I don't believe in Low Energy Leads anymore

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Man, am I getting good with the click bait.

“I don’t believe in low energy leads.”

What I mean is that:

I’m not going to write this newsletter for much longer.

I do believe in low energy leads.
I don’t believe in the Low Energy Leads newsletter.

If you want to know why I’m moving away from this brand, that’s exactly what this issue is about.

If you’re here to find clients of your own (I get it—that’s what this newsletter is supposed to be about), try these top past issues:

• So you want low energy leads?

• Where creative entrepreneurs find clients

• How to get word of mouth referrals

Now for another peek behind the curtain…

I don’t believe in Low Energy Leads anymore

Couple weeks ago, I wrote about how my creator business was going (or not going, actually) and a couple months before that, I shared that I put my membership (aka my main revenue) on hiatus.

No matter what I say about my business, people will always hear that the issue is “revenue.”

No. It’s about joyful revenue.

I know how to sell and make money. The problem is that I don’t want to deliver MOST of the things people want to buy from me.

I am quite simply not enjoying the market position I have crafted for myself and that brings us to this helpful chart I made:

In 2014, I decided I wanted to be known for “growth design.”

This was not a google-able term back then. Even the phrase “growth hacking” was only a few years old. Growth as a practice field was just getting going and I was serendipitously early to it.

I started writing about it and speaking about it all over Silicon Valley and by 2018 I was so well known for it, a tech book publisher (O’Reilly) reached out and asked if I wanted to write a book on it.

But I didn’t because I could already tell I was ready to stop talking about it.

Back to my chart, the longer you’re willing to talk about something, the more likely you are to cash in on that thing.

If you talk about anything for at least a year, you can get consulting work around that thing.

But if you want to sell books, courses, digital products, templates, trainings, programs, conferences, sponsorships, something at scale, you’ve got to talk about it for much longer because you need a much bigger audience and you need to be louder about it than everyone else.

This brings us to another eerily similar chart!

The longer you play the game, the more likely you win.

The issue with the Low Energy Leads newsletter is that after 2 years, it has very minimal word of mouth. The signals are just bad. I have to bring in the vast majority of new subscribers and those tables should be turning by now.

The referral share→new subscribes metrics should be more promising. This list should be growing faster from within and my digital products and events should be getting easier to sell.

Could I continue pulling levers to figure it out?

Of course I could!

But I don’t really want to talk about booking clients anymore. I have now solved that so many ways for so many people, I’ve said all I wanted to say. (See chart 1!)

I also started taking my vitamins and I moved out of my mold soaked loft so I’m not even low energy now. I’m pretty high energy these days 😜 

So high energy that I’ve started hanging out with the growth bros again (a story for a future issue.)

My new direction

Low Energy Leads (the newsletter) will continue until early October.

That’s roughly 5 more issues. We’ll tour through some of my greatest hits about booking clients and I may have a couple new, fun deep dives into other creative entrepreneurs I’ve been tracking.

My main focus now will be on Journalists Pay Themselves, a newsletter for reader-funded journalists who are building subscription businesses.

I’m also starting a behind the scenes newsletter of my soon-to-be subscription business called Revenue Rulebreaker (I truly have no idea what you can expect here yet so don’t expect much!)

You can sign up, but it’s very likely I will move you over there anyway because it’s still me writing about growth and monetization and I’ve spent a lot of effort getting this list where it is! You can of course, always unsubscribe and I welcome that because it will indicate I’m successfully repositioning the boat.

Infrequently asked questions

Isn’t this your whole business/life’s work/identity/purpose?
No, it’s just a project.

How are you going to make money?
Not sure yet. I’m still working for Senja on contract (actually there is no contract LMAO) which I am having a ball doing. Come hang with me over there! I do have other inbound opportunities though I don’t want to add more client work.

I am taking speaking gigs and teaching gigs and possibly looking at booking sponsorships for other creators. Other than that, I’m lowering expenses to buy testing time.

What will happen to the past issue archive?
It will stay up for a while at either read.lowenergyleads.com or at lowenergyleads.com.

What about events and quests?
The current quest wraps this Friday! I will probably put a few of the quests up on the shop if you want to run them yourself. The last live event for Low Energy Leads is Q4 Quarterly Planning Party with Devin Lee (Sept 26).

Can I work with you 1:1?
Not right now.

Can I book you for an hour?
No and probably never again. I think I’m done with power hours for good. I do have recs for this though on the marketing coach side if you ask.

Are you a quitter?
Yes, I am! But I’ve never regretted quitting anything (except for Twitter) so I think I make these decisions pretty well :)

Can I request a topic for the last issues of Low Energy Leads?
Yeah! Reply and let me know what you want to see.

P.S. This photo I shared of me at the racetrack on LinkedIn is from another thing I quit. It was taken on the set of the only feature film I art directed, a movie about racing starring Sean Astin and Cheri Oteri. That racetrack is now shut down too though so guess I’m not the only quitter 🙃