how 2 tiny followings make $288K/month (no virality needed)

Summary

two businesses I run pull a combined $288,000 a month. neither has a big social following. that’s not a flex, that’s the lesson: who you build for matters more than how many you build for.

there are two audience types:

• followers. they want entertainment, motivation, vibes. they watch and scroll. they don’t apply.
• builders. they want depth and mastery. they take what they learn and use it. they buy.

stop optimizing for followers. start building for builders. the math gets stupid in your favor.

four rules for builder content:

1. don’t chase cheap viral tactics. depth doesn’t go viral. depth converts.
2. interact. respond to emails. answer DMs. relationship over reach.
3. every channel points back to the newsletter. that’s where the relationship gets dense.
4. prune the email list ruthlessly. a 5,000-person engaged list out-earns a 50,000-person dead one.

eight-step process to attract builders:

1. write the newsletter weekly.
2. anchor every piece of content to it.
3. promote the free signup, not the paid offer (yet).
4. use Kit (or any solid email platform) to manage delivery and segmentation.
5. run targeted ads to people who’ve already engaged with your content.
6. drop a small product to qualify intent.
7. layer a high-ticket offer for the most engaged.
8. cull the dead weight quarterly.

tiny followings, big revenue. that’s the model.

Transcript

stop chasing followers: what to do instead

Look, I’ve been building businesses online for over a decade and I don’t chase followers. So you need to stop chasing followers as well. I’m going to teach you exactly what to do instead and I’m not going to hold anything back. Here’s the deal. I’m currently consulting for two different companies. One company has about 4,500 followers across all social channels.

They have 2000 email subscribers and they make $184,000 a month. Another business I’m working with has about 2000 followers across all social media channels and they only have 1400 email subscribers and they’re making about $104,000 a month. So how are these people making big monthly revenue with small social followings? Let’s get into it.

I’m going to be going over three different things today. First, the difference between a follower and a builder and why you want to create content for builders and not followers. Then I’m going to be talking about the four rules when creating content for builders. And then lastly, the eight steps to build a successful newsletter.

case studies: low-follower, high-revenue businesses

So if you go through everything in this short video, you are going to be making lightning fast progress in your online business. If you can just implement these simple things. So let’s start with followers versus builders. So a follower is somebody who consumes. That’s all they really do. They are there to consume content.

They’re not actually building anything. So you can think about people who follow someone like Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast makes some decent videos. I mean, arguably some of the best videos on YouTube, but ultimately he’s there to entertain. He’s not building content for builders. He’s building content for consumers. Now a builder is different.

followers vs. builders: key differences

A builder is there to consume content and apply it. So think about whatever your content may be. Are you trying to teach somebody something so they can go apply it? Builders want content so they can apply. They’re not there to be entertained. Second, followers are there for dopamine, primarily mindless, scrolling zombies.

They just want to go through real after real or short after short. They want it short. They want it fast. They don’t really need any depth whatsoever. Okay. That is ultimately what a follower is. And that’s why you shouldn’t be chasing them. And why I don’t chase them. A builder is after depth. They actually want depth, believe it or not. People still want depth in this world.

They want to go deep on something. They want to learn something. They want to read a thousand word newsletter. They want to go deep. They want depth. And that’s what a builder does. Now I could go on and on, but the last one for now is followers are there for motivation. They want to get hyped up at best by following the content of the people that they like and subscribe to followers. Just want motivation.

I’m not here to motivate you. Maybe some of the things I say is motivational, but that’s not my intent. My intent is to provide content for builders who want mastery. If you’re after mastery, my content is for you. You are a builder and you should be creating content for builders. People who want to apply people who want depth, people who want mastery.

It’s very different in how you create content. If you are going after builders as opposed to followers. So that’s the first thing you need to know. Now let’s dive into the four rules for creating content for builders. The first one you need to know is that builders are not mindless. Okay? Builders are not mindless.

rule #1: builders are not mindless

All that those cheap strategies and crap you see on Instagram to go viral, get the hooks, all that crap that insults a builder. A builder’s intelligence is actually insulted when you do all that crap. So you do not do that in your content, especially in an email newsletter. It is not what gets people to go deep with you.

The next thing you have to know is a builder is not a fan. They’re not there to look at your morning routine. They don’t care about all that stuff. While they might find it interesting if you talked about it or produce some content, maybe some behind the scenes or whatever, they are there to learn.

rule #2: builders are not fans, they want to learn

They are sophisticated. Builders want to learn from you. They are not there just to be entertained. I think I have said that one enough. You just have to be very careful in your content here. If you truly want an intelligent builder to consume your content, that they are going to apply for the mastery of their craft. All right.

The third one is depth. Builders want depth. Everyone on the internet is crying about how attention spans are shrinking and you have to do all these things like dance and take your shirt off. And yeah, that might be true, but it’s true for followers. It’s not true for builders. Okay. Builders are the intelligent people who want to consume your content.

rule #3: builders want depth, not dopamine

They want depth. They’re actually capable of reading a 1500 word newsletter that goes deep and is helpful as opposed to a follower who would never do any of those things. Okay. So you got to create the content. Those people are out there. People are acting like these blanket statements of smart people are not out there. People who want depth are not out there. They are out there. Okay.

There are a lot of them out there. And if you can realize that and you actually cater your content towards depth over, you know, cheap dopamine, you will start to build an audience of builders. All right. The fourth and final rule before we move on is interact. All right. So you want to interact with anybody who subscribes to your email list.

And I can’t stress this one enough. A lot of people act like they are some famous person who’s incapable of replying to the replies they get from their email newsletter. And I think it’s crazy. People have 500, 500 people on their email newsletter, which is nothing to sneeze at, but they’ll have 500 people.

rule #4: interact, don’t act famous

And then when people reply to that, they just ignore them because it was a broadcast newsletter that went to hundreds of people. That’s not what builders want. Builders want to build a relationship and you should want to build that relationship too. So if they reply to an email, guess what? You reply back, you interact. If they ask for help, you provide helpful resources.

If you’ve got them now, you don’t have to reply with 1200, 1500 words, but a reply that is actually helpful, that can help the other human being become better. And you’re working with builders. You want to interact with your audience as much as possible. Don’t act like you’re some famous person who doesn’t have the time you’re not.

Okay. If you can’t follow those four rules, I highly suggest you go do something else. But if you are still here and you want to build here, the eight steps to build a successful newsletter of builders who actually want depth and will eventually want to buy from you. The first thing is you need the tech setup.

step 1: set up your email tech

You can use anything that you want for sending out broadcast emails, but if you want a direct recommendation for me and what I’ve used in the past successfully, it’s kit, kit.com formerly known as convert kit. It’s just simple. It’s easy. It’s not overly expensive. And you can just get going like today if you were to go sign up for an account and you’re not going to have a headache and all the technology and everything else. So kit.com is a great place to start. All right, let’s talk about the second thing. Now you’ve either already signed up, you’ve just signed up or you already have the software, the technology.

The second thing you’re going to do is you are going to create a free thing. This free thing could be anything. It could be an ebook, it could be a download. It could be a audio podcast that’s private or a video, anything that can actually provide value and solve a problem specific to the problem you help people solve. You’re going to need to develop a free thing.

step 2: create your free value-driven lead magnet

People don’t typically just want to subscribe to your newsletter for no reason at all. So have a free thing that they can opt in for. It can even be a sequence of emails that teaches them a specific thing, but you need a free thing for people to opt into as opposed to, Hey, go sign up for Jerred’s newsletter cause Jerred’s cool. Uh, maybe, I don’t know.

But if I say, Hey, go sign up for my newsletter in the description because I will teach you how to build a newsletter with videos, with templates, with systems, everything. You can go sign up and Hey, and that’s real. Go sign up for my newsletter in the description of this episode. If you want to get that series, see what I did there. Very meta.

All right. The third thing is you are then going to create a depth sequence. What is a depth sequence? So a depth sequence is where you are going to go deep. So I have a depth sequence in my email newsletter. You can sign up. Like I said, I’m not going to hit you over the head with it. I’m just giving you real life examples. It’s about five emails.

step 3: build your 5-email depth sequence

The average email is somewhere between 600 and 700 words, which is pretty deep. Now on the depth sequence, you don’t want to go too deep, too fast. Okay? You have not earned a 5,000 word email to someone. So people do like depth, but there’s still this trigger of like, I don’t know if this person is worth my time that everyone’s going to go through know how it doesn’t matter how intelligent or sophisticated they are.

And so I found roughly less than a thousand words, more than 500 or right at 500 words is enough to go deep and really get your point across without having to go crazy long or crazy short. Okay? So you want to depth sequence these five emails for mine and my newsletter. Right now they teach you how to build a newsletter.

It goes through all these systems. It goes through tools. It gives you access to things. I point you to videos and resources I have around creating a really solid newsletter. You get to know me a little bit more. You get to work on your mindset. We do all of that. I do all of them five emails, roughly 600 words per email. I go deep.

step 4: social media strategy, drive to newsletter

I get crazy amount of opens and replies to these emails. And guess what? I reply back because I actually care about the people who subscribe to my newsletter. All right, the fourth thing. Now I’m going to teach you what social media is actually for social media. All roads should lead to Rome. Whether you’re on YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok doesn’t matter. Your Lincoln bio, your Lincoln description, wherever your links are should point to your newsletter.

You’re trying to get away from that rented audience to an audience you own, preferably for people who want to build. Cause here’s the thing. If I really want to teach you something on Instagram, again, I got 16 to 90 seconds. And if my hook’s not good enough, Instagram is not going to show you. But if you can consume my content, find out, I actually know what I’m talking about.

I’ve actually done what I am trying to teach. Then you can subscribe and you can find the depth in the email newsletter. I’m not trying to go deep on a lot of the social media platforms cause that’s not where people are typically going deep most of the time. But if you want to find builders, they are on social media and they will subscribe for that depth.

step 5: run simple retargeting ads to your free thing

So all roads lead to Rome. You just need to point every single social media link you have on every platform to your newsletter. That is a big important rule. All right, the fifth thing that you need to do, the fifth step is you need to run ads to your free thing. So we’ve got the free thing, right? You created that in step two.

Now we’re going to run some ads to it. It’s pretty simple here. You can do retargeting ads. So again, if I’m on Instagram, just to give you a very specific example of something I do, I’m on Instagram. I post quite frequently on Instagram. Some people consume with it. Nothing, nothing crazy. I’m not going viral on Instagram, but thousands and thousands of people every single month interact with my content. I retarget those people for my free thing.

My free thing is a depth sequence about creating email newsletters. And so they sign up to from this ad to my free thing. And it’s very effective because they might not have seen the opportunity to go deep with you. Otherwise, these ads are not expensive ads. I’m not talking about a hundred dollars a day. I’m talking about $5 a day, $10 a day. That’s going to build an audience of builders, people who actually want depth, who are intelligent and sophisticated.

So you need that ad running to your free thing at all times, whatever your free thing is, and you can change things up, but these are not complicated. People overcomplicate advertising. I’m just trying to advertise to people who’ve already consumed my content. That’s the most important part. Your audience is to people who’ve already consumed your content. All right, the sixth step to building a good newsletter is you need weekly depth.

step 6: weekly depth, write, don’t outsource

Every single week, you’re going to send an email newsletter and it needs to be you who wrote it. Now I’m sure you could get away with AI and everything else, but that’s not what people want. If you are just putting together some crappy AI written newsletter, this whole thing, everything I’m talking about really isn’t for you. Okay.

You can use AI to augment your ideas, to speed you up, to proofread, check, maybe change flow, get feedback, those kinds of things. AI is an amazing tool, but if you just say, Hey, create a weekly depth email that goes deep on this sequence, that’s not helpful. And people are starting to realize what’s AI generated and what’s not very, very quickly. And so you need to go deep.

And I honestly think just for your own sake, just for your own brain’s capacity, for your own intelligence, write something, write 500 to a thousand words a week, one topic. You send it once a week and help somebody solve a problem. That’s what you’re ultimately trying to do. And you’re going to do that every single week. All right. The seventh thing, we got to make money at some point. Okay. And you can do this with builders.

If you prove weekly that you have depth, you have a good depth sequence. You have a free thing. All of this is demonstrating your knowledge, your expertise, but at the same time, it’s helping people trust you because they know that you’ve actually done this thing. I wouldn’t recommend you start an email newsletter about something you’ve never done unless the newsletter was specifically, Hey, I’ve never done this before.

step 7: monetize quarterly (but do it smart)

Let’s learn together. That’s a strategy, but ultimately you’re going to have to monetize at some point. And the main reason being aside from, Hey, we’re running a business and we need to make money is an email newsletter is going to cost you money. Especially the, if you get thousands of subscribers, things like kid are going to start to cost hundreds of dollars per month. Uh, and it only goes up from there.

So you’re going to have to start to monetize your audience at some point. Now you’re going to offer something that has to do with your free thing, your depth sequence and your ads, right? So whether it’s a course or a paid webinar, um, maybe come see you some sort of, uh, you know, whatever it is, whatever your business is, you need to offer.

But I don’t think you should offer too frequently. Okay. A lot of people offer too fast. They’re really just trying to pillage their list that they’re trying to create a relationship with. If you had a friend that was just trying to sell you his new thing every single week, you probably wouldn’t want to hang out with that friend very much, right?

That’s not what we’re doing. We’re offering something quarterly, something that can really solve a problem, something really awesome. And add yourself, interject yourself in there a little bit. Can you help them? Can you be a part of the community? Because if people are trying to solve a problem and you already have solved this problem and you can help them out, make an offer to do that once a quarter.

step 8: prune your email list quarterly

And now you’re starting to make money with people who actually care about your stuff. Now, the last thing is something nobody really ever does. And that’s step eight. You need to prune your list. So what do I mean by prune your list? Well, you need to get rid of people who aren’t actually builders. Okay.

You’re going to end up with some followers on your email list. And these are the people who don’t ever really open your emails. They don’t really ever click. They don’t ever really reply. You’re going to prune those and things like kit can help you do this. It can show you who’s who are unengaged contacts, unengaged subscribers.

So also once a quarter, you want to get rid of them for a few reasons. When you get rid of people who aren’t opening, aren’t clicking, aren’t engaged. One, you’re getting rid of people. You’re actually paying for it because you pay for every single email subscriber to you’re keeping your open rates really high, which is a good signal to all the email service providers that you are providing a good, valuable newsletter and people want to open it and interact with it.

final note: builders chase mastery. be one.

And so you want to get rid of the people who just shouldn’t be there. And a lot of people are scared to do this. Like I paid for those email subscribers or it took me so long. Who cares if they’re not opening, they’re not interested, they’re not buying. Get rid of them. Keep the email list small. You don’t need this massive email list where 1% by how about a really awesome engaged, you know, list of 500 people where half of every single person buys.

That’s a way better situation to be into than having this massive thing that costs you a lot of money, has a lot of customer support, all these things that you don’t want to deal with. You need to prune your list and I recommend doing that quarterly to shortly after you’ve made your quarterly offer. All right, it’s pretty simple from here.

Are you a follower or are you a builder? If you’re a builder subscribed to my email newsletter, you can do that in the description of this episode. If you’re a follower, I don’t even know how you made it to the end of the video. Go implement something chase mastery. Try harder.