Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
Every single tweet costs nothing and has the potential to reach the entire world.
It’s the best lottery ever made.
— Naval Ravikant
Endless scrolling, cheap dopamine hits, anonymous trolling—it’s easy to criticize social media. What doesn’t make headlines: the ability to connect with millions, generate income, and create real businesses.
Welcome to X, formerly known as Twitter, where financial influencers are doing just that—transforming social media posts into lucrative business ventures.
I interviewed eight of X’s most influential financial accounts, boasting a combined 3.22 million followers. The goal: uncover their processes and learn how they leverage the X platform to generate revenue.
These creators don’t just post about the stock market or personal finance; they’re entrepreneurs who’ve built profitable businesses around their online personas.
And they all share a common origin story: the pandemic.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, these creators started their accounts not to doomscroll or troll but to share their financial wisdom.
The pandemic gave them the time and space to focus on building their audiences and personal brands. They committed to creating content full-time, posting several times daily while engaging with their audiences and networking with peers.
[Note: X was known as Twitter, and posts were called tweets when these creators started their accounts. I’ll be using those terms interchangeably throughout the remainder of this article]
The Coach
Clint Murphy’s (357.9k followers) journey on X began as a passion project. He started sharing self-actualization tips and strategies to help people realize their personal, professional and financial goals. His content struck a chord, and his follower count started to grow.
Recognizing the opportunity, Murphy began offering one-on-one coaching sessions, using his X influence to attract new clients. “COVID and technology made it easier than ever to start a coaching business,” he says.
His wife became a believer in his online business when he earned his first significant paycheck from a sponsored post. “The first dollar became her saying, ‘I’m willing to believe in you,'” he recalls.
Murphy has a diversified approach to monetization, from affiliate marketing to sponsored newsletters to direct coaching. “My number one investment is always me because earning more will outperform any investment I make,” he states.
The Publisher
Genevieve Roch-Decter (425.6k followers) published a newsletter for 5,000 subscribers at an investor relations firm. She’s since built a financial media company, Grit Capital, with multiple revenue streams, including paid subscriptions and advertising. Roch-Decter and Grit Capital have branched out to other social networks and have a combined million-plus followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
As an opinionated woman in the financial world, Roch-Decter gets her share of trolls. “My motto is ‘Hug Your Haters.’ Hopefully, they will turn into fans eventually. For someone to attack you, they have to be in a bad place mentally. People who are happy and doing things out in the world are not spending time hating.”
Roch-Decter emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience. “It’s like you’re standing in the middle of an NFL stadium with hundreds of thousands of people. What you write has to matter to them,” she notes.
She and her team are considering other avenues like courses and a private community. “There’s a bit of magic in letting the audience dictate what products you create and getting feedback from them,” she adds.
The Luck Magnet
Sahil Bloom (1.04 million followers) spent seven years in a traditional finance role at a private equity fund in the Bay Area. When the pandemic hit, he says, “I had time to reevaluate priorities and think about what I could be excellent at in the long term.
“I’d always enjoyed writing and being out in front of people. I felt there were areas of the world where those skills and passions would be better served than what I was doing. So I just started writing with no real intention of it ever becoming my day job.”
Bloom started his account to share what sparked his curiosity and has since amassed over a million followers. He’s turned that into a profitable newsletter and a book deal with Penguin Random House.
Bloom used the X platform to launch and scale a holding company of cash-flowing businesses collectively generating over $10 million in annual revenue. The businesses, which include HeyFriends (a YouTube production studio), Viralcuts (a short-form video editing service), Alto Studios (a personal branding platform), and Paperboy Studios (a newsletter growth service), among others, achieved their growth and profit with zero marketing spend.
Each business generated tens of millions in pipeline interest on their initial launches through single post announcements to his audience.
Bloom believes in utilizing the networking opportunities available through the platform and has illustrated how it’s shifted as his account has grown. “In the early days, using Twitter to reach people was an incredible opportunity. And then, it just becomes a magnet that attracts other things to you. It’s like a luck magnet at scale.”
The Teacher
Dino Antonuccio, a former music teacher, runs an anonymous account known as The Art of Purpose (307.8k followers).
Antonuccio’s story is one of reinvention. During the pandemic, he found himself at home with a newborn and more free time than he knew what to do with.
Rather than binge-watching Netflix
NFLX
Antonuccio uses X to sell a cohort-based course and a Discord community called Masterclass 24/7. The course and community, aimed at helping smaller accounts grow their audience, pulled in total sales of around $750,000 over the past two years.
Antonuccio believes the critical factor for X success is networking. “The thing that people get a lot wrong about this platform is they see the likes, the retweets, the engagement. That’s fine. But the real value is who you meet and the connections you make along the way,” he says.
“If you’re somebody who’s starting and you have no online presence, you need to start meeting people along the same journey as you are. Why is this important? You can help each other grow. It’s hard for anybody to see your tweets in the early stages. But if you have other friends willing to share your content, you’ll grow ten times as fast.
“Form your online posse,” he adds. “Kind of like the Seven Samurai.”
The Host
Gav Blaxberg, the man behind Wolf Financial (280.9k followers), was formerly in private wealth management for Goldman Sachs. He saw the potential in a new Twitter feature called Spaces, an interactive audio-only forum cloned from Clubhouse, a once-popular app.
“I’d never made a dollar off Twitter when I had 30,000 followers. So I said, ‘I’m just gonna go full-speed Twitter Spaces for a year and see what happens.'”
Blaxberg now hosts 40 hours of Spaces each week, with thousands of people tuning in. He monetizes his time on Spaces like radio, selling sponsorships. “When a company sponsors a Space, I build an hour of content around their brand,” he explains. In addition to monetizing his Spaces, he also sells sponsorships to his Wolf Financial newsletter.
Some Spaces are AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with CEOs of public companies, providing them a platform to connect with potential investors and customers. “It’s basically a live due diligence session for an hour,” says Blaxberg. “And to be honest, sometimes we rip them apart a little bit.”
Blaxberg’s strategy blends entertainment, education, and strategic monetization. “You’ve got to keep people on their feet, listening and converting.”
The Millennial Money Woman
Fiona Smith, known as the Millennial Money Woman (257.5k followers), was inspired to promote financial education after watching her grandparents lose everything due to poor financial management.
“They didn’t have a wealth advisor. They didn’t have any investments. They reinvested everything in their business, and they risked it all,” she says. “I saw them live in complete poverty until the day they died.
“That was the seed that led me down the path of wanting to not only help my family rewrite their next financial chapter of their lives but try to help as many people as possible. I did it online because I have a much greater reach than just in person.”
Smith started her career in corporate wealth management, helping ultra-high-net-worth clients. “There was a point where I realized, ‘I’m working with folks that are already well off. But I wanted to make an impact on folks that weren’t as financially settled. So, at that point, I co-founded a financial literacy mentorship program.”
Smith then started a blog but didn’t find an audience. During the pandemic, she took to Twitter and began writing threads. Her threads took off, driving millions of impressions and leading to thousands of newsletter subscribers.
Smith’s approach to finance is practical, easy to understand, and devoid of jargon. Her content ranges from basic budgeting tips to advanced investment strategies, catering to a broad audience.
The newsletter lets her go deeper on topics, offering more detailed recommendations and exclusive content. It’s also become a significant revenue stream, thanks to affiliate marketing deals and sponsored content.
Smith has a multi-pronged approach to monetization, adding ebooks, coaching, and a private community to her offerings.
“I’m trying to reach as many people as I can from any age bracket,” she says, “to give them hope that anyone can start and rewrite their financial lives.”
The Advisor
Doug Boneparth (262.2k followers) is a certified financial planner whose firm, Bone Fide Wealth, caters to millennial clients. It’s a traditional advisory business, but his social media approach is anything but traditional for the industry.
His content mixes financial advice, irreverent market commentary, and the occasional meme, making finance fun and accessible.
Amid the pandemic, he took to Twitter, embracing the platform to reach a younger, more tech-savvy audience.
“People were dying by the tens of thousands. The market was in free fall. And humor is how I coped,” says Boneparth.
Boneparth’s X influence has helped him attract new clients and opened doors to speaking engagements and media appearances in outlets like CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.
“I view my content like a real comic would,” he says. “The jokes are thoughtful, having either turned a concept upside down or threaded some personal finance thing into something zany to get your attention.
“Maybe it’s the antithesis of what a CFP would say. And that’s the point. You would never do that; you’d do the exact opposite of it.”
For Boneparth, X is more than just a marketing channel; it’s a platform for building relationships. “All the real action happens in the DMs,” he says, emphasizing the power of networking on X. “I’ve talked to real thought leaders and made some amazing friends.”
Millionaire Habits
“Don’t be afraid of controversy,” says Steve Adcock (295.4k followers). Known on X as Steve • Millionaire Habits, Adcock is a former IT professional who retired in his late 30s.
He got involved with the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement, which glorifies frugality, simple living, and freedom from a 9-5 job. Adock quips, “My wife could tell you how much we spent on sweet potatoes for a few years.”
Adcock stands out from other financial accounts on X with his unique voice and strong opinions. “You have to have a strong, confident voice,” he says. “Saying the same thing in the same way, that’s not how you grow.”
Adcock’s approach is all about community and engagement. He believes in the power of networking and has formed a group of online business owners.
“The most important thing that you must remember when you’re building a Twitter account is to form relationships. Build a network of people around you that have a similar goal,” he emphasizes.
“I have a group of seven to eight highly motivated Twitter people, also online business owners, making $15-20,000 a month.”
Adcock diversified his income streams from ebooks to courses and even an email consulting business. His first published book, Millionaire Habits, is set to be released in January 2024.
The Power of the Post
Each influencer has carved out a unique niche, leveraging their expertise and audience engagement to create profitable businesses.
They’ve shown that the real currency on social media platforms isn’t just follower count; it’s the relationships and networks you build. This sentiment is echoed across the board, highlighting the importance of genuine engagement over mere numbers.
Perhaps the most compelling takeaway is the democratization of financial wisdom and business opportunities. These creators started with little more than a Twitter account and a desire to share their insights.
Now, they’re not just thought leaders in their respective fields but also entrepreneurs who’ve built and grown profitable ventures.
These stories are more than just tales of individual success; collectively, they paint a picture of the still untapped potential within social media platforms like X.
