Hey there 👋

What's up.

I'm growing anxious by the day.

As the date for my course launch comes close, my anxiety levels are increasing.

I've taken a big bet on this whole "Writing course + community" thing.

I'm usually a small bets person, but every once in a while you have to go big on one of your projects.

At least that's my thesis 🙄

This project has shown the most promise, that's why I'm going big on this.

I want to build the whole stack:

• E-book

• Video course

• Community

• Possibly a job board for writers.

• And even a writing platform for writers to get feedback and showcase their best work.

Yea, I have many plans 🙈

But they need time and focus.

For that, I've even slowed down all my client work.

Had to let go off a few clients just so that I could find time to work on my own products.

This means my revenue will be down for this quarter at least.

I'm ready to take that gamble.

If this doesn't work out then by July or August I will start doing outreach again and find clients to bring the revenue back up.

The only good thing is that I am confident of gaining clients and making revenue through service work.

But the uncertainty around my products gives me anxiety.

I'm super confused about whether this will work or not.

Will I end up making a fool of myself, the effort that I am putting in, will it be worth it in the end or not🙄

This anxiety is tiring, it's stressful.

And that stress leads to procrastination.

Sometimes I just don't feel like working on anything. I push pending tasks to the next day.

I remember in the old days I would keep grinding till late in the night just to finish what I had planned for the day.

I feel like I'm getting lazy, not pushing myself hard enough.

But at other times I tell myself that I'm doing the best I can. Not wasting my time at all, and all my tasks are getting done on time(more or less)

I shouldn't worry about my "efficiency" as such.

And the times when I would grind it late into the night, I would lose all energy the next day.

At least now I getting 4-5 hours of deep work every day consistently.

I guess that's enough.

Enough to build a small, sustainable internet business?

We will find out 🤞

Anyways, let's look at my best tweets of last week.

What do you pay money for?

I'd been thinking about this a lot.

Our real selves are revealed in our purchases.

So I tweeted about it, and got some great answers.

That tweet got 5800 impressions at a 3% engagement rate. Which is quite cool.

Numbers across the board are going down these days. Possibly some algorithm changes.

Anyway.

Answering that question for myself, I spend most of my money on books and courses.

Last week I enrolled in Daniel Vassallo's small bets course and community.

I've been Daniel's fan for a long time. Wanted to join the course as well, but wasn't able to find the time.

For this cohort, the dates worked out well so I bought it.

And tweeted about it 😀

Letting go off clients

As I said, had to let go off a few clients last week.

I tweeted about it, asked how other people do it.

I didn't want to be rude, didn't want to spoil the relationship, but had to explain to them that I need some time to work on my own things.

Got some great answers on how to articulate and handle these conversations.

Many gems here, I've bookmarked this tweet to come back to later on.

This one got 3800 impressions at 4.5% engagement rate.

What works on Twitter

I've seen so many people who just start out on Twitter, post generic advice, and get no engagement.

And there's a reason for that.

Generic advice only works for large accounts like Naval. Not for small accounts like us.

For us, this works:

Weekly reading recommendations.

Stuff I’m consuming:

I'm going through Josh Spector's 2nd Skill session these days.

It's about content curation.

Finding shareworthy content for your audience. It's super cool, do check it out - Josh Spector Skill Sessions.

Stuff I created recently:

I wrote a premium post for my newsletter Listen Up IH. Went deep into the rabbit hole of how the micro-saas Closet Tools became successful.

Do check it out, it's partially pay walled:

Key Lessons from the success of Closet tools — www.listenupih.com

Hello 👋 This is a “key lessons” report for Listen Up Pro subscribers. (You can get the current best deal on a pro subscription on the pro page) We are diving deep into how the micro SaaS app Closet Tools found success. To read the story of how founder Jordan O’

I wrote a thread about the best Twitter content from small accounts I found last week:

Up for a call?

I got on 2 calls last week with my Twitter friends. Just to get to know each other and find out what we are working on.

I have a couple of calls lined up for this week as well.

I would love to get on a call with you and get to know you better. What projects you are working on, how can I help you better.

It would be a fun conversation.

If you're up for it, feel free to book a time in my calendar.

Looking forward to it🤗

Important Information

That’s my time with you today, will let you go now.

I'm trying out a new format for this newsletter. Going deeper into the ups and downs of my journey.

Do let me know what you think.

Just hit the thumbs up/down button at the bottom of this email.

Or hit reply and share your thoughts.

This will give me a better sense of the direction that I should take with this newsletter.

And if you’ve not been having fun with this newsletter, please consider unsubscribing.

I don’t mind.

No hard feelings.

I’d rather you unsubscribe than not open the newsletter.

But if you do enjoy it.

Please do me a favor, please ask one of your friends to subscribe.

It would mean a lot to me🙏

Cheers,

Ayush