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Quick Thoughts on Distribution

What is distribution? It’s a channel for people to see your work.

It could be an email list, a TikTok audience, a Twitter audience, whatever.

Just like a lack of distribution is the number one cause of failure for startups, it’s the number one cause of failure for creators.

You can be an incredible writer, artist, whatever, but unless you have a solid distribution channel for people to see your work, you’ll never make it.

Back in mid 2022, I was talking to my friend Austin Schlessinger who grew his Twitter to nearly 20,000 followers by writing Twitter threads about health-tech companies. It felt like every week, he was dropping another viral thread.

So I asked him what his secret was. He said “Double the work and hustle for distribution. Send the post around to all your friends and ask them to share it.” I took his advice. I spent 6+ hours working on a Twitter thread. And after I posted it, I sent it around to 30+ of my online friends and asked them to share it. The post went viral. I gained 5,000 followers in 3 days. Boom.

In the beginning as a creator, it’s impossible to have a solid distribution channel. Sure, you can pay to run ads, but not everyone has the budget. Plus, they’re not a good way to build a real devoted audience. The best way to do build distribution is to invest time and energy in building up relationships on a platform like Twitter.

Would Ringo Starr and George Harrison be successful without the stars John Lennon and Paul McCartney? Probably not.

When you’re starting out online, you’re like Starr and Harrison. You need to find some Lennons and McCartneys to help you out.

How do you do that? You need to do things:

1. Find Twitter friends around your follower count

2. Find Twitter friends with massive followings (think of these as your patron saints or sponsors)

For both things, the one and only way to do this is sending cold DMs, saying hi, and hopping on the phone. Go make some Twitter friends.

As for finding Twitter friends with massive followings specifically, I wrote up a guide on how to get access to the rich, powerful, and Twitter-famous. I highly recommend reading it. I included real screenshots of DM conversations between me and Twitter-famous people.

At the end of the day, the trick to having fun as an internet entrepreneur and Twitter addict is to treat it like you’re playing Call of Duty with friends. Gamify it.

• Hitting 10k followers = Unlocking a new level

• Hitting a new high MRR = Beating a challenge

• DMing someone cool = Meeting a new player online

• Going viral = finding the Mario Kart rainbow mushroom As

As Packy McCormick says, we’re all playing the great online game.

So go play, make some friends, and hustle your way to the top.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin

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Until next edition, see you on Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn.