Sharpening the Axe: Getting More Work Done, in Less Time.

GM Legends 👋

We’re making some changes around here. In this episode I’ll cover:

🪂 Care-Package: Weekly Growth Fuel
🪓 Sharpening the Axe: More Content, in Less Time.
🧙‍♂️ Diary of a Founder: Easier Work Leads to Bigger Results
🧗‍♂️ Building in Public: The Newsletter

Let’s get into it… 💯

🪂 Care-Package:

A weekly package to help you Grow Faster 💯

🧲 Attract an audience:

Social Hacking

If you’re early in your content journey, you can massively boost your growth by writing about larger accounts. But there’s the right way to do it, and the wrong way.

The right way:

• Write something constructive and positive

• Don’t ‘suck up’ - most people don’t want to re-share something that looks like a ‘shill’

• Reference something that they are currently doing (e.g. “This is what I learnt from this person’s newsletter”)

The wrong way:

• Empty positive vibes

• Promoting something of your own through this piece of content

• Asking for engagement in the content

🍄 Become Better:

Read this book in 4 hours: 100m Offers by Alex Hormozi

I’m halfway through this book by Alex Hormozi and it is a game changer. It’s $0.99, you can read it in 4 hours and it will teach your more about persuasion & sales than any course.

If you have time on your morning commute or over the weekend, take the time to read this with a notebook and a pen.

🌿 Feel f*cking fantastic: 

Wait 90 mins before your first coffee.

Do you ever get a caffeine crash in the afternoon? I used to. I fixed it by waiting 90 mins in the morning before my first coffee.

This gives your body the chance to process your sleep neurotransmitters before caffeine interrupts this process. (Link)

🪓 Sharpening the Axe: More content, in less time.

Writing this newsletter has been my favourite form of content creation.

But it’s also been brutal.

I have time and time again found myself scrambling on a Friday night after a massive week of work…

Burning myself out to get that long-form piece of content out.

And at the same time, I wanted the quality of the content to be better.

So it was time to sharpen the axe 💥

To give context, the way I’ve written every week has started with a blank page and a question…

“what the f*ck am I going to write about this week?”

So I meditated on two key thoughts:

1. How can I make this process smoother?

2. How can I create value that is quick and easy to read for subscribers who are short on time?

Let’s start with #2, adding value 🎁 

I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, and something I noticed last week was that there were some newsletters that I found fun to read, and others that I didn’t enjoy as much.

The newsletters I enjoyed had one very simple thing in common.

A section where I could get quick value immediately, even if I didn’t have time to read the whole thing.

So I thought to myself…

Hmm… This is a newsletter about growing faster 🤔

How can I create fuel to help you grow, that’s also quick and easy to digest?

The answer: The Care Package 🎁 

3 weekly pieces of content to help you grow your audience, your entrepreneurial skillset and how you feel.

For anyone also writing a newsletter, the great thing about this content is that it is easy to take notes on during the day to day experience of content consumption & personal growth.

(E.g. When you read a great book, share it)

And then when you go to write the newsletter, you have multiple pieces of content ready to go before you even start writing.

This means I can provide all of you more value, in less time.

Which brings me too…

Point #1, improving the process ⚒

My original process was:

1. Write the main article in notion.

2. Copy it into Beehiiv (the newsletter platform)

3. Cut up sections manually

4. Update formatting

5. Do all the send settings manually

6. Add emojis

7. Add links manually

8. Hit send

That’s way too much work, just to get the content into the platform.

So the obvious answer was to create a template, through writing a draft email and duplicating it each time I need to write.

Now, my process is:

1. Copy an email that is in my drafts labeled template

2. Fill in each section (write the content directly in Beehiiv)

3. Copy and paste Care Package sections

4. Add a title & subject

5. Hit send

I timed myself from the beginning to the end of writing this article.

In the past, it was a minimum of 4 hours per article. This article took me 1.5 hours.

With a simple change I was able to add more content, and get it done in less time.

🧙‍♂️ Diary of a Founder: Often easier work leads to bigger results

Do you ever work really hard on a piece of content, feeling like it will blow up and then it flops?

So does everyone.

The biggest thing to remember is don’t overthink your content. Often simpler, clearer content leads to the biggest results.

🧗 Started from the bottom now we’re here…

^{If you’re new here, one of the core principles of the content I share is that a newsletter is the most linear and simple business you can start in Web3. It has high sponsorship revenue and can go from being a side hustle to a full-time business in under a year. I am building this newsletter in public, to share the progress each week so that you can be a part of the journey. Now let’s get into it 👇}

This Week:
Subscribers: 1439 (-2 subscribers, had to take an L this week to improve how I work for future weeks)
Open Rate: 46.5%

Tracking my goals:

🚂 Get my newsletter earlier in the week: This is my first week getting the newsletter out on a Thursday morning. If I achieve this again next week I’ll consider it complete.

✅ 2,000 / 2,000 Subscribers: (Complete)

🚂 Expand the content categories: Care package is my new segment. If I repeat this next week, I’ll consider this complete.

We’re hitting our goals. Onto another week.

— Alex

Thanks for reading this week’s episode of Grow Faster ❤️

I’ve been in Web3 for 8 years, ETH since $45 and am building on my NFT project Bricktopians every single day.

If you want to join my world, and be a part of a project that grows with me.

Grab a Bricktopian NFT and let me build for you 💯