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As a kid, Teddy Mitrosilis had dreams of playing Major League Baseball — and squared off against a handful of future big leaguers on the sun-soaked diamonds of Southern California. A gifted reliever with three different pitches, Mitrosilis eventually played at the University of North Carolina, before deciding to focus on his other real passion: Writing. |
Since graduating a little over a decade ago, he's worked as a sports reporter and in the tech sector — and now as a consultant helping leaders build audiences. In just months, he's increased his own Twitter & LinkedIn following from 2,000 to over 65,000. |
The Daily Coach sat down with Mitrosilis recently to learn how he applies lessons from his baseball career to his business, audience-building essentials, and some other leadership beliefs of his that cut against the grain. |
This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity. |
Tell us about your childhood and some lessons from it. |
I grew up in Redondo Beach, Calif., and I loved sports. I really played all kinds growing up, but baseball was what I got obsessed with at an early age. It was the primary vehicle my dad used to teach me lessons. |
Every night, we'd be in the garage together practicing. I grew to like practice even more than games. My dad would always give me these sayings like, “It’s the little things every day that will make you great.” And “practice makes progress.” You don’t understand mantras like that as a kid, but as you get older, you start to connect them. And now as an entrepreneur, as a husband, as a dad, I think back to those little lessons all the time and just showing up every day and being consistent. |
Who’s the toughest hitter you faced growing up? |
(Current Los Angeles Dodgers star) Freddie Freeman. We played out in Orange County in something called Scout Ball. We matched up a couple times. It was the one time in my life I remember standing on the mound and thinking, “There’s not one pitch I have in my arsenal that can get this guy out.” I faced him twice. First one he hit a double off the centerfield wall, and the second, he smoked a single to right field. |
Where’d your baseball career go from there? |
I ended up pitching at Long Beach Junior College, then at the University of North Carolina. I wanted to study journalism and had made the decision I was going to go to UNC even if they didn’t have a spot on the team and it meant giving up my baseball career. I had been holding onto the pro dream by a thread. I played my junior year at UNC and ended up not playing my senior year. At that point, I figured I wasn’t going to play pro and I needed to start to get ready for whatever was next. |
Take us through your journey after college. |
Right out of college, I moved to Bristol, Conn., and started working for ESPN. I was Buster Olney’s editor. I was a writer and an editor for ESPN Insider, did that for a year, then worked on the college sports team on the digital side. I went to Fox Sports in Los Angeles from there to run a digital college sports group. |
I got out of media in the fall of 2016 to join a tech startup startup called Strivr, which had 15 people at the time. I spent the next six years there helping us grow from 15 people to 150. I left in March of 2022 to go out on my own, and I’m doing two things now: really focusing on my own writing on Twitter and LinkedIn and just launched The Process, a weekly newsletter about how world-class leaders operate. I also have a boutique audience building agency working primarily with executives, founders and CEOs to help them build their audience on social media. |
You’ve had amazing Twitter growth this year and are now over 40K followers. What’s been the key? |
I spent 10 years basically doing what most people do on Twitter: consuming news. For the last five or six years, I didn’t really use it because I didn’t like the negativity around it. But I also didn’t really understand its power. |
This spring, I took a fresh look at it and saw people in tech and business who were really building strong audiences on there. I started asking them what are you doing and what’s really the key? There are some really smart, interesting people using Twitter to build relationships, to learn and grow audiences and showcase their own long-form writing. It changed my entire perspective. I decided I was going to treat it more as a community and find interesting people and genuinely reach out and engage in the spirit of building relationships. |
What advice would you give someone looking to build his/her own audience? |
I think the keys are No. 1, figure out what you want to write about. You don’t need just one topic, but you need some kind of focus. No. 2, find people on Twitter who are in your topic area who are building an audience. Set out to build relationships with them in good faith. Engage with their content, send them DMs and learn from them as a normal, genuine human being. On top of it all is consistent content creation. Write longer threads, one- to two per week on a topic area, and I would share what you’re learning. If you’re building something, write about that. If you’re learning, share some insights. |
The No. 1 reason people fail to build audiences is they are not consistent, and audience building is a compounding game that takes time. It can be really easy to get discouraged when you’re three months or six months in and you’re not seeing a lot of traction. Most people will stop or just fall off — and that kills it. Consistency is the name of the game. |
What’s the grittiest thing you’ve done in your career? |
My senior year of college, I was trying to figure out how to crack into ESPN and was working any connections I might’ve had. I knew that (then-ESPN President) John Skipper was a UNC alum. On spring break, I went with the journalism school on a networking trip to New York. I had spent about eight weeks before that trying to get on his radar and ended up getting to his assistant. I leveraged my UNC connection along with baseball player trying to get into media. |
I got a breakfast scheduled with him the Saturday morning before we were going to leave. I showed up at the Four Seasons like an eager college kid in a suit and tie. He comes into the lobby in a white T-shirt and jeans. I remember thinking “This is so awkward.” But it was also perfect, too. That led to the opportunity. |
You write a lot about self-leadership. How would you define self-leadership? |
To me, it starts with the belief that everyone’s a leader. And I’m not sure everyone thinks that, but there is someone who is a couple steps behind you and is looking to you as an example, whether you realize it or not. Leadership to me begins with leading yourself. It’s hard to lead other people if you don't have your own house in order. What that looks like depends on the person, but it’s everything from your mindset, to your habits, to your behaviors, to just how you approach your daily life. |
What’s one quote you live by? |
It’s not a quote per se, but “The Man in the Arena” from Theodore Roosevelt is one that has probably impacted my life the most. |
What are three books that have inspired you? |
“Stillness is the Key,” by Ryan Holiday
“When Breath Becomes Air,” by Paul Kalanithi
“The Second Mountain,” by David Brooks |
What’s an unconventional leadership belief you have that goes against the grain? |
Ego can be a good thing. It can also obviously be an extremely destructive thing. What I most commonly see is people talking about to be a leader, you can’t have an ego or you need to kill it. My perspective is everybody has an ego, we all do. What matters is how you channel it. An ego is what drives us to be great in a leadership role. It can be part of what drives a company to be great or to build a great team. Ego can have productive value, it’s just very nuanced because you have to be aware of its dark sides and not let it sabotage your team. |
You’ve already found yourself at a couple career crossroads. What advice would you give to someone in a similar position trying to decide if one particular path is right to go down? |
I know it’s cliché, but learn to trust your instinct. One thing I’ve learned is nobody can give me the answer. People can only say what’s worked for them, but they can’t tell you what decision to make in your life. Only you can make that. |
The other thing I’d say is what matters is not so much your on-paper resume but the skills and experiences you have acquired along the way. Those are a lot more transferable than a lot of people realize. I’ve been asked a lot how I went from being a writer and editor to building a consulting division at a tech company. It doesn’t make any sense on paper, but if you view it as what skills I developed in media — communication, work ethic, cross-functional teamwork, the ability to execute on deadline, how to ask really good questions and find information — all these skills translate. It’s how you apply them in a different context. |
Q&A Resources |
Teddy Mitrosilis ― Twitter | LinkedIn | Newsletter: The Process |
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