Creator Spotlight: Alex Banks of Through the Noise

Alex Banks is a man on a mission to satisfy his curiosity, and he's bringing thousands of people along for the ride.

Around the beginning of 2022, Banks wanted to delve into his own interest in startups, financing, and venture capital, so he started experimenting with sharing his thoughts on Twitter. "I started creating content to distill concepts to the essential and help people go from A→B without the frills.”

The first weeks were frustratingly slow as Banks explored his broad base of interests and found the right voice and focus. But, as soon as he found his audience, he scaled it to 25,000 in just three to four months.

Here are the key takeaways from our interview:

• Embrace your quirks and write in a style that’s as “you” as possible to find/connect with a like-minded audience.

• Find unique topics by documenting your curiosity (and avoid the sea of sameness).

• Connect your existing marketing/branding to your newsletter as soon as possible (so you don’t miss out on subscribers).

• beehiiv recommendations are effective if you can connect with fitting publishers (don’t be afraid to reach out).

• Be careful selecting partners/sponsors. It’s easy to lose the audience's trust.

• Don’t be afraid to seek out a “personal board of advisors” to guide and ground you in your work and life.

Through the Noise

As the audience grew, Banks wanted a medium where he could explore concepts more deeply. That's when he launched his newsletter, Through the Noise.

It was a good move. In fact, Banks told us he would advise new creators to offer email signups as soon as possible. "Even if you're not writing, just being able to capture that audience in case Twitter falls off the next day...you have that direct line to them, you can chat to them, you can speak to them. And that is super, super important for building a trusted community."

"I don't think I opened up an email signup form on Twitter soon enough. I was all the way to about 30 or 40,000 followers without being able to capture that event. So I was a little late to act."

The newsletter allows him to connect more deeply with his unique audience — "You know, people who subscribe to my newsletter, we often share common interests and a sort of quirkiness and slightly nuanced views as to how we see the world. So it's really nice to share that with other creators so we can ultimately get behind each other's backs and support one another."

A High-Band Signal

How does Banks capture a modern audience's attention with the written word? He credits his success to the thought behind the words. Instead of just creating content for its own sake, his strategy begins with his own curiosity and original analysis of concepts and ideas.

"So my newsletter, Through the Noise — it really does what it says on the tin. There is a sea of chatter on the internet. What I'm doing with the newsletter is to give you that clear-cut view through the vibrations, so to speak, so that you can understand what's going on. I'm not here writing thousands and thousands of words about a given topic. I'm taking the time to distill concepts all the way down to their core so that I can give my audience this sort of high-band signal."

But there’s more to Banks’ success than refining the details. It’s about shrewd analysis and thought leadership.

"In terms of how I go about structuring my content strategy, it really relates back to [doing] the work on my end to disseminate these points and find key insights I can give to my audience. Versus finding an article and just sort of rewording. What I'm here to do is to give you a thought-provoking piece."

Banks credits his traditional finance background, which includes a master's degree in finance from Imperial College London, for the ability to drill down to the details. In that world, he says, there's a lot of rigor in the process of writing. Banks says that having clear, defined deadlines and objectives is massively important to him as he moves from that structured background to a creative setting where everything is much more open-ended.

But Banks discovered another huge mindset change when he shifted to a creative setting: Community.

A Vibrant Creator Community

For Banks, community is a new, refreshing change.

"I’m coming from my background in traditional finance, where it's very hush-hush, and not much is discussed outside of close-knit circles. Now I’m immersing myself in this wonderful, vibrant community that is beehiiv and Twitter — my friends who I've met online, real, genuine people that I couldn't see living my life without now. It's super, super cool because everyone can learn from everyone. And we're all in this game together."

Community, for Banks, is an opportunity for growth. He speaks of "finding your personal board of advisors, so to speak, of individuals who are trusted to give candid feedback to one another. It isn't just a friendly pat on the back…You know that the feedback you get from them is going to be more honest and you can ultimately trust it. That's been hugely important for me."

"A big thing for me is having mentors,” he adds. “So I know through weekly or monthly conversations, I can garner an awful lot of knowledge and insight from those individuals.”

Mentorship offers more than just a trusted sounding board, however. Success comes quicker when you stand on a mentor’s shoulders, rather than trying to figure everything out on your own…