503. 16.5 Proven Audience-Building Secrets

The ONE Thing

NOVA Media

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Jay Papasan launched the Twentypercenter newsletter, it was his personal version of a Rocky-style training montage. He committed to writing, editing, and publishing a new piece every single week—no matter what. 137 newsletters later, he’s gained more than just consistency. He’s built a powerful, intentional audience and uncovered key lessons about what it takes to grow something meaningful. In this solo episode, Jay shares 16 and a half of the most valuable lessons he’s learned along the way. From the importance of patience and vulnerability to the surprising power of simplicity and repetition, Jay opens up about the creative systems and mindset shifts that helped him grow from 89 subscribers to over 12,000—with zero paid ads. Whether you’re starting a newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel, or just building something of your own, these lessons will help you create with purpose—and keep going long enough to see it pay off. Challenge of the Week: Pick one idea you’ve been waiting to start—a newsletter, podcast, blog, or creative habit—and publish the first version this week. Don’t overprepare. Don’t wait until it’s perfect. Just hit send. Then, create a simple system that will help you show up consistently from here on out. *** To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit: the1thing.com/pods. We talk about: Why creativity snowballs once you start creating consistently How quality beats quantity—and why 1,000 true fans is enough The critical role of systems, habits, and reader feedback in sustainable growth Links & Tools from This Episode: Build Your Audience Resources Kevin Kelly's “1000 True Fans” Read Humor, Seriously by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas Read Getting Things Done by David Allen Read Atomic Habits by James Clear Free Resources Want to be a guest or share feedback? Email [email protected] or send us an audio note at Speakpipe.com/the1thing. Produced by NOVA

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jay Papazan and this is the One Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
0:18.3	Hey there, One Thing family, Jay Papasan here. We've got another solo episode for you. This one's on
0:23.7	building an audience. Spent two and a half years building a newsletter audience and I wanted to share
0:28.9	some of the lessons I've learned. So here's the backstory. I was in a transition in my career. I had been
0:34.6	running a lot of large departments and had a very full schedule. We were between
0:39.1	books and suddenly my world got reduced by quite a lot. I went from having about 44 people in my
0:45.6	org chart to less than 10 and I suddenly realized I had bandwidth again. And what I wanted to do
0:51.7	is put that time I got back, I wanted to devote it to something that was more meaningful to me and my future.
0:58.5	And so I had to come up with an excuse for how can I have a reason to do this that lines up with the business mission and also with my mission, which is a very one thing I hope thing to do.
1:08.9	I wanted to find my one thing that also served the one thing
1:11.7	of the business. And for that, we wanted to build an audience with a newsletter that was
1:17.0	appealing to the top people in our industry, which just happens to be real estate. And we called it
1:21.7	the 20%er. And it's crazy. In my entire writing career, I've never had a weekly deadline.
1:27.4	I've never had a daily deadline. I've never had a daily
1:28.2	deadline. And I decided, with a little bit of research and looking around, that I would give
1:33.4	myself a weekly deadline that every week I would have to write, edit, and publish a new piece of
1:40.1	work for as long as I could put up with it. And I kind of imagine when people would ask,
1:45.1	why are you doing this? I kind of thought about those rocky movies. You know the training scenes
1:49.6	where he's out there chasing chickens and doing pull-ups in the forest or whatever it is they're
1:54.6	doing? They're supposed to say, I'm getting in shape. I figured that writing a weekly newsletter
1:59.6	would be the reps and the workout, my rocky scene,
2:03.2	the workout scene before the big fight, they would just be preparing me for the next book
	...

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