20k+ Members on WhatsApp in 20 Months 🚀🚀
So pumped to share this big milestone, and a lot more about what is in the works. This will be long. But, do read till the end :)
I started Biz News+ community on WhatsApp (https://lnkd.in/gde8JxgR) exactly 20 months ago on 5 Feb ’23.
And today, it has surpassed 20k+ investors who consume the multiple biz insights I share there every single day!
During this time, I have shared a total of 2.9k notes in the community, avg 5 a day and totalling over 25 lakh words!
Just for perspective: That’s equivalent to writing about 50 books equivalent of avg 50k words each.
Fifty! Even I am madly amused by this! 😅
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But, for those who don’t know, building this has not been a one-way upward journey.
Let me explain with the chronology of how we got there:
05 Feb ’23: 5
31 Mar ’23: 4.5k
31 July ’23: 11.7k
31 Dec ’23: 16.5k
15 Apr ’24: 18.2k
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And then, on 22 April WhatsApp banned my communities, assuming them to be spam.
-> My 14 months of hardwork disappeared overnight, and there was no grievance redressal
-> And a month later, on 27 May, when WhatsApp suddenly restored all except one of the Biz News+ groups, over 7k members had already left.
But, this was a big relief because I still had 11.2k members! 😅
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I immediately doubled down - Full throttle on LinkedIn deep-dives & building parallel distribution.
How? Launching two newsletters.
1️⃣ Decoding The Dragon - Focussed on decoding the Chinese economy, one sector at a time - https://lnkd.in/ghcUv6-j
2️⃣ Deepdives with Jay - For my research & data deepdives - https://lnkd.in/gjUQnjJu
And today, the deepdives newsletter is now at 1.7k subscribers, and the China one is at ~1.5k subscribers
Since then, I have also launched one more (Bharatnama) which has 1k subscribers.
I’m aiming for each one to hit 5k subscribers by the end of December (~85 days to go).
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But, while I was doing all of this, I did not give up on WhatsApp - I tripled down.
I was putting out more high-quality long-form text-only data/research deepdives, than I had probably done in the past.
Putcome? As aforementioned, the Biz News+ community has rebounded from 11.2k in May to members to >20k 🙏🙏
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That said, in this while I have also worked on building a small power team to help me.
And thanks to that, I have found renewed confidence to relaunch my YouTube channel again.
That is at 4.2k+ subscribers now, and I am bringing back not-so-commonly known biz content there starting 10th of October (5 days from now).
So do check that out here: https://lnkd.in/gy2aFKr5
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Overall, this has been a humbling journey full of hustle, heart and a heart rebound.
And to all who have supported me in this journey, many of who are also among those 20k+ WhatsApp community members, thanks 🙏🙏
You know how grateful I am. Genuinely, and deeply :)
Best,
Jayant