Good Sunday 🌞!
Thanks for opening up another email from me. With the world getting more and more overwhelming, I'm grateful you're still reading Sunday Beam! 🙏
This week is all about:
- What little Avery is up to 👶
- Overcoming my mental hurdle of sharing income publicly 😨
- Cracking early days Audience Building 🔧
🍌 Hello Uncles & Aunties!
I want to give a quick update on my baby girl Avery because I haven't talked about her for a while 🙃.
Avery is 4.5 months now, and she is a ball of joy! She laughs a lot, flips herself now, and we're starting to let her try congee and apple sauce.
She has a strong body which she bends all the time, so yesterday I put a banana next to her to tease her curve, and she gave me this face 😂😂 This girl is hilarious! She has the potential of becoming a comedian 🤭.
Raising a kid is definitely the biggest project in anyone's life. It reminds us about what it means to run a rewarding and sustainable project.
🍎 1) Let's not think too far ahead. Lydia and I are not thinking about what Avery should know by 2 years old, we're focused on doing the right things in the present. Like getting a business off the ground, when we start to get ahead of ourselves, we take on ridiculous pressure and move the wrong needle!
🍋 2) It is all about taking baby steps. We cannot hack parenting. We have to do it every day and let the experiences slowly accumulate. We have done house tour and repeated the same stories dozens of times. Today's progress affects tomorrow's. This is why it is 100x worth it to invest in things like SEO, authentic brand & audience building, and credibility. Hacks make you feel good but the effects don't last.
I'm all about raising kids and building businesses slowly, what about you?
💣 Sharing Income Publicly
💢 I have to admit ... I don't like it when people keep posting their latest MRR (monthly recurring revenue) on Twitter. What's the point other than showing off? I don't need your regular updates!
But I'm not against the action of sharing numbers. I think if you can share the lessons learned along with the numbers, I'm 100% supportive.
Honestly, as transparent as I am, I've been holding off sharing my online income so far. Partly because they're so low as I am just starting out, and partly because I'm not sure how to think about it. What personal image does that project? Will people work out the math and figure they're over-paying? E.g. my early community members get discounts and members in the future might not.
When I came across Monica's Income Report, I was inspired.
I first have to ask myself: what about Monica's blog posts that hit me so hard? Why do I feel inspired?
👍 I felt stuck recently. I wanted to know how I could take Public Lab and #30DaysInPublic further. When I learned about Monica's strategies and attempts to improve her products and drive a higher revenue while being mindful of costs, I was enlightened.
The most important part to me is to understand how she thinks about building her online businesses. While books can teach me theories and good practices, Monica's building in public gives me actionable inspiration because I'm on a similar journey.
🥊 It hit me! I write a lot because I want to influence others like how Monica influences me. That's my purpose. So by sharing my numbers and income, I am letting others pick up actionable inspiration from me. That's who Kevon is.
This is why I'm currently writing my first retrospective & public report for May 2021. I don't care if people stop following me when they see the small numbers, I care more about the people who stay because they enjoy learning from my journey.
🔖 Golden Ticket to Audience Building
🙌 I'm starting to bring in guests to the Public Lab community so our members can learn from them! We had our 1st AMA session with Aprilynne Alter. She really understands the human part of Audience Building so I was super excited to have her answer our members' questions.
"When you first start, no one cares about you." It is the brutal truth. If all you talk about is yourself and what you're building, it is highly unlikely you'll get any followers. In the early days, all she did was identifying content that would be useful for the mass audience and focusing on those.
❗ Then how can you increase your chance of winning follower's hearts? It is all about translating what you're learning into generic business lessons other people find useful.
If you think you're building in public when you share about redesigning a landing page, I'd say "Who cares?"
⭐ You should talk about the decision behind the redesign. What triggered the action? What did users say? Did the new design increase conversion rate? What's the easiest way to redesign? How did you find help on making nice illustrations?
All these are things other people need to go through, so it is highly likely they find it useful and want to learn more from you.
🍀 This is quite simple, but most people don't get it. I'm glad to see builders in #30DaysInPublic nailing it. If you want to see what they're sharing, see this Twitter list. By the way, I launched a new cohort starting July 1st, it is currently on early bird price if it interests you.
💡 Inspirations
Usually this section features interesting read from me. But ... I have been busy creating than consuming so I don't have anything to share here! 😅
A reflection of mine. I get super inspired by builders who are steps ahead of me and share publicly. My journey started with Nat Eliason, then Preetam Nath, and now Monica Lent. I still look at their work very closely.
It is so important to have these "role models" to reference from. I study their work and strategies and figure out my own. This is exactly what the book Steal like an Artist is about. Steal? More like learn. Keep learning from people who are better than you!
P.S. see, the book link above is an affiliate link - something I learn from these online entrepreneurs!