Why I Write My Newsletter, Content Ideas, OG CrossFit Workouts
Thursday Three: Episode 7
read time 3 minutes
Here are three interesting ideas you won’t find doom scrolling.
TL;DR
Why I Write My Newsletter (and How I Measure Success)
20 Prompts To Help You Find Content Ideas
OG CrossFit Workouts
Why I Write My Newsletter (and How I Measure Success)
I’ve had a handful of people ask me “Why do you write your newsletter? What’s the purpose?”
And to be honest with you — after years of writing this thing, then stopping, and then writing it again — it’s been one of THE most challenging questions for me to answer.
When I started writing online, my main goal was to build an audience. This involved growing my Twitter following and converting those followers to newsletter subscribers.
So I wrote a bunch of clickbaity stuff on Twitter — some of it was good…a lot of it was okay — and then converted my Twitter audience to newsletter subscribers. I followed this playbook until I had around 15k followers on Twitter. Then, I realized something…
What I loved about writing wasn’t the fact that my audience was growing. It was the authentic relationships I was making with my readers.
The comments people would leave on my posts
The Zoom calls I’d have as a result of something I wrote
And the projects I’d start with the people I had met through my writing
So when people ask me why I write this thing, it’s because it’s a channel to share my ideas and discuss them with people who they resonate with.
Followers and subscribers are no longer my measurements of success. Rather, it’s the replies, comments, texts, conversations, and projects that come out of it — which is a little bit more challenging to measure, but infinitely more rewarding.
20 Prompts To Help You Find Content Ideas
One of the most challenging parts of creating content is coming up with ideas. So here’s a list of prompts to help you out. I’m in idea overload at the moment but will be visiting this list when they dry up, starting with these:
What is the one thing you could give a Ted Talk on?
What is one traumatic life event that gave you superpowers?
What's a bet you'd be willing to make & back up publicly?
OG CrossFit Workouts
CrossFit started in 2000 out of a single gym in Santa Cruz, California. As it started to grow, they began posting CrossFit workouts on crossfit.com. That way, people could follow along all around the world. Those workouts are still live today…
Here are links to some of the first workouts posted on “Dot Com” — as OG CrossFitters would call it.
It’s crazy that CrossFit has been around for 24 years, and the workouts are pretty much the same — lindy AF.
Austin’s Recommendations
There’s nothing I nerd out on more than personal finance. Okay, maybe CrossFit… But I love jamming on personal finance too.
If you’re semi-interested in personal finance, you’ve heard of Mint—Intuit’s budgeting app they recently decided to shut down, which left me scrambling to find a new app!
Luckily, my boss is a huuuge personal finance guy and recommended I check out Monarch Money. So I used it for a month and fell in love with it. They make it super easy to categorize transactions and track your net worth.
I actually like it better than Mint.
If you want to try it out, Monarch is offering a free 30 day trial. Grab it below and let me know what you think.