Good Sunday š!
In last weekās Sunday Beam, I tried a long-form style. After getting feedback and reflecting, I decided to go back to the old style - short with doses of inspirations - because that's what a newsletter is for! And I can always dive deeper in my blog posts (and you can click on it).
Okay, about my life at this moment, Iām literally overwhelmed š by the amount of content I need to produce every week. The list is incredibly long, and I find myself revisiting my batchtasking system every 2 weeks to make it work.
In this 2-min video, I talked about how Iām able to write more tweet threads in less time.
Other than that, Avery š¶ is growing nicely - 1 week from being 4 months old. In Chinese culture, we celebrate 100 days for newborn and here is our family photo that day š§”.
This week, letās talk:
- 30DaysInPublic 1st cohort kicked off!
- I love referencing from peopleās work #stealing?
- Writing is not your bottleneck in audience building. This is
š„ #30DaysInPublic

It is official! The 1st cohort kicked off this past week and I canāt be more grateful that one common goal brings 17 builders together. The goal is to build an audience in an authentic way.
Twitter, where we build in public, is a battlefield where actions are happening every second. And our #30DaysInPublic cohort is a training ground where builders not only learn #BuildingInPublic techniques, but they get deployed into the battlefield to make things happen.
I absolutely love that weāre all learning and taking action at the same time. Iāll continue to share more.
š± Iām referencing peopleās work #Stealing?
For this, I donāt mean copying someoneās idea. Thatās a different topic.
When I was 12 years old, I was obsessed with the Internet. I learned Microsoft Frontpage for web development. My go-to strategy was to look at the HTML & CSS of my favorite websites, inspect their front-end code, and recreate a similar style myself. I was referencing someoneās work to learn and to create.
Now you might ask - is that stealing?
Honestly, in my view, the Internet is built upon everyone taking reference of one another's ideas.
There is a major difference in copying someoneās idea and trying to make it similar to steal and referencing and learning from someoneās best work and inject those elements into your own work.
- How do you learn to grow your Twitter? You find the best account and learn what they do.
- How do you learn to grow a blog? You find the best blog and learn what they do.
- How do you learn to grow a community? You find the best community and learn what they do.
It is one big open playing field, and I donāt think we should be shy or embarrassed to admit that weāre learning from others.
When I decided to start Public Labās community, I took inspiration from Monica Lentās Blogging for Devs. I truly enjoy Monicaās style of building in public and she seems to be doing an excellent job to provide so much value to her community members. She is a role model!
I became a member of her community and I also emailed her to let her know that Iām creating a new community and I learned a lot from her. I was thinking āHmmm⦠will she ever reply me? I'm literally saying I'm here because I want to learn how you run things.ā š
And she didnāt just reply me, she shared even more with me! š¤©š¤©

It is totally okay to reference peopleās work, and if you take that chance to be transparent, youāll not just feel better but something amazing might happen.
P.S. Of course not everyone is going to take it nicely like Monica.
š Writing is not your bottleneck in audience building. This is.
If youāre following me for #BuildingInPublic, then youāre likely interested in building your own audience.
One thing I notice is that most of you can write. And, in fact, some of you can write really well.
Whatās stopping you is not your ability to build an audience or to write, it is how you tackle accountability and consistency.
Without figuring out a way to achieve these two, youāll never achieve your new goals.
ššš I broke down accountability and consistency and shared how I tackled them in this blog post. P.S. I shared my business model too š±
š” Inspirations
ā4 Painful Lessons I Had to Learn Again with My New Startupā
Iāve been following Leoās writing since he co-founded Buffer. A legend alongside Joel. In his new blog post, he talked about a mindset āNot knowing is more intimateā.
I firmly believe so. Iām not an expert in #BuildingInPublic, I just happen to know a little more than you. And while Iām sharing a lot of resources and tips to help you out, Iām still learning with all of you. This makes me feel much better than having all of you rely on me as an expert.
What about you? Are you taking a ālearner mindsetā while teaching and guiding others?
āWriting tools I learned from Paul Grahamā
This is a good article to learn about writing. BUT, I have another reason to share this with you. If youāre keen on building an audience:
- Breaking down famous peopleās work is a great way to make a useful piece of content. Who doesnāt want to learn from these famous people?
- Youāre leveraging this famous personās credibility to build your own. People reading this piece of content wants to learn from Paul Graham, and they learn about the author Ahmed Soliman as well.
I did the same when I was first starting out: Best Copywriting Examples by Dave Gerhardtā
Can you pick your favorite person and break down their work or strategy?