What I Learned After Getting 16 Million Views on a Single LinkedIn Post
Welcome to issue #002 of Growth Code. Each week, I send one public and one private email with practical steps to help you build the future you actually want.
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A few months ago, I reposted an old carousel to LinkedIn.
It wasn’t a polished new asset.
It wasn’t an A/B tested experiment.
It was a piece I’d shared months earlier that had gotten very little traction. On a quiet morning, I copied and pasted the same image and caption again—more out of habit than strategy—and hit “post.”
Within hours, the post passed a million impressions.
By the end of the week, it had crossed sixteen million.
I was gaining more than 1,500 followers a day (some days 6000+). My inbox was flooded. My audience had multiplied almost overnight. It was the most visibility I had ever received from a single piece of content.
And I wasn’t ready for it.
The Realization That Hit Hard
The post was doing its job: driving traffic, creating interest, generating momentum.
But I hadn’t done mine.
I had no lead magnet.
No landing page.
No clear call to action.
No product.
No email capture.
No back-end system.
People visited my profile, scrolled through my content, clicked my link—and found nothing. The attention was real, but it was leaking out the bottom of the bucket.
I had done what many creators do: I spent all my time focused on growth, and none preparing for what I would do if that growth actually arrived.
The Cost of Neglecting the Back End
Here’s a simple breakdown that still makes me cringe.
Sixteen million impressions.
Even if just 0.1% of those views had converted into email subscribers, I would have captured sixteen thousand new subscribers.
If 1% of those subscribers bought a $19 product?
That’s over $3,000 in revenue—on autopilot.
If 5% had become loyal, long-term readers?
That’s the start of an entire business.
But I captured none of it. Not because I lacked the tools or ideas—but because I lacked the system.
I had the moment.
What I didn’t have was the machine to turn that moment into something meaningful.
What I’d Do Differently (And Now Do Every Time)
This experience changed the way I think about content.
I no longer see content as “something I publish.”
I see it as a traffic engine.
And if you’re going to drive traffic, you need the infrastructure ready before the road gets busy.
Here’s what I now put in place before I publish anything that might take off:
A single landing page with a clear value proposition
A simple lead magnet (checklist, swipe file, or one-page PDF)
A short welcome sequence that orients new readers
A product (free or paid) that solves a real problem
A newsletter cadence that keeps them coming back
This is the foundation. Without it, growth is just a temporary spike. With it, growth becomes a long-term asset.
The Real Lesson
We all want the breakout moment.
We want the spike, the audience growth, the feeling that people are finally listening.
But very few people prepare for what happens after.
They assume they’ll “figure it out later.”
That they can set up the infrastructure once they’re getting traffic.
That the system can wait until they’re bigger.
But when that moment comes—and it will come if you’re consistent—it’s too late to build the engine while the car is moving.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to be prepared.
The next time a post hits 100K, 1M, or more—make sure it has somewhere to send people. Because attention is fleeting, but systems create scale.
P.S.
I’m putting together a simple checklist called “Breakout Ready”—a guide to the exact system I wish I had in place the day that post went viral.
It’s free.
It’s short.
And it’ll save you months of lost growth.
If you want it before I share it publicly, just reply “Breakout” in the comments and I’ll send it your way.
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