Chasing Impact: The True Value of Credentials and Community Building

Do I still chase credentials? Well, yes and no. I don't chase a credential for its own sake. But I do chase the learnings that may lead to a credential.

To me, any degree or certificate is only as good as the value and impact one can create using all the skills and learnings they acquired during the process.

How do I know if I’m actually creating any value and impact? I validate it in two ways:

1. How well I contribute to the business of my employer.

2. How I help uplift people within my sphere of influence.

Which leads us to my post the other day on my Social Media profiles.

In the original post on Threads, @curiosettee’s replies validates #2 above:

Although I don't seek these types of testimonials, I admit it's good to receive them once in a while. They help remind myself that, yes, I'm still on the right track. That I'm still impacting people positively. That it's still worth it to keep going.

So yes, thank you @curiosettee for these very kind words! 🙏🙏🙏

On that note, I've been asked a couple of times why I'm building a newsletter in 2025. I know, I know, in this day and age, email newsletters are kind of archaic 😅, but they’re still one of the most effective ways of building a community. Here's a few more reasons:

1. It's also in line with my pursuit of continuously increasing the value and impact I provide to others.

2. For almost two decades, social media platforms have dictated how creators reach their audiences. And quite frankly, creators don’t own anything on these platforms. Social media is what’s called “borrowed audience”. At the whim of the platform, they can take the audience away, and there’s nothing the creator can do. It has happened a couple of times to me already on Facebook, even forcing me to painstakingly rebuild my page from scratch. Having a newsletter helps me take back some of the control over my audience.

3. In relation to that, both creators and audiences are at the mercy of social media algorithms. Creators can’t choose who ultimately gets to see the content they put out. And audiences can’t choose which content from the pages they follow actually show up on their feed. It’s not rare that you’ve probably missed some of my posts, especially important announcements (never mind the cringey memes 🤣).

4. Same goes for online communities/groups. Just recently, there reportedly was an incident on Facebook wherein some groups have been suspended due to an artificially generated spam attack. These things make me anxious, so I had to make sure several contingencies are in place for Tech Career Shifter Philippines, including the weekly newsletter.

5. The age of AI is here. One of the biggest problems I have with it is how it gobbles up all the content out there to train its algorithms, without any credit to the original authors. A newsletter that’s inaccessible to AI crawlers guards some of my intellectual property.

6. I quote myself from one of the recent issues of the newsletter:
   “I love writing, it's been a hobby of mine before the social media age. Lately, I had been feeling that my writing skills have regressed very badly since I started relying on AI. Forcing myself to write weekly for the newsletter is allowing me to exercise my creative muscles, even if that means writing this in the wee hours of a Monday morning.”

7. I’ve been pretty upfront with this since the beginnings of Kuya Dev and Tech Career Shifter PH: for me to be able to realistically sustain what I’m doing in the long run, I would have to find a way to monetize this without needing to make my followers pay for any of my content, and I firmly believe building a newsletter is one of the keys to that. Although social media platforms share some of the ad revenue with creators, it’s often just chump change, especially for a small niche such as mine. On the contrary, any ad placement on the newsletter goes directly to the creator. So if you really want to show your support for your favorite creators, sign up for their newsletters!

If you support what I’m doing… If you believe in what Kuya Dev stands for… Please do sign up for the newsletter and spread the word about it! It would mean the world to me. 🙏 Every new subscriber brings Kuya Dev to financial viability, which allows us to grow our impact even further, the same impact people like @curiosettee believe we’re making. A huge thanks to all of you in advance!

P.S. I want to make the newsletter as valuable to you as possible. So if you have any ideas or suggestions that could make it better, please do let me know. Thanks, I really appreciate it!

P.P.S. If you or your company wants to sponsor the newsletter, by all means, let’s connect.