15 Years of Reading Before “Overnight” Success
The Story
Trung grew from 10K to 300K Twitter followers in a single year (2021). It looked like overnight success.
But he had spent 15+ years reading voraciously about history, economics, business, and culture before any of it became content. He reads the New York Times, Bloomberg, and 30+ newsletters daily. He’s visited over 30 countries. He was a CFA charterholder, an equity analyst, a screenwriter, and a fintech researcher before he ever wrote a tweet.
His own quote on patience: “There are only so many new subscribers you can get in a week… you just have to let time happen.”
The rapid growth wasn’t rapid. It was the moment a decade of accumulated knowledge met a platform (Twitter) and a format (threads) that could express it.
Lesson for Creators
Your “overnight” breakthrough will be built on years of invisible preparation. Trung’s reading habit, his screenwriting training, his CFA-level financial literacy were all “wasted” time until the day they became his content engine. Don’t wait until you have a platform to start accumulating expertise. The accumulation IS the preparation.
Related
- Claude Code - The Side Project That Got 2 Likes — A project that got almost no initial reception but later became the foundation for explosive growth
- My First Million Nearly Died, Then Found Its Format — Grinding through a long trough of mediocre results before the format finally clicked
- The Mystery CEO Call — Small early results compounding over time into something significant
- Hand-Copying Sales Letters - The Unfair Advantage — Years of invisible, unglamorous practice building a skill that later became a decisive advantage
- The 2021 Boom That Faked Product-Market Fit — Yossi Levi: the inverse pattern, where rushed growth hid the absence of compounding foundation
- 1K to 10K Was Harder Than 10K to 100K — Jesse J. Anderson: a shorter-arc version of the same compounding curve
- From SDR to 45K Followers Across Four Years — Mischa Collins: three years of casual posting before going “all in” produced the breakout
- 40 Percent of the Day Reading — Kyla Scanlon: the same input-volume principle, sustained at 10 books a week since childhood
- The Nine-Month Wait, 200 Posts — Olivia Wickstrom: the same patience-before-compounding pattern, applied to Substack