A New Experiment I’m Trying

Hey friends,

A few days ago, I did a sick podcast episode with Nathan Barry, the founder and CEO of ConvertKit. If you haven’t heard of it, ConvertKit is an email platform for creators and businesses. They’ve been running for 10 years, and do $40m+ in annual revenue which is bonkers. In fact, they even open-source most of their metrics on this page, which I absolutely love. They’re also the platform that I use for this very newsletter.

But what was somewhat surprising about the 2h30m long conversation I had with Nathan on the podcast, is that we spent basically zero time talking about his business. Instead, we talked a LOT about the creator economy, flywheels, how the next generation of creators are building $100m+ businesses, and a bunch more things. Can’t wait for you guys to listen to the episode.

But there was one major takeaway that I’m trying out as an experiment in my life – writing 1,000 words per day.

From 2012-2015 (ish), Nathan wrote 1,000 words a day for 600 days. In that time, he published 3 e-Books, tonnes of blog posts, and even more content to grow his social platforms. In fact, he basically said that “writing 1000 words a day was the catalyst for everything good in my career”. Here’s a really good blog post where he talks about this in more detail.

I was so inspired to hear about this. And it made me realise that in the line of work I’m in, writing 1,000 words a day would be absolutely game-changing.

Everything I do is downstream of writing – the YouTube videos, the podcast episodes, these newsletters, my upcoming book (and future books), content for my socials (eg: Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram etc) – all of it is downstream of writing.

The more I write, the more stuff I can share.

But other than when I was working on my book, Feel-Good Productivity (now available for preorder 😜), I’ve never really had a writing-themed goal. I’d always just read stuff, and then hit record and try to speak from the heart. I’m still planning to do this for some of my videos, but now that I’ve been in this “career” for 6 years, I’d like to experiment with being more thoughtful and structured with what I put out there.

This newsletter is probably going to always continue to be a public journal of sorts, where I can share from the heart without overthinking it. But especially for future book projects, and increasingly for YouTube videos and even social media posts, I want to lean into spending more time in the writing phase.

Because writing isn’t just the mechanism for output. It’s also the mechanism for thinking.

The more I write, the more ideas I have. The more I write, the more developed those ideas get. The more I write, the better stuff I can put into books, videos, podcasts, and everything else I do.

So the goal is this – writing 1,000 words a day, for at least the next 30 days, to see what happens. So far, it’s been 7 days, and I’ve managed it! It’s been quite rewarding.

If you’d like to join me on this challenge, let me know and we’ll see what we can do 🙂

Have a great week!

Ali xx

💕 My Favourite Things this Week

1. Video – This video from Alex Hormozi was great. He breaks down the 8 different things that a business needs to become a valuable and saleable asset. I don’t intend to sell mine, but there was plenty here to learn that made me think: “ohhhh this is what a grown-up business does”. In particular, Alex’s point about automated dashboards, and about cutting other people into deals, was a firmware update for my mind.
2. Another Video – This video about the FTX fruad from my friend James Jani is an absolute masterpiece – storytelling, editing, sound design, research, it’s got it all. The video took him 8 months to make, and it’s gotten 1.6m views in the first 7 days. I love James’ videos because they demonstrate a totally radically different approach to YouTube than mine – treating videos as Netflix documentaries that take months to make rather than “let me hit record and share something I’ve just learned”. You won’t regret checking the video out.
3. Yet Another Video – Speaking of masterpieces, this video from Johnny Harris was also absolutely incredible. Johnny and his team manage to create bangers on a ridiculously frequent upload schedule. My team and I watch every one of his videos to (a) be amazed, (b) be educated, and (c) be inspired to up the quality of our own stuff.

🎬 My New Videos

🎬 8 Powerful Laws of Success That Changed My Life – Steven Bartlett’s new book The Diary of a CEO just came out so I gave it a read and absolutely loved it. In this video I go through my favourite 8 laws of success from the book.

✍️ Quote of the Week

“There is another reason that note-taking flies mostly under the radar: We don’t experience any immediate negative feedback if we do it badly.”