#008 - I wish I did this sooner...

Author

Fernando Cao Zheng
March 12, 2023

Hola amigos,

My whole personal brand strategy changed after realizing this one thing…

This week I felt stuck and lost.

My leads dried up…

I was annoyed that I wasn’t getting any more.

After writing 4 pages in my journal, I realized the problem...

I was doing zero outbound.

I was focused too much on inbound hoping that leads would come to me.

It’s like guys who complain that they can’t get girls and you find out that they talk to one girl every five months…

So I spent the last 2-3 days consuming all the knowledge I could from Cold email wizard, JK Molina, and Dakota.

As simple as it sounds now, I felt like I had a breakthrough…

Audience building is NOT the same as audience monetization.

Audience building requires the “creator” skillset whereas audience monetization requires the “business” skillset.

Audience building grows lots of followers hoping that one day you can make money off of them.

Audience monetization focuses less on attracting lots of followers and more on attracting the right followers that would buy your offer.

JK Molina told a story that put this into perspective.

He built his account up to around 70k followers thinking that people would buy from him…

But saw that other accounts that were way smaller than his were making way more than him.

That’s when it clicked for him and he discovered that likes ain’t cash.

Given this newfound perspective, I’m going to apply Cold email wizard’s mindset of moving with an intense urgency to make progress fast.

  • No thinking too much

  • No overconsuming information

  • No coming up with the “perfect” plan

Just fucking GO.

So now, I’m pivoting my focus on monetization NOT follower and engagement growth which I was unconsciously still doing with my personal brand.

I’m going all in on lead gen and I made a simple strategy for the rest of the month…

Outbound

  • Building prospect lists from my dream 100 [the 100 big accounts which my ideal clients follow/interact with]

  • Send 10+ DMs/day to them

Inbound

  • 1x Giveaway/week [Ex. Guides that are useful to my target audience]

  • 7x Competency proving tweets/week [Tweets that demonstrate my credibility to my target audience]

And I’m gonna move fast.

This week I procrastinated a lot because I had no direction of what I needed to do and execute on but now I have clarity.

The main takeaway from this week is to realize what game you’re playing.

Focusing on growing your following is fine at the start.

But it gets to a certain point (around the 1,000 follower mark) where you need to be clear on your “why” and make that your focus and go all in.

Combining this with acting urgently is a superpower that can help you make 100x the progress compared to anyone else…

I appreciate you taking the time to read this as always.

If you have any feedback on how I can improve, let me know.

I want to make it as valuable for you as it is for me reflecting on my journey.

See ya next week.

Big love,
Fernando

P.S. If you want more of my content, follow me on Twitter @thefernandocz (where I'm most active), or My Podcast - The Fernando Cao Zheng Podcast. Links below to my other content, services, and affiliates:

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