Hey friends, I just realized I wrongly published a scrappy draft with a part that was meant for next week. The one you’re reading now should’ve been the newsletter of the week. Consider the previous email a bonus 🤪

A Quote I Liked

Growth Mindset

I realized personal growth, like life, has seasons too. Sometimes harvests are fantastic (e.g. reaching your goals, getting sign-ups for your product, investment has good ROI, speaking to someone in a foreign language) but it won’t always be that way.

In fact, there are going to be a lot of dry days. A lot of boring days with no obvious results from your efforts.

It’s especially important to remember in today’s dopamine-high society that the things that matter take time. Opening Instagram or Twitter for the 100th time today won’t get you closer to a lasting sense of fulfillment.

Whether it be starting a business, upskilling yourself, or building relationships, what you do during those dry days matters. So, if you’re feeling lost or setback, review what you do when things aren’t exciting (aka, your systems).

As James Clear says in his book, Atomic Habits, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”. Continue learning that new language/skill, marketing your product, DCA-ing (not financial advice!), reading, and journaling even in the absence of big wins.

Having systems in place (for doing and for reviewing) complements the concept of smart quitting that I reflected on in my previous newsletter, check it out.

Entrepreneurship

After cross-posting the tweet below to LinkedIn, someone reached out to me to collaborate and integrate my productized service with their existing offering.

This reminded me of 2 things:

Nobody knows unless you publicize

You work for hours/days/weeks to develop your product. You have a branding strategy ready. Sign-up and payment flow are all done. But if you don’t distribute it publicly, you’ll remain the only one who knows about it.

That’s why indiepreneurs constantly reiterate the importance of building in public.

But it doesn’t stop at just that. Simply tweeting about it every day doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get lots of traffic. How do you get past the noise? Is that platform even where your users are?

The power of untapped channels

Looking past Twitter (where most Web3 communities are concentrated), I decided to start tapping into a channel I personally dislike, LinkedIn.

I hate the content on LinkedIn because it’s a bunch of people patting each other (but mostly themselves) on the back, group pictures of events, job changes, graduations, and clickbait nonsense. But that’s where the B2B crowd is. It’s an untapped channel for a lot of companies within Web3 and can be a blue ocean if used wisely.

You don’t have to dive head-first into a new channel. As for me, I’m starting off by consistently cross-posting my tweets to LinkedIn.

To summarize, make sure you distribute your work publicly, and in the right places (including underexplored ones).

Freedom

Freedom is hard to achieve but harder to manage.

There’s a lot of talk about escaping the 9-5 but just as how you need to develop the discipline to get out of that hamster wheel, you’ll need even more discipline to show up when nobody directs you to (other than yourself).

Traveling is fun and the idea of doing it full-time sounds amazing (because traveling was otherwise scarce). But from personal experience, it requires a lot of discipline too. I found that without the discipline of being mindful, I would lose myself in the routine, and the full-time traveling wouldn’t feel much better than not doing it in the first place.

So I’ve learned that freedom isn’t about breaking free of constraints, but more of breaking free of constraints imposed by others and substituting them with your own. At least in my case, it was the pursuit of the freedom to be empowered (by myself).

Homework

Inspired by Sahil Bloom’s newsletter: Imagine your future. What are you certain of today that you'll laugh at in 10 years?

We encounter a lot of stuff that we have immediate certainty of but end up finding out is untrue. By being fluid, you can spare yourself from the agony of wasting time. Constantly question the underlying certainties and assumptions in your lives. The openness to new ways and perspectives will catapult your growth rate.

Till we meet again next week.

Cheers to the future,
Ernest
indiepreneur, digital nomad, transhumanist

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