#30: Getting 60,000 Blog Readers in 2 Months (on the Side) and Building a Personal Brand with Austin Belcak

About the Episode:

In this episode, we’re talking to Austin Belcak, who started the rapidly growing career blog, Cultivated Culture.

Austin is a hardcore side hustler.

Very quickly, Austin built his blog traffic up to 60,000 readers in a matter of just 2 months. He recently had a successful launch of his first online course, and has hosted multiple virtual summits with tens of thousands of attendees.

Built around his experience landing jobs and interviews with companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Uber, Austin’s monetizing his skills (and interests) by helping other people land their dream jobs, negotiate higher salaries and navigate career transitions.

In Today’s Episode, we talk about:

01:52 As always, we start off by finding out what book Austin is reading at the moment.
02:35 His background and where he grew up
03:00 He talks about where he went to college.
03:12 His passion for fishing and how he started his first business.
05:07 A brief overview of how he got started in digital marketing.
07:25 How he chose his niche
08:28 Austin’s talks on how landing a job in a major cooperation led to the creation of his career development blog.
09:11 He gives some advice on building relationships, dealing with challenges, coming up with strategy, and handling rejection.
16:03 He talks about the importance of his strategy of identifying a problem before offering a solution.
17:06 He talks about how long he’s been blogging at Cultivated Culture.
17:16 The number of subscribers he’s got on his blog
18:53 His big break and the strategy that led to a huge increase in the number of subscribers he has.
20:42 How Austin and I first connected originally.
21:07 He talks about future projects he’s got coming up.
25:22 The experience and the support he received from his managers at his day job.
27:10 He speaks on income targets and what would justify quitting his day job.
28:14 He talks about his most effective growth channel for his blog.
29:47 His best piece of advice for anyone looking to get their first 100 subscribers.
31:36 He talks about the most difficult challenge he’s faced in growing his blog.
33:14 Austin talks about the best investment he’s made in his business.

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Resources Mentioned:

Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher

Connect with My Guest:

Cultivated Culture

Austin on LinkedIn and Twitter

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