I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Getting your newsletter open rate near 50%
Hey Reader,
I hope you had a good holiday break, but I know many of you faced hard times of one kind or another, they seem to be unavoidable these days. I'm not a big fan of new years resolutions, but I am wishing for more peace this year and to get back to some sense of our previous "normal."
FROM TWITTER
A few threads from the last few weeks
I've been working building my Twitter presence and following, and have been tweeting more lately because of that. Here are a few threads that did well, or I just liked.
There is no speed limit to life, the pace of your life is up to you. Want to graduate early? Do it. If you're willing to put in more work than anyone else and find real leverage you can get the results much faster.
Are your email open rates increasing? iOS 15 may have something to do with that. Read more from our deliverability team here.
I love this story about the Patel Motel Cartel, it's my favorite example of hard work, community, and investing profits to build wealth.
FROM THE PODCAST
Sherrell Dorsey
Sherrell Dorsey is the founder and CEO of The Plug, a publication and community for news, insights and analysis on trends in Black innovation. The Plug features stories that show the substantive ways Black people engage with the innovation economy, including analyses of modern technologies. We talk about building an audience, sponsorships, The Plug’s revenue model, Sherrell's background in journalism, and how she brings that into her current work.
And finally you know you’re a designer if this photo drives you crazy. Find the two tiles that are wrong.
Shout out to Sean McCabe for pointing this out during an indoor volleyball game.
Hope your year is off to a good start!
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? You’ve probably seen some version of this question before. It’s a good one, though sometimes the answer isn’t immediately obvious. That’s why I like Graham Weaver’s 8 questions for what to do with your life. Graham founded the private equity firm Alpine Investors, and he teaches at Stanford. In Chapter 2 of my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth, I credit him with a principle he shared with his MBA students called "worse first",...
Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...