The Maker Letter ·
Let me ask you this đź‘‘
Would you rather:
1/ Have 20,000 followers and make $1K/mo
2/ Have 3,000 followers and make $10k/mo
I hope you made up your mind, Champ.
I’ll break the ice. I’d be on team 2.
You see, when I started my LinkedIn journey, I was a shameless dopamine junkie.
Constantly glued to my phone. Thinking of what viral carousel to put out. Commenting for 8 hours a day. Counting likes, impressions, followers.
I’d get a rush from seeing 600 likes on a post.
But that rush didn’t last long.
I got a whole bunch of:
“Great post”
“Super valuable”
“Let me try this”
Which I’m grateful for don’t get me wrong.
But at the time I sold Power Hours for $100.
And I would get like 1-2 a week.
That was $800 a month from power hours.
(Thankfully I have the agency otherwise I’d be looking for a job in a bar or something).
Then one day it dawned on me and I asked.
“Why am I doing this?”
I wanted to make money - obviously.
And I’m not ashamed.
I would write emails & social content for clients for a living, yet I treated myself like a viral junkie.
I looked at our company Instagram page which brings in $20K/mo from clients, with 1,800 followers.
(We do a lot of referrals & word of mouth, it’s not solely on Instagram).
And thought to myself.
Why not change my strategy (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jacob-pegs_my-linkedin-strategy-2022-post-for-likes-activity-7227908509101678592-MOnk)?
So I pivoted from:
- How to
- Stories
- Trends
- Entertainment
To:
- Demonstrating
- Social proof
- Opinions
- Education
What happened wasn’t rocket science.
My follower growth went from 1,000/month to 200-300/month.
My bank account went from $800, to $600k+ (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jacob-pegs_im-60-of-the-way-to-my-1myr-goal-theres-activity-7227258073784999936-vfDA).
Now, it’s not solely the content. There’s a backend system, retention, higher ticket offers, and a whole bunch of stuff involved.
But at least, I was getting the right set of eyes to look into my world.
Rather than a broad set of eyes that would never buy.
I call this content principle “dog whistling”.
A frequency only dogs can hear.
In this case your ideal clients.
If you want to go viral - keep going, I salute you.
If you want to dog whistle, to right fit clients.
Hit reply with “whistle” and I’ll let the dogs out.
(Modern Maker is opening on Monday, but if you hit reply, I’ll give you the details early).
Power to you,
Jacob “dog whistler” Pegs