Postcard 27: When the end is the beginning.
Hello team,
People say write online to compound knowledge, put yourself out there and let serendipity come to you. Write online to gain leverage over the world.
Those all sound like big abstract words; what the hell do people mean when they say that?
On my last session as a Mentor in Write of Passage, I shared a LinkedIn post about quitting my job. I would've never been able to write something like this before this year, before I got comfortable putting myself out there and sharing more with the world. Before all of the reps, I put in writing essays, and newsletters, and tweets.
What's the point of this? Well, fifty-eight thousand people have read that post so far, which is no big deal since some people can reach millions.
But it's a big deal for me. I had multiple investors add me and reach out and ask if I am raising capital for my new venture. All off of one post.
This is what people mean when they tell that you that serendipity will come to you. This is what they mean when they say you will gain leverage over the world. This is also what they mean when they say you will get better and compound knowledge.
If you can't communicate with the world, tell it what you want, it doesn't matter how good you think your ideas are in your head. You won't achieve your dreams.
So, Write of Passage ended this week, and so did my first mentorship teaching people how to write online and put themselves out there. My mentorship sessions were a whole lot of these examples I just gave you. I wrote a quick thread on my takeaways from WoP.
But the end of Write of Passage left me with a ton of great ideas, and it left me feeling like it is just the beginning of so many great new relationships and threads to chase down.
A few articles from this week:
I wrote an essay, inspired by a tweet, to not part time your dreams. That it is incredibly hard to work for a big company and make your projects succeed. I equated it to this:
"Trying to do both is like being a world-class runner while also trying to be a world-class powerlifter."
Stepping off a Rocketship. Strapping on a Jetpack.
Nick just quit his job. And he is a guy who is very "career" focused. Some strange stuff is happening in the world right now. This is a great post about some of those changes going on in the world and why Nick decided to:
I’m strapping on a jetpack to go exploring.
My good friend Edward reminds us that what we really need is the reasons to do something. The time is always there. By the way if you are into fiction, Edward is writing an amazing story as a series of essays, which is both about the distant future and the recent past. You can follow along here.
I learned this year that social media and the internet can be amazing if you curate your own feed, follow the right people, subscribe to the right newsletters. Don't let the algorithms jam junk into your brain.
Change those inputs and that will change your life.
One meme for you:
Thanks for reading and as always, my inbox is open; feel free to reply to this email if I can help in any way.
Have a great weekend,
Louie