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 modelling out “hairy” investments, so I apply much of the same to the newsletter. 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, but I always want to make sure 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 that's 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. Also, while you're listening to a more junior person, I think you're also getting insight 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 that 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 building the platform.

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 the 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 and have also driven more people to hop 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 its 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 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 good qualities of companies? It requires putting on a more credit analyst-type hat. Kind of gearing towards this recession we're having and what that means for the market, macro, as well as the recovery after, is a voice I want to get out there.

Top 2 posts: Being greedy when others are fearful

Deals gone bad

Your goal for High Yield Harry

HYH: The goal is to get more Instagram and Twitter followers on board. I think the hardest part is convincing people “hey this guy is pretty junior and makes memes but maybe he has some accretive thoughts on finance”. I think this can be chipped away at over time because I don’t plan to go anywhere and am a very consistent person. So the goal is to continuously provide quality and informative content and refine what I do each time.

Why beehiiv?

HYH: Honestly, I saw everyone else doing it. I think that's was a big influence for me. It seemed like there was huge network effect where everyone that was making a newsletter was doing it on beehiiv. So it really just seemed like a no brainer. Obviously, I did some due diligence beforehand. I saw that everyone was really enjoying it. I've never spoken to Tyler personally but I saw how highly people were speaking of him. Additionally, the YouTube videos make a lot of sense and made getting started on beehiiv pretty easy to navigate on my own, and looking up questions was always super easy with the documentation.

Any other tips or recommendations for other newsletter creators

HYH: Marry your Twitter and Instagram presence with your newsletter. At a minimum use Pollinate. It’s worth *sometimes* after a solid tweet to say “Hey if you want more like this check out my newsletter” – just don’t do that too often/don’t overdo it tho and sound like a try hard after every tweet.

Favorite beehiiv feature

HYH: Recommendations for sure!

Another beehiiv newsletter that inspires you

HYH: Ramp capital, he's a really good dude, and he really has a great newsletter. I think he really went to the forefront of building out fintwit and being comedic on there, as opposed to fintwit being too serious. He has really led the way in this market and probably my top recommendation.

Biggest takeaway

HYH: I want to continue to play to my strengths, which is really zoning hard in a particular investment or finance topic, and providing key and decisive takeaways for the audience. I guess this audience are my readers, as opposed to a credit investment committee.

I think it’s worth noting that I’m right there with the community, in the city, trying to get deals done and cranking on models and decks, so I want to get after it and find ways to add value and humor to their lives.

Want more?

Be sure to follow HYH on Twitter here, Instagram here and subscribe to his newsletter here!