave the best part on the table - because starting feels better than grinding.

Here’s the math that finally got me.

Ten things at 80% is zero finished things.

One thing at 100% is a business.

The gap isn’t talent.

It’s whether you can stand the boring part.

Three Things That Actually Move the Needle

One - decide the night before.

You can’t win the focus fight first thing in the morning. Everything’s pulling at you. So don’t have the fight then. Pick tomorrow’s one thing tonight, when it’s quiet. Then show up and do what you already decided.

Two - one arrow.

Pick the single thing worth going all in on. Then say no to the next shiny one until it pays off. No new project. No new tab. No “but this could be big too.” That’s just starting in a disguise.

Three - finish before you start.

Before you begin anything new, close the last 20% of what’s in front of you. Ship it. Send the email. Hit publish. Finishing one boring thing beats starting three exciting ones. Every time.

What I’m Using

A calendar I plan the night before.

Not a to-do list. Every block has one job, decided ahead of time, before I sit down. Family goes in first. Work fills in around it.

It took the daily “what do I even work on today” question off the table. That question used to eat my whole morning.

One More Thing

Here’s the question I sat with. The one that finally got this finished.

Do you want to feel like the person who finishes?

Or actually be him?

The first one is the re-read. The new plan. Starting over again on Monday.

The second is a saved file. A thing you shipped. A boring Tuesday nobody claps for.

I spent most of my career picking the first one.

I’m done with that.

- Ryan

If you’re done starting over, I teach the whole thing in my Maven cohort.

Growth Code Cohort 1 is where I walk you through it - the one arrow, the week planned ahead, the finishing reps - live, small group, people who keep you honest. Not another course you start and never finish.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and finish the one thing that matters, that’s where we do it.

→ Join the next cohort: Growth Code Cohort (open now - or get on the waitlist for the next one)

Consistent work beats clever work.

McQueen wasn’t trying to be cool.

He just refused to do anything he didn’t actually want to do. He raced because he wanted to race. He picked his films because he wanted to make them. He showed up the way he showed up, and the world rearranged itself around that.

There’s a version of McQueen that’s all leather jackets and Mustangs. The real version is quieter. He’d already figured out what he wanted his life to look like and he was patient enough to let it happen on his timeline.

Just a man inside his own life.

I think about that a lot these days.

I started on September 24th, 2024.

As of this writing that makes today Day 603.

I didn’t pick 1,000 days because it sounded good. I picked it because it’s roughly the point where you stop being able to lie to yourself about whether the thing is working.

Three months in, you can tell yourself anything. You’re “still figuring it out.” You’re “building the foundation.” You’re “in the learning phase.” All of it is true and none of it means anything yet.

Day 603 is different.

You can look back at what you’ve built. You can see the patterns. You can see the months that didn’t move the needle and the weeks that moved everything. You can see who’s still in the room with you and who quietly walked out around Month 6.

Most people don’t make it to Day 603.

Not because they fail. Because they get bored.

What Has My Attention — The 1,000 Day Mentality

There’s a version of building a business that’s all about the next 90 days. The next launch. The next post. The next cohort.

I’ve done that version. It works, sort of. It also burns you out by Day 200.

The version I’m running now is different.

I made a decision somewhere in the first 90 days that I was going to give this 1,000 days before I let myself evaluate it. Not 90. Not 6 months. Not a year. A thousand days of showing up, building, posting, iterating, listening.

The math is uncomfortable. 1,000 days is almost three years. Most people can’t picture committing to anything for three years that isn’t already paying them.

But here’s what 1,000 days does to your decisions.

It kills the panic. You stop refreshing the dashboard. You stop measuring the week. You start measuring the quarter.

It kills the comparison. You’re not running someone else’s race. You’re running yours. They might be on Day 1,400. You’re on Day 603. Different problems.

It kills the quitting reflex. The bad week stops feeling like evidence. It just feels like a bad week inside a much longer thing.

Day 1 of 1,000 is a mentality. So is Day 603.

Whats even more interesting is seeing how many other people you started with have faded away. The relationships vanished or they pivoted to go try something else.

That mentality that today is just one more step on the long road, or even 10 steps back because of some decision. You have a long time to come still.

The version of me at Day 1,000 will barely remember what Day 603 felt like.

I was reading about Mr Beast and his journey - he didn’t even make money at all until day 1000. Thats a long time to just hone your craft and build. We all know how much he’s grown since then, but if you put it in perspective you have to be willing to do unreasonable things for an unreasonable amount of time to truly win.

What I’m Doing This Week

I’m running a free Lightning Lesson on Maven this Friday.

It’s the first one in the series, a tight, focused session for people who want to see how I actually build this stuff, not just hear about it.

If you’ve been on the fence about building a brand, or you’ve been posting and nothing’s moving, this is the one to sit in on. Free, live, and you’ll leave with something you can use the next day.

You can find it here

The Door

If you’re somewhere in your own first 200 days and the numbers haven’t moved yet — that’s where most of this gets decided. Not at Day 600. At Day 60, 90, 120, when nothing is working and you have to choose whether you’re the kind of person who keeps going.

I help people stay in it: https://ryanyockey.com

- Ryan

Day 603 of 1,000

"On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think 'okay, this is the limit.' But then you find that you can touch it again, and again." — Ayrton Senna

Senna wasn’t talking about effort.

He was talking about the gap between what you think is possible and what actually is.

Most people back off when they hit the first wall. They assume that’s the ceiling.

Senna kept going. Found out the wall was paint.

There’s a version of this in everything I’m working on right now. The course. The platform. The way I show up in public.

Every time I think I’ve hit the limit of what’s working, I find out I haven’t even tested it.

What Has My Attention — Why Your Best Work Disappears

Something I keep watching people do.

They write a post. A real one. A piece of work they actually thought about.

They hit publish. Get 11 likes. Two comments from the same friend.

They walk away thinking the post wasn’t good enough.

It was good enough.

Here’s what most people don’t know.

When you publish on LinkedIn or any social platform, the platform tests your post on roughly 2-5% of your network first. If they engage in the first hour, distribution expands. If they don’t, the post is capped, unless it has a secondary viral trigger (which rarely happens).

The algorithm makes the call in about 60 minutes. Then it’s done. Doesn’t matter if someone discovers your post on day three and loves it. The decision was made on day one.

Three Things That Actually Move the Needle

One — first-degree velocity.

The single highest-leverage thing you can do for reach is engagement from your existing network in the first hour.

The best thing you can do here is network with like minded creators who will help you engage on each others content, who also ideally have larger audiences. If you’re all active on Linkedin, TikTok, Instagram around the same time and actively engaging with content, it makes sense to let them know you’re publishing content.

That’s not gaming the algorithm. That’s how anyone with a real network operates.

Two — dwell time.

LinkedIn doesn’t just track whether people clicked. It tracks how long they stopped. A post people read for 8 seconds outperforms one they glance at and scroll.

Just like a YouTube video where watch duration is the real goal, same here. The longer we can get them to stop and digest and possibly, comment and repost, the better.

Take your last post. Reformat it. Single-sentence lines. White space between every one. Read it back. If it reads faster and feels easier to scan — that’s the format. Use it from now on.

Three — the first three lines.

LinkedIn cuts your post after three lines with a “see more” prompt. The job of those three lines is to earn the click. If they don’t create a reason to keep reading, the post dies at the fold.

Open with a hook. Specific. Surprising. Personal. Emotional. Never with “Today I want to talk about...”

The hook is where you should spend the majority of your time. Easily 80% could be spent in the hook alone, because thats what stops people from scrolling at an insane pace to read what you’ve shared.

What I’m Using

I post every day. Seven posts a week.

Not because seven is magic. Because that’s my schedule, and I keep my schedule.

Whatever your game is — three a week, daily, twice a day — pick it and show up. The algorithm rewards consistency. So do the people who eventually buy from you. Nobody trusts the person who posts hard for a week and disappears for two.

I write Sunday. Edit Monday. Schedule the week. That clears the writing off my plate so the only thing I have to do when a post goes live is be present for it. Phone down. In the platform. Replying to every comment in the first 30 minutes.

The post is the car.

The first 60 minutes is the race.

I keep coming back to that.

One More Thing

I’m building The Growth Code in public right now. People are inside, building alongside me. Some are crushing it. Some are figuring it out.

If you’re someone who’s making your way in the world and you know you have something worth saying — this is what we’re doing.

ryanyockey.com

— Ryan

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Steve Jobs

Jobs is one of those figures people reference constantly but rarely actually study.

He didn’t build Apple by doing more. He built it by being ruthless about what he wouldn’t do. One product. One vision. Everything else got cut. The people around him sometimes hated it. The results spoke for themselves.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

Not because I’m building Apple. But because the principle is the same at any scale.

What Has My Attention — I Built My Own Chief of Staff

A few weeks ago I got honest with myself about something.

I was spread across too many things. Course production. Growth.store. Content. Coaching clients. Family. All of it pulling at once. None of it getting the full attention it deserved.

The usual answer is to buy a new tool. Hire someone. Add a system.

I went the other direction.

I built a Chief of Staff using Claude. SMS-based. Simple. Costs almost nothing to run (10c a day). It checks in with me daily, keeps me anchored to my actual goals, and runs on the Rob Dyrdek Rhythm of Existence framework that I’ve integrated into how I operate.

Here’s what it actually does. Every morning it asks me three things — what’s the one thing that moves the needle today, what’s at risk of stealing my focus, and am I on track with my bigger goals. Every evening it closes the loop. What got done. What didn’t. Why.

That’s it.

Is it life changing? Not yet. But it’s becoming fully integrated into my life in a way that’s quietly shifting things. The daily check-in alone has changed how I start and end each day. I’m clearer. More deliberate. Less reactive.

If there’s enough interest I may open it up or build it into a standalone platform. Reply to this and let me know if that’s something you’d want access to.

What’s On My Mind — Pare It Down

The instinct when things aren’t working is to add.

New content format. New tool. New strategy. New offer. More. More. More.

Almost every time I’ve seen someone break through - in business, on LinkedIn, in life - the move was subtraction. Cut the thing that was actually taking away energy.

Give the one thing that mattered everything it needed to grow.

One goal. Full energy. That’s it.

Jobs knew it. Dyrdek lives it. I’m learning it.

What’s the one thing you’re doing right now that deserves your full attention and isn’t getting it?

I’m a few weeks out from having something ready to share on the course. If you’re a senior professional sitting on a decade or more of expertise and you’re not sure how your LinkedIn profile is actually landing — I do a free profile roast. You send me your URL, I send back a Loom. No pitch, just a real audit.

https://ryanyockey.com/roast-my-post

Enjoy your week.

— Ryan

"The edge isn't what you know. It's what others don't." — Bobby Axelrod, Billions

Bobby Axelrod didn’t win because he worked harder than everyone else.

He won because he saw things others couldn’t. He had information, knew how to read it, and acted on it before anyone else in the room caught up.

When I was starting out I barely had any data, mostly because I was new and wasnt consistent. Posting and hoping. Guessing what worked. Starting from zero every single week.

That’s not a content problem. That’s an information problem.

The getting a few winners started to really change the game for me and the data informed even more opportunities.

Which is exactly why I’ve been spending time inside Stanley’s new analytics feature.

What Has My Attention — Stanley Just Changed the Game

I’ve had early access to something I’ve been waiting for.

Stanley rolled out a new analytics feature and it’s the clearest picture I’ve seen of what’s actually working on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s native analytics give you impressions and reactions and almost nothing else useful. You can’t see what’s actually driving follower growth. Its challenging to connect the content to growth points, albeit Linkedin is trying to drive more insights its slower to move here.

Stanley fixes that.

Here’s what I’m looking at right now across the last 90 days:

142,200 followers. Up 7,468 in 90 days. 92% engagement rate. 596,000 total engagements in the past year.

Stanley is the first tool I’ve used that actually helps me see it in a more unique way.

What the data revealed that surprised me: contrarian hooks challenging productivity myths consistently outperformed everything else. Not motivational content. Not tactical frameworks. The posts that pushed back on something which started more conversations are what drove both reach and follower growth simultaneously.

I wouldn’t have seen that pattern clearly without this dashboard.

The other thing worth noting — my top performing post in the period was “Your job won’t teach you what you actually need.” 6,722 engagements. While my Linkedin dashboard shows this, I cant directly correlate this to my growth patterns.

Axelrod was right. Information is the commodity. Most people just don’t have access to the right information about their own content.

Stanley is fixing that. And it’s early, this feature is still rolling out. If you’re not already using it you should get access.

https://stanley.stan.store/

What’s On My Mind

You can work hard or you can work informed.

The best creators I know do both. But when they have to choose where to spend an extra hour — they spend it understanding what’s already working, not just producing more.

Data isn’t the opposite of creativity. It’s the thing that tells your creativity where to aim.

I’m a few weeks out from having something ready to share on the course. If you’re a senior professional sitting on a decade or more of expertise and you’re not sure how your LinkedIn profile is actually landing — I do a free profile roast. You send me your URL, I send back a Loom. No pitch, just a real audit.

https://ryanyockey.com/roast-my-post/

Enjoy your week.

— Ryan

“You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.” - The Sundance Kid

Two old school icons in one shot. Paul Newman always was cool, and had a passion for cars like I do, so he resonated with me. Robert Redford was cool in his own way and genuinely carried his true self with him all the time.

The quote above emphasizes this for me too. They knew what each other were about and didn’t try to be something they weren’t.

That’s been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve been deep in production mode on my course. Head down, quiet, building. It’s the kind of work that reminds you how much of the game is just showing up consistently, in the right places, and sharing what you’re truly good at.

What Has My Attention — Commenting Is the Simplest Growth/Connection Strategy

A question I just got this week, was what was your biggest differentiator with your content when you went from 1200 followers on LinkedIn up to 142k.

I was constantly reframing my content, which without a doubt is a big part of growing.

Really connection and true grass roots growth comes from engaging in the community and social network.

Almost nobody’s thinking about this.

Here’s something I’ve watched play out over and over again - both in my own growth and in the people I coach. The fastest movers on LinkedIn aren’t always the ones with the best content. They’re the ones leaving the best comments.

A well crafted comment on a post for me can drive over 1000 impressions and this is borrowed distribution. The algorithm treats engagement as a signal, and your name shows up in front of an audience you didn’t have to build from scratch. Done right, it’s not networking. It’s a growth framework.

The mistake most people make is treating comments like a chore. “Good post.” “Love this.” Which can work, but why would anyone choose to go see who you are because you thought this was a ‘good post’.

The real move is to treat every comment like a micro post. Add your unique perspective. Disagree respectfully. Tell a 2-sentence story that extends the original idea. Make someone stop scrolling because your comment was worth reading.

I’ve had conversations start in comment sections that turned into clients. I’ve had posts go further because someone with 50K followers replied to something I said on their content first.

You don’t grow alone. Sundance knew that.

Start treating the comment section like it’s your stage too.

What’s On My Mind

I came up with something recently that I can’t stop thinking about.

I've also been into etymology lately - the root of words and where they come from.

Entertainment comes from tenere - to hold. To keep something in place. Occupied. Contained.

Attainment comes from tangere - to touch. To reach toward something and make contact with it. Literally, touching a goal you’ve been striving toward.

One holds you still. One moves you to your goal.

A few months ago I cut most passive entertainment out of my life. No shows. Basic phone. Do not disturb constantly on. (hack: allow my wife and son to message me, thats it)

Of course like anyones digital detox there were times of wanting to see those things to “Entertain” my mind, but honestly it was fleeting. I found myself gaining hours back and being far more focused.

And the goals I’d been circling — building, creating, starting — they weren’t waiting on more time. They were waiting on me to stop being entertained.

Entertainments goal is to keep you in one place. That’s what makes it dangerous.

Cut the entertainment. Go get your attainment.

I’m a few weeks out from having something ready to share on the course. If you’re a senior professional sitting on a decade or more of expertise and you’re not sure how your LinkedIn profile is actually landing — I do a free profile roast. You send me your URL, I send back a Loom. No pitch, just a real audit.

Submit your profile here → https://ryanyockey.com/roast-my-post/

Enjoy your week.

— Ryan

“The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.” — Confucius

I’ve been chasing two rabbits.

Not in a reckless way. More in the way a builder does when they know both things matter — but haven’t yet decided which one to sprint toward first.

Here’s what’s actually going on behind the scenes.

What Currently Has My Focus: Choosing the Right Constraint

I’ve been splitting my time between writing here on Substack and building out my email automations on Kit.

On the surface, both feel productive. Both feel like progress.

But I’ve noticed something: when I try to do both at the same time, neither gets done the way it deserves.

The Substack issue gets rushed. The Kit sequences get half-built. And I end up with two things that are fine instead of one thing that’s great.

So I made a decision.

I’m going deep on Kit — building the automations, the sequences, the systems that will make this whole thing run without me pushing it manually every week.

Why? Because the list is the lever.

Right now I have over 2,400 subscribers here. But most of them get one email a week. There’s no welcome sequence pulling them into the story. No nurture flow that explains what I do, what I’ve built, and how I can help. No automation that connects the dots between LinkedIn and here.

That’s a gap. And gaps are expensive.

The counterintuitive truth: sometimes slowing down the content to build the system is the highest leverage move you can make.

What I’m Building: The Kit Automation Stack

Here’s what I’m working through right now:

→ Welcome sequence — 5 emails that onboard every new subscriber properly. Who I am, what this is, why it matters, and what to do next.

→ Lead magnet follow-up — A tight sequence tied to the LinkedIn profile roast offer. Deliver the value, then bridge to the next step naturally.

→ Re-engagement flow — A sequence that quietly identifies who’s gone cold and either wins them back or cleans the list.

The goal isn’t to automate the relationship. It’s to make sure no one falls through the cracks while I’m busy building everything else.

What I’m Reading

The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow.

If you have any kind of subscription or recurring product, this is required reading. Warrillow breaks down why recurring revenue isn’t just a business model — it’s a completely different relationship with your customer.

The part that hit hardest: most people under-invest in the onboarding experience because they’re too focused on the next acquisition. But the money is in what happens after someone subscribes.

Sound familiar?

Building in Public

This week’s numbers:

→ 141,000+ LinkedIn followers
→ 2,500+ newsletter subscribers
→ Kit automation stack: in progress

What I’m optimizing for this week: depth over output.

PS — If you’re building on LinkedIn and want a second set of eyes on your profile, I’m still doing a handful of free LinkedIn profile roasts. Reply “roast me” and I’ll take a look.

Something shifted for me this week.

Not in the business. In me.

I’ve been on a quiet mission to strip everything back. Fewer decisions. Less noise. More intention. I’m looking at my calendar, my commitments, my inputs — and I’m asking one question about all of it:

Does this belong in my life right now?

A lot of things don’t.

When you eliminate the things that don’t belong, something interesting happens. You stop feeling busy and start feeling clear. And from clarity, everything moves faster — your work, your decisions, your energy.

I’m more focused than I’ve been in a long time. And it’s showing up in everything I’m building.

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

What Has My Focus

140K. And a new kind of lead magnet.

Hit 140,000 followers on LinkedIn this week. Grateful doesn’t cover it.

But more interesting than the number is what I’ve been testing to get here and what I’m doing with it now.

I’ve been playing in public. Not just posting content, but turning the process of helping people into the content itself.

This week I started roasting LinkedIn profiles publicly.

You send me your profile. I tear it apart - the headline, the about section, the positioning - and I tell you exactly what’s holding you back. No fluff, no ego protection. Just honest feedback that most people would pay a consultant for.

The response has been wild.

If you want your profile reviewed, grab a spot here: https://lp.ryanyockey.com/roast-my-profile

I’m doing these live and in public because I think the best way to teach is to show. And I think there are thousands of people walking around with incredible backgrounds and LinkedIn profiles that are costing them real opportunities.

Don’t be that person.

On LinkedIn Right Now

Here’s what I’m seeing in the data that you should be paying attention to:

The accounts growing fastest right now aren’t the ones posting the most polished content. They’re the ones willing to do things in public. Tear something down, build something up, show the real work.

Your audience doesn’t need another framework post.

They need to watch someone they trust make decisions in real time.

→ Play in public. Document the experiment.

→ Give away the thing people think you charge for.

→ Let the process be the content.

That’s the growth lever most people are leaving untouched.

Something New Worth Trying

I’ve been recommending a tool this week that I want to put in front of you directly.

It’s called Stanley — an AI content advisor built specifically for LinkedIn. It can write posts in your voice, analyze what’s working in your content, and interview you to pull out post ideas you didn’t know you had.

If you’ve been staring at a blank screen wondering what to post this week — this is worth ten minutes of your time.

→ Try Stanley here: https://stanley.stan.store/

It won’t replace your voice. Nothing does. But it’ll help you use it more.

What I’m Reading

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.

Don’t let the title fool you — this isn’t just a sales book. It’s a time management book, a focus book, and a systems book wrapped in one.

Holmes talks about doing fewer things with more intensity. Pigheaded discipline, he calls it. The idea that most people fail not because they lack talent or ideas, but because they chase too many things at once and never go deep on any of them.

That’s resonating hard with where my head is at right now.

If you’re a founder who feels scattered, start here.

This week’s numbers:

→ 140,000 LinkedIn followers

→ 2,400+ newsletter subscribers

→ Playing in public and the DMs are full

PS — If you’ve been thinking about working with me directly, my 4-week Done-With-You coaching program is still running. I’ll help you turn your LinkedIn into a lead gen machine - content, positioning, customer journey, and the systems to hold it all together.

This is for founders who already have an offer and want to turn their social traffic into deals.

Book a call to see if it’s a fit.

Thanks for being here. Reply if anything hit — I read every one.

See you next week.

“There is a way of living that has a certain grace and beauty. It is not a constant race for what is next, rather an appreciation of what has come before. There is a depth and quality of experience that is lived and felt, a recognition of what is truly meaningful. These are the feelings I would like my work to inspire. This is the quality of life I believe in” - Ralph Lauren

This week I stopped pitching and started thanking people. My inbox exploded.

Here’s what happened: I sent DMs to creators I admire with zero agenda. Just “I love what you’re building - it really inspired me.” No ask. No offer. Just gratitude.

Result? Multiple conversations turned into genuine relationships. A few wanted to take things further. All because I wasn’t selling anything.

The counterintuitive truth about brand building: When you stop trying to convert, conversions find you.

What Currently Has My Focus

Brand Win: The Gratitude Engine

My positioning clarity came from testing a simple LinkedIn CTA shift. Instead of “Buy my thing” or “Book a call,” I’m just asking people to continue the conversation.

The numbers:

• 140K LinkedIn followers (crossing the threshold this week)

• 2,200+ newsletter subscribers (hello all you folks reading this)

• Engagement rate up 4% according to Shield Analytics

• 100M impressions overall on LinkedIn content (still processing that number)

But here’s what matters more than vanity metrics: My Substack email list is now a conversion machine from LinkedIn. Not because I’m hard-selling - because I’m inviting people into dialogue.

Worth copying in your own way: Test removing friction from your CTA. What if you just asked people to respond? To share their story? To continue the conversation?

Trust scales faster than transactions.

Currently Reading: The Ultimate Sales Machine

Chet Holmes - and it’s rewiring how I think about systems.

Rock solid framework for building a sales-driven business, but here’s my brand-building lens: Holmes talks about “Dream 100” - identifying your ideal clients and nurturing them relentlessly.

I’m applying this to Dream 100 Conversations instead. Who are the 100 people I want to build relationships with? Not sell to - build with.

Those gratitude DMs I mentioned? That’s my Dream 100 in action.

The takeaway: Sales systems work for relationships too. You just need to change what you’re optimizing for.

This Week’s System: The Reply Multiplier

Here’s the micro-habit that’s driving conversations:

Every morning, I scan LinkedIn for:

• Creators doing work I admire

• Posts that made me think differently

• Comments that show depth (not just “Great post!”)

Then I send 3-5 DMs with genuine appreciation. No template. No pitch deck waiting in my back pocket.

Why this works for brand-building:

• Positions you as generous (rare on LinkedIn)

• Creates reciprocity without expectation

• Builds your network through genuine interest

• Gives you content ideas from real conversations

Time investment: 15 minutes/day

ROI: Immeasurable relationship equity

Recommendation: Test Your CTA Assumptions

If you’re building a personal brand, your current CTA might be killing conversations before they start.

This week, try this:

• Remove “Book a call”

• Remove “Check out my course”

• Replace with: “What’s your biggest challenge with [your topic]? Reply and let’s figure it out.”

You’re not abandoning monetization. You’re building the trust that makes monetization inevitable.

I’m not selling anything through my LinkedIn CTA right now. Just asking people to continue the conversation. It’s turned into my biggest growth lever.

Building in Public

This week’s metrics:

• 139,847 LinkedIn followers → crossing 140K

• 2,200+ newsletter subscribers (up 180 this week)

• 4% engagement rate increase

• 100M total LinkedIn impressions

What I’m optimizing for: Quality of conversation over quantity of conversion.

PS - I’ve been getting a lot of messages the last couple weeks I’ve been getting a lot of inbounds about my coaching.

It’s a 4-week, Done-With-You where I will help you turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead gen machine using a mix of:

• Strategic Content

• Customer Journey Mapping

• Systems to save you hours, so you can focus on your customers

• and Identify and build areas where you maximize your revenue

Actually, I just wrapped up another cohort...

And since it was a great success, I’m going to be running another one in the couple weeks.

So if that sounds interesting at all, you can book a call with me to see if its a fit.​

Just one heads up: This is NOT a beginner program where you’ll learn how to go viral on LinkedIn. Instead, I’m going to help you implement more advanced strategies to consistently turn your social traffic into deals or sales. Which is also why you need to have an offer in order to qualify.

I’ve always believed if you put in the work the results will come - Michael Jordan

If you ever watched the Last Dance on Netflix, then you will get a sense of how much work Michael Jordan put in to achieve what he has.

This is the same level of work you have to put in with anything if you want to be great.

Its often more work than you could even predict before you start doing it.

I recall when I was 14 I wanted to start learning how to make webpages. That became an obsessive practice that lasted the better part of 20 years.

I failed so many times and made so many terrible websites and businesses that went no where.

However, I had a lot of successes because I never quit and never gave up.

Several acquisitions, became an executive, built two different businesses built up over billion dollars in revenue.

We have to do a lot of work in private to eventually make something great

This is why I love the idea of working at something for 1000 days before you give up and give in.

Hone your skills for 1000 days.

Build for 1000 days.

Market for 1000 days.

Then if its still terrible, go to the next thing. But I bet by 1000 days you’ll be an expert.

What I’m Focused On: Don’t Build Everywhere

There’s a constant note from the broader creator community to build everywhere on every platform. However as someone who started over from scratch while holding down a full time role as the head of engineering for a major business, I can tell you, you probably shouldn’t do that.

The exceptions are if you have the budget and time to build a team of people to execute your vision across all platforms, then sure, go ahead and rock that.

I would wager however the vast majority of people who are starting to get ready to build their presence online should only start on one, maybe two, places.

Obtaining mastery over one medium will take you much further than jumping into 4-8 other places at once. They each have their own style of messaging and unique visuals needed on each one.

From my own experience, I started on Linkedin, as that was the perfect medium at the time for my audience. I got very good at building there over the course of a year. Once I felt like I had an excellent grasp of the basic and advanced concepts, then I moved on to Substack.

So find your platform and master it. Otherwise you’re just speading effort in too many places.

What I’m Listening To

I was recently on a podcast with @jeremybennett

PS - buy my stuff

It’s not the money. It’s not the money. It’s me. It’s me and the system. The system. - Thomas Crown

Its all about finding new ways to challenge the system.

Build One Product - Talk About it for Years

Everywhere I’ve ever been that has been successful has built usually just one service or product offering and stuck with it for years before they did anything else.

My most successful products from over a decade ago was DNA Art. Of course we made variants of that look and feel, but it was that thought process and relentless focus that made it a success.

This is where a lot of people I’ve coached and businesses I’ve worked at get lost.

They think more products will solve those problems they have.

They think that customers want variety.

They think more sales will come if they have more to offer.

This kind of mentality is what splinters peoples focus and inevitably destroys the company they are working at.

You can see it with decision making especially at the executive levels. The more scattered the focus, the harder it is to be relentless about what to focus attention on and still be wildly successful.

This can happen even when we’re running our own things.

When its early in the process, my suggestion would be start with one product or service offering at a time. Figure out if the market wants what your buying, then move forward if they do.

If they hate it, then great, shut it down. Move on to your next idea.

Reducing your mental overhead is the best possible thing any leader can do to be ruthless about what you’re building and who you’re ultimately helping.

The other side of this, is once you have that product or service ready, then its promotion time. Seriously you will just promote this one thing for a long long time. It will feel boring and sometimes monotonous when you’re doing it too.

This is how you build and distribute your message to everyone.

This is how businesses are built to last.

What I’m Listening To

If you haven’t heard them and run a weekly livestream right here on Substack called REAL TALK with Brewton and Berry.

They both have a massive wealth of knowledge about business operations and growth. They have incredibly well thought out insights on the market as a whole.

Please take time to subscribe to both and give it a listen, it will be well worth your time!

P.S. The fastest way to confidence isn’t motivation.
It’s clarity.

My 6-week 1:1 coaching helps you design a business model you can actually execute.

Reply Interested if you want to stop guessing.

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body.” - Anthony Bourdain

Bourdain was a magician with words and after recently picking up a book of his writing (The Anthony Bourdain Reader), it was amazing to rediscover some of his work.

The quote above hits hard for multiple reasons.

Taking journeys is often the most growth a person can experience. Whether its just in your town or ending up half way across the world. It has a way of challenging yourself in new ways.

The second part of the quote is what I was drawn more to, which was the journey.

While it talks about the traveling journey, I felt it was more like our journey in life. We are constantly changed by it, we feel new emotions, and if we let it, we become even more of our true selves through the process.

I felt this during our recent trip to Japan. It was incredible to see the country for the first time, but for whatever reason I felt challenged by the language barrier. Even though I stumbled a bit, I still embraced it and jumped into speaking more Japanese regularly.

That part felt like I was able to embrace more of the culture at a deeper level than just jumping in as a visitor.

Embrace the journey, whatever it may be.

The business.

The trip.

The new meal.

The Time is Still Now

If you’re wavering on building your brand online, or even struggling to think of what that means for you, then now is the time to play with it.

There are probably two platforms that are still widely underrated and can help build your presence.

Substack (hello to everyone on here) and Linkedin (aside from the AI slop)

Each has an incredibly low barrier to entry and we’re in that golden point where everything is maturing and growing.

Linkedin is the more mature of the two, and yes its filled with tons of AI posts and comments, almost to the point that many people are talking about bailing. Its still filled with plenty of great creators and founders who are genuinely trying to help deliver value.

Linkedin though is going to lean heavily into video and so should you if you’re debating using the platform. I’ve had a few students really see massive growth from it in recent months. One going from 2k impressions on platform earlier this year to over 1.5M now.

I’ll be jumping even deeper into value driven content there as the new year rolls around. Imperfect is ok here.

Substack (yes also has AI posts and notes on it) is still amazingly young and the growth is massive here if done well.

Substack has that magic that few other platforms offer. I swear I see more genuine notes and posts on here than anywhere else and thats the magic you need to cultivate. The closer people can get to having a casual coffee to hear your stories with you the better.

My best performing content has always been the story based ones as well as others around practical tips/strategies.

Like most early era social platforms, embrace the “social” side. Message people, invite them to live streams, try collaborations. Try it all.

The beauty of both is no one cares what you’re posting and its safe to test anything.

Just try your content on a whim.

Post it. Forget about it. Try the next one.

What I’m Listening to - Founders Podcast

Started binging these podcasts from the talented . Given that its Christmas time and sprinting into New Years, the podcast episode below on Thomas Peterffy is amazing to listen to.

As someone who spent almost 30 years doing software engineering and building automated processes, its fascinating to hear how he built automation into his workflow in the 70’s and even does today.

Matched with the fun tidbit that he helped the director of Trading Places, John Landis, work the trading floor for him for a period of time.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Heres to an amazing 2026!

Wishing everyone a prosperous 2026.

While this is the most decadent picture I’ve probably posted, I can’t help but love the Swiss alps and the idea of a snowy holiday season.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season as we kick off the wrapping of presents and Christmas cheer gets kicked up to a 10 in our home with family and friends coming to stay with us for the holidays.

Because thats what its all about, time to truly be present and enjoy the company of loved ones, whether you argue or quietly enjoy those moments together.

We lost my mom a couple months ago, so its a different kind of holiday altogether.

Enjoy your holidays.

Enjoy your family.

The moments and memories are our greatest asset.

Aside from actually feverishly wrapping gifts all day today, I’m still working on projects, albeit a bit slower.

Music vibe The next few weeks:

What Has My Attention - The New Era of Content

I’ll have to come up with a better name for it, but in the era AI we have to rethink how we make content for the Linkedin crowd and even here on Substack.

We used to be able to get away with multiple levels of content, top/middle/bottom respectively.

Top is where the game has been changing dramatically. Top of funnel used to be all about throwing quotes out there (which I still do, mostly because I enjoy a good quote), but now real trust building is starting right away.

The top of funnel is starting to collapse into the middle of funnel content. Every piece need to deliver a story or some form of wisdom only you would have experience in.

This is where its currently difficult for AI to replicate and fully imitate you as an individual.

What this means is we’re going to be fully creating more of your own content to connect with your audience and your unique story.

No longer can anyone get away with letting AI do all of your content forever. It will build engagement, but it won’t necessarily build connection and trust.

What I’m Reading

Invest in yourself during the holiday breaks that are going on.

Spend some time reading/learning/growing.

I read a ton from - give her a follow and invest in your own personal growth from someone who spends her time challenging the .01% to be better.

Enjoy your holiday break!