2023 Year-End Wrap Up | #40

2023 Year-End Wrap

No. 40 — read time 7 minutes

Welcome to The Soloist, a weekly newsletter where I share timeless ideas and insights about life, business, and creativity.

Get My New Course on Distribution

I just finished recording my first course that I’ll be selling. It’s based on a class I guest-lectured on at David Perell’s Write of Passage course on distribution, i.e. getting lots of eyeballs on your content.

I’ll email everyone about it in the new year but for now I’m giving 10 people access to it for free in exchange for feedback and a testimonial.

I want to make sure it’s the best it can be before I release it and your feedback is important to me.

Reply back here if you’re interested. First come first serve.

The other day it dawned on my that it’s been exactly a year since I left the world of traditional full-time employment.

Ever since I graduated college, I’ve never had a prolonged period of time where I didn’t work in some sort of organization.

And then, in December of 2022 I pulled the plug.

After a decade of working on and founding high growth technology startups backed by never-ending venture capital fundraising efforts, I walked away.

At the time, I didn’t know what my plan was. I just knew I needed a break.

And so, I began writing. Every week I wrote this newsletter to you. And every day I’d post something on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I took a little mental health break the last 60 days or so due to the war in Israel where I still have many family members impacted, but otherwise it’s been a pretty consistent year of writing and exploring this new path. And this issue marks number 40.

With 2024 around the corner, I wanted to put a bow on 2023 by sharing with you how the year went for me and what to expect heading into next year.

Let’s dive in:

The Good

My X (formerly Twitter) account grew to over 16,300 by the time I took a break in October 2023. In 8 months I went from 2,000 followers to +16K.

This newsletter now has +1,800 subscribers (THANK YOU) and the open rates have held +60% with +5% click rate — incredible numbers which always remind me to keep going. Enough of you enjoy what I write and that makes it worth it.

And my small bootstrapped side project Dewey did +$54k in revenue and is now at $3,800 MRR with very minimal pushing.

The best part of 2023 though was getting to meet a ton of amazing creators whose work I admired and are on a similar journey. This past July, at a rooftop bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn not far from where I used to live, I hung out with Khe Hy, Paul Millerd, Monica Lim, and Cissy Hu, all phenomenal human beings who are publicly documenting a different approach to life. Meeting them IRL helped put a lot in perspective.

Behind all the tweets, posts, memes and inside jokes of internet culture, there are real people like you and me who are putting themselves out there.

It’s weird and scary but also exhilarating and lots of fun.

If you’re at all on the fence about beginning to write more in 2024, please take the dive. The worst thing that can happen is you won’t enjoy it and you can go back to being a lurker. But what if you do end up enjoying it? What if you meet people you would have never otherwise met? What if you end up finding a tribe of people who are genuinely interested in reading what you have to say? And what if that decision ends up changing the trajectory of your life in a positive way?

Looking back on the last year, I’m so glad I took the jump.

The Bad

I’m a big believer in being honest with yourself. My grandfather used to say “you can lie to the whole world but you can’t lie to yourself”. In a similar vein, Naval Ravikant once said:

Part of being honest with yourself is looking at what isn’t working and making a plan to correct course.

Before I get into that here let me share a quick story.

In 2021 I wrapped up a year long break to get a Master’s degree at MIT and joined the founding team of a deep-tech aerospace startup. Everything was going well except when I took stock where I was health wise, I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. Years of hustle, raising venture capital, and always pushing myself in my career led to serious neglect on my health. I was overweight and out of shape.

On November 28, 2021 I made the decision to get back on track. I started tracking everything I ate, weighed myself every day, and built a spreadsheet to track my weekly results. Coupled with lifting weights 3-4x per week, I was able to hit my goal and slim down from 182 lbs. in November down to 154 lbs. in April. Then I started adding in cardio (run, swim, bike) to prepare for my first triathlon. By July I completed my first triathlon and must have been 12-13% body fat at that point.

Here’s what didn’t go as well in 2023:

Dewey

Dewey can be much bigger if I put more effort into it. Since 2023 was a sort of sabbatical year for me (I realize I’ve taken a sabbatical every few years after pushing really hard, I’ll write more about this in future posts) I wanted to not have deadlines, goals, or targets when it came to Dewey. To grow it bigger I’ll need to change that approach and start putting some targets on the board, so here goes — get dewey to $15k MRR by this time next year. Why $15k? It’s roughly 5x where it is now which feels like a stretch but probably doable.

I don’t overcomplicate goal setting. I stick to S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based.

The reason this framework actually works is because it posits that if there is a deadline combined with something that is clearly measurable, there can be no ambiguity. The outcome is binary. You either hit or not.

And we know the brain becomes more creative when we introduce deadlines.

Personal Brand

2023 was a year of exploration for me creatively. I wrote about all types of topics and many of you have stuck around week after week to read. From posts about how Nirvana copying The Pixies is an inspirational model for creativity to exploring how tinkering is often better than pedigree when it comes to innovation, this newsletter has been a true “follow your curiosity” space.

I’m immensely proud of most of my writing and the fact that I’ve reached issue #40 is a testament that just showing up consistently over time builds up a resume of work.

But being all over the place makes it tough for a tribe to form around your ideas.

In 2024, I want to be more intentional with where this is all going.

To that end, I’m going to be focusing on the following themes:

• Self-love and mindfulness

• Creator stories

• Interviews with creators

Looking back, the things I’ve always been most excited about have been self-development, learning acceptance, and reaching for a higher self. Learning how to write and publish online has helped me face insecurities I once believed would always haunt me.

There are so many others like me across so many niches on the internet whose stories I find fascinating. Part of my journey this past year has been doing 2-3 zoom calls per week with creators.

Instead of keeping those conversations to myself, I want to start making those public.

In Q1 I’ll be launching a podcast where I interview these creators.

The goal is get to 20 episodes.

Additionally, I want to lean more into monetization.

I’ve shied away from that partly because I had enough savings and income from Dewey that I didn’t need to worry too much about monetization but if I dig deep, there is a part of me that feels uncomfortable selling myself.

I suspect this is true for many people who are used to letting their work shine for itself.

But the internet, which can be rewarding, can also be punishing for anyone who feels cringe putting themselves out there and selling something.

To that end, I’ve put together my first course which I’ll be emailing you all about. It’s based on a lecture I gave at David Perell’s Write of Passage course, where I was asked to teach his class of over 300 students about distribution on X (formerly Twitter).

I took those slides and recorded myself teaching it again and will be selling it as a course. If you’re interested in replicating my growth and figuring out how to get eyeballs on your content, you won’t want to miss this.

It covers everything I learned after 12 months of trial-and-error and finally figuring out what works and what doesn’t to get more eyeballs on your posts. Even if you’re not sure you want to post on X and might prefer LinkedIn (or another platform), the principles are the same and you will get value from it.

And as an end of the year bonus, the first 10 people who respond to this email will get a FREE copy of the course — the only thing I ask in exchange is feedback and a testimonial.

Just reply back here and I’ll hook you up.

Additional Experiments

While my writing was purposely all over the place, I managed to fight off shiny-object-syndrome and kept my focus on X and this newsletter.

In 2024, I want to do more. I’ll share more about what those are in future issues.

I realized that I get more done when I have many projects going at once. And I’m a believer that you need to increase the amount of experiments you run before you can really know where to double down.

And who knows, maybe I’ll decide against doubling down.

One thing I’ve learned is that maximizing every possible opportunity is a fool’s errand. I’m not interested in maximization and optimization of everything I do.

There’s big upside to leaving chips on the table.

Here’s to an amazing 2024. See you on the other side.

If you enjoyed today's newsletter, consider sharing it with friends and family. If they don’t hate you, they might thank you.

If this email was forwarded to you, consider subscribing to receive them in future. |