If you don’t like the food you order in a restaurant, you can choose to order something else.
If you don’t like where you live, you can choose to move.
If you don’t like your current career, you can choose to pursue a new path.
The bigger the choice, the bigger the consequences, but there’s no reason to get paralyzed when making a decision.
Because every choice you make can be undone by making another one.
Now, on to this week’s ideas…
1. How I Went From Reading Zero Books To 20 A Year
“You don’t have to finish every book you start.”
I didn’t read a single book in high school, college, or for the first dozen years of my career.
But that’s changed over the past few years and in this post I share 10 habits that help me read 20 books a year including how to place books in your line of sight, find better books, and get more value out of the ones you read.
Related: How to make your social media feed more interesting.
2. How To Attract 1,000 Paid Community Members In 10 Months
“Rituals build habits and answer the question. Why do we gather?”
After a couple failures, Dru Riley focused his attention building the Trends.vc paid community and has had incredible success in a short period of time.
He breaks down how he attracted 1,000+ paid community members in 10 months by using magnets, focusing on rituals, and decentralizing leadership.
Related: Read this if you’re struggling to grow your audience.
3. Eight Harsh Truths About The Creator Economy
“A creative education teaches people to be creative without teaching them how to make a living from their ideas.”
There’s no shortage of hype about the creator economy these days, but some elements of it are often overlooked.
Srinivas Rao shares eight harsh truths about the creator economy including that it’s not a meritocracy, ownership is the only path to wealth and success, and the ability to get instant validation from strangers on the internet leads us to confuse attention with achievement.
Related: A manifesto for creative people.
4. How An Author Grew Her Newsletter By 1,200 Subscribers In One Summer
“I created a plan that prioritized what little time I have.”
Elle Griffin had a newsletter with 1,770 subscribers when she decided to commit a summer to growing it.
In this article she reveals how she grew her newsletter by 1,200 subscribers in one summer including what worked (buying ads in other newsletters, cross promotions with other newsletters, and publishing blog posts) and what didn’t (Twitter ads, cold email outreach).
Btw, if you want to experiment with using newsletter ads to grow your newsletter you should consider placing one in my newsletter.
A recent sponsor got 80 new newsletter subscribers out of it.
Related: Get access to my Newsletter Accelerator.
5. The Seven Stages Of Income Growth For Entrepreneurs
“Stop thinking, researching, and stalling.”
This is aimed at women entrepreneurs, but it’s a fantastic resource for anyone trying to monetize their work.
Hello Seven shares the seven stages of income growth for entrepreneurs including a breakdown of why you might feel stuck and specific action steps to take based on how much income you currently generate.
Btw, I found this link on Khe Hy’s Twitter account.
Related: 50+ experts to follow on Twitter.
Imagine How Much Faster Your Audience Would Grow If You Had This
I want to help you grow your audience.
That’s why I’ve created resources to help you adapt my processes to improve your ability to reach and connect with more people who will love your creations.
Join This Is How I Do It today to get immediate access to all these resources:
• How to define your audience
• How to triple the conversion rate on your email list signup page
• How to choose you niche
• Four tweet formats that work every time
• How to get more people to see your tweets
• How to survey your audience
• How to build a 4,000 member Facebook group
• A framework to create successful social media posts
• How to create an effective social media strategy
• How to promote your podcast on Twitter
Plus, you’ll get access to 50 more resources to help you grow your audience and business.
Classified Ads
• Direct mail data ad guru. 15M letters generating 150k monthly calls per month. Acquire new clients through direct mail. Visit www.overflowworks.com
• Get inspired and smarter with this easily-digestible daily newsletter. Each day I share a quote, non-fiction book highlight, and 100 words of wisdom.
• Sendinblue helps you reach your customers digitally. Create personalized emails, Manage your CRM, Send transactional emails. Learn more here!
• This blog post outline process has produced posts that attracted millions of readers.
• Anyone, anywhere, can start a business with Shopify; make it grow with Sensorpro.
Have something you’d like to tell 18,000 FTI readers about?
On average, sponsors get 150 clicks on their ads.
My Final Words Of The Week
I watched an old episode of The Shop this week and WNBA player Elena Delle Donne had a great observation:
“There’s nobody who talks to you in a day more than yourself.”
Choose your words wisely.
Have a great week!
Josh
PS — If you enjoy my newsletter I’d love you to tell others about it.
Thanks!