If you're new here, welcome. Here's the quick version of who I am and why any of this is worth your time.

I was beehiiv's first sales hire. I personally closed $4M in deals and built the sales team that scaled the company to $30M+ ARR. While doing that full-time — with two kids at home — I built a six-figure media company on the side: a podcast, a multi-city newsletter network, social brand deals, and over 50 million impressions a year across five platforms. I never had the luxury of focusing on one thing, so I built systems that let me scale many things at once.

That's the credential. Now here's what I actually know.

BUT FIRST, check out this absolutely sick view of Canyon Overlook, where I hiked yesterday with a 2-year-old on my back, a 4-year-old on my side, a pregnant wife in front of me, and her entire family.

In the last 12 months, every single one of those five platforms has driven real business for me. Meaning a human being paid me money because of something I said on one of them. I’ve highlighted some of those posts here.

Impressions are nice. Dollars are better. Here's how I'd stack rank them for anyone doing founder-led sales or building a personal brand with business attached to it.

X is where the money moves fastest.

I've had direct conversations with hundreds of millionaires and billionaires on X. Getting hired at beehiiv was a direct result of my presence there. Hosting Moneywise — where I interview 9-figure founders — came from a relationship that started on X. The six-figure agency I ran before beehiiv? Every client came from a direct conversation I started on X. This month I'm sitting down with several billionaires in New York. Most of those relationships trace back to X.

Wealthy founders and influential operators spend more time on X than anywhere else. If your goal is to reach people who can write a check or open a door you didn't know existed, X is where you show up first.

LinkedIn is for C-suite, and C-suite is where enterprise deals get closed.

Where X skews toward founders and the already-wealthy, LinkedIn is where VPs, Directors, and corporate decision-makers live. The people who control budgets inside large organizations are on LinkedIn in a way they simply aren't anywhere else.

What makes LinkedIn genuinely underrated: it levels the playing field. You don't need a massive following to reach powerful people. The right message to the right person at the right time works whether you have 500 connections or 50,000. LinkedIn's entire infrastructure was built to make that possible — the search, the InMail, the targeting. X wasn't built for this. LinkedIn was.

If you're doing any kind of B2B or founder-led sales, LinkedIn is not optional.

YouTube is the hardest platform to grow on. It's also the most respected.

Tell someone you have 100k subscribers on YouTube and they treat you differently — full stop. I have a channel at 37k subscribers and another at 1k. Both are growing. Both are genuinely difficult. The production bar is higher, the algorithm is less forgiving, and the feedback loop is slower than every other platform on this list.

But YouTube has something none of the others can touch: retention. Your audience there actually watches. They come back. They remember you six months later. A strong YouTube presence compounds in a way that viral Reels simply don't. It also forces you to develop real on-camera confidence and real storytelling depth — both of which transfer everywhere else.

Instagram is the sleeper right now, and I say that as someone who's gone viral there multiple times.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a billionaire I connected with exclusively on Instagram — nowhere else. He'll be coming on Moneywise. So yes, it happens. It's just rarer than X.

The challenge is the conversion gap. Going viral feels good. Turning that virality into revenue requires either consistent virality at scale or a substantial audience you can actually funnel somewhere. Getting followers on Instagram is comparatively easy. Getting them to pay you is harder than most people admit.

It's worth being on. I wouldn't prioritize it above the first three for founder-led sales.

TikTok is a content lab.

Treat it as a testing ground for short-form ideas you'll repurpose on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn. If something lands on TikTok, you have proof of concept before you invest more heavily elsewhere. You can make real money there — TikTok Shop in particular is a legitimate revenue channel if you're willing to grind it. The tradeoff: TikTok's algorithm will put you in a box. Pick your niche carefully, because the platform will define you by it.

Honorable mention: Threads. I've gone viral there. Haven't seen a dollar from it yet.

Pick one platform and go deep until it's working. For most founders that's X or LinkedIn, depending on who you're trying to reach. Build the relationship flywheel, not the follower count. The follower count is a byproduct of doing the first thing right.

Distribution is the moat. Once you own an audience your entire worldview will change rapidly.

I personally closed $4M at beehiiv and built a six-figure media company on the side — with systems, not more hours. I've advised hundreds of operators on how to launch and scale audience-driven businesses, and I can help you do the same. If you want a clear strategy for founder-led sales, personal brand distribution, or building your own media flywheel, book a consulting call with me.

One hour. Real frameworks. Built for how you actually operate.

Work with Daniel →

Until next time,
Daniel (The Fatherpreneur)

P.S. Hit reply and tell me which platform you're betting on this year. I read every response.