Welcome to 2025’s Q1 business breakdown.

In these quarterly reports, we peak under the hood of my business, discussing:

• Freedom (leverage)
• Revenue (income and expenses)
• Growth (social media and newsletter)

This one’s a 6-minute read.

Let’s dive in.

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The Freedom Metre

As an entrepreneurial writer, it’s important you protect your time.

Freedom is crucial. Not just because it’s enjoyable, but because it’s effective. We live in an age of infinite leverage—you need space to take advantage.

At the start of 2023, I set a goal to reduce my ‘low-leverage’ income to less than 10%.

At the time, it was at 43%.

Now it’s at 5.15%:

But Q1 was the most time I’d offered, making $38,979.

I ran two offers:

1. A 12-month mentorship (2 clients)
2. An 8-week cohort on creating digital courses (7 clients)

I’ve enjoyed both immensely. Products are great, but close contact with customers is fulfilling. It’s important for your writing too. The best content comes from conversation.

The mentorship offer focuses on strategy. I’m helping entrepreneurs build their writing business and position themselves as an authority in their niche.

I’m not taking on more clients yet.

But I’ll be in touch when I do.

And regarding the course offer, I’ll release a productized version of the material in June.

Let’s dive into the numbers.

Q1 net income: $79,049.36

Gross Revenue

In Q1, I ran an experiment, running 1-2 micro-launches per month.

I committed to 1-2 micro-launches per month.

These are 4-day bursts, 5 emails, with no social media promotion.

Previously, most of my revenue has come from big launches.

But if I continued that process, I’d be bald by 35.

(I’m 33 in 4 weeks. If you missed it, I’m releasing a one-time exclusive course with 33 actionable ideas to help you become a 1% writer in your space. This’ll be packed with cool tips for your business. Hop on the waitlist here.)

The micro-launch model has been enjoyable.

And it’s nice to see monthly revenue increase as a result.

But the coolest part? The leverage game is kicking in.

Aside from the mentorship and cohort offers, I didn’t build an extra asset.

I just repurposed what I had in different formats.

The result?

$67,392—with the only time invested being writing and drinking Yorkshire Tea.

…Which is my idea of heaven.

The blueprint I’ve followed:

1. Find work that feels like play
2. Build a reputation around it
3. Create high-leverage assets

I cover this in depth in my new book Digital Freedom, which I write every morning before the day begins.

Let’s talk expenses.

Expenses

I have two rules for expenses:

1. If it saves me time, it’s worth the dime
2. Knowledge is the best investment

The bulk of my expenses therefore:

1. $2,000 per month for my VA (who is excellent—she came from Somewhere)
2. Roughly $600 on software​
3. The rest on coaching and courses

My VA and I have been together for a year now.

We’ve been working hard on systems and SOPs, and it’s paying off.

For example, for microlaunches, all I have to do is write in Notion. She handles everything else. Sales pages, product batching, uploading, repurposing into content, handling requests.

I can’t stress how helpful and important this is.

You can’t afford to get bogged down in low-leverage admin work. Especially these days, the Internet is becoming more competitive.

Recent software I’ve enjoyed:

1. ​Fyxer.AI auto-manages your inbox and writes first draft replies in your voice. The replies aren’t great yet, I end up rewriting most of it. But it’s good for admin stuff.
2. ​Senja. An incredible product for collecting social proof. A must-have in any writer’s arsenal.

Let’s talk audience growth.

Audience Growth

Newsletter

One downside to selling more is growing less.

In the email marketing world, this is a ‘no shit’ statement. The more emails you send, the more money you make. But I feel like I have one foot in each pond. As an entrepreneur, I love pitching my products.

But as a writer, the bigger my list, the more books I’ll sell.

For now, I’ve reached a happy medium.

2-3 emails per ‘normal week’.

4-5 emails for a ‘micro launch’.

And every email must:

• Have a story
• Be useful regardless of whether you buy

I’m betting big on storytelling. Why? Because AI is going to change the world. But it won’t change human nature.

We crave connection. Even more so as we spend more time with robots.

You will have a serious competitive advantage if you embrace storytelling. I guarantee it. Why? Because storytelling is vulnerable, it’s authentic.

And so most avoid it.

For example, last month, I sent my most popular email to date.

I almost didn’t click send, but I got hundreds of in-depth replies.

​You can read it here (it’s about my experience with magic mushrooms).​

Let’s wrap up with social media.

Audience Growth

I crossed 250,000 followers last month, but it’s been a slow crawl.

I could shake my fist at algorithms. And sure, I bet on X, which at the moment, ain’t great.

But that’s just ego.

The truth is, I don’t want it enough.

I don’t deserve to grow as fast as some of my friends.

I know I could accelerate LinkedIn growth if I comment more and write for the platform (which, from what I can tell, means frying my brain cells to write more dumb).

I know I could grow faster on X if I shared screenshots of mindset quotes and stories of people I don’t care about.

But I’m done doing shit I don’t enjoy.

When I say freedom is my top value, I mean it.

That’s not just a clear calendar. It’s spending every day doing exactly what you want, without fear of falling behind. Or not ‘being enough’.

I’m working towards that goal. It is incredibly difficult, much harder than I thought.

Especially as someone who’s spent most of his life chasing external validation.

If you want to truly love what you do, you must peel away your conditioning like layers on an onion.

Else you just end up building society’s dream.

…Which, I’m starting to realise, is just a prison with pretty bars.

It’s why I tried the mushrooms—it felt like 50 therapy sessions in 5 hours.

That’s not to say I’m renouncing audience-building. If anything, content is what lights me up the most.

But how you grow your audience is more important than how fast.

And the Internet is the best opportunity to build a life precisely on your terms. You just have to have the guts to go for it.

It’s why I quit dentistry to bet on writing. And in July, I’ll hit my 5th year since my first blog post.

I’m thinking a lot about what I want to do with the next 5.

I’ll share more thoughts as they get clearer.

Appreciate you reading,

Kieran