Sundays are lazy for me.
I don’t feel like working or writing.
Then, I remember this notion:
“If you work on weekends, you are already ahead of 90% people.”
How?
52 weeks = 104 days.
104 days * 4 hours = 416 hours.
That’s 20% more than my competitors.
Sunday is also the most important day of the week for me.
I do my weekly planning on Sunday. Review my week.
And that is why I started this Sunday Growth Dairies so that I can:
👉 Keep track of my journey
👉 Document my processes
👉 Plan for the next week
And most importantly share my journey with my subscribers.
✔️ The decisions I’ve made in the past week
✔️ The hurdles I’ve jumped
✔️ The lessons learned along the way
As another week on my journey to 1 million subscribers wraps up.
Last week was crazy.
It was full of calls.
A lot of people give their feedback on my newsletter.
- Secured a partnership.
- Diversify my income sources.
- Announced a $100k Upwork Agency in public.
Next week’s agenda is different.
My processes and workflows are constantly changing.
But my newsletter remains the same.
It has the same essence that was 5 weeks ago.
The only thing that is changing is my marketing efforts and marketing plan.
Because I get distracted a lot.
I suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome.
Which I am working to overcome.
Plus, I get greedy when it comes to content.
I aim to write once and publish it 10x.
I am struggling to find people for my agency.
I have come to realize that good people are the assets of any company.
And finding good people is a hard job.
Anyhow, here’s my look back to my last week.
Weekly Overview
This week’s focus was on understanding the problems of my audience.
Until I understand this, I can’t achieve the growth I want.
Another interesting thing is that my most important metric are not impressions.
It is the CTR.
In simple words, how many people are coming to my website and subscribing to my newsletter?
Target vs Reality
- The goal for the week: Understand what works and what doesn’t. What makes people click?
- The reality is that I still have no f***** clue. My research is still going on. I need more market insights. And the next week will be dedicated to this.
I am studying the social media of Top Influencers like Justin Welsh and Jasmin Alic.
- What they are posting.
- When they are posting.
- How people are reacting to it.
I have been studying their content from 2-3 years back when things started to take off for them.
I hope to gain what works and what doesn’t.
An interesting insight is this: They both have pretty much the same trajectory.
In The Spotlight
A lot of things are brewing on my desk these days.
And most of them are incomplete. Such as:
- The Golden Strategy (my content strategy)
- The Copy Studios (My outsourcing agency)
- My strategy to go viral on Twitter
- Building a cult-like audience (Jasmin Alic’s audience – 44 comments in 4 minutes)
- Reverse engineering Justin Welsh’s strategy
And these are the pieces of the puzzle that I am putting together.
I have started to publish on:
- Substack
- Medium
Indie Hackers is in the pipeline.
SEO seems like a legit thing but I am not at that stage right now.
Atm, understanding my audience and what makes people click on social media is more important.
Strategic Insights
Grow your audience first, then work on a solution.
I did the opposite.
I created a solution first, now I am building my audience.
Which is the opposite of conventional advice.
The good thing about this is that I am getting direct feedback from people.
And this is helping me improve my newsletter a lot.
As well as my strategy.
Lessons
Lesson # 1 – Experimentation.
Whatever you are marketing – product or service. Experiment.
Without experiments, you won’t be able to find that breakthrough.
A/B testing is very important.
Lesson # 2 – Reverse engineering is like diving in the past.
If you are reverse engineering someone’s strategy, dive into their past.
Look at what they said when things started to take off.
Lesson # 3 – Network a lot.
I have met some very good people on social media.
And this has opened a lot of opportunities for me.
Along with invaluable advice.
Lesson # 4 – Post in real-time
Do not schedule posts on Twitter or LinkedIn.
You will miss out on a lot of engagements and direct feedback.
Post in real-time daily and interact with people.
Promote your content in DMs and by commenting.
Content Audit
I am auditing Justin Welsh’s Twitter.
And I have found that his Twitter strategy is simple.
His best-performing tweets are:
- One-liner
- Threads
He links them to an article on his website.
Then he converts them on the website by a CTA at the end of his website.
It is a long audit.
I went back to the tweets that he posted in 2020 and 2021.
It took him 2 years to see good results.
I will publish a detailed audit on this.
I know that you were expecting a lot today.
The problem is that I underestimated the time it would take to work on these things.
But the insights are valuable.
They are the building blocks of a million-dollar business.
So, a little patience here will pay off well.
See you tomorrow.
Signing off,
Talha X
Dreamer & Founder @ The Notion Millionaire.
