# Growth First Principles

*Distilled from Stijn Noorman's X growth newsletter (2025–2026) — 183 → 59,500
followers, 102M annual organic impressions, six-figure income.*

Growth on X is not a mystery and it's not random. It reduces to three inputs.
If you're not growing, one of them is broken.

---

## The Growth Formula

```
Good Comments + Good Content + Optimized Profile = Followers
```

That's it. No other lever matters more than these three.

### Good content
Makes people who see it want to click your profile. Your content is your
storefront window.

### Good comments
When the algorithm doesn't push your content (which is most of the time, early
on), your comments are the only way strangers see you. A comment on a 100K
account is free reach you didn't earn with followers.

### Optimized profile
Converts clicks into follows. If 100 people visit your profile and only 2
follow, you have a conversion problem — not a content problem.

---

## The Follower Funnel

```
Exposure (tweets / comments / shares)
  ↓
Profile click
  ↓
Optimized profile
  ↓
Follow
```

Everything is either:
- Upstream (write more, write better, comment more, comment better)
- Conversion (profile: bio, pinned, banner, picture)

If growth is slow, identify which stage leaks. Low impressions = upstream.
High impressions + low profile clicks = your content isn't showcasing you.
High profile clicks + low follow rate = profile conversion is broken.

---

## The Algorithm Truth

The algorithm's goal is to keep users on the platform so X can show ads.

Three implications:

1. **It rewards content that holds attention.** Hooks, threads, replies — all
   keep users in-feed. Links out punish you.
2. **It's not random.** If you're not growing, the problem is your content,
   not the algorithm.
3. **Don't optimize for the algorithm. Optimize for the people it serves.**
   You can't control outcomes. You can control inputs.

> "When you know what to focus on, the algorithm becomes irrelevant."

---

## Why Most Creators Stay Stuck

### It's not your ideas. It's exposure.

Analogy: your concert might be great. But if no one knows it exists, no one
shows up. The problem isn't quality — it's discovery.

Roughly 90% of creators don't know how to put content in front of people. Once
you learn this, growth happens in days, not years.

### Advice from huge creators is often outdated

Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, Naval — their *strategy* is right. Their *current
tactics* are not what grew them. They're 20 steps ahead of you; what works at
100K followers doesn't work at 100.

Take tactics from people 5 steps ahead of you. Take principles from the giants.

---

## Engagement Velocity

X decides whether to push a tweet based on the first 15–30 minutes.

- High early engagement → content enters a larger traffic pool
- Low early engagement → the tweet dies, regardless of how good it is

What this means in practice:

- **Post when your audience is active.** Timing is not decoration.
- **Your first commenters matter.** Reply to every comment in the first hour
  to compound conversation weight.
- **Author-to-user conversations weigh ~150×** in the algorithm (leaked
  internal data). One meaningful reply beats 150 likes.

---

## The Systems Approach

Growth that depends on "how I feel today" doesn't compound. Systems do three
things:

1. **Reduce decision fatigue** — you don't wake up wondering what to write.
2. **Simplify execution** — templates replace invention.
3. **Make output predictable** — showing up beats brilliance.

### Stijn's system

- **4 hours/month** of content creation — total.
- **240 tweets** batched at once (8 per day).
- Average month: +2,000 followers, +2M impressions.
- Peak month: +10,000 followers, +20M impressions.

### The 60-minute weekly content system

- Don't reinvent the wheel every day.
- Batch-create with templates and frameworks.
- 21 tweets/week from 60 minutes of focused work.

---

## Do Less, Get More

### The productivity paradox

The more time you spend "getting more efficient," the less time you spend
doing the actual work. Most optimization is procrastination in disguise.

Stijn once tracked 64 habits from Huberman podcasts. Nothing in his life
changed. Tracking habits ≠ having them.

### The correct order

1. **Prioritize** — what's the one thing that moves the needle?
2. **Eliminate** — cut everything that doesn't.
3. **Simplify** — reduce the remaining work to its essentials.
4. **Optimize** — *then*, if still worth it.

Before optimizing anything, ask: is this worth optimizing at all?

---

## Sun Tzu for Creators

Your energy is finite, like an army's soldiers. The more problems you attack,
the less force each gets.

**Concentrate on the weakest breach**, not every front. For most small
creators, the weakest breach is:

- Writing better hooks (not more hooks)
- Commenting on the right 10 accounts (not all accounts)
- Fixing the profile (not changing the posting schedule for the fourth time)

---

## Critical Information

From a $40M mentor to Stijn: *people pay to get results. Results require
solving problems. Solving problems requires critical information.*

If you're stuck, it's one of two things:

1. You're missing some critical piece of information.
2. You have the information but aren't executing.

Usually #1. You probably have 80% of what you need. The missing 20% is 1–2
pieces that, once you have them, unlock everything.

> "Nothing happens, then everything happens."

---

## Why X Is the Best Platform Right Now (2026)

Stijn evaluates platforms on 5 criteria:

1. Learning curve
2. Feedback speed
3. Remaining organic growth space
4. Skills required to grow
5. Content types you enjoy making

X wins because:
- Text-first, lowest barrier to entry
- Business-oriented user base
- Highest remaining upside (Elon is pushing toward an "everything app")
- Only one core skill needed: writing
- You can post multiple times a day without penalty
- The retweet button enables exponential reach
- People care about your ideas, not your credentials
- Fastest feedback loop of any platform
- 5M impressions = ads revenue starts

Once you've built on X, everything else is easy. Repurposing Stijn's tweets
added 12K YouTube subs, 7.5K Threads, 2.5K LinkedIn, 9.5K Instagram, 8.5K
Substack — at <15 minutes per week.

---

## The Three-Word Creator Test

A creator needs three things: **Grow. Sell. Help.**

- **Grow** — your audience
- **Sell** — to your audience
- **Help** — your buyers get results

If an activity doesn't grow, sell, or deliver, it's a distraction.

When choosing what to write next, ask: *which of the three does this serve?*
If the answer is "none," don't write it.
