Newsletter & Email Growth: Growth In Reverse

Growth In Reverse Podcast with Chenell Basilio & Dylan Redekop: How Chenell Grew to 11k subscribers in 6 months
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Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] I actually grew my newsletter to 11,000 subscribers in six months, and so I was like, okay, let me reverse engineer how I did that because I don't even remember anymore.

Dylan Redekop: You're Growth-in-Reversing yourself.

Chenell Basilio: I think there is a strategy in a world where you could post one time a week and just comment every other day and like still grow your following,

Dylan Redekop: engage with people, answer questions, reply to posts.

Be helpful. If you're not a really social person and you don't want to engage with people on social media, then there's ways to grow your newsletter without it,

Chenell Basilio: but it's gonna take longer.

Dylan Redekop: Yes, yes. Let's find out what Chanel did to go from zero to 11,000 subscribers in six months. Da da.

Chenell Basilio: People always ask about how to kickstart a newsletter, get to a thousand subscribers, 10,000 subscribers. And so recently I was kind of digging back into my stats and looking at like my growth and just kind of seeing what the journey looked like. 'cause it's been. Three years now almost. I was curious and I realized that I actually grew my newsletter to 11,000 subscribers in six months, and so I was like, okay, [00:01:00] let me reverse engineer how I did that because I don't even remember anymore.

So today we're gonna kind of share some behind the scenes, going back into the data and seeing what worked and how you can do the same.

Dylan Redekop: You're growth and reversing yourself is basically what you're Yes. You're doing here. I love it. At least

Chenell Basilio: the first six months. Okay. Which is like the most fun part anyway, because people always say like, oh, I just started like, I can't.

I can't get traction. I can't figure out how to grow. And so I'm just gonna give you kind of what I did and you can follow the same things. I like it. Same playbook.

Dylan Redekop: And we should we caveat this by saying like, you're publishing really great content. Um, people know that by now. Yeah. We'll,

Chenell Basilio: we'll share that too.

But it

Dylan Redekop: wasn't, it wasn't just by virtue of you just hitting publish on like a quality deep dive that you grew, it helped, but there was other, other aspects which we'll dive into.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, totally. So of course, as with everything starts with insanely valuable content, and then you can go ahead and use some of these tactics as well.

Um, but I, I do think along, like in the beginning, you don't know what that content's [00:02:00] gonna look like, what your readers enjoy. So sometimes you just kind of have to play and see what happens. Play around, see what people enjoy reading, what's working for you. Um, but over time you should be aiming towards like narrowing that content format and everything for your audience.

Dylan Redekop: Did you, when you first started, not to make this, about what was it like when you started, but did you know this was like as soon as you had published on that first edition, you're like, I'm gonna do more of these. Or was it like, I'm just gonna see how this one lands, or what was your, like when you were playing around with how you were structuring your newsletter, what was your initial idea?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think the first one when I was writing it, I was like, I don't know if I'm ever doing this again. 'cause I spent. I think I spent like a good 55, 60 hours on that. Wow. And I only started like capturing the time. Uh, I was, the time that it was taking like a little bit into the process. 'cause I was like, I should probably keep track of this.

But, so it was very long and I was like, there's no way I could do this every week, whatever. But after I got like my first three subscribers and like sent that first email, I was hooked. I was like, I'm totally doing this again. Let's go. This is fun. So for [00:03:00] context, just to give people dates. So I published and sent my first email on.

December 4th of, so December 4th, 2022. Okay. Um, I kind of like, so we're gonna talk about Twitter necessarily, 'cause this is where I started growing. However, before you click away, this is replicable on any social platform I believe today. Um, similar tactics, similar ways you can do things. Uh, the underlying strategy still works.

I think we're gonna test it out, but, so yeah. So I think. This is just like we're using Twitter as the example, but you could replicate this on other places.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. We're gonna dive through what you did on, specifically on Twitter.

Chenell Basilio: Mm-hmm.

Dylan Redekop: That grew your newsletter. So I think we should dive in. Let's, uh, let's, let's find out what Chanel did to go from zero to 11,000 subscribers in six months.

Dun, dah, dah.

Chenell Basilio: Oh my gosh. That's awesome. Um, okay. The way I got my first three subscribers was I commented on Cody Sanchez's tweet and she had said, [00:04:00] um, something to the effect of like, who runs the best community out there? And I was in Jay Clause's community, so I naturally commented and I was like. J Klaus is awesome.

Here's why. Gave a couple reasons. It wasn't just like a short comment, it was like informative.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Right before I had started commenting on these people's tweets, I changed my Twitter profile to only be about growth and reverse. I removed everything else. Um, Twitter was not something that like my personal friends or like people knew about that I had like that account.

So it was fine to like. Keep it on the dl like nobody had to know.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, as an introvert, I am not someone who likes to talk about things I'm doing, so I changed, like my profile picture. I changed, uh, the link to go directly to growth and reverse.com. I made the, the profile banner, like about growing a newsletter.

Everything was all growth and reverse. So Jay clicked over and he is like. Growth in reverse. He's like, I didn't know you were doing that. And he subscribed and he was my first subscriber. And I was like, whoa, [00:05:00] okay. This works. Like, 'cause at the time I had like notifications turned on where you get an email when you get a subscriber.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: And so I saw three come in that day and I was like, oh my gosh. I think I showed my wife and I was like, look at this. I have three subscribers. And she was like, cool. Like, what does that mean? So that kind of got me hooked. That was in, I think that was like. November 30th. I didn't pull that one up. I was just looking at my own posts.

But, um, so you got through subscribers

Dylan Redekop: before you had published your first edition kind of thing?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And

Dylan Redekop: Jay was one of them?

Chenell Basilio: Yep. Jay was one of them. Then I think it was, was it Paul?

Dylan Redekop: Okay. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I don't know. I'd have to go back. Newsletter

Dylan Redekop: guy. Um.

Chenell Basilio: So I was like, oh man, this is so cool. So that first email, my first deep dive went out to three people, which are like, cool, that's like super small audience.

Um, but from there I just started following kind of what I was seeing creators do. So I wrote that deep dive on Mario Gabrieli and he. Was writing threads. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna write a thread. So I wrote a thread on December 6th, so this is two days after I sent the first [00:06:00] email. At the time, I was like following how people were writing hooks.

Like I think this was my, my leverage here. It was like getting really good at figuring out like the first and second line of a social post, and pretty much any content, you need a hook to keep people reading, right? Mm-hmm. So it says like, over 300. Thousand dollars from 60 K subscribers question mark. And then I said, that's what Mario Gabrielle built with the generalist.

And I said, and those are conservative numbers. Here's how he did it. And then the next tweet was like the thread, right? So that first one, which was pretty good hook, although I made some mistakes, but it was pretty good for my first one. It got 42 likes. Now I'm gonna just stop here because this number is not representative of my Twitter, uh, engagement.

This is like outsized returns. Mm-hmm. And I have to wonder if people have gone back over time and liked it post. Yeah. Me sharing it initially, because I don't remember getting this much.

Dylan Redekop: I was gonna say, do you remember how many followers you had at that time?

Chenell Basilio: Well, so that's interesting too because I think.

So I, I had this Twitter profile [00:07:00] since like 20 2009, but I, I was just doing like, like back in the day, you would put, put like your content into Buffer and it would automatically like just share articles. Mm-hmm. And you never engaged, you never did anything. And then I was playing like the follow for follow game Right.

Way back in the day. Yep. So I, I think I had like 8,000 followers, but none of them were real, like, there, there's maybe a hundred. Were were real. Okay. Um. So if you go to like any of the, the Twitter stat tools, um, you can see like my follower account just like kept going down 'cause people would like it was bots

Dylan Redekop: or whatever they're getting deleted.

Uh, the accounts were, yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: So I don't know how many followers I had. That's a good question. Okay. It's. I would estimate very, very low real people.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: And so I, I remember publishing this and nothing happened. And I was like, oh no. And I went and I like walked around and I like, I was like, I have to come back later.

And then I like, keep checking my phone. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And I was like, I don't think this is gonna work for me. Like, I'm just not good at this [00:08:00] stuff. Hmm. But then I remember like three or four hours later, like Mario liked it. Maybe did he comment? He might have commented. He did not comment. He just liked it.

And I was like, okay, well that's a signal. That's pretty cool. Like it didn't really do anything for engagement, but the fact that the creator saw it is awesome.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I was like, okay, maybe I'll just keep going. So I would reply a lot on Twitter. That was like my strategy. But the next post I did was December 16th, so that's like 10 days later.

Right. And it was another thread about the next deep dive I had done on Nathan Ball. That one got two likes. It was even worse. Hmm.

Dylan Redekop: This is not the right direction. I just,

Chenell Basilio: this is not the right direction. But I just wanna share like these examples to sh to like, let people know it's okay. Like you're going, you're going to have very low engagement in the beginning.

Yeah. Um,

Dylan Redekop: and so if you had just called it quits after the Nathan ba post two likes, it's kind of, you know, uh, wah wwo. Yeah. Not very great. Then there would be no growth in reverse. There would've been two articles ever. But you persisted. And what kept you going? Like [00:09:00] why after those two posts, what did, where did we go from there?

What kept you going?

Chenell Basilio: I think I joined a course about Twitter from, wait, I'm gonna have to go back and find this receipt. Hold on. I forgot about this until this exact moment. It was again. A hundred dollars course, maybe Dagger Burr, what was his name? Daggle Bear. Oh yeah,

Dylan Redekop: Renouf.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I bought his course, like I think it was, I think it was in December of 2022.

I think it was the first month I started. 'cause I was like, clearly I don't understand Twitter. What am I doing? Um, so I started going through that. And so seeing someone else explain how to do these things or just like. Being in like the room with other people doing this. I was like, okay, I can test this play around, see what happens.

So I think that's why I kept going. Okay. Okay. So December 17th. Yeah, I had, I'm trying to go back to my subscriber count so I could give you like context. I had 27 subscribers, so that's pretty good actually. I think that people were sharing it and I didn't realize this. I was like, oh. 'cause every day I am like one subscriber, two subscribers.

[00:10:00] And then after that, Jay Klaus shared it in his newsletter. I think Jay shared it like December 20th or 21st. 'cause he had seen, he had subscribed and he had gotten two posts and he was like, this is really good. Mm-hmm. Like you're writing really good stuff.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: And he's like a nice guy. So he shared.

You know, a call out like, Hey, check out this new newsletter. I think it got me like 40 extra subscribers. And I was like, this is awesome.

Dylan Redekop: This is crazy.

Chenell Basilio: I just like doubled my list.

Dylan Redekop: The addiction has begun. Yes. Yeah, the

Chenell Basilio: addiction has begun. But it started with one Twitter comment, like that's where he noticed that I was, 'cause I didn't tell him I was writing this, I didn't want to tell anyone.

Right. Because I was scared.

Dylan Redekop: Not even anyone in the lab community. Jay's community. Mm-hmm. No.

Chenell Basilio: December 16th, I wrote the Nathan ba. December 17th. I wrote my first ever teaser post. Now, if you don't know what a teaser post is, I totally stole this from Justin Welsh, right? He was essentially the day before his newsletter went out, he would write on Twitter and say something, some hooky phrase, and then be like.

I'm [00:11:00] explaining why or how or whatever the thing is. Mm-hmm. Tomorrow, my newsletter.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: So for this one, I wrote 6,000 email subscribers in just a hundred days question mark. Tomorrow my subscribers are getting the roadmap about a creator that did exactly that. If you want me to send it to you. Sign up@growthandreverse.com and that got seven likes.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. How many subscribers? Guess you don't know, eh,

Chenell Basilio: I dunno.

Dylan Redekop: Okay.

Chenell Basilio: But I wasn't really growing too fast at that point, so I think so I think

Dylan Redekop: the, what I'm seeing here is like you believed in the content you were getting in front of the right people. Like Jay Close is the right kind of person to get your content in front of.

And you didn't do it in like a, you didn't like ask his, ask him to share it. You were in his lab, you had the foundation in place where you had created your profile to all point towards your newsletter. So any traffic that came to you would realize it and go subscribe. And despite your numbers, I think it's so far it was like your first thread was the best one, and then it kind of went downhill from there for a bit.

But you kept with it. You stuck with it because I think you just knew that this was like going to pay off at some point, right? Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I think something to [00:12:00] call out here is like, it wasn't just that Jay randomly found my post like I had. Joined his community. Yeah. So he was probably, he probably felt indebted in a way of like, Hey, she's in my community.

I want her to succeed. Let me see what she's doing.

Dylan Redekop: Well, would you do that for your own community members? I think you, I think that's it. Totally. Exactly right. So you, you can relate to that.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Yeah. And so I just wanna call that out because I think we kind of glossed over the fact of, like, I always talk about relationships and community, but this is like a clear.

That this is an impactful, not for growth, but just like, I don't know, start getting yourself in front of people and like sharing your work. Mm-hmm. And like getting feedback and, and that kind of thing. So I just wanted to double tap on

Dylan Redekop: that one. Yeah, that's a very good point.

Chenell Basilio: So that was December 17th was my first teaser.

I don't think I wrote a thread that week. I did not write a thread that week. Fun. What I did do instead was I made a post from one of Ann Laura Lacomb, so she was my third deep dive who we've interviewed on this podcast. Yeah. Ann Laura. Um, yes. Labs. Tiny experiments

Dylan Redekop: I made.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. Yeah. So I made a quote image.

It was just like a white [00:13:00] background with black text that says you can't become a better writer by thinking or reading about writing. Embrace the cringe. It's a sign of personal growth. And then I tagged her in that image and. That tweet got 24 likes. I actually had stolen that from a guy named Danny Miranda.

Was it like on Twitter at the time? Yeah. And I loved his podcast and I was like, oh cool. Um, so I made this and then I, I sent it to him 'cause I was like taking quick action or whatever. 'cause he had done the same thing and I was like, I'm just gonna try this. So he commented and said, oh, this is cool. Um.

And then, so we're still within a month. So December 26th, 2022 was when Ethan Brooks tweeted at me. Actually, I don't even think he tagged me. Oh, he reposted. This is why my Mario Gabrielle thread got 46 late. He reposted that thread. That was like 20 days old at this point. Mm-hmm. And said. Wow. Just came across Chanel's work and it's so good.

And then he linked to it

Dylan Redekop: and then he shouted you out on his podcast with Tim Stoddard. Yes, and I was listening to that and I remember thinking, damn Chanel's getting shouted out by Ethan [00:14:00] on the podcast.

Speaker 5: I stumbled across this woman Chanel. She's so cool. She, which he's been doing is. Really deep breakdowns on creators.

Specifically, she takes some of the the best known people in the creator space and then like reverse engineers their growth and shows how they went from zero to 50 K subscribers.

Speaker 6: What a great tagline. Yeah, lemme just read this. I reverse engineer how top creators get the 50 K plus subscribers. That's so good.

Dylan Redekop: And then I do recall, I don't know if I, you might have been aware of it or not, but I was like, Hey, you should see this, or you should listen to this. And I think I tweeted at you saying like you're getting shout outs on podcasts. So,

Chenell Basilio: yes.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: And I didn't know that, so I think you were the one that told me about that.

That's funny. Yeah. Thank you. Full circle moment. Um, and just for context, Ethan Brooks used to work for the Hustle. Yeah. Like he's worked closely with Sam Parr, like, so this was a huge deal for me. I was like, oh my God, Ethan.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. He writes about, he was like a, he original, like writing about newsletter guys.

News, letter writer, newsletter guys. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: And if [00:15:00] he hears his name in this, he's gonna cringe. 'cause he hates being called out publicly. But he's awesome. Yeah, and I thought this was so cool 'cause I was like, oh my God, it's Ethan. So that was super cool. So it was 22 days after I sent my first edition.

Dylan Redekop: Okay.

Do you have your f your subscriber account at this point?

Chenell Basilio: 26. Now here's where it gets a little muddy. So I have a thousand subscribers now. Okay, the 26 3 weeks. But here's, here's where it gets money, because I had an old website called Hustle the Startup, and I think I imported like 800 email subscribers that I don't think I messaged before.

So this is like horrible email, like etiquette, like you're not supposed to do this. I did that. So I had a thousand something.

Dylan Redekop: Okay, so maybe realistically it was closer to 200 ish.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from here on out, let's just remove 800 from any number that I tell you.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. 200 subs in the first three weeks, three and a half weeks isn't, isn't that bad at all?

I know it took me a hundred days to get my first 100 subscribers.

Chenell Basilio: That's very like round numbers there. I like it.

Dylan Redekop: I set the goal. I was like, I was at [00:16:00] like 90 and it was like four days before the hundredth day and I'm like, I gotta get a hundred. So I made a push to get it to a hundred just for that reason.

But yes. Nice. So, where are we at? How are you are, what else are you doing on Twitter at this point? And like has anything changed for you?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and so this view that I'm looking at is probably not a good one because I took out all of the replies, which was like a huge part of my growth. I was gonna say,

Dylan Redekop: so lemme go back.

I think you, you even, we recently reviewed some of your Twitter, um, behavior and you were just like, wow. I did not remember replying so much. Like you were, it's, you were in there all the time. I was such a degener back then.

Chenell Basilio: Yes,

Dylan Redekop: but it all the time. But again, this was like this. I dunno, you're bullish on your newsletter and really, really psyched to grow it.

So you're taking the time to do it. Right. And I think that a lot of people kind of expect like recommendation engines to fuel their growth or like, I don't know, it's, it does take the work.

Chenell Basilio: So I'm looking back. Yeah, I was, I was comment. Wow. I was very [00:17:00] much commenting like multiples 10 plus replies a day.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: They're just like random comments to people. Um. Schneider. Oh, this is fun. Yeah, I was commenting on a lot of stuff. So, yeah. So I would say 10 to 20 plus a day replies on other people's posts.

Dylan Redekop: How much time do you think that you were spending replying?

Chenell Basilio: A lot. Well, and part of it is like the deep dives themselves are me going through tweets and like going into the past like Twitter archives.

So like I was on Twitter, which I'm sure helped with engagement because these social platforms love for you to be on them, be engaged, be like sharing stuff. Mm-hmm. And so, um, I think that definitely probably made a big difference.

Dylan Redekop: When did things like really start to hit that escape velocity?

Chenell Basilio: Things really, really took off, um, probably late January, early February.

So I hit, I like February 6th or fifth, I hit a thousand subscribers, like minus the 800 that I imported. So that's like, what, two months? And then yeah, it kind of [00:18:00] like kicked off really hard. And so in those early days, like the replies, the comments. Me just sharing stuff. Like, I'm looking at my tweets right now, two likes, 10 likes.

Mm-hmm. One got 30 and I was like, oh, this is awesome. One, like, yeah. So it's just all over the place, but I just kept going. Yeah. And I'm, I'm looking back at my past self and I'm like, good job. Like, I'm proud of you. Mm-hmm. Because I, today, I'd probably be like, I'm not gonna keep going if it's only one.

Dylan Redekop: Like, I mean, Chanel you already like. This LinkedIn post flopped, so

Chenell Basilio: Totally. Yeah, see, exactly. Yeah. So like I am envious of my past self for being this like

Dylan Redekop: determined, insane, persistent, yes. So I think that calls to, again, I'm gonna keep going back to like you were playing a long-term game back then, and I mean, you still are now, but like.

You had this long-term mindset of like, I believe in the content. I'm getting the signals from people like Jay Klaus, who I didn't even ask to share my content in his newsletter, but he did. He, he shared, featured it. Um, I'm getting shout outs on podcasts from [00:19:00] people who know the newsletter industry, like, like Ethan Brooks.

And so like the signals were there that you were doing the right thing. And I would imagine that in the back of your mind, you just kind of knew like, okay, this is going to pay off. Like my time I'm spending on these algorithms, the time I'm spending on these deep dives. Will pay off if I stick with it and just keep going.

And you will be that Jack Butcher, you know, visual where eventually things just kind of go and sure enough they do.

Chenell Basilio: And I think honestly it comes back to like I was heavily building in public. Like I'm sharing analytics, screenshots. Yeah. Screenshots of my subscriber accounts. Reposting like this one guy.

So Matt McGarry was nice enough to back in the early days, like he and I started around the same time. So his newsletter was very small at this time too, and he had shared one of my, I think it was my Paki McCormick Deep Dive in his email and somebody reposted that and said, this is such a valuable post.

Dylan Redekop: Hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Um, just read this awesome piece by Matt McGarry on Paki Building Not Boring. [00:20:00] And I retweeted it and I said, thanks so much. Glad you liked it. He has a pretty wild story. Thanks. To Matt McGarry for sharing my post in his newsletter. Just 'cause I was like, I'm not letting you get credit for this. Yeah.

Like I'm not letting you share the credit with somebody else. Like, I spent so much time on this thing. Yeah. Um. So I that it was gutsy, I think. Yeah. To do something like that. But yeah. And then I'm just like reposting people saying like, really enjoyed this piece and like, I don't know, I was just like part of the community.

Mm-hmm. And I think that's a huge piece of this is like, so many folks look at social media these days and they're like, I'm just gonna post every day and just like bounce. Like that's it. Yeah. I'm just gonna post. But you had to really like lean in and try and like be. Part of that group, support other people's stuff, comment on other people's posts, and I think that's such a big missed opportunity.

You can't post

Dylan Redekop: and

Chenell Basilio: ghost. Yeah. And they look at social and they're like, oh, it, it doesn't do anything. I'm not getting any engagement. I'm like, well, are you engaging back? Like mm-hmm. There's, it goes two ways. So I think there's a lot to be learned in this sense and like I'm learning this going back through [00:21:00] my story right now.

Like this is actually super fun. So I'm glad we're doing this.

Dylan Redekop: And we were talking earlier about. That post that I shared today and how I said it was from a long time ago, like four years ago almost. Yeah. And it's like kind of the eye rolly kind of content, which I realize now when I look at it, but at the same time, there's some truth to it.

'cause I'm like, there's no growth hack. Um, and I published this in 2021. There's no growth hack. You have to like. Actually engage with people, answer questions, reply to posts, be helpful, um, show up. That's, it was true four years ago, and it's true now. Like probably even in a lot of ways, more than ever. Um, especially with like the rise of AI just in the last few years.

So, yeah, you being your real person, replying genuinely not with like an AI response every time, that's gonna go so much further. So I think it's, it's important people don't just ghost and are posting ghost and are actually spending time and you, maybe LinkedIn's not the place for you, maybe Twitter's not the place for you, but you find that place where you know your people, so to speak, are.

You feel comfortable [00:22:00] and engaged and become part of that fabric?

Chenell Basilio: Definitely. Mm-hmm. And I think it's easy to look at like someone with a huge following and be like, well, they never comment. They're never there. And it's like they already have that following. If you go back and like if they're not a celebrity from TV or a TV show or something like that, and you go back and you look at their first thing that they did online, I'm sure that they were engaging and doing kinds like all kinds of stuff.

Mm-hmm. In the comments. It's just you don't see it anymore 'cause it was so long ago.

Dylan Redekop: Yep. There's also outlier cases. And yeah, people who have good connections and are in engagement pods that don't necessarily need maybe as much. So there's other things happening behind the scenes that can explain some of that too.

Chenell Basilio: Now, the other thing that I did pretty regularly was, and this is related to social because a lot of them were happening on social, but I would go to, um, spark Loop. Subscriber list used to show like a UTM source for your subscriber. Yeah. Isn't that awesome? It wasn't. It's the best. And now they did away with it.

Come on, man. So I would just, I would constantly be refreshing that page, refreshing that page, and I'd be like, oh wait, there's five [00:23:00] subscribers from, it says ConvertKit. And I'm like, who sent an email? Who shared my link? Yeah. So then I'd like go research and like go through my inbox and see if I was subscribed and if I saw it.

And it was just like. If I found it, I would immediately message that person and be like, thank you so much for sharing. That was huge. Like I really appreciate it. Even if they sent me one subscriber, I was doing that and I think people. Think that's cool. Like they recognize that like, oh hey, like you're a human and you care about other people.

So I think that went a long way.

Dylan Redekop: I remember you sending me, thank you. When I'd share a post of yours, you'd reply saying, thanks for sharing. And it didn't have to be like this whole like long thing, just like, just a shout in the inbox. Hey, thanks for sharing. Appreciate it. It goes a long way.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And now we have a podcast.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's so fun. Um, but I think, okay, so going back to like, this isn't just about like the Chanel growth story. I think the, the thing that people get wrong about social media is like, it is such a key piece of like, and an easy way to build relationships over time. Like you're, you're finding new people, you're finding content, you're.[00:24:00]

Learning how people think and you're like, Hey, I actually resonate with that. Like we should chat. I can't tell you how many times I sent someone a Calendly link and I was like, let's jump on a call. Mm-hmm. Like had 30 minute calls with like random people on the internet and it's so fun. Mm-hmm. Like so fun.

Some of those people I've now written deep dives on some of those people, like I just collaborate with, maybe we did a cross promotion, so I just. I think that can't be overstated. Like the, the value of being social on social media is like, it's not just about follower account or email subscribers that you get.

It's also like finding people you like and, and mm-hmm. Building those relationships,

Dylan Redekop: finding your tribe as, as much as that word has probably been. Overused, but that totally is, is the case. And I think it's funny because I think about an episode we published probably in the springtime where we're

Yeah,

talking about growth without social and how you don't need social media to grow.

And that's, that's also true. Like all, all of these things can coexist. Um, you just have to play a different game, if you will, and, and go use a different strategy. [00:25:00] And, uh, we'll, we can link to that episode if you're curious what that even means and how you can go about that. But that also takes effort.

None of these, none of these strategies are just like, you know, plug and play. It's like you have to actually come in, do the work, engage and, and grow. And if you're doing it the other way, you have to do the other things like reaching out to people, doing cross promotions, collaborations, um, getting in front of other people's audiences like.

That also takes a lot of work. But yeah, you'll avoid the algorithms, but you'll still be in inboxes and, and connecting and doing all that stuff too. So,

yeah.

Um, these strategies can both work. They just, I just don't want people to think we're like, disregarding all the advice we gave, you know, six months ago.

Um, totally great call out. Both, both of these things can happen and can coexist depends on you and your preference and what, where you feel your strong suit lies. If you're not a really social person and you don't want to engage with people on social media. Then there's ways to grow your newsletter without it,

Speaker 3: but it's gonna take longer.

Yes. Yes.

Dylan Redekop: If you like any definitely will

Speaker 3: take longer

Dylan Redekop: if you like getting in the algorithm and [00:26:00] hamming it up and, um, being social, this can be a, a lot more so than the other way.

Chenell Basilio: And I'm sure someone out there is like, oh, I'm just gonna use paid ads. I'm like, all right, cool. But yep. If you use paid. Before you have like that content audience fit, I really think you're kind of wasting your money.

So I, I, I really do feel like po like learning how to write a good social post is such a life skill. Like, and I'm not even the be like great at it. Like I'm, I'm okay at it. Mm-hmm. I still think is a great life skill, just to know like, what are people resonating with? Are the topics I'm writing about interesting to other people?

Yeah. How can I make them more interesting, uh, copywriting frameworks and all of that stuff. I think it's, it's such a good life skill that you should at least give it like a few months and try it out and see what you gain from it,

Dylan Redekop: and it'll help with your writing, your newsletter writing too. Totally.

Just all these, all these skills, um, cross pollinate, they're, they'll help you in other areas.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And oftentimes I would take my teaser posts, copy, paste it into the beginning of my newsletter. 'cause I knew it [00:27:00] resonated. Mm-hmm. And so it would get people reading to the next few lines. And I'm like, okay, now we're in the story.

And now you're invested. Let's keep going from here.

Dylan Redekop: It's gonna help you with. YouTube packaging. If you wanna get into video, it's gonna help you with scripting Short form video. It can, it can go a long way. So, so I think that's, that's good piece of advice.

Chenell Basilio: And like, again, like relationships, collaborations, cross promotions, these things all become easier when you're out there.

You're on social media, you're commenting on people's stuff

Dylan Redekop: when they know who you are. I think it helps.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I think there is a strategy in a world where you could post one time a week and just comment every other day and like, still grow your following mm-hmm. In your, your newsletter. You don't have to be posting daily, you don't have to be posting multiple times a day or even like four or five times a week.

Like you could still, you know, do the bare minimum, but just like be social and still meet people and grow your newsletter.

Dylan Redekop: And what if I wanted to do that, say like next month?

Chenell Basilio: Oh, you do? Well that's fun because, so in January, um, we actually, January of this year, we kicked off a LinkedIn [00:28:00] challenge inside the growth and reverse Pro community.

Mm-hmm. And did super well. It was so fun. We had a leaderboard, we had prizes, we had a winner. And um, this time around I was like, you know what, there's a lot of FOMO with that. And I kind of felt bad that people couldn't like join, that weren't in the growth and reverse pro community. 'cause the, the community's not for everyone.

And that's fair. But I think. Having a challenge like this and like a 30 day timeframe and like accountability is kind of important, um, at least to like re kickstart or reignite your growth. So we're doing this, we're actually opening it up to the growth and reverse audience as a whole instead of just the community members.

Um, so. You can go to growth and reverse.com/social and learn how to sign up. There is gonna be a small fee just because I wanna make sure people are actually like, trying and engaging, and I'm putting so much work into this. Dylan is too. We're gonna have live calls, uh, roast my post calls, which are the most fun, where Oh yeah.

You know, you can bring a post that you've done that maybe [00:29:00] didn't get as much traction as you wanted. And we will roast it live and tell you how maybe you can do it better next time. Yeah, improve the hook with you. I'm, I'm so excited.

Dylan Redekop: It's amazing how an extra set of eyes can just like show you things that you just did not realize, um, with anything.

Not just, not just posts, but it's really helpful in this case too. 'cause you can get like, I dunno, live feedback on. Why this post may have flopped, so,

yeah.

Yeah, totally. They were, they're really helpful Back in January when we had those two.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I remember the, the one from inside the community. Um, my friend Becky actually posted something and I was like, Ooh, the hook's not so good.

And she's like, what do you mean? And I rewrote it for her and she updated it like an hour after posting it, before she updated it. She had like three likes. After she updated it, it went to like 30 or something. Nice. So like, not a huge viral post, but like that's big deal for her, like. Piece of content you spent a bunch of time on, like all she changed was the first sentence.

Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. That's huge. So, and if you didn't mention it, it's gonna be open not just to LinkedIn, you can grow on [00:30:00] platform of choice. So whether it's LinkedIn, Twitter threads, um, Substack notes, substack, I think we're gonna focus more on written platforms. It's, it's gonna be fun 30 day challenge to, to, I know.

I need, I need the motivation to kick my butt back into gear to posting relatively often, somewhat more than I am right now.

Chenell Basilio: I am so excited. Um, we're gonna have separate spaces for each of these. Mm-hmm. Um, and so you can jump into the Substack space and be like, Hey, I just posted this. It didn't do super well.

Um, or it did great. Here's what I'm learning. And just like kind of share these learnings with each other. You get a taste of the Growth Rivers Pro community. Yeah. Yeah. Like get to see how supportive we are. Like it's not a place to tear people down, it's just like, honestly, a place to grow your newsletter.

And in this case we're gonna do it via growing on social.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: The fun thing is we're gonna have a full leaderboard. Uh, we're gonna have Grand Prizes, winners, um. The last winner got to be in the sponsorship spot in the growth and reverse newsletter, which was [00:31:00] super fun. Yeah, she gained a bunch of followers from that, so that was cool.

That is great. Um, so we're gonna have some other prizes too, but we'll keep those under wraps until, uh, we kick things off. So if you are interested in joining us, I would love to have you, uh, growth and reverse.com/social if you want to join the challenge.

Dylan Redekop: And so just to call out why people might be like, well, why isn't this, I grow your newsletter challenge.

Let's speak to that a little bit. Yes,

Chenell Basilio: totally. So it is a grow your newsletter challenge with social media, but as like someone who can't see behind the scenes into everyone's newsletter account, uh, I can't see how many subscribers you have. So the best metric I can use is a public facing one, which is a follower account.

Um, but we are not just gonna say like, okay, this person grew to 11,000 followers. They win. No. No, because that's not the fair. So we're gonna do it based on growth percentage. So if you start with a hundred followers and you grow to a thousand followers, you could potentially beat someone who has a much larger audience just because your rate of growth was faster.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: [00:32:00] So that is kind of like how we're playing it. There's also gonna be cha uh, prizes for like. Most subscribers gained, but I can't keep up with those numbers every week. 'cause you know, it's like a, a manual thing. So I'm trying not to ruin my life for September. Uh, so, so I'm trying to keep it easy, keep it straightforward, and we're just gonna focus on follower growth

Dylan Redekop: for those prizes.

Very cool. And we'll also, we're also having some coworking calls as well, where we can kind of work on our LinkedIn posts. Um. At the same time, but at the same time, right. Um, stop on a call, on a zoom call, work away kind of, uh, in sort of like as if you're working with friends, but, um, on your own time. And then we'll rehash at the end how everyone did with their posts and if they feel accomplished and that sort of thing.

Yes.

Chenell Basilio: And so we'll also have a couple of like office hours calls as well. Yep. Um, just to kind of, you know, if you have questions or you want help with something, an extra pair of eyes, that kind of thing. And I'm probably gonna just like, take some of the calls that we've had in pro that are around [00:33:00] LinkedIn or a specific platform and dump them into there so you can kind of watch those and see how some of the, the bigger names are growing too.

I think that'll be helpful. That will be helpful. So I have to add that to my list. Just, just figured we should do that. Um. But yeah, this is gonna be fun. Even prizes aside, like the leaderboard sounds confusing to you. It's okay. We're all just gonna go in there and like, help each other, figure this stuff out, grow, support each other's content.

This is not like a pod or anything, but we're trying to just like showcase other people who are writing great stuff. I'm excited and it, it went over really well last year and I don't want you to have FOMO come like September 5th when you can no longer join. Yeah, so make sure you get in before then.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And I, I think it's important to put to say like, we're not doing this as like an engagement pod type of thing. 'cause cynic might be like, oh, that's just all you're doing here. Um, there is no pressure to comment or like, or even follow people in, in this challenge. It's strictly for a motivation for you to post and grow and just some accountability to do that.

So I just wanna [00:34:00] make sure that's clear. Yeah. And what about people, so people obviously who are in growth reverse pro already, they're in. They can opt into the challenge if they want, if they don't have, if they don't want to, um, without having to pay anything extra. But what about people who have said, um, you just released the Growth Vault as well?

Yes. Do you wanna share what you wanna do there?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so if anyone has bought the Growth Vault and a lot of you have, I will be emailing you a link to join this for free as well. So you get that as a bonus just because you signed up. So if you buy the Growth Vault, which is 200 bucks, you get this for free.

So it's kind of like half price and you get a challenge. Honestly, I would buy either, either option. You don't have to buy the growth vault. That's fine. Uh, it has like more video lessons and ways to like optimize your onboarding and growth and that kind of thing. You don't have to do that, but just get in.

I would say like probably the 26, 'cause we're gonna have content and we're gonna have you No, but like we're gonna have content and like things for you to do and like get yourself level set before we start publishing on the first.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the things that, um, I [00:35:00] talked to you about this too, when I took Ship 30 for 30 all those years ago.

Yes. That was the part I was just most. One of the most blown, blown away by was the onboarding before we even started publishing was the on-ramp to that. And we wanna not copy that, but we wanna replicate that energy of like the ramp up and like, feeling pumped to start this challenge, making sure you're prepped and you've got all the, the tools you need or your questions are answered.

So that you can really hit the ground running on September 1st when we, when we go live, if you will.

Chenell Basilio: And I feel like it's just such, such a good time, like it's back to school time. Mm-hmm. Like people are starting to realize like, oh shoot, like Q4 is coming up. Like, yeah, I should, you know, kind of get focused here before the new year.

So I'm excited to, uh, kind of kick this off in September.

Dylan Redekop: I mean, it's pumpkin spice latte time, right? I think that is really, Ooh. What we're flipping the calendar to, right? So we're going summer to fall. Starbucks is our signal. So we know, we know it's time. Time for a challenge. Time for some PSLs. I did not know

Chenell Basilio: Canadian.

I did not know Canadians liked pumpkin spice lattes too. I

Dylan Redekop: mean, I don't, but it is a thing. Okay. I'm either, it is a thing.

Chenell Basilio: [00:36:00] People are like crazy about them here.

Dylan Redekop: I, I'm not gonna say I don't like them. I just don't buy them and they're very sweet. So I don't know. Yeah, it's like, it would be like a dessert. I feel like my whole

Chenell Basilio: day is ruined when I have one of those, because I'm just like.

Shaking from the sugar.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah. Sugar, caffeine, like combo just buzzing.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. Yep. Yeah, no, that's a thing here. Yeah. Interesting. I didn't realize that. That's good to know. But yeah, I think, I think going through the social growth I had was pretty cool. Like I didn't realize the impact that 30 days had. No, I didn't get to 10, 11,000 in 30 days.

It was six months, but the first month was pretty crazy.

Dylan Redekop: Well, that's at your foundation, I think, right? To get you. To that,

Chenell Basilio: yeah.

Dylan Redekop: 10,000, 11,000 subscribers in six months. So if you hadn't started commenting and posting and posting threads and trying things and seeing what worked and seeing what didn't and um, getting discovered, so to speak, um, by people like Jay and people like.

Ethan, then you wouldn't have probably got to that point. So it all has to [00:37:00] start somewhere. And people might roll their eyes and be like, oh sure. Yeah. Right. You know, just start, ha ha ha. But it really, I mean, it does, you have to, you have to start somewhere. Um, and you never know if you could be in that spot in six months time.

So. We'd love to have some success stories come out of this challenge too, just to like, I dunno, cheer you on and, and, um, celebrate with you as well.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And I already have a couple of growth reverse pro members who are pumped to like, help and like be mm-hmm. Kinda like evangelists of like certain platforms.

Yes. So I'm super excited Yeah. To get them. 'cause they're just like. They've been doing this a little bit longer than some other people might have, and so they're gonna be able to help you if you get lost or stuck or, I'm actually, I actually created my first ever custom GPT yesterday. Hello. Calling it the Hook Helper

Dylan Redekop: essentially is

Chenell Basilio: gonna help you rewrite your hook because this is.

Honestly, like one of the biggest pieces of this stuff. And so when you join, you get that for free too. It's not perfect. I'm still tweaking it, but it's close. Can you send it to

Dylan Redekop: me now? Totally. You help with my hooks.

Chenell Basilio: I like went [00:38:00] through LinkedIn yesterday and I was just like scrolling until I found like posts that were like not great, but like the content was good, but the hook was bad.

Yeah. And I copy and pasted it in there. I'm like, that's a banger. You should change your hook. Um, really? So it's, it's working pretty well. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: So you took other people's content. Put it in the hook helper and then got a better hook out of it. And then Did you send it to them? I need to start doing it. I think you should.

I was just

Chenell Basilio: like flying through this and I was like, oh, this is really good. Like it just pulls out different angles you didn't think about, so yeah. I'm excited for it.

Dylan Redekop: That's, that's fun. Okay. Very cool. Looking forward to the hook help.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So that's one of the other bonuses you'll get and then a bunch of other things that, uh, me and Dylan are working on for you as well.

Yes,

Dylan Redekop: yes, yes, yes, yes. Looking forward to it. Alright, so right now we're recording this. This is the middle of August. By the time this comes out, you'll have only five, six-ish days to, to sign up. So yeah, reach out to us if you have any questions. Growth reverse.com/social and uh, we hope to see you in the September Social Growth Challenge.

Yes.

Chenell Basilio: Alright. Can't wait to see [00:39:00] you.