Weekly Review
Week of June 22nd, 2026
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” - Warren Buffett
He was talking about your calendar.
It’s just as true about your audience.
What Has My Attention - Find Your 35
Friday I taught 46 people live.
A hundred and fifty thousand follow me. Forty-six showed up. And here is the part that actually matters - I never needed the hundred and fifty thousand.
I’m happy with 35.
Let me show you the math, because almost nobody does.
Pick your number. The real one. The one that covers the mortgage and the school and still leaves the evenings alone.
Say it’s $10k a month. $120k a year.
Now divide it by what you charge. And charge for the problem you solve, not the hourly rate (honestly this is where people I work with really miss the mark and short change themselves hard).
Lets say $3500 to take one person to getting paid for doing what they love.
$120k / $3500 = 34 people (but i’ll round it up to 35).
That’s the whole business. Not 150k followers. 35 of the right ones.
The right 35 from 150,000 is the exact same business as the right 35 from 10,000. The crowd was never the asset. The 35 are.
So why does everyone keep optimizing for the bigger following?
Because the following is the number that goes up in public. The 35 is the number that goes into your bank account. The following feels like winning. The ones who pay you is the real winning.
Here is how you spot one of your 35. I look for all four filters.
They have the exact problem you solve. Not adjacent to it. Exact.
The problem costs them something. Money, status, sleep, time. A problem that doesn’t hurt never gets paid to go away.
They can actually pay. Wanting it isn’t a budget. You need the want and the means, or you have neither.
They are the decision maker. No committee. No “let me run it by” that never comes back.
If one of these is missing, you likely have a follower. Followers are amazing, but they don’t pay the bills.
Three Things That Actually Move the Needle
One - hunt where they already are.
You don’t need more reach. You need to look harder at the reach you already have. Read your DMs. Read the comments. Find the people who comment something real, not “great post.” or “love this!”
You might even have customers who already paid you once. Your next 35 are most likely goign to come from customers who have already paid you.
Make a list. Actual names. Twenty is plenty to start. That list is worth more than the next ten thousand followers, and it costs you nothing but paying attention to them.
Two - make your content a filter, not a megaphone.
Stop writing to impress a thousands. Write to get those 35 to say “thats me”. Name the exact problem, the exact person, the exact cost. The wrong people scroll past and that is the POINT. A post everyone applauds and nobody buys from worked for the algorithm and doesn’t help you sustain your life.
Repel on purpose. Precision is the whole job.
Three - talk to people. One at a time.
The crowd is a broadcast. Your 35 is a conversation. Five real conversations this week will do more than five hundred new followers. Ask what they are stuck on and be genuinely curious. Listen for the four filters. The one who hits all four isn’t a lead, it’s a client, and its on you to close them. This is the part everyone skips because it doesn’t scale. It doesn’t have to scale. It has to be 35.
It scales when you get really precise about those problems and you can sell them on a sales page because you understand them so well that they convert without you being there.
46 people showed up Friday. I am not measuring that by 46. I am reading the replies, the questions, the ones who were really engaged.
That is the real work this week. Not reach. Fit.
The lesson filled the room. Now I find my 35 inside it.
One More Thing
How many of your followers could you name?
Not the count. The names. The handful you could call right now who would actually pick up.
That number - the one you actually know - is sitting a lot closer to your real business than the one number on your profile.
Stop bleeding for a crowd that will never pay.
Find your 35, and then you can relax.
- Ryan
If you have the following and not the income, closing that gap is the whole thing I teach.
The LinkedIn Authority to Income Accelerator is where we build the whole stack together - the profile, the list, the nurture sequence, the one offer, and the system for finding and serving your 35 - it will be a live, small group, with people who keep you honest. Friday I taught part of the free version. The cohort is where you actually build it.
→ Join the next cohort: https://maven.com/ryanyockey/growthcode/ (registration is open now, or get on the waitlist for the next one)
Consistent work beats clever work.
This was very enlightening and gave me some new things to think about. I’m taking a lot from this, starting with examining first what problem I feel I am solving for others and building from that. Thank you for this piece of advice