Welcome to March’s business breakdown. Each month, we take a peak under the hood of my business, discussing:

• Leverage
• Revenue
• Growth

Today, we’ll discuss the results from my recent launch and why this is the last monthly report I’ll send.

The Freedom Meter

The freedom meter measures income sources based on their scalability. 14 months ago, 33% of my total earnings were ‘low leverage’.

Here’s today’s figure:

This year’s aim is 90% high leverage. It’s a slow crawl now that the numbers are getting bigger, but we’re up 2% since the last report.

Let’s chat through the launch.

March net income: $132,727.40

Gross Revenue

The relaunch of High Impact Writing (HIW) grossed $118,000 — the remainder came from my MRR product, the Magnetic Content Masterclass, plus a few coaching calls and course sales later in the month.

The win was wild, and entirely unexpected.

I decided to relaunch to improve the course quality. My original plan was to ‘touch up’ the production. But it ballooned into a complete rewrite after hiring a course expert who made me realise I could do much better.

I ended up changing 90% of the material. I also never liked how it was just video-based — what sort of writer doesn’t write their courses? — So I made two versions, video and written.

This meant we had 7 weeks to rewrite and refilm the course, plus a new sales page and emails (pre and post purchase). The good news is my girlfriend and I pulled it off 15 minutes before the launch began.

The bad news is my hairline will never be the same.

To nail a launch, you need to bring your A game. You have 4-5 days to make a splash. Unfortunately, I had to cancel a lot of my marketing because I was exhausted. And original customers got the course for free, so I expected a quiet result — this was a reputation move, not revenue.

But it panned out pretty well for two reasons:

1. I had a brilliant affiliate team. In addition to customers affiliating, some of my favourite writers got involved: John Bejakovic, Jon Morrow, and Chris Orzechowski — roughly $40k came from affiliate sales.
2. I had unbelievable support from customers. Friends said I should charge for HIW 2.0, but your fans should always come first. Many people publicly supported the product, so it marketed itself.

Those 7 weeks taught me a lot about persistence and hard work, but I also broke a lot of personal rules around habits and happiness — stopping things like reading, relaxing, speaking to friends and more.

Here’s the truth.

As an entrepreneur you can get addicted to speed. But if you can’t slow down and enjoy success, you’re not really a success. Internal metrics are just as important as external. I’m approaching 7 figures yet sometimes find myself less pleased than when I was making my first 6 figures.

You must work just as hard at being satisfied with success as you do achieving it — else you might spend your life climbing mountains without enjoying views. For my next business project, I won’t throw away my routine. I’m playing decade long games anyway.

That said, the next step for High Impact Writing happens in May.

It’s my birthday on the 3rd. To celebrate, I’m holding a Kieran Drew ‘Birthday Bash’, where I’ll interview 5 brilliant writers to discuss how they built their skills, brands, and businesses. If you own the course, I’ll send invites soon. If you don’t, hop in before May.

Let’s talk about refunds.

Expenses

Refunds are part of the package for digital products. Some copywriters suggest not offering them, but it’s a matter of trust. So I increased my refund policy to 90 days because I want people to see how serious I am about helping them write.

The percentage dropped by 3%. We won’t know the final figures until May, but I anticipate an improvement.

Audience Growth

My social game has been shocking.

You can’t optimize for business and audience growth at the same time (unless you outsource your writing, which is a terrible idea).

So I stopped engaging and posting long form content, but I’m back to it now. And I regret stopping. Compounding requires consistency and the mistake people make when they get ‘big’ is they get lazy.

My plan is to keep up with things now. I built a simple system so I can post 3 long-form ideas on 𝕏, LinkedIn, and Instagram simultaneously. I’m not optimizing for any platform in particular because the more complex things get, the easier it is to quit. Plus, algorithms will slowly rub away your rough edges as you ‘follow what works’, despite uniqueness being the biggest predictor of long-term success.

A note on 𝕏.

Growth’s hard at the moment. A lot of friends have given up. But you shouldn’t stop posting when things slow down because anyone can keep consistent when it’s easy. It’s how you respond when things get tough that counts. If it bounces back, you’ll enjoy the next wave instead of miss it.

Why I’m stopping the monthly business report

Last week, I wrote why you should be concerned about the sea of increasing noise.

One idea I shared was the importance of evergreen content.

If you only write about trends and tactics, your content might get noticed more, but it has a shelf life that traps you on a treadmill.

But when you focus on building compounding assets, like an evergreen blog and newsletter, the more you write, the more space you create for future projects (I’ve always wanted to write books and hope to be good enough to do so in 3 years).

This business report has been great for helping me think in public and I love bringing you along for the ride. Hopefully, you’ve loved it too.

But it’s twelve emails per year, which is potentially hundreds of non-compounding emails by the time we both retire on a beach for sipping pina coladas and snorkeling (or more likely for me, reading and Yorkshire tea).

So I’m moving the business report to quarterly.

This should give me space to explore more timeless topics. Plus, I’ve always told you to follow your curiosity, but I lost track of that along the way.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old. But I don’t feel excited by being a writer who’s ideas go no deeper than how to make money writing.

I know some creators talk endlessly about how to make millions with simple words (hint: it’s the fastest way for them to make millions), but it’s a fascinating world out there and I want to share what I’m learning about it.

That’s stuff like mastery, mental models, philosophy, and creativity.

Besides, these are what will help you build something truly special anyway. Business. Writing. Life. It’s all about understanding, thinking clearly, and having a good perspective. That’s how I’d like to serve you best with my content. Hopefully it leads to a more exciting direction for the future too.

I’ll email more about this as I think it through, starting next week with an idea I’m mulling over called ‘incentive drag’.

As always, I appreciate your attention and I’m excited for the journey, wherever it leads us.