It’s inching slowly towards the end of the year and like many of you, I’m taking a look back at how things have gone. Candidly, I didn’t earn as much as I would have liked and honestly it has been a year filled with grief, a profound sense of exhaustion and just constant adjustments that had to be made due to situations that were out of my control. Despite all of the headwinds, I’ve had some surprising wins and have had some success in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. Basically, this year has been a mixed bag. Let’s get into it.
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10 Lessons Learned
There are 10 lessons that I plan on sharing and one bonus lesson that I think is important for people to hear.
- Some years are for building and rethinking the vision of your work-I’ve spent the majority of this year quietly building stuff out. I wasn’t really traveling, I was just at home doing the work. It was and continues to be really hard. Happily I’m at the tail end of this process. What was I doing? Building products, evaluating systems and changing tools. I’m astonished at how much time it took to do all of these things. The best thing about this is that I won’t be in building mode next year.
- Grief will have a profound impact on your capacity-I have been dealing with two very different types of grief. The first is my grandma passing. She was like my other mother and honestly, I really miss her. I still cry if I think about her too much. The second type of grief is dealing with what’s going on in the U.S. I’m not going to go further into it but I’ve had to let go of and adjust what dreams I had related to my life here.
- Newsletter recommendations are good and bad-You need to prepare for the bad. I love that so many people are recommending my newsletter. I do think that how Substack, in particular, has the recommendations feature set up needs to be reworked. In fact, I recently listened to a podcast episode with Matt McGarry of the Newsletter Operator podcast and GrowLetter Newsletter talk about the downsides of this feature. If you’re growing a newsletter with the recommendations feature you need to pay attention to your stats. My newsletter is solid but I feel like it could be performing even better.
- Collaborations are in the top 3 activities that every creator should be focusing on. The other two activities are building a list and marketing. One of the best moves I made in this year was the collaboration that I started with Angela Hollowell founder of Melanin MVP and Please Hustle Responsibly and Corey Gumbs founder of The Black Podcasters Association. This collaboration has gone so well that we’re hosting an online summit and have even named this project. It’s now called “The Anti-Grifters Social Club”
- Building quietly is just as impactful as building loudly if not more so-Tyler Dink of Beehiiv is a prolific marketer. It can often feel like he’s everywhere. Then things got quiet and we didn’t hear from him as much. Why? He was busy working with his team to uplevel his newsletter product Beehiiv. Sometimes you have to move in silence. You don’t have to announce everything you’re doing. I love what the Beehiiv team developed so much that I’m upgrading my subscription.
- Always build, refine and grow your email list-The money is in your list. I’ve shared throughout the year the many different dangers to a business. Usually I’m referencing a digital facing business but it’s the same for Bricks and Mortar businesses. You need a list. Once you build the list you need to email the list. If you’re on a platform that has additional ways to connect with your list use them. I livestream on Substack and I think that’s one of the reasons why my list is so responsive.
- All platforms will eventually change in ways that you dislike-Refer to point #6 Don’t rely on one way to grow your list. Optimize several different approaches to list growth. Side-eye all platforms. Yes, even your current favorite platform.
- Your audience and the broader community is paying attention to what you’re doing-move accordingly. This point is so important. You will be amazed by the people who are quietly watching, reading, listening and supporting what you’re doing. If you’re talking crazy, mistreating people, not following your word, distracted, happy, sad, inconsistent, disingenuous, etc. People will notice. And oftentimes they will share receipts.
- Respect your capacity-You can always return to projects or interests that you have later. I have 4 projects that I have worked on for several years. I pause projects depending on bandwidth and capacity. It’s also important to recognize what drains your energy or overwhelms you in some way. I’m in the process of simplifying my life. I’m leaving the Board that I’ve been an active member of for almost 5 years, I’m keeping travel to a minimum. I’m really focused on keeping things as simple as possible.
- Prioritize rest and self-care-I don’t know how things would have gone if I didn’t rest as much as I did this year. I literally wasn’t able to work beyond my capacity. I just didn’t have it in me. Self-care also means setting a lot of boundaries. The rest looks like, naps, walking and relaxing, going to the mountains for a couple of nights (I go to bougie hostel-great value, beautiful properties) I read books, I go to spas (reasonably priced ones) and do a few other things to manage my well-being.
