Welcome to September’s Monthly Memo.

If you’re new here, each month I share my income, expenses and what I’m working on now.

This month I lost $26,536.

Grab a cup of tea, let’s chat through why.

The Freedom Metre

When I was a dentist, I hated how my income was tied to my time. As a writer, I began tracking leveraged income—scalable assets—because what you measure you improve. We began the Freedom Metre in January 2023. I’d made $89,360.77, and 35.82% was low leverage.

Today’s figures:

Let's dive into the numbers.

September’s income:

Gross: $15,096.26

Expenses: $41,632.47

Net: -$26,536.21

Income breakdown

• Products:
  • Social Selling Simplified: $8,214.66
  • Digital Products: $4,962.75
  • Consulting: $500.00
• Affiliate sales: $1,418.85

Despite the loss, I’m proud because this month’s income cost almost zero time. I am focused on my book, Magnetic Writing, so avoiding heavy money-making projects.

For Social Selling Simplified, I hired an expert to deliver the training.

And Senja paid me a bonus $1,000 for an earlier promotion.

The majority of product sales came through a new e-book I built called The Business of Writing. It was my first paid ads funnel iteration. I’ve written more about this below.

Let’s take a look at the expenses.

Expenses:

Notable Expenses:

• One-off/Education: $35,204.71
• Monthly Running Cost: $2,555.99

I hired Jordan & Diana Parker (who delivered Social Selling Simplified) for a year of support. We worked together on a monthly basis previously. But I want to get good at paid ads and coaching, and they are fountains of knowledge with both.

So I paid for a year.

It’s a good win-win.

I saved several thousand dollars, and we deepened our relationship, knowing we have a 12-month timespan to build something great. Year-long commitments with your clients are a great way to serve fewer people, but better.

You might be wondering why I feel good about losing money. I explain more in the final section of this email.

First, let’s chat about audience growth.

Audience:

Gained followers:

• X: 352
• LinkedIn: 125
• IG: 23
• Threads: 40
• YouTube: 43
• Substack: 23

Social media has been slow and steady. I love it. Chasing an algorithm makes my skin crawl these days. I want everything in my business to be a “Hell Yeah”.

An interesting observation:

Multiple people reached out to work with me this month. They highlighted ‘big names’ in the creator space and how their content was repetitive, shallow, and uninspiring.

It reinforces a message I’ve been banging on about:

Making an impression is more important than the number of impressions.

Growth is good, but how you grow is more important than how fast. Especially today. In an age of infinite noise, the more real brands win.

I just started posting on Substack, but have no intention of splitting my focus. I have hundreds of emails and thousands of tweets to repost. It’s why writing is powerful. Every word is a robot that will work day and night to build your business. Make them work harder.

YouTube is also going well.

I’m very much a beginner, but I love speaking to my audience in a different way. I’m slowly iterating now that I’ve recorded 10 videos.

Newsletter:

Total readers: 32,493

New subscribers: 662

Unsubscribes: 979

Net growth: -317

One downside of less social media traffic is fewer email subscribers. But it’s cool. Each month, I grow more confident in my newsletter. It seems few brands take theirs seriously, which is madness.

Your job as a writer is to build a world so that when people find you, they never want to leave. The aim is not to be the writer for everyone, but THE writer for someone. Email is where that magic happens. It is your inner fortress, and should be treated as such. You want a tight list of raving fans.

That said, I’m working on more growth mechanisms. So let’s talk about the paid ad stuff.

3 moves I am making

Move 1: I built my first paid ads funnel

I have always relied on ‘free’ traffic. But social media is not free; you pay with time. And I’m getting more grey hairs these days.

If I can get faster results using leverage, I am in.

So I built an e-book called The Business of Writing. It is an improved version of an email series I shared last month. I added upsells and bumps using my other assets, and wrote a quick sales page to replace the “thank you” page on my lead magnet, the SUCKS framework.

Then I paid $2k for an ad with Justin Welsh.

We made $1,807.10 back so far.

It didn’t break even on round 1, but I’m happy considering it took a few hours to set up. We’ve reduced the cost per lead significantly. I’m now adding more leverage with an improved welcome sequence, pitching my other products. Each month should become more profitable.

Importantly:

This turned 46 subscribers into immediate buyers.

And those who buy once, buy more (if you prove you’re worth investing in).

I have 100% confidence that some of these customers will invest in my future offers, and all I need is an extra $192.90 to say I am growing my audience for free.

It’s fun to learn a new skill, and I’ll share more as I figure it out.

So, what about bleeding cash?

Move 2: I’m reinvesting heavily into the business

And it feels great.

Because I am not freaking out about seeing the numbers go down.

Classically, I have a huge scarcity mindset. I’m frugal, and my original life plan was to save and reinvest heavily into stocks and shares.

But my attitude has changed.

I’ve always known that business has a higher ROI than index funds. But I am in no hurry to get rich because my dream life is a simple one (write, read, walk, eat, in good weather with good people).

But when I realised that money is energy, it felt like having a rug pulled from under me. I don’t want to save cash for some distant future. I want to spend it to advance my mission. I want to make more of an impact.

And I want to look back when I’m old, knowing I had the balls to bet on myself as a writer.

On that note…

Move 3: I’m writing weekly ‘essay’ style emails

I love long-form content. But it is not optimal for sales. Short, frequent emails grow your business best. But I want to write stuff my kids would be proud to read. I don’t get the same feeling when I write content without depth, so I asked myself:

Why not do what you want?

The best writing comes when you scratch your own itch. So I set an experiment: 12 emails that take on deep, important topics on my mind.

I’ve posted 2 and written 4 more.

So far?

It is going f**king fantastic. I am having so much fun. Even though I spend my first 4 hours on the book, I can’t wait to write essays in the afternoon. I’ve almost doubled my writing time without forcing myself.

It’s an important lesson on success:

Follow your curiosity.

Because it makes work feel like play.

It’s too soon to assess the impact of deeper emails. But the early replies have been fantastic. Relationships take time to build, so I’m interested to see what happens in a year.

It reminds me of something I wrote on my whiteboard 5 years ago:

The longer you wait, the bigger you win.

With YouTube, Substack, weekly essays, and Magnetic Writing—it feels like 95% of my effort is on the long game again. Which is precisely where a writer should be. Leverage rewards the patient.

To your freedom,

Kieran