THEY THOUGHT OF YOU

Hey all,

Happy Sunday from NYC.

Interesting twist today: I didn't type this issue. I talked V1 into Wispr Flow. (Wispr says Reid Hoffman sends 89% of his messages through it with zero edits. I am not Reid. There were edits.) I then piped my transcript into Claude and used beehiiv’s MCP to build me a first draft. No, Wispr Flow isn’t a sponsor; I was experimenting!

Prompt: take this transcript and use it to draft a newsletter in my voice. enrich this with any other ideas from previous newsletters in beehiiv that you think are relevant, as well as anything from my work that you've noticed. make sure to find interesting stuff to hyperlink.

I then went through it with my type-A brain, cleaned it up, and truly made it mine.

That brings us to today’s topic, the thing I wish I'd started one to two years earlier in my career: become a B2B creator.

For all of my non-marketing folks here, here’s some context.

What is a B2B Creator: A B2B creator is someone who makes content about their industry for the people who work in it: buyers, decision-makers, operators, founders. They're experts who show their work in public.

Why you should globally care about B2B Creators:

Wrong.

Every person who's working a job should be documenting it.

Don’t you WANT to build something of your own!?!? YES.

All you need to do is maintain a consistent version of yourself online that says "here's what I'm building and here's what I learned."

It's the modern resume. But better, more personal, interesting, catchy.

Your actual resume gets updated when you're job hunting (aka too late) or probably hasn’t been updated in years.

Content updates every week and gets served to people you've never met. These algorithms are smart, and if you build content for a specific professional niche, it will serve the content directly to people in similar roles or industries as you.

For example, my entire LinkedIn feed is filled with people in the startup world.

Here's how your audience grows:

That third group is where interesting, unexpected opportunities will come from. The best part is that this never stops growing. Once you start your content engine, it just continues to attract people.

Knight Vision exists because of this newsletter. I started writing on beehiiv to document what I was building at Citizen. That turned into a community, which turned into a company, which turned into a Times Square billboard less than a year in. I didn't plan any of it. I just kept writing every Sunday.

Citizen taught me the flip side. I hit 2 billion views and grew Citizen’s IG from 15K to 450K followers without owning a thing. BUMMER! Every single one of them belongs to Citizen. When I left, that audience stayed behind. What came with me was this newsletter.

Kyle Poyar started Growth Unhinged in 2021 as a side project while he was an Operating Partner at OpenView. He's been open that he didn't know if he could keep the pace, if it would distract from his day job, or if anyone would even care. Today it's 80K+, he's full-time on it, and totally crushing. When he fits our brands at KV, we love working with him.

Tyler Denk runs beehiiv and still writes Big Desk Energy. He's even published his investor updates in public. If the CEO of one of the fastest-growing platforms in media has time, you have 10 minutes. Shoutout killer. IF YOU’RE A FOUNDER, DOCUMENTING WHAT YOU’RE BUILDING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER!!!!!

And the paid data agrees. When we put spend behind LinkedIn content for clients at Knight Vision, posts from the founder's page beat posts from the brand page every single time. 📣 People follow people!! 📣

Friday afternoon works. Write down one interesting thing you saw at work: test results, a customer quote that you looped over, a tool that you’re now obsessed with, relationship dynamics, industry trends. Voice-note it into your fav AI tool if typing feels like homework.

Now you have a list = your new content calendar. Congrats, you're a strategist!

Short takes on X. Longer-ish posts on LinkedIn. Video on IG or TikTok. Depth in a newsletter. My vote is newsletter first because it's the highest-touch way to stay in someone's life + you own the list. LinkedIn second. Go where people in your professional network already are. For me when I started, marketers in tech were on LinkedIn.

Consume content from top creators in your expertise, whether it’s deep tech, GTM, VC, etc. Watch how Maggie Sellers turned posting about her VC career into Hot Smart Rich. Look at the themes they talk about and how often. See what people love about them and think through how you can put your own twist on talking to the same audience.

You will be, as long as you write about what you're actually building. Nobody else is building your exact thing or living in your brain.

Connect Claude to beehiiv, drop in your Friday notes, and have it draft. You can edit and publish!

You’re going to overthink this more than anyone consuming it. People spend seconds to a few minutes consuming your work. Use this to your advantage! Experiment and have fun.

If I could go back, I'd have started one to two years earlier.

Here’s what I’ve found to be the biggest payoff: you become the person people think of.

When a role opens, when a founder needs an advisor, when a VC asks, "who's good at X?", people name whoever is most relevant. Oftentimes, that person showed up in their feed or inbox in the past week. Right now, that's someone else.

Once you have an audience, you can leverage it however you want. Make a f*ck ton of money, grow a community, intro people, make new friends, ship product.

Endless opportunities if you take initiative here.

Take 10 minutes this Friday. Write down one thing. Then hit reply and tell me what it was. I love reading your responses! Makes me sooooo happy to see you crush it.

Have a great and productive week.

Julia