Tarzan Kay

<tarzan@tarzankay.com>

May 27, 2025

to you

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Subject:

a love note from Tarzan

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How Online Business Owners Are Using Social Ads to Get More Email Subscribers on Autopilot

Tarzan Kay and Tara Zirker are pictured in a promotional graphic for a free ads workshop, with a sign-up button and text highlighting "trends to dramatically grow your business without breaking the bank."

Next week I’m co-hosting a workshop with Tara Zirker, who I’ve been working with for the last 6 months on my list-growth ads. Meta ads are my main list-growth strategy and one of the main reasons my business is profitable. It’s how I maintain a presence on social media without actually posting. 

Join us live on June 4 →

Replay available

 

A Love Note From Tarzan

I was going to ask my team to publish another rerun this week but instead I thought I’d pop in quickly to give you my heartfelt thanks for the kindness you showed me after I shared about the loss of my brother Quentin.  

Some of you said, “I called my brother after reading your email.” Others spoke of loved ones who also walk in the darker realms, and how my email helped to hold them with grace. 

You sent me poems and songs.

You shared your own stories of the ones you loved and lost.  

You sent flowers. 

You prayed to the Great Love that binds us all to keep the channel between my brother and I open. (That’s an almost-direct quote from this wonderful earth poet Kendra.) 

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard,” said one subscriber, quoting A.A. Milne. How beautiful, and how true. 

I want to thank you for being here through the grittiest parts of the journey. Many of my subscribers have been with me through starting out as a copywriter-for-hire, buying my first car and my first house, birthing babies, getting married and then divorced, losing the house, dismantling my empire, starting a throuple and doing too many drugs, and now through death touching my life for the first time. You’ve been gracious and supportive through it all. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you ♥️

Thank you for seeing my brother’s incandescent spirit, his humour and his complexity, and – most meaningful of all – for seeing the depth of my love for him. The grief is too much to carry alone, and in reading your replies it felt like hundreds of subscribers raising their hands to walk beside me in the exquisite darkness of death’s lonely corridors. 

Again, thank you. 

One thing I’ve learned about grief is that it’s proportionate to the amount we love. A wide-open heart is a vulnerable way to live, but it is the only way I’m interested in living. 

I’m not sure what’s next for me. I’m supposed to be promoting my mastermind Power right now, but I have to be honest about my capacity for leadership. Even a Master Wayfinder like me needs to take a step back now and then, and let someone else chart the path.

Time will tell what that looks like. Grief is its own kind of drug, and it is working on its own timeline. I never know what my capacity will be from day to day. 

I’m lucky to have an incredible and generous team who are capable of making decisions without me, even stepping in to facilitate on the days when grief, that merciless dominatrix, needs me to submit fully to her will. 

Thank you for your patience. 

Thank you for your replies. 

Thank you to everyone who said, “This needs to be a book.”

As one subscriber who said it best:

Akal Akal Akal 

~ Tarzan

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Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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Just One Link This Week

️  Growth Currency is a newsletter I strongly recommend if you want to stay on top of the newsletter industry. It’s written by Dylan Redekop, who is an honest voice I trust in the space — and you know how persnickety I am about people in the business growth world. Great for solo operators and small list superheros.

️  Okay, fine two links. A reminder I’ll be co-hosting (read: sitting back and mostly listening) a Facebook ads workshop with Tara Zirker. I’ve been in her program Successful Ads Club for 6 months, and it’s helped me understand my ads much better, gather my own data, and given me bespoke support when things go pear-shaped.

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Tarzan is an amazing teacher if you want to write business copy (especially email) that supports your business without being spammy or manipulative. 

Sonia Simone, cofounder of Copyblogger


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