i want to tell you something that took me longer to admit than it probably should have.
for a while, i was chasing the wrong thing.
not intentionally. i didn’t wake up one day and decide i wanted numbers over connection. it just kind of happened the way a lot of things happen gradually, quietly, while you’re busy doing the work.
at my peak on instagram, my content was pulling around 200,000 views a month. my carousel on being a copycat in your brand blew up harder than anything i’d ever posted in the last 6 months.
people were sharing it, saving it, sending it to friends. the comments were full of people saying it changed how they thought about their brand.
and i knew the content was good.
i’ve been doing this for years.
i know brand strategy.
so i wasn’t surprised it was landing.
but here’s the thing i couldn’t name at the time. none of those people were really talking to me.
they were reacting to the work. validating the idea. applauding the carousel.
but the conversation always stopped there, right at the surface, because that’s what the platform was designed for. a comment section isn’t built for connection. it’s built for response.
and i didn’t know the difference yet.
there’s a Business Insider article that made rounds in creator circles back in 2022. the headline is why TikTokers may face problems forming deep connections with fans, despite the platform’s hold on Gen Z.
the argument is uncomfortable if you’ve spent any real time building on short-form platforms.
the idea is that the format itself, the short video, the infinite scroll, the algorithm that surfaces you to strangers — might actually be making genuine connection harder to form. not because creators aren’t talented or authentic. but because the platform trains people to follow a version of you. a highlight. a caricature. the one thing you went viral for.
and then that becomes the box you live in.
what made this article so popular was when at one of the most popular creator conferences held in the US, the parts of the program reserved for certain “big” creators on Tiktok had the lowest attendances.
people were engaging with them online but felt no reason to move and support them in real life.
i read that and felt something click into place.
because i’d lived it.
the instagram version of me was the smart brand strategy guy. clear. concise. good at making complex things simple. and people followed me for exactly that.
but that wasn’t all of me. that was a sliver of me, polished and packaged for a feed.
so i started the newsletter.
not with a grand plan. honestly it started as something i just wanted to do.
a place to write like myself without worrying about what the carousel needed to look like. the audience was smaller from the start. a few hundred people. now just over a thousand.
and something happened that i genuinely wasn’t expecting.
people started writing back.
not “great post.” not fire emojis. actual replies. long ones.
people sharing things about their own journeys, their own fears about being seen, their own version of what i’d just described. they weren’t responding to my expertise. they were responding to me.
that was new.
i have a friend, Anna-Maria.
we’re friends in real life. like, we actually know each other, hang out, have had a conversations across tables and group chats and voice notes.
and somehow, she and i have had more honest conversations through newsletter email threads than we ever managed in person.
every single time i send something out, she writes back. not a quick reply. a real one. something thoughtful and personal and specific to what i actually said. and it goes back and forth from there.
at some point i realized i’d learned things about how Anna-Maria thinks, what she’s working through, what she actually believes, that i hadn’t picked up in years of real-life friendship.
the newsletter did something the friendship hadn’t figured out how to do yet.
i’ve been sitting with that for a while.
(she writes beautifully by the way. if you want to read something that makes you think and feel at the same time, go read her piece “God still loves your ex” at heyannamaria on substack. i think about it more than i let on.)
here’s what i think is actually happening.
on socials, people validate your work.
in messages, people reveal themselves.
one gives you reach. the other gives you relationship.
and i think a lot of us, myself included for a long time, confused the two. we thought reach was the goal because reach was the metric. more views meant more people cared. a bigger audience meant a bigger impact.
but caring and watching are not the same thing.
the people who follow you because of one viral post don’t know you.
they know the thing you made. and the platform will keep feeding them more of that thing because that’s what the algorithm learned they clicked on. you become the copycat carousel guy. or the fitness tips girl. or the branding expert who does those clean graphics.
you become your content. not yourself.
i’m not saying reach doesn’t matter. it does. you need people to find you before they can connect with you.
but i think we have the order wrong.
we build for reach and hope connection follows. when really, connection is the thing that makes people stay, refer you, buy from you, reply to you at midnight because something you said hit different.
you don’t need to become famous to become successful at what you do.
you just need the right people to care.
and here’s the uncomfortable truth: a thousand people who genuinely care will do more for your brand, your business, your sense of purpose as a creator, than 20,000 people who scroll past.
the 200 who reply are worth more than the 20,000 who double tap and forget.
i’ve stopped optimizing for reach.
i’m building for the replies.
so here’s what i want you to do after you read this.
reply to this email.
tell me one thing you’re building right now that you care about more than your follower count can show. tell me something real. not a pitch, not a summary of your brand. just something you’re actually working on or thinking about.
i read every single one. and i write back.
that’s kind of the whole point.
talk soon,
Mike