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independence4 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

14 claims · 12 articles · 4 receipts

window

2012-03-13 → 2025-07-01

4 builders who never spoke to each other

Teach your own people before you sell them anything

Spend the pre-product years being visibly useful to the group you intend to serve, answering their questions and publishing what they need. Trust is the prerequisite for a campaign rather than a by-product of one, and the teaching doubles as the research that tells you which problem is urgent.

The method

  1. 01

    Start earning an audience's trust by teaching them years before you have a product to launch to them.

  2. 02

    Teaching is what makes promotion sustainable: articles and tutorials for people who do what you do keep growing the list that buys

  3. 03

    Frame audience building as a service question rather than a promotion question: people subscribe because you are useful to them, through either education or entertainment

  4. 04

    Publish before you are good; the visible improvement across posts is itself part of what builds a readership.

  5. 05

    Consistent publishing pace matters more than any individual post.

What it returned

  • 2012

    Justin bought Nathan Barry's Designing Web Applications in 2012 and became ConvertKit's longest-running customer after Barry launched it the following year.

  • 100,000

    James Clear did not tell friends or family about his newsletter until it had 100,000 subscribers because he was embarrassed

  • The switch to writing for app designers and developers is what made the first book sell after two products aimed at markets he could not teach

  • A reader told Nathan Barry his early writing was terrible but that he could watch it improve post by post.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in community

all community plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.