Today is the 100th consecutive day I’ve sent out an email to my subscribers for Casual Marketer. I’m pretty proud of this achievement because when I started this project, one of my overarching objectives was to be consistent. I wanted to put in the work every single day and move this project forward by adding value to my subscribers via email on a daily basis.
And at the 100th straight day, I can confidently say that I’ve achieved that milestone and I’m looking forward to pushing onwards to 200 days and beyond.
This exercise has been extremely challenging, rewarding and fun. There were days that I just didn’t feel like sitting down and writing an email or times when I just ran out of hours in a day, but knuckled down and still produced the work.
The past two days are great examples of this. We’d spent over 20 hours in the car driving to and from Melbourne last weekend and when we got home, my family had come down with the flu. I started coming down with it yesterday and by last night, I was really not in the mood to write – I was literally sneezing so much that I pulled a muscle in my rib cage.
Today is no better. I’m enjoying writing this email because it’s celebratory in nature, but I’ve got a full blown flu right now and I’m feeling pretty poorly. I’d really rather be tucked away in bed than sitting at a computer at this very moment.
But that’s the thing, you don’t meet your goals by taking the easy path. Deciding to start your own side hustle project, a kitchen table business, be a Casual Marketer or what you want to call it, isn’t the easiest thing to do. You’ve decided to walk down the harder path, challenge yourself and go for something more.
You’ve decided that you’re willing to put the work in and at times like this when you’re feeling a bit under the weather, you still need to sit down and do the work.
And that’s the part of celebrating 100 straight days that is the most gratifying because I’ve pushed myself.
It’s also a good opportunity for me to share some stats with you.
When I started Casual Marketer, another one of my goals for the year was to publish 300,000 words. In January, I published nothing because I didn’t kick off the site until February 2nd. Since launch, I’ve published in excess of 135,000 words. Not bad for three and a half months. I anticipate by the end of June that number will probably be close to 200,000, so I’m on track to meet my 300,000 target pretty handily.
That’s all well and good, but one other thing I wanted to do was to get the newsletter to a sustainable level financially. I did some rough budgetary numbers of paid subscribers I was looking to sign up and candidly, I’ve blown way past that number. I don’t share my financials or anything like that, because frankly, my numbers aren’t really anyone else’s business, but what I can say is, this project that I wanted to “sustain itself” is now a healthy five figure per year business and with some promotion and effort, could turn into a six-figure source of revenue. I’m pretty happy with that.
It’s not been all cupcakes and glitter showers though. I’m a bit behind my schedule on a number of key deliverables that I set for myself. I wanted to extend Casual Marketer into a membership site and make some of my courses and things available to subscribers, but I’m at least a month behind on that. The book is done, but there’s a small hitch I’m hoping to get past tomorrow to get that shipping to members early next week.
And then there’s the external marketing… Oi vey.
I really wanted to get a strategy together for growing the business side of Casual Marketer out with some paid and earned traffic. Unfortunately, I’ve just been too busy to get across that. It’s still on the cards and not doing it is slowing my growth, but that’s just something I have to accept.
That’s the thing, because this isn’t my full-time job and I’ve not gone “all in”, then I have to balance things. This is an important lesson. In the past I would have burned the candle at both ends, worked myself to the bone and gotten burnt out trying to get everything done on top of working full time at my job, serving our SEO and Content clients, plus still finding time for my coaching clients.
I didn’t do that this time. I focused on making sure my two main deliverables for Casual Marketer were a priority – the daily email and the monthly newsletter are the things that have to get done. Now when I add something else in, whatever that is, it will become a priority and get done properly too.
For me, in terms of my personal growth, that’s been a huge advancement. I have a pretty high work rate, but I know that to maintain quality and consistency, I need to pace myself. I’ve been able to successfully do that, so that’s something I’m pretty proud of.
Probably the last thing I’d say is how thrilled I’ve been with some of the feedback I’ve gotten to daily emails. The feedback I really enjoy is when someone tells me I made them think and use their brain. I try to entertain and provoke a bit of thought, so seeing that, has been pretty rewarding. In fact, I pretty much get at least one piece of feedback directly from subscribers every single day – I actually look forward to waking up and seeing the feedback overnight.
Most importantly, thanks to those of you who’ve come on this journey with me so far, read my emails every day and take the time to send me your thoughts and feedback. I’d like to make a special shout out of thanks to the people who have stumped up and subscribed to the newsletter as Foundation Members, that’s been humbling and very much appreciated.
Lastly, I want to encourage everyone to set some lofty goals for themselves, push harder than you thought you could, but respect yourself and remember that life is for living, not just working.