How KP leveraged his Twitter presence to land jobs at two fast-growing startups

Hey friends,

It’s officially mid-January, which means that you’re either pumped to continue working towards your 2023 goals or are beginning to see some signs of fatigue. As you know, working towards your goals is never easy and overnight success is usually nothing but a chimera. To achieve any goal, you need to be consistent with your craft over a substantial period of time. Practice, as they say, makes perfect.

Nothing illustrates this better than the story we have for you today.

You may know KP from Twitter. But what you don’t know is that as 2018 was nearing its end, he was at his ultimate low. He had just shut down his startup and the future looked bleak. However, he managed to turn it around very quickly.

Over the last three years, KP has amassed 38K+ followers on Twitter, and is known for being the top voice of the ‘build in public’ movement. Previously, he worked as a Program Director at Day One, a premier founder school backed by Gary Vee and Antler Ventures. Before that, he built several global entrepreneurial communities (including On Deck No-Code Fellowship) from scratch to $1m in revenue.

Let’s see how he got there.

Why did you decide to build an audience? How did you it?

You can’t control startup failures and business outcomes but you can control whether you decide to be a proactive creator or a passive consumer. I was tired of being a spectator in the peanut gallery. I wanted to become a creator and get into the arena. This was the choice that was in front of me in Oct 2018.

I saw the likes of Ben Tossell, Bram Kanstein, Pieter Levels etc. create content on Twitter and document their journey publicly no matter what they were building.

So I vowed to never be without a network/audience advantage ever. And I knew that if I created content and gave value to people, good things will happen. So I began my journey in the winter of 2018.

Some key wins since then:

• Grew Twitter from 414 followers to 37,700+

• Grew newsletter from 0 to 7100+ subscribers

• Grew podcast to 1000s of listeners and landed interviews with iconic guests like Gary Vee, Sahil Lavingia, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole etc.

But really what I am proud of?

• 30,400+ tweets created

• 44 episodes of the podcast published

• 11 editions of the newsletter shipped (in the last 11 weeks)

• And more importantly, I did all this on the side while navigating 2 leadership roles at fast-growing startups (On Deck and Day One) and later becoming a dad. I’m proud of my determination.

What impact has audience building had for you?

Having an audience has either directly or indirectly led to the below key wins in my career:

• My two high-profile startup leadership roles both came from building in public and putting out “bat signals” boldly and showing how I can help startups (see the below tweets)

• Much of my personal brand’s credibility came from pitching my podcast in public and recruiting iconic guests and business leaders in public (like Gary Vee and Alexis Ohanian and many more)

• In almost all occasions, I have been proactive and able to put myself “out there” without giving into the fears of public rejection or embarrassment. That skill alone has helped me immensely over the years.

• Finally, outside of credibility and jobs, I’ve been able to build a world-class network filled with top investors, founders and ambitious creators because of my content output and consistency. I’ve interviewed so many of them on my podcast but there are 100x more people who I built relationships on private DMs, Zooms and emails, etc.

Now, let’s get in the weeds. What were the tactics that helped you grow the most? Why?

Here are the 5 tactics/secrets that helped me a lot:

• I discovered a secret which came as a surprise to me. That is creating content is a 3 dimensional game. On the X-axis is your content. The Y-axis is about value to people. The Z-axis is about iterations. A lot of people are obsessed with the X-axis alone and do abysmally poor on the Y and Z axes. They are so worried about fine-tuning and optimizing their content to make it ‘look perfect’ while forgetting that what matters a lot more is the Y-axis (value to people). I learned this quickly and stopped worrying about how ‘well-refined’ my work is. I obsess over value and iterations 10x more than the average creator. Which means that naturally, I accrue more goodwill and social capital because my content is way more consistent and helpful… despite its lack of perfection. Aim to be prolific, not perfect.

• The 2nd secret of my growth is that I am very disciplined when it comes to sticking with a niche. So many beginners constantly toggle between niches because they haven’t found the right niche and they are trying to mimic or copy other viral content. I don’t give a sh*t about virality. I know it will come and go as it pleases, so I’d rather not worry. Instead, I focus more on being insanely focussed on evangelizing my worldview (which is ‘building in public’). Your niche doesn’t have to be too complicated, just pick a worldview or a strong opinion and that can be a niche too. For example, if you believe async work is the future, just turn that into a niche and create a boat load of content for 2 years. Then, you’ll reap insane rewards.

• The 3rd secret is that I barely compare my journey and the current chapter to anyone else’s. I did this for a while and it drained me, and I almost quit because I thought I wasn’t growing fast enough. I finally overcame this limiting belief and became focussed on playing my game my way. I am very ambitious, yet at the same time very content with my path so far. I want to focus on decades, not days. This is the mantra I repeat to myself in my head, which frees my brain from worry and helps me create a lot of content across Twitter, Podcast or Youtube etc.

• The 4th secret is that I study other great content creators who are building huge audiences only to understand their techniques and tactics. For example, Justin Welsh has some great tactics so I like to study his content. It’s important to learn from others and be inspired. However, I caution that you should focus on being yourself and using your own authentic voice or style, so people get to know you better.

• The 5th secret is that I approach content creation with a combination of intensity and joy. Yes, I try to be prolific but I do it in a state of flow. Someone recently gave me a wonderful compliment that I reminded him of an athlete with a strong endurance. I am grateful for the kind words because I actually do view myself as gritty. I put a lot of effort into becoming someone who’s prolific and whose output is ridiculously high. But I do it with joy. I like to take a lot of shots on the goal (creating content) and have fun doing it…and if only a small sliver of that succeeds, that’s enough for me.

What is one piece of advice you wish someone gave you in the beginning of your audience building journey?

You might be able to guess this by now. Be prolific.

You can’t control virality. You can’t control the outcomes, follower counts, serendipitous opportunities, revenue figures, etc. but you can control whether you show up to your audience and add value. Being prolific is the only thing you can control and if you can be world-class at it, the rest will all fall into place.

What is Salley?

​Salley helps you accelerate your career by learning new skills, such as building a strong online presence.