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Growth In Reverse is the must-listen podcast for anyone serious about growing an email list and turning a newsletter into a thriving business. Hosted by Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop, two leading voices in the newsletter space, this show pulls back the curtain on how today’s top newsletter operators actually grow and make money.
Episodes include deep-dive teardowns of the strategies behind the most successful newsletters. You’ll hear how creators like Justin Welsh, Codie Sanchez, Sahil Bloom, and other creator founders are building loyal audiences and turning subscribers into revenue. Learn how they attract traffic, increase conversions, boost retention, and scale without burning out.
Whether you're launching your first newsletter or refining your growth engine, Growth In Reverse gives you proven tactics you can use right away. From onboarding systems and referral programs to sponsorships and paid products, this podcast helps you grow faster and smarter. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start applying what works, tune in and learn how the best are building newsletters that last.
Growth In Reverse Podcast - 30-Day Social Growth Challenge Debrief
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Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] We gained about 14,000 followers across the people who were posting.
Dylan Redekop: I had 25,900 total impressions and I got nine new email subscribers in 40 days from
25,000.
Chenell Basilio: That's not very good.
Dylan Redekop: No, it's not, it's not very good at all.
Chenell Basilio: One guy got retweeted by the top figure in his niche. She actually grew her newsletter by 87.5%,
He didn't have a newsletter to write, it was purely LinkedIn.
Dylan Redekop: The burnout factor is real when you start going down that rabbit hole
What would you say was the biggest win then from this challenge?
Chenell Basilio: I don't know, I don't know, like, is it even worth it?
Chenell Basilio: So what happens when you post on social media every day for 30 days? Well, maybe you get your first newsletter sponsor, or maybe you meet a friend in real life to do co-working together, or maybe you get one and a half to $2 million of interest for funding your next project. That's what happened. [00:01:00] Those are some of the results that came out of our social challenge that we did last month, and today we're gonna recap how it went and some more details for you.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, this is gonna be great. We had a, for those who don't know, we had a 30 day social growth challenge in the growth in reverse pro community. Actually, it wasn't even within the growth reverse pro community, and it was, , public, anybody could join. There's a small fee to enter. And we ran it from what was supposed to be September 1st to October 1st.
We had a little hiccup with some software. We extended it basically September, September 1st to October 10th. And it was quite an experience where people could grow their social media following on whatever platform really they chose. So we had done a LinkedIn challenge in January of of 2025, strictly on LinkedIn.
And this, this challenge, we decided to open it up to the public and to any platform that you want to grow on.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so the previous challenge we did was super fun. We had a leaderboard. We had people like competing, which was really hilarious to see every week. [00:02:00] They were like, oh, I'm winning. I'm, I'm, now, I'm in second, et cetera. We decided to do it again and just kind of open it up to the wider audience.
'cause after the last one, there were so many people commenting on posts saying that they wanted to join and how could they join? And I was like, oh, I should have done a better job of promoting this. So this time we had a little bit more foresight and we decided to open it up and you just had to pay a quick a hundred dollars fee.
Wasn't too crazy, but enough to make sure you were actually serious about it. And yeah, it went great. Where do you wanna start with this, Dylan?
Dylan Redekop: Well, how many people ended up joining? Like how many people did we have doing this, doing this
Chenell Basilio: Yes. So I, I also opened it up people who have bought The Growth Vault, which is like a series of optimizations and growth tips that I find that I'm constantly adding to. So people who have, who have bought that product, I actually let them in for free. So overall we had 128 people signed up, but. Naturally when something is free, you don't take it as seriously.
So about 92 people [00:03:00] posted regularly,
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Okay. And
then it also included some people from the growth reverse pro community too, who,
who opted in to do the contest. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Chenell Basilio: exactly. Pro community members pretty much get access to everything.
Dylan Redekop: Yes,
yes. Pro community is the place to be for all things. Uh, one, one fee, all things. So it's great. Why don't we start with some high level stats, because I know in our wrap up call you shared some really interesting stats on kinda the general contest.
So why don't you share those just to get a, an, so people can get an idea of the impact of this challenge and what, you could expect to potentially get if you join the next time,
if there is next time.
Chenell Basilio: So 92 people, like I said, joined. Through the course of that we actually. As you alluded to, we tried starting on September 1st, we were using a, a software tool. It didn't end up working out, so I manually went through and captured everyone's starting date or starting follower account on September 10th.
So unfortunately, some people were posting for like 10 days and [00:04:00] didn't actually get credit for it. Sorry. Um, but it was the best I could do. And so we started. The follower account on September 10th, and from there until October 10th. Um, cumulatively, cumulatively, that's a fun word. Uh, we joined or we gained about 14,000 followers across the people who were posting.
So some folks, um. Posted a couple times. It only got like 10 followers. Some folks posted every single day. And we can talk through some of those too. But, uh, there was a wide range, but 14,301 followers to be exact over the 30 days.
Dylan Redekop: And there were awards given too for the people who, um, grew or had the biggest increase in followers and also the people who posted every day were, if you posted basically all 30 days, then you got entered into a kind of a raffle to win a prize too.
Chenell Basilio: The winner, um, is taking up the sponsor spot in my newsletter, uh, [00:05:00] for a week, which is fun. And then the other ones will get a shout out in the newsletter too. So they should, you'll be, we'll be seeing those if you're on the email list, uh, you'll be seeing the winners in an upcoming email.
Dylan Redekop: Awesome. One interesting thing I think as well that you figured out too, was. Basically how to gauge how who is actually growing their audience at a decent rate. We won't go into too many details and nerdy details on this, but in the past it had been like, oh yeah, whoever gained the most subscribers, like, well, people who have huge audiences, it's not necessarily fair to the people
who didn't.
So let's go with growth rates. So whoever grows by the most percentage. But then the people who had very small audiences had the advantage because. If you had 10 followers and all of a sudden you had a hundred at the end and you grew by a crazy amount. So that, handicapped them as opposed to giving people with the bigger audiences advantage.
So tell us what you figured out and how you judged the, placement.
Chenell Basilio: So, like you said, typically I use growth rate 'cause it just seems the most normal. But then there [00:06:00] was, , pro Community Member Destini actually was doing it and she started a substack from Zero. So she, she started with like, I actually had to put the number one in for it to even work 'cause it was like, I don't compute.
So she had 60 followers. So it went like one to 60 and it was like 7900% or something insane. I was like, well, no one's ever gonna catch that one. So then I, , brainstormed with ChatGPT and it came up with this nerdy, logarithmic scale. I don't know how it works, but apparently it's an Excel thing too. Then I, I asked the people in the community and someone. Shout it out and said, yes, that's a great way to do it. And I said, okay, cool. It's not just ChatGPT saying that. So
Dylan Redekop: brings me back to, I think Math 10, uh, in 10th grade doing math
Chenell Basilio: yes, like some weird calculator with like a million buttons on it.
Dylan Redekop: Yep. Yep. Graph calculators. Good times.
Uh, we're dating ourselves
Chenell Basilio: Dylan.
Dylan Redekop: Yep. Exactly. So. I dunno if you have those, these in front of you, but I have my stats in front of me, , I'm gonna share [00:07:00] some stats so you can, if you have yours pulled up or if you want to. So, I counted the 40 days because I did start tracking, um, and start posting on September 1st and went all the way to October 10th. So through that time I had 25,900 total impressions and there's people who were getting. That many or more impressions on a single post. I have by no means a, a massive LinkedIn following.
I've got about 2,800 followers at this point. Through those 25,900, almost 26,000 impressions, um, I got 1,471 engagements. And 107 new followers. So, you know, not nothing. And from the followers I tracked in. Kit, how many new email subscribers I got? Again, not necessarily from the new followers, but just throughout this time period I was able to track the referral for my new subscribers and I got nine new email subscribers in 40 days from
25,000. No, it's not, it's not very good at all. So It [00:08:00] really, this bookends, a lot of thoughts I've had about doing stuff like this, and I've, I'll dive into those thoughts maybe later, but it really was like an exercise in futility to some degree because I wondered how much, how much more I would've been able to do had I spent less time worrying about what to post every day and spent more time on. Bigger scope, bigger picture, deeper quality content, and then extracted from that and post it on LinkedIn with that. So that was just a few numbers I wanted to share with mine. I'm not saying that you shouldn't post on, you shouldn't do a three day challenge, et cetera, et cetera. They still, there were still some definite gains and made some great connections and met some. Awesome new people who also joined our community after the challenge was over. So all of this was really beneficial, maybe in a non-tangible way, but I thought if you just went from the actual like ROI, probably not the biggest win for me.
Chenell Basilio: Yes. I did a terrible job tracking subscribers over this period. I was trying to go download my kit list. It's gonna take way too long while we're on this call, but I do have my LinkedIn stats pulled up. So, um, throughout the [00:09:00] 40 days, I'll just start it on September 1st, I got 179,000 impressions.
Um, yeah, well it was like three posts that did that. So it's one of those things where you kinda have to Yeah. Like most of them did, very few, like maybe a thousand, but then there were some where it's like three 4,000 and then like the highest one was 21,000.
Dylan Redekop: What's your following count on LinkedIn right now? If you wanna just share for context.
Chenell Basilio: uh, it is 13,470,
so not huge.
Dylan Redekop: About 10 times
Chenell Basilio: Um.
Dylan Redekop: so you know, I.
Chenell Basilio: you're at what, 3000?
Dylan Redekop: 2,800.
Oh, hey. That's why I gotta get use that graphing calculator more
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I was
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Oh my God.
Chenell Basilio: um, that's pretty funny.
So, over that time period for, , follower count, if we're going that route instead, well from the leaderboard, 'cause this is not showing me, I think it was like [00:10:00] 400, um, 400 followers. So nothing too crazy either. And then subscriber count, it was probably minimal because I wasn't like promoting the newsletter necessarily.
Dylan Redekop: Why would you do that?
Chenell Basilio: and I, I think I got so burned out with trying to post every day that I wasn't going back an hour later to like optimally time it right to put the link in the comment and it was not great.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it takes, it takes a lot to, I think, do this and, and optimize it and do it really, really well. So we've talked a lot about Tom Alder and other people who are really good at doing these optimizations. You know, half an hour before you post, make sure you're engaging a bunch, and then you post without a link and don't be the first comment.
Make sure you get people to comment, then comment, then comment with a, a link, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe edit your post to add a link. To whatever call to action you want. So there's a lot of different ways, um, you can do this that may be more optimized, but like you said, like the burnout factor is real.
When you start going down that rabbit hole,
Chenell Basilio: Well, let's talk about it. 'cause Tom Alder, we talk about him a [00:11:00] lot. He got to 5,000 subscribers before even launching his newsletter. He grew, he had I forget, he started with a 60 day challenge and then he was doing it for nine months or something like that. But let's remember, he wasn't doing a podcast.
He didn't have a newsletter to write, he didn't have all of this other stuff. It was purely LinkedIn. So. If it's your only channel, maybe you have a little bit more brain power to spend on it. And it was like, you could say he had a full-time job, which is fair and valid, but this is probably him, his creative outlet.
Right. He didn't have like other creative outlets necessarily. So he was like, let me write on LinkedIn. Um, I don't wanna not give him credit. 'cause that is a lot, a ton of work. Um, I just think there are, I don't know, there are like seasons for it and there are variations to it.
Dylan Redekop: He definitely was solely focused on. At least from our perspective, from what we saw, he was very focused on just posting on LinkedIn and doing it consistently. And he maybe was posting on other platforms as well, like copy, paste, type [00:12:00] of style of, of, um, whether on Twitter or not. But either way, he was, he was very focused on LinkedIn.
He wasn't publishing a newsletter like you said. So all of his focus and attention could go into that.
Chenell Basilio: So that's, something to think about. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was hard and like, I don't, I don't think it was worth it for the subscribers or the, or the followers. I looked at the leaderboard. I had 502 was
Dylan Redekop: 5 0 2. Okay. Okay. what would you say then, what would you say was the biggest win then from this challenge?
Chenell Basilio: I think that the biggest win from doing something like this is that you get to connect with really cool people. I think that just looking at the wins that the, the people who did the challenge have had, I'm like. Oh yeah, this is awesome. Of course this is worth it. Who cares if you got four followers?
But like the one guy posted, , you can't see this as a win, but, he's like,, directly because of posting on LinkedIn last month, I was able to partner with a friend who I hadn't been in [00:13:00] contact with for years on a
or on a project he's working on. So I mean, that's gonna end up being like.
They went out and raised a million dollars in funding, so . That's kind of cool. No, you didn't win, but hey, that's kind of a bigger
Dylan Redekop: That is a bigger win,
Chenell Basilio: yeah,
Dylan Redekop: than random internet people clicking follow on your profile. Yes, much bigger win.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And so I think that some, we can go through more of these wins 'cause I think they're just so fun to look at. But I think that is the biggest, the most powerful part of this is like the connections you're making, the friendships you're building, and just.
The people you get to see and talk to and, do this alongside.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, there's a networking element involved, but it's all, it's not like the, you know, the BNI kind of. Sort of, eh, kind of icky, um,
networking, like the, that goes with that word. This is
like, hey, these are actually like cool people who are trying to do the same thing. We are like grow their audiences, grow their newsletters and their content and they are. They're good people to know and [00:14:00] they're, they're supportive and maybe a collaboration comes from it or maybe they become a client or maybe you become their client or a subscriber to their newsletter, who knows? But I think ultimately, like you said, it comes down to building these relationships and getting to know, some interesting people in the space and you never know where that can lead.
Chenell Basilio: And I think with, with how much I keep hearing people saying they're burnt out on social media like. I don't think I would recommend this route right now, unless you're like really excited about a platform. But honestly, I feel like YouTube or, I don't know, maybe even Instagram if you're willing, would be good to do this.
But YouTube it's just, it lasts longer. It's evergreen. LinkedIn, yeah, they're starting to show posts that are like a couple weeks old, but it's not anywhere near the the lifespan of a YouTube video. So I think if I were personally thinking about where I would put my energy, it would be more on something like.
YouTube or just like creating better newsletter content and partnering with people like one-on-one.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I agree. And I think even if you are posting YouTube videos and you're trying to go there, you still need to [00:15:00] promote this and get people to watch those things and let people know that it exists. And yes, you can rely a little bit on the YouTube algorithm, you know, to show it to people, but. That can become, that content can become what you post on LinkedIn that can become like your LinkedIn content. Right. And I think that was one of my big takeaways was focusing on, kind of that keystone, cornerstone content. Longer form typically those, insanely valuable pieces of content, if you will, that are going to really move the needle for you.
When it comes to getting people to read, retaining subscribers, like they're opening, they're reading, they're like, wow, this is great content. I definitely wanna read the next one. And even potentially sharing it with other people. If we focus on that, then we all already have a, we've got good content. That people are enjoying, that they're reading, that they're potentially sharing. And then we could pull from that content and then post it on LinkedIn. So it's like, I feel like doing a social media growth challenge, if you [00:16:00] don't already have this kind of backlog of this high quality content, whether it's video or written or whatever it might be, audio like, uh, Adam from our, um. From our community has, he pulls
all of his content from his audio podcast.
If you don't already have that, then doing a challenge like this might not be the best first step in trying to grow an audience. So that might sound obvious, but it's, it's just becoming clearer and clearer to me. CJ Gustafson has mentioned it before where he won't take a meeting before 1:00 PM and I know we've talked about this, but this just like keeps coming back, into my head that you have to have this really good quality content to share. So people will actually want to subscribe and read and share it with other people.
Chenell Basilio: he says, I won't take any calls before one o'clock because. I need to focus on my writing and my podcasting. Otherwise people won't find me interesting enough to have phone calls with me after one o'clock, and that makes so much sense.
And it was like a little self-deprecating humor, but like, that's a, a great way to put it.
Dylan Redekop: Yes it is. And I, that's why where I felt like [00:17:00] every morning when I was getting on, and this isn't necessarily the best way to do it, this is the way I was doing it. Do not recommend every morning like, what am I gonna write about today for LinkedIn? And it's like, no, no, no, no. This is like backwards. You should be creating that, that quality content first and pulling from it and then having something that you can add to LinkedIn on.
So
I think there's something to be said
Chenell Basilio: back on this one.
Dylan Redekop: well, I was just gonna say, there's something to be said about using. Short form content to iterate and get feedback and ideas, see what resonates with people. I
totally see the valid point, but when you already know that your audience, is subscribed to you for a certain topic, or you're authority in a space, or you, are an expert in some space, then I think you can pull your content from the longer form stuff and then use it for the written as opposed to just pumping out daily things that may not go anywhere.
Chenell Basilio: I am still gonna push back on it because i, I have 70 deep dives and it, this was still extremely hard for me to do. And so yes, it's probably like a mental barrier, but there is [00:18:00] something to be said about that, of like, people are just like, oh yeah, repurpose stuff. I'm like, yeah, but like, what, what do I repurpose?
How do I repurpose it? Like how do I, I don't know. And if I had some better planning of actually. Putting the post together before this happened. I probably wouldn't have been scrambling every morning and then, you know, completely fell off the wagon afterwards. So, yeah. But it's, it's, it sounds easier that way, but I also don't know that that is the only, like, I don't know, I don't know, like, is it even worth it?
Dylan Redekop: Is what even worth it.
Chenell Basilio: Create the long form piece. Yes, that is super valuable and necessary, et cetera, but is it even worth it to go back and try and like force it into a LinkedIn box?
Dylan Redekop: Mm. . I see
Chenell Basilio: That's where I struggle.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I'm trying to remember all the time that most of the stuff that I've published long form or short form, most of the people, , following me or subscribe to my newsletter have not seen so. Coming at it from that [00:19:00] lens, since you published your first, you know, eight, 10 dozen deep dives, you've grown so dramatically that if you reshared some of those people would be like, I never knew this even existed.
Right. So pulling the content from there. See, I guess I don't see the, the harm or the reason not to, but if, if it's a mental barrier, like I don't know how this fits into, relevancy in someone's algorithm today. I think you could do it and pull a lesson from there, but I, I totally get what you're saying with this mental block of I don't know how this works or how this makes sense, or where this
fits, or what the point of posting it is if it's not driving people somewhere.
Chenell Basilio: And it's not just that, it's like, okay, so these are 5,000 word articles. What am I pulling? Where am I go? Like, am I, am I doing an outline of the full piece? Am I just pulling one part of it? I don't know. And I'm sure it's just an experimental thing of like figuring that out, but I just, I don't know.
The results I'm seeing aren't exactly it doesn't lead me to want to spend time on it. I will say that I'd rather take that piece and [00:20:00] repurpose it into a newsletter or update it and repost it and send it out via email or something like that. So,
or maybe turn it into a video where I like explain the whole thing.
Dylan Redekop: What did you think about, we just had Adam, uh, Schaeuble, I believe is
how you pronounce his last name in from the growth and verse Pro community, come and actually do a session in the community for us, on how he has this like 12 week content flywheel where he repurposes his content. How did you. Did that give you ideas or inspiration or anything to repurpose content?
Chenell Basilio: No, I don't know. Like in the moment I wasn't thinking about it in the lens, the lens of my content. So maybe that's, I need to go back and like re-listen to it in that state of mind. But I mean, it was a great idea and like the way he pulls out pieces of it and like shares them 12 weeks later, I think is super smart.
, But it was more of like podcast to newsletter and then he shares stuff on social media. I don't know. I mean, what, what did you take away from that?
Dylan Redekop: I [00:21:00] took away the. Kind of exactly what I was saying before, where like, Adam would be somebody who would be able to just absolutely crush this 30 day challenge. Just in, not necessarily like, I'm not saying he would win it, but I'm saying for, for having content where a lot of people get hung up on, I don't know what to post today, or I've run out of ideas, or I'm falling off the wagon, he would not have that problem.
Right? He has two or three posts a day that he's just sourced from, his podcast that he published 12 weeks ago. He goes today is, week 12. I'm gonna go back to week one and see what I published that day. There's my post and I'm gonna post it. So he doesn't overthink it. Which I think is actually brilliant in some ways. Like it's so simple, just post a lot of this is consistency. Yes, it does have to be, good and it has to resonate, but it's working for him. He is getting clients from it. He is getting new listeners, new downloads. He is had over a million downloads on his podcast, so there's something to it,
Chenell Basilio: , I think his, um, his platform is very underrated and he was in the [00:22:00] challenge, but he was the only guy on threads, so nobody knew he was in there.
Dylan Redekop: That's right.
Chenell Basilio: but I love, I love his approach because yes, he says he gets clients, he gets customers, and the best part is like you look at his posts and you're like, how are these working?
You're getting like four likes. But if one of those people is a potential customer, who cares if it's for likes if you're gonna get paid for it? So,
yeah.
Dylan Redekop: I mean, if you get one like, and that one person turns into a client and that's the ultimate goal of your content, then a hundred percent hit rate.
Like it's working. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Totally. I think, yeah, I think we get so bogged down with these follower accounts, which makes me hate that. We used followers as like the metric for winning, but I don't know. It was just too, it was too hard to do like subscribers or anything like that. 'cause I can't see those numbers. I'd have to get them like submitted, if you will, but
Dylan Redekop: That would be, that would be challenging and a lot of self-reporting would have to go on and all that stuff.
Chenell Basilio: As we're having this conversation, I'm thinking that I, I think there is a, something deeper. Like we all say, I don't know what to [00:23:00] post. I don't wanna repurpose, I don't, you know, all that stuff. I don't know if that's actually true. I think there is a lot of mental barriers that happen where it's not like, I don't know how to take my deep dive and put it into a LinkedIn post.
It's more of like. Is this good enough? Are people gonna think this is horrible? And even after going through all that, I, I think there's still some of that for me. So I don't know, maybe it's just I'm not consistent enough, so I don't see the results that I'd wanna see for it. And so that's why I don't stick with it. But
yeah, I mean, I didn't see a ton of results until halfway through the challenge, and then it spiked, and then I think. I didn't follow through after the 30 days, I fell off at the end of September.
Dylan Redekop: Hmm.
Chenell Basilio: Something to be said about like hitting momentum and then you're like, wait, maybe like, let me pump the brakes here.
And it's like, well, why? This is what you wanted, right?
Dylan Redekop: Yeah,
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: so do you remember why the impetus to this challenge, what that was?
Chenell Basilio: Because [00:24:00] I haven't been posting
and we were talking about what was it?
Dylan Redekop: You were reviewing the first six months of how you grew your newsletter.
Chenell Basilio: Oh, yes,
Dylan Redekop: And it was from posting all the time. Right
when you were, you were like almost. Dumb enough not to know better. Right? Like, and I don't mean that as an insult, I just mean like you're so naive and new and like excited and motivated.
So I think that comes back to what you were just saying about this mental block. It's like now I'm deep into it and I've got this curse of knowledge or whatever you want to call it. Imposter syndrome, where it's like, well. I've written about this, but is it any good or will people actually like it?
When in the beginning you're just like, Hey, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I deep did a deep dive on these people and here's what I found and I'm sharing it and people are like, wow, this is great. So,
I think that's, it's funny to, to think about the reason we started this and what do you, what
do you think.
Chenell Basilio: I think, I think, yeah, I agree with you. I I think there's some level of like the [00:25:00] audience has grown and so that makes it harder to put out "meh" content and like maybe that's the wrong approach to this. I also think there's something to, I was growing on Twitter, and Twitter is a very build in public style place, whereas LinkedIn, I feel like you can post once a day, maybe twice a day and that's it.
And Twitter just felt so much more community oriented and LinkedIn feels very like boxed and siloed and so I struggle to stick with it 'cause I don't know. I feel like I find peop my people and then I don't ever see them again. And then I'm like, wait, where'd they go?
Dylan Redekop: On LinkedIn?
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Whereas on Twitter, I feel like, it's easier to like keep track of people that you were engaging with and enjoyed their content and that kind of thing. So
Dylan Redekop: Hmm. I.
Chenell Basilio: I don't know. It's a mix,
Dylan Redekop: Damn algorithms.
Chenell Basilio: right?
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. I think, yeah, I, I'd be curious to see, like you say, like Twitter, you could just kind of post whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to [00:26:00] some degree. It didn't matter, you didn't feel bad if you, you had, three tweets in a day, or 12 tweets in an hour. A lot of that was serving the algorithm and helping you in a lot of ways. Right. Whereas I I can see where the hesitance comes on LinkedIn. And I'm curious to challenge, , what happens if I post like three days, uh, three times a day for like a week. But like, what would happen? Am I actually gonna get, punished by the algorithm? I wonder what what would come of that?
Chenell Basilio: I don't know. Try it out. See what
Dylan Redekop: try it out.
Chenell Basilio: Um.
Dylan Redekop: Okay. So
Chenell Basilio: I,
Dylan Redekop: unless you have some more to add,
Chenell Basilio: no, I'm just scrolling back through Twitter and I'm like, I just love this interface more, and I feel like it was faster. Like LinkedIn, you post something and like, you don't get the dopamine hit until like 10, 20, maybe an hour. In
with Twitter it was like almost immediate.
There'd be like, like, like, like or something like that. So I have to wonder if if that, yeah, if that helped. Me stay consistent there. I don't know.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah,
probably.
Chenell Basilio: [00:27:00] thanks for the therapy session, Dylan.
Dylan Redekop: You're welcome. So one of, one of the questions I've written down here is, um, will we do this again?
Chenell Basilio: Well, after we just said all that, I don't know, I love the, I love the concept of a challenge. I love getting people together and working towards a goal, but I don't know that social media is the goal.
Dylan Redekop: I think you know that it's not the goal. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, but.
Dylan Redekop: Or if there's a content challenge that we could do more like, yeah, we should probably not, uh, brainstorm this on live on the podcast, but I guess there's something to what we're both saying. Where for me, what I realized was like, I need to actually create the content worth sharing on social media first before I just try to like. Create something for social media. So that's where my head is going is like a, not a 30 day challenge necessarily, because you don't wanna publish like a daily long form piece of content. But something along those lines where it's like, okay, let's, let's focus on the [00:28:00] content that's really gonna actually move the needle that we can then pull from to publish on social media where we want to.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think either that or do like a subscriber type of challenge where it's not, there's no leaderboard. We're not trying to like capture everybody's growth, but , i've been listening to a lot of James Clear content lately and he keeps talking about, um, instead of outcome based goals of like, I wanna hit 10,000 subscribers.
Think of like input based goals of like, I'm a writer or I'm the type of person that writes every day.
And so maybe that could be 250 words, maybe you don't publish it, but I'm wondering if there's something of focusing on the subscriber growth, whereas inputs or, , I'll share like 10 ways that I think you get your first a hundred subscribers and have at it we'll do a seven day challenge. Justin Moore recently did a sponsorship challenge, um, and it was a seven day challenge and he said it was, it was great 'cause it was short enough that people stayed focused, they were interested, but it was long enough that they actually [00:29:00] got a result. So
I have to wonder if there's something around that of , let's get your next thousand subscribers or a hundred subscribers, or whatever the number is.
Dylan Redekop: Hmm. Doesn't that conflict with what you just said about like doing the input, so focusing on that.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Right. So back back to that. I think if there are like three main ways that people should try to grow their newsletter, right? Like three things that I think can really help you get there. Maybe it's like, pick one of those and do that for seven days. Or maybe we pick one, like we tried to do the, cross promotions challenge of like partnering with other newsletters and that just turned into the 30 days of growth and whatever it wasn't. So maybe it's something like that, or, I don't know.
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Well we got a bit to think
Chenell Basilio: brainstorm it. If you have ideas, let us know.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, the aim would be a January 1st, 2026 sort of thing. Turn of the calendar. That's what we did last year. Not guaranteed, but I know that's what we were eyeing up right now, but, so we've got a little bit of time to think about this, but any,
Chenell Basilio: it's like, uh, seven days [00:30:00] to, maybe it's not subscriber growth. Maybe it's like optimizing or cleaning your list or, I don't know, cleaning your Kit account or something.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: For those people who have 9,000 tags like I do.
Dylan Redekop: Yes. Yeah. That could
help. My last question is, what would, make this challenge a success in your mind? I, I think you talked about what made it a success, but I have this written down, so I'm just gonna ask you what would make this challenge a success?
Chenell Basilio: The one that we just did.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Or, or a future challenge even.
Chenell Basilio: Honestly, I just think get, getting people moving, like there's something to be said about momentum and like if you can just get over the hump of like doing the thing a few times in a row. Like, I think there's so much power in that. 'cause we get ourselves stuck and we're like, oh, it's, it's gonna be so hard.
Like even, okay, this is like a personal thing, but I hate making phone calls to the [00:31:00] point where like, I will not do it. And so I will put off calling people back for weeks because I'm like, Ugh, we like making a doctor's appointment. Forget about it. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be so bad. And then like, you actually do it and it takes 60 seconds and you're like, why did I put that off for two weeks?
Dylan Redekop: Yep.
Chenell Basilio: So I think there is something like similar in the business space where it's like, oh, this seems so hard. But it's, it's really not. You just gotta hit, publish or open the thing or start writing or whatever it
Dylan Redekop: Absolutely. I mean, I think that's why like Ship 30 for 30 was so, I know such a game changer for a lot of people is because it's like you're gonna write something short, but you're gonna publish it that day and then you do it for 30 days. And to some degree it didn't really matter what you wrote.
It was the fact that you were actually like. Spurred into action to do it. Yeah, you don't wanna just write and publish trash, but you, the point was like, to get that writing muscle and that habit built in where you're doing it every day and, [00:32:00] and thinking about it as well, like actually thinking about what could be. What you could create content from or, uh, what was interesting, what was a good story you could share, that sort of thing. I think getting your mind in that, in that head space or getting into the habit of like, thinking about those things in your day-to-day life or when you're online, uh, on LinkedIn, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're on whatever, whether website you're on. And thinking about what can I learn from this? Or is this worth sharing? Or do I have an opinion on it, or does this, like, uh, is this a signal for something that I've already written? Or does it validate something I've already been thinking about? So I think that can be also just like a, a really important headspace that we can get into or that we should get into.
If we wanna do more stuff like this.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I agree. I think I would like to call out some people's wins if
Dylan Redekop: Let's do it.
Chenell Basilio: Okay. One guy got retweeted by the top figure in his niche, which was this other guy has like hundreds of thousands of followers.
This was day one. I [00:33:00] think it was early.
Tara got her first sub stack subscriber and she actually has now, I think she's over like 200 or 300 in the last 45 days, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Awesome. I know Caitlin actually posted something outside of her norm, which was like. More personal, but got like, went crazy viral for her, like hundreds and maybe even over a thousand likes on that post, which is pretty wild.
Sachin actually hit a MRR goal. So like made a certain amount of money in a month on day three, like after just posting for four consecutive days, closed a, a client, which is pretty cool. I know Becky said she actually grew her newsletter by 87.5%, which is pretty cool
over the last month.
Do you remember any good ones?
Dylan Redekop: Somebody got shouted out by former, uh, colleagues as well, which, which wasn't like a viral win, but it really meant a lot to her. I think that was [00:34:00] Rachel.
Chenell Basilio: Rachel got shouted out by two top execs at Adobe, which is like, that's freaking awesome. I'm just like, I'm so excited to see these. 'cause it's so fun that people took this and actually started building relationships and doing the thing and learning and experimenting, getting subscribers, making money, and just growing their business.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It was really cool. Really cool. Seeing that you had a hand in that, just in like bringing them together at the very, at the very least Right. Is is pretty fun. It was pretty
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that feels pretty cool.
Um, I guess we should call out our winners at
Dylan Redekop: We should, yeah. yeah. definitely.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, So the winners of the 30 Days of Growth, uh, Alejandra Rojas came in third place. She grew, her following from 2,270 to just about 2,700, which was pretty crazy, about 19% growth, which in a 30 day time span is pretty crazy.
Danny [00:35:00] Naz, who I've been interacting with since the early days of growth and reverse on Twitter. He grew his followers by over 1200.
And then Tom Orach, who is a member of the Growth In Reverse Pro community, I love having him in there. He always shares such good stuff. Um, he grew
Dylan Redekop: Uh, sorry, I was gonna say
podcast alumni as well. He's been on, on our podcast. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Yes. That was a good one. He grew his followers by a whopping 3,200.
Dylan Redekop: Dang, That's more than a hundred a day
Chenell Basilio: It's more than a
Dylan Redekop: Wait, should I get my graph calculator and make sure that math is right?
Chenell Basilio: log, co-sign. Yes. So congrats to those three. Um, excited to share their work in an upcoming newsletter. Maybe you'll see us in another challenge here in a few months.
Dylan Redekop: And if this sounds like fun, let us know if it's something you'd be interested in. And, you know, we, I think it, it is just a. You can like dive really deep into this sort of stuff, but at the end of the day, it can be just a fun thing to [00:36:00] do, just a kick in the butt to post on social if that's what you wanna do.
And you, you have the wherewithal and the mind set to do it then. Yeah. I, it doesn't have to be like this huge strategic endeavor could just be something you wanna get more proactive with. So this is a good excuse to do it.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, these are fun. I just like seeing all the things people are doing and who's interacting with who. Uh, Alejandra and Laura, who was also in the challenge, actually met in person to come to one of our coworking events. 'cause we were doing those every Monday too. And I just, they both showed up and I was like, Hey guys, this is fun.
And they were like, we're actually in the same coffee shop. And I was like, what? And they like turned their cameras around and I was like, oh my gosh.
Dylan Redekop: And they had ne they didn't know each other in real life. They'd never met before.
Chenell Basilio: No.
Dylan Redekop: They, they had come together because of this challenge and then
actually literally came together in real life because of the challenge, which is really cool.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. That's super fun.
Dylan Redekop: and that goes back to the, the thing you were saying earlier about, the [00:37:00] power of this is connecting with, with people too.
So, uh, there's a lot of, a lot of additional benefits than just like growing your followers.
Chenell Basilio: I wanna do something like this again, even if it's not. Social growth, maybe it will be. Maybe I'll come back to it in three months and be like, well, all right, let's do it again,
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it
could be a two part, maybe you do a two part challenge where it's like, okay, build out your content library for 30 days and then try a social growth project. You know, maybe not the next 30 days, but maybe it is. Um, so that people actually have some good ammo to, to use. Like me, I'm really talking to myself here.
Somebody else's a good ammo to use for their, their content, and for the following 30 days. That could be kind of fun.
Chenell Basilio: That would be fun. Yeah. Maybe we don't even post, maybe it's like, let's just build out content that we can post.
Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. And if there's a way you need to keep yourself accountable, we could fi figure that out too. But uh, yeah, that would
be, that could be fun. That'd be valuable.
Chenell Basilio: I think so too. All right. We'll brainstorm it more.
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Should we call it, is
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, let's call it, I think [00:38:00] that's, that's a good one. Um, always good to reflect on stuff like this.
Dylan Redekop: It is, it is.
Chenell Basilio: All right. See you next time.