SAHIL BLOOM: FROM CORPORATE FINANCE TO A 1M+ FOLLOWER CREATOR

Morning!

I’m back at my new favourite cafe today - Nicolau Porto. 10/10 would recommend, currently writing this as I await my pancakes which are going to power me through this writing session.

Today, I’m going to break down someone who has been a huge inspiration for me recently.

Not because of what he says, but more so because of how easy he makes growth seem.

At 22 he was grinding his way through the finance world with no concept of what creating content was like.

Today, 10 years on he has managed to accumulate an audience of over 1M+ people online, purely through talking about the things he’s curious about.

He’s got:

- 875,000 followers on Twitter
- 203,000 followers on LinkedIn
- 210,000 followers on Instagram
- And 300,000 subscribers to his newsletter

He’s a man that millions of people know, yet few know exactly how he got to where he is today.

But that’s exactly what you’re about to find out.

Here’s how Sahil Bloom grew viral…

Breaking Down The Strategy

On my regular scrolls through Twitter, I’ll often see people with 10-50k followers and think “I’ll get there one day”.

Then I’d come across the likes of Justin Welsh, Dave Perell, and Julian Shapiro and think… damn, I’ll never get there.

- They all had awesome niches.
- They were all very clearly positioned.
- And they all had stupidly big followings.

Then I came across Sahil Bloom.

He stuck out like a sore thumb to me. He wasn’t trying to dominate a niche or become THE guy in a certain field. It just seemed like he was writing about what he found interesting and then hitting post.

Granted his writing is great - but it’s not like he’s some godsend Shakespeare-esque writer. He’s just a finance guy who liked posting online.

He seemed like a normal guy, doing well and truly abnormal things. It didn’t make sense to me, so I started to dive deeper and deeper into his story.

Turns out, Sahil was a pretty clever guy throughout his life. But not just clever, he excelled in sports too.

He did both his bachelor’s and master’s at Stanford whilst also being a pitcher for their baseball team.

(If you’re American you’ll understand just how impressive this is.)

When he graduated he dove headfirst into the world of finance as an analyst at Altman Capital Partners.

Over the next 8.5 years, Sahil followed the classic finance path up the corporate ladder.

Granted, this path put him in the top 5% of people on the planet. Yet still, it didn’t make him the Sahil Bloom we see today.

So how did he go from being a classic finance guy climbing the corporate ladder to the infamous online presence he is today?

I spent the last 6 hours of my life figuring it out (or at least getting an idea of) how it happened and I think it all comes down to these 5 key steps:

1) The mindless leap

On a recent podcast with Jay Clouse, Sahil explained how he actually began posting on Twitter.

He said that when Covid hit in 2020 he was suddenly given back hours and hours of time that were usually spent commuting or stuck in meetings.

He wanted to fill that gap with something productive but had no idea what to do with the time.

Then in May 2020, he realised that there was a huge knowledge gap between his finance knowledge and that of the mass population. So he decided to start posting tweets that close the gap.

This was his first ever thread:

It now has thousands of likes, but at the time Sahil had <500 followers and this thread was essentially sent into the abyss with little engagement.

This thread is what I call a “mindless leap”.

There was no real strategy around it, no real tactic, just a shot in the dark, a leap of faith.

But that leap was instrumental for Sahil.

2) For the pure fun of it

This is arguably the most interesting take Sahil has on his growth, but he essentially says that between around 1 → 50,000 he had no real strategy around what he did.

If he found something interesting, he’d write about it.
If he learned something he thought others would find interesting, he’d write about it.

And that was it.

So many people attack growing an online presence with strategy and structure from the start.

Instead, Sahil just did it because he enjoyed it. I think that difference is one of the reasons Sahil is where he is today.

Such an underrated approach.

3) Consistently cranking it out

When Sahil did start taking his online presence seriously the one thing that really moved the needle for him was consistency. 1 piece every week, every week for years.

He talks at length about the fact that most people just don’t have the dedication and commitment to show up like he does.

In fact, he said he’s posted 1 long-form piece on Twitter every single week for about 2 years now.

But more interestingly he says that he isn’t too bothered about how they perform.

It makes me wonder how many people would be up there with audiences as big as Sahil’s if they only had this same mindset.

4) Expanding his TAM

At first, Sahil’s content was heavily finance-orientated. But over time he realised people in the finance space on Twitter were stalling after they hit 100k followers.

So rather than getting pigeonholed into finance, he decided that it was time he expanded the topics that he wrote on.

He looked himself in the mirror and asked “What am I truly interested in and want to write about”.

He spoke about this as his turning point as a rocket ship for his growth. That his TAM (total addressable market) 10X’d the second he began doing this.

Plus, being consistent became much easier for him. He no longer had to find finance topics to talk about, instead, he could talk about whatever he wanted.

5) Picking inspiration over structure

At this point, Sahil had built a 1M+ strong audience online and his newsletter Curiosity Chronicle was absolutely flying.

Most people would begin to pull themselves out of content creation process and added structure around posting.

- Content calendars
- Posts scheduled months in advance
- A team of writers

But one key point that Sahil talks about at length is the way he purposely doesn’t structure his content creation.

This was crazy to me when I first heard it, but now I’m starting to think it makes sense.

How many people lose love for growing online when they turn it into a business? Probably a lot.

Instead, Sahil virtually treats it like he did from day 1.

He chooses to write about things he’s inspired about, when he’s inspired about them.

A tactic 0 content guru’s would push. Yet, it’s a tactic that has made him one of the biggest creators on the whole of Twitter.

A pretty crazy story right?

If you want to emulate it, here’s the bullet-pointed formula:

1) Take a mindless leap
2) Do it because you love it
3) Be consistent
4) Expand your TAM
5) Pick inspiration over structure

And that’s all for today!

A longer one today, but it was one I was excited to write about. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading it.

Until next time.

— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of Sahil Bloom’s marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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