A departure from the usual content, but -- I hit 1 million views on Linkedin!

When I started posting last fall, I had zero audience.

So, why did I start?

When I became a co-author for Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, I felt guilty that I couldn't help promote it.

Gayle McDowell and Aline Lerner were already established names in the space, whereas putting my name on something had no weight at all. If anything, they took a risk in bringing on someone unknown who wouldn't be able to help with promoting it. All they had to go by was Mike Mroczka's endorsement of my technical skills.

Here's what I reflected on, and perhaps something YOU should reflect on too: if you want to branch out from just being an employee, having reach is deeply valuable.

When writing a book, building a startup, or starting anything from scratch, making the thing is only half the battle. Getting people to care is the other half.

So, if you think you may ever want to do anything like that, maybe you should start growing an audience too.