In reply to my email yesterday, a puzzled reader wrote in to ask:
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How did you initially start your list? Like to get those first few people in the door. I feel like we’ve never been told your origin story to how this list became to be what it is.
Maybe I’m wrong, I’ve only been reading for 2 years, though your list is older then that. And I don’t even know how I got here.
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I’ve been reading a lot about newsletter growth lately, and the above is a frequent question that comes up.
“How did you get your first few subscribers? Your first 100? Your first 1,000?”
The most common answer I’ve read is, “Oh, at the start, I just asked people in my network if they’d like to sign up.”
That is not what I did. For one, I don’t have a network. For another, I don’t like asking anybody for anything. (They might say no, and then what!)
I started my list over 5 years ago.
I checked just now, and it took me 18 months and 5 days from starting daily emailing to my get my first 100 subscribers.
The background of why it took me that long is that I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn, depending on your moral compass.
For the longest time, the only thing I did was write my daily emails, and post them to my website.
I did on a few occasions post something smart and professional in copywriting groups on Facebook. I believe I managed to get two, maybe even three new subscribers that way.
But mainly, I was just grinding away, because like I said, I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn.
My plan was never really to build this email list into anything.
My only vague goal was to get better at writing emails, and to have something to show potential clients as a demonstration of my skill. That was back when I still did client work, which is something I don’t do any more.
And yet, I continue to write daily emails today.
I’m currently reading a book, The Psychology of Money.
It was published a little over three years ago. Today, it has over 43k reviews on Amazon, 32k of them being five-star.
Basically, the book tells you how your own psychology gets in the way of your making money, growing money, and keeping whatever money you’ve managed to make or grow.
None of those are topics I’m interested in at all. But I realized I could make this book more interesting to myself by switching out “money” and switching in “business” or “project.” Suddenly, the lessons became familiar and dear:
– Think long term, and let the power of compounding work for you
– Be okay with a wide range of outcomes
– Realize that you will change — what you think you will value in the future is probably not accurate
So that’s kind of the Bejako origin story, and the explanation of my motivations in driving this newsletter onwards in the way that I do, well into my 6th year with it.
Now, I can imagine that my origin story sounds entirely uninspiring. It’s kind of the opposite of wandering into the wrong room, lingering just a second too long, and getting bitten by a radioactive spider that dropped from the ceiling.
To make up for my uninspiring email today, tomorrow I will tell you a way that, while I still had practically nobody reading this newsletter, I grew another newsletter to a few thousands readers in a matter of weeks, and filled it with quality subscribers.
That’s on tomorrow’s episode of the Bejako Show.
Meanwhile, if you want lessons on success with any long-term project, consider Morgan Housel’s Psychology Of Money, and it’s 32,000 5-star reviews.
If you’d like to take a look, here’s the link: