šļø I grew to 6k subs in 6 months my career growth newsletter for software engineers
Turning procrastination into productivity. All the lessons I learned from growing my online presence from zero to thousands of subscribers and connections.
Iām not special, so arenāt you.
I had an itch to do something online for more than 10 years, but I never started
Until I did.
Now I have grown in 6 months from 0 to 6k subscribers in Substack and from 300 to 14k connections on LinkedIn.
And Iām going to give you my learnings so you can replicate it if thatās what you want.
š¶Ā Before starting
#1 āI have the desire, but Iām not taking actionā
I had the idea of writing a blog about books 3 years ago. I had the idea of writing a blog as a developer when I read The Complete Software Development Career Guide.
Yet I didnāt start any. They were just ideas.
Around June 2023, my coworker Alex Zajac started his newsletter Hungry Minds. I talked with him multiple times to tap into his thoughts and understand how was he feeling about it. It was inspiring to see someone doing what I wanted to do for a long time.
Needless to say, it took me 3 months to start writing myself. I had the idea of doing my own site and being independent of any platform. Besides being a bad idea to reinvent the wheel, I never did it.
āLesson Learned: Writing online has been a great way to balance engineering vs business. If you only approach with an engineering mindset, youāll never release anything.
I had my goal to get a post online by the end of Q3 2023. When I saw I was not going to meet it, I pivoted to start writing in Substack. It only took 30 minutes comparing platforms to pick one.
Iāll procrastinate a lot, but I wonāt miss my self-imposed deadlines. If I tell myself Iāll launch the first post by a certain date, Iāll do it.
āLesson Learned: Find whatās the best way to trick yourself. And use it to achieve your goals
#2 āI want the shortcut to become good at writingā
āIf you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot. Thereās no way around these two things that Iām aware of, no shortcutā. - Stephen King On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft
I have many interests, writing is just one of them.
I did some trainings at work, and it seemed that writing online would be great to practice. However, I found social media copywriting and newsletter writing are very different than business writing. Each serves a different purpose
The more styles you practice with, the better you understand when to use each one. I see professional writers doing this all the time, usually with smaller side stories
āLesson Learned: If you want to become good at something, force yourself to explore it from different angles. Donāt stick to a single recipe if you want to become a chef.
#3 āI have more things in my life and I donāt want to give up on themā
We all have a full-time job, families, and social plans on weekends.
I didnāt like the idea of having to sneak time out of those activities. I donāt want to make a newsletter to compete for time with them.
I was already reading career growth and productivity books in my own time. The time required to write about that was smaller than if I wanted to write about a completely different topic.
Of course, I felt like an impostor when writing about something I was figuring out. And at the same time, I donāt feel like writing about my times as a student because those times are not fresh in my memory.
It takes time to find your voice, and youāll only find it by writing
āLesson Learned: Be the guide, not the guru. You donāt need to wait until you are an expert. Even if your insecurity nudges you into talking like an expert, approach it as recording your journey.
š¦Ā Once you start
#4 Find consistency
I made a promise to myself to stick to my plan for 6 months: 1 weekly article on Substack, and 1 daily post on LinkedIn.
āLesson Learned: Commit in the short term. Ideally, socialize it to have an accountability buddy. Tell your buddy to tie you to the ship and stick wax to your ears, donāt change your plan when you hear the Sirensā song about all the shiny other things you could be doing other than writing.
I didnāt do anything other than LinkedIn and Substack during that time. When I started posting a bit on Twitter, I realized I was distracting myself from the essence of my commitment.
I have gotten better at many areas: Writing, increasing the reach of the posts, engaging with other creatorsā¦ But the key was the consistency of my commitment.
From research studies, diving people into groups focused on quantity and quality, the group focused on quantity also had the best quality thanks to iterating more often.
āLesson Learned: Do few things, but commit to iterate on them for long periods
#5 Standardize the writing process
My first post, Optimizing your career: A minimization or maximization problem had no headings. I didnāt know how to structure information.
I just wrote my thoughts.
After all the other posts, I learned some basics about writing. And I created my categories of posts:
The single idea post. From the introduction to the conclusion, the post is cohesive about a single topic. An example is āAre you blocked? (And how to unblock yourself)ā
The list of resources post. The entire purpose of the post is to provide multiple ideas, all at the same level of importance and depth. For example, āWhy Amazon's culture makes me a better engineer (5 principles)ā
āLesson Learned: Make improvements on your next iteration, not on your first iteration
I have read about writing, but my biggest learnings were not from reading a book.
They came from reverse-engineering other peopleās posts.
Whenever I read an article I took notes to help retention. I also have a section in my Notion template to write down the structure and tone of the post. After doing this for over a hundred newsletter posts, I found patterns that gave me a better understanding
āLesson Learned: Any creator needs to be a consumer of other peopleās content. But itās not passive consuming. You are doing market research
#6 Connect with the community
When I started, I made a list of people to follow and take as role-models.
had 20k subs. , and had 10k-15k. , , , and had 5k.As you can imagine, people with over 1k subs seemed out of my league. Even people like
who started a couple of weeks earlier seemed unreachable being a Staff engineer.But thatās just my brain making the grass seem greener on the other side. After the feedback from people and seeing my numbers grow, I realized I also have unfair advantages, like working at Amazon or making my writing actionable.
Thereās a mindset shift from consumer to creator. The hardest part is the first post, you are changing your identity.
āLesson Learned: Going from 0 to 1 post is infinitely harder than going from 1 post to 2 posts. Start and itāll be all easier as you go.
Iām here to tell you what it looks like now that I crossed to the other side.
These creators are regular people. We can give feedback and support each other in the journey of creating content. We can text each other or arrange a call to share our thoughts on some struggles we are going through.
I felt super refreshed after talking with
and . Itās an informal way of mentorship: Some months ago they walked the same path Iām walking right now, I can learn from their actions and their insight.Talking to people works at any stage you are at.
āLesson Learned: talk to the people doing what you want to do. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort you feel when your actions and your beliefs are misaligned. Most people change their self-talk to match their poor actions. Do the opposite: Talk to people doing it so you are forced to change your actions
š§āāļøThe future
#7 My plan for the next 6 months
I like writing. I like the people around writing. Iām not going anywhere.
My mind thinks linearly: Double the time and double the stats up to 12k subs.
But the reality is exponential. Itās full of situations it canāt predict. Call them 0-to-1 changes, black swans or just luck. I believe compound interest applies to any area in life. This means the hardest part is starting and I already went through it.
Thatās why my goal setting is focused on some vague guiding principles in the long term. I want to improve at core skills like writing, but I donāt define how in this goal setting. Iāll work backward and set concrete goals with metrics for the short term. For me, the short-term is quarters, and the long-term is anything bigger than that.
Iāll continue to focus on the core skills of reading and writing for the next 6 months. I will add milestones of collaborations with creators and monetization.
For now, I have intentionally earned $0 from my newsletter or LinkedIn. From the sponsorship/affiliate opportunities I got, I decided to reject anything that didnāt feel like a āhell yesā.
At some point, Iāll enable the paid tier and offer real benefits to the people who subscribed. I want to justify financially the time I spend on this and Iāll sell you my products. I have my ideas, but until finalizing them, Iāll keep things as they are.
I enabled to pledge subscriptions if anyone wants to show early support. But I donāt expect anyone to do so. I wouldnāt sign a contract where Iām not clear what Iām getting.
#8 Now itās your turn
Donāt lie to yourself. If you have read until here, thereās something in you that wants to do something online.
I was this person. I had 4 different YouTube channels and a creator Instagram account in the last 12 years. I had many ideas that never materialized into anything. I had one idea that generated me 100k+ views and 1.8k euros. But these are stories for another moment.
If you want to write, go ahead and write.
You were probably waiting for someone to give you permission. I do this myself all the time. Iāll be that person for you.
After you start, make a promise to stick to it for a certain period. You canāt quit before that.
Happy writing
āAny analysis ahead of action is pure speculation. NOW, not howā - Noah Kagan in The Million Dollar Weekend
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Great job, man.
It's been a pleasure getting to know you more, chatting, and learning from each other.
I've changed a good amount of how I do my day-to-day from what I've learned from you. Looking forward to put it into practice more next week too.
Keep up the great stuff
nice, congrats Fran.