“Write a newsletter every week for a year and watch it change your life.”
(h/t to Dickie Bush for this quote on Creative Elements, April 2021)

It was August 2020. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Feeling desperate, I had rebooted an old Twitter account on a whim.

“Maybe I can figure out how to make money online?…”

I started following the #MoneyTwitter crowd. I started tweeting platitudes and joined engagement groups — pretending to be something I was/am not.

Exhibit A:

But all that began to change when I caught an episode of the Danny Miranda Podcast. He’d just launched the show and I was fortunate enough to stumbled up on it. I couldn’t be more grateful to have found it, to be honest.

It was the inflection point that has transformed my life.

That sounds dramatic. But hear me out. Two pivotal things occurred:

  1. Danny interviewed my ‘Big 5’: Dickie Bush, Nicolas Cole, Steph Smith, Khe Hy, and Tim Stoddart (all within 6 weeks of each other!) — and I was eating these interviews up. Danny’s pod was my gateway drug to the digital/content creator world.
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  2. Danny’s only podcast goal was to put in 100 reps: he vowed not to quit the podcast until he hit 100 episodes.

Danny’s story is only heating up. More on that in a bit.

But this is where the Growth Currency⚡ story begins.

Danny’s commitment to 100 episodes was wildly inspirational. I was jealous. Not of what he was doing, but that he had a mission and a goal.

I wanted that. So I made it happen.

Logging into my dormant Substack account, I published my first official shitty newsletter edition on January 19th, 2021.

I vowed to myself it would be the first weekly edition of 100.

Not yet realizing 100 weekly editions is a 2-year commitment…

And here I am at 90 editions, 636 days later. 90% of goal achieved.

This is a big deal for me. I notoriously never stick with anything: I’ve quit blogs, jobs, courses, gluten — everything. But here I am: about to publish the 90th weekly edition of my newsletter.

It’s changed my life in a number of ways — many I didn’t anticipate. And I believe it could change yours too.


How writing 90 editions of my newsletter has changed my life

I’ve gained confidence in myself.

It’s not that I had zero self-confidence. But I didn’t think I could impact the online world. I wasn’t sure what I had to offer. I didn’t think I had the resilience and resolve to continually publish something consistently. I’ve proven it is possible. This has been the most important part of the whole journey.

I’ve made a ton of friends.

The biggest turn-off with #MoneyTwitter was how transactional and greedy the whole experience felt. Nobody cared about you unless they could make a dollar off you. They cared about vanity metrics & affiliate commissions. The #CreatorTwitter space is the opposite: giving, kind, generous, positive, and human. You are my kind of people: Mike, Ian, Merott, Josh, Espree, Sarah, Christine, Ev, Jeremy, another Jeremy, John, Matt, Jessie, Samantha, Sushil, Andrew, Dan, Stephen, Nick, Vineet, Corey, Ben, Jay, Ame, Daren, Brian, Miko, Louis, another Dan, and many more. Thank you.

It’s opened unexpected doors of opportunity.

From freelance opportunities, job offers, collaboration projects, all the way to skills I wouldn’t have otherwise needed to learn. None of that would have happened if I never hit publish. Go publish your shit. You’d be amazed at what can happen if you do it repeatedly.

I’ve earned a modest side income.

The pandemic proved how important multiple revenue streams can be. You never know when your job (aka “reliable paycheck”) could just vanish. I didn’t start a newsletter to replace my job. But I knew I wouldn’t regret growing an email list, either. And I’ve done that while also earning ad revenue and affiliate income. I’ve earned $1k/month steadily since May 2022, and will be aiming for $10k by the end of the year. All thanks to publishing a newsletter consistently.


RELATED: How I Book $1k per Month in Newsletter Ads.

I’ve learned how to build and manage a small media business.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d operate a media business. But that’s what my newsletter has become: a small media business. I have zero desire to take it to the heights of Morning Brew or The Hustle (and I’m not delusional to believe I could if I tried). But I’ve gotten a taste for ad sales, copywriting, managing an ad calendar, and reporting. Never thought I’d like it. But I here we are!

Does any of this matter?

It doesn’t matter at all — and it matters so much.

It doesn’t matter if you’re crushing it already. Keep going. And it doesn’t matter if you have no desire to create a lot of content for a long time. This ain’t your father-in-law’s MLM get-rich-quick scheme. If that’s what you want, the content creator game ain’t for you, sir or ma’am.

But it matters so much because you might be where I was 2 years ago: craving creative expression, direction, and a goal — but not sure where to start. Maybe you’re 10 newsletter editions in and wondering if this is worth it. Maybe you need an average Joe success story. Well here I am: an average Joe who found some success here. If I can do it, trust me: so can you.

Or maybe you’re like Danny Miranda in August 2020, asking people on Twitter to hop on a phone call — not realizing 2 years later you’d be approaching 300 podcast episodes and cresting 1 million podcast downloads — becoming one of the top 1% podcasts in the world. Danny continues to crush it and inspire me and many others.

Danny’s done it.

I’m doing it.

You can too.

More From Me.

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