Lessons From 100 Newsletters in 100 Weeks | 100

100 newsletters in 100 weeks. It's kind of crazy to think of how far we've come since the first one.

The goal of this newsletter was simple.

Share the creative business knowledge that allowed me to grow my business.

My mission is to make creative biz education more accessible. There's a lot of fluff out there. I'm here to break through the noise and tell you what actually gets you results.

100 weeks later, and we're hitting that goal every week.

My Biggest Takeaway

Before we get into it, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for giving me your attention each week. I know it's your most precious resource, and I'm grateful you choose to spend it bettering yourself through education.

Doing this for 100 weeks gives me some perspective on what makes a good newsletter. I learned a few new things. But really, my own beliefs around success were reinforced.

I've been running my business for 4 years now, and the things I learned from the early days still ring true.

There are no fancy hacks. Successful people do the basics consistently.

At the start of my journey, I kept hearing the same thing from the most successful people. All they talked about was consistency. They had a few core actions they took every single day. And they did them well.

It's not like they were secretive about what these actions were either. Most of it boils down to: do something to improve your core offer, do something to get that core offer in front of more people, and do something to turn strangers into customers.

Take these 3 things, add consistency for years, and you've got a successful business.

This is what they would preach on stages, on podcasts, and in books.

But I always thought they were hiding their true secrets. It can't be that easy.

But it is. It is that simple.

Successful people aren't hiding some secret. They just show up every single day.

They show up every single day despite not seeing results.

They show up every day, even when they've experienced failure upon failure for the last 3 months.

They show up every day when the wins start piling up.

They show up and do the work that needs to be done. And that's it.

They ignore the outside circumstances and focus on the work.

The work needs doing.

It's that simple.

This clip shows exactly what I'm talking about. I haven't seen this movie, but this motivational clip always resonates with me.

What Makes You Successful?

I have a poster on my wall of Teddy Roosevelt's Man In The Arena speech. It's helped me through the toughest times.

Roosevelt says you can either be “in the arena” doing the work or be outside the arena judging those doing the work.

I talk to a ton of creatives, freelancers, and entrepreneurs every week.

Some of them are successful in their business. Most aren't, but they're extremely capable individuals.

The people that aren't successful spend their time looking for answers. They try and research the perfect way to do something. They try and figure out what the tricks are that all the successful people are doing that makes them so successful.

They follow the successful people on social media and see their success. The life of freedom. The perfect family. The money.

But they don't see the 1000+ tries it took to get there.

Until you're successful, no one is following your journey. No one cares about the person getting rejected after sending their 5000th cold email. You only see the people who are succeeding once all those cold emails pay off.

No one sees the rejection upon rejection upon rejection.

You only see the success.

So, unsuccessful people try and replicate what the people at the top of the mountain are doing, and they stumble.

It's not about replicating what people are doing at the top of the mountain.

It's replicating their climb to the top.

This is what all the successful people I interact with do. They're doing the simple basics over and over, each and every day.

They're showing up no matter how they feel.

They're doing those 3 things I talked about.

Improving their offer

Getting eyeballs on that offer

Converting eyeballs to customers.

That's it. It's that simple.

What does this have to do with writing a newsletter? All I did was write once a week for 100 weeks in a row. We went from a few dozen subscribers to over 5000.

I just showed up every week and never stopped.

And I'm just an ordinary dude.

You can do the same.