Creator Spotlight: How High Yield Harry grew from 0 to 2600 subs in just 6 months

About the creator:

High Yield Harry is an anonymous Instagram finmeme and fintwit account that works full time in NYC in public credit/private credit. He originally launched his account in mid-2020 as an outlet during COVID-19 and has gotten much more attention across both Instagram and Twitter this year.

As he built his social media presence, a natural progression of his newsletter subscribers followed. He grew from 0 to 2600 subscribers in just 6 months of launching his newsletter on beehiiv.

About High Yield Harry 

HYH: My content is for anyone in the banking/business world and anyone serious about investing and learning. I spend most of the workday digging into and modeling out “hairy” investments, so I just apply that to the newsletter front. I use the newsletter to send out 1-2 deep dives on the credit markets, investing current events/lessons, and advice on personal finance for 20-somethings trying to save some extra $. What I dig in on really varies. Still, I always want to ensure that the readers and I are all learning something actionable. There are too many daily and abbreviated newsletters that repeat headlines, so I don’t want to play that game. I think I can grow into the 1-2 newsletters a month game pretty well.

Describe your newsletter using one slogan

HYH: A deep dive for anyone that's in the banking, credit business world or anyone just interested in learning about investing.

What do you uniquely offer your readers?

HYH: I think it's a differentiation from a lot of the headline regurgitation, something that's more daily, where you're just repeating the headlines or something along that line. I think the goal is to focus on deeper dives. While it may be a more junior person, the insight is from someone right in the thick of it in New York City, who has worked in public credit and private credit space. Coming from someone who has really dug in, been through the trenches and all that all that jazz, and is right there with the community or college students who are just trying to learn more.

So I think my layer of how I approach things as a credit investor is a unique perspective, especially coming out of an equity market. The past couple of years, even the past five years, it's been a little frothy, so it's important people are really getting the most pragmatic type of advice.

What excites you most about building your newsletter?

HYH: I’m excited for this new channel to reach people who are also obsessed with finance and investing. It’s fun to push myself to learn something new and go out and do these deep dives. beehiiv has been great so far so I’m excited too to see how they continue to build out.

What have you found to be most impactful in scaling the newsletter?

HYH: It’s still early innings, but I think adding value and updating the community on future posts have driven a lot of growth. My first newsletter gave a rundown of compensation among public and private credit professionals – this greatly benefits my community and there’s not a lot of compensation transparency in the credit world – so being able to deliver something valuable like that is a driver that helps everyone. Even if you’re not in the space, diving into finance and market topics we talk about all the time can be super accretive to all. I also have been using my platform to pre-announce any new deep dives have also driven more people hopping on board.

I think the easiest area to tap into is existing followers which I've done on Instagram and Twitter. I have about 64k on Instagram and about 41k on Twitter. Beyond that, I think the beehiiv platform is really great in terms of their referral program. So I think tapping into that and the pollinate feature are very easy organic growth drivers.

How were you able to grow your social media following?

HYH: I started an Instagram first because that was all the hot buzz at the time and where all the action was. That's where all the eyeballs were. And then Twitter was really just for formatting since it makes everything look more visually pleasing. If you just write something on Twitter and then send it over to Instagram, it seems to look and perform well. But growth on Instagram just came through talking with other accounts and getting stuff out there, and people latched on, and it picked up some good momentum.

I think people people were really excited and were tuning in. Twitter was less of a focus at the time but I think out of nowhere, this past year really kind of grew a bit for me. I went from 9k at the beginning of the year to 41k now. I definitely wasn't expecting that but the more the merrier. And it really is a lot of fun. So, I love it.

Your team and content strategy

HYH: It's a one-man shop. I don't sleep that much, honestly. But no, just kidding. Yeah, it's just me and I'm genuinely just really into this stuff.

In terms of strategy, it's really just about the fact that there's always something new going on in the market. I think this past year has been a massive change in the way a lot of people my age invest and think about finance and think about money. We've had so many easy years propped up by low-interest rates, but now that we're in a more challenging time, you need to be more thoughtful about the macro environment. What are the good qualities of companies?