back on social (and not hating it)

I started using LinkedIn again. 

It was something I tried last year that petered out after, like, 1.5 posts. 

Every other social media platform makes me want to crawl under my desk and wait for the apocalypse to wipe out all technology, hopefully starting with Instagram, which, in my case, is the exclusive domain of beautiful white lady coaches promising me my first $10K as a new coach even if I have no training and no audience. 

But LinkedIn, on the other hand? It’s text-based and perfect for writers i.e. made for Tarzan.

Plus, there are actual men there.  

(SIDE NOTE: Despite what my haircut suggests about my sexual orientation, I enjoy the company of men both romantically and professionally.)  

I’m digesting people’s opinions and ideas on the future of email marketing, and they are different from anything I’ve read elsewhere. Ideas about newsletter growth, for example, which I’m low-key obsessed with right now. That market is exploding with possibility. When I read about newsletter growth, I can see the future of my business magically unfolding in front of my eyes, like an exciting mushroom trip where suddenly everything makes sense. 

I’ll talk about newsletter growth more soon, promise. 

Today, the message I want to share is simply that when you’re learning a new skill, it’s okay to suck at it for a while.

Most of my posts fizzle out. I mark them in my Google doc, which is code for “no one cares.” Occasionally, I’ll mark a post with a if it got a bunch of comments but that’s rare. 

And you know what? I don’t care that no one cares. It’s just data. 

Imagine if I quit emailing my list every time a newsletter only got 3 replies that were only 3 words long? I’d have been out of business 7 years ago. 

In order to be good at anything, you must first have the courage to suck at it. Please remember that if you’re still getting used to writing emails to your list. 

You will get better. Week by week, your emails will start to improve. Bird by bird. One newsletter at a time. 

It takes intense vulnerability to do something imperfectly out in public, for the first time. I second-guess everything I post. Is this stupid? Doesn’t everyone already know this? AM I GOING TO DIE ALONE?!

But every post gets a little better, a little easier, a little faster. Every time I post something I feel a little bit braver, a little bit less like LinkedIn is an office party and I am just some loser in a Kirkland Signature sweatshirt wondering if I belong. 

If you want to show my posts some love— 

→ here’s my profile and connection requests are welcome
→ here’s a post I thought would slay but actually bombed

The results? 

So far, I’ve been invited to speak at a local business event and they agreed to pay my fee which was not huge but also not nothing. I also received one inquiry about writing email copy, something I don’t offer, but I’ll refer to another copywriter and that always feels great.

Pretty decent for less than a month of posting,  though it’s worth noting that I’m a fast writer who is also highly systemized so all of this only takes me about 10 minutes a day.  

Over to you.

How’s it going with your big January plans?

Don’t be afraid to share what you failed at if you can’t find something to boast about. I failed at Dry January. What can I say? Drinking Patron on ice in the bathtub just isn’t something I ever really wanted to quit. 

The only way to avoid failure is to never try anything hard. 

Doing hard things is basically my middle name so look to my future emails for continuous inspo. (Don’t worry, I’m working on that in therapy.)

Sincerely,

Tarzan “Doing Hard Things” Kalryzian

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