Hi friends,
As always, post-Halloween, we’re in full pre-holiday swing. If you don’t know, I’m based in Australia, so when the pumpkins come down, there’s no Thanksgiving to look forward to. I put the tree up last weekend and ate my first fruit mince pie of the year, and I’m sort of halfway done with shopping already.
I’ve broken out the August Burns Red cover of Carol of the Bells, so you know it’s seriously festive:
But, really, I just want to enjoy a slower year next time round. I want to just wake up in the morning, sip a coffee, have no plans. I want to bake something that smells like Xmas; I want to go on long winter walks and have hot chocolate after. I want to talk to the friends I’ve been seeing for so long through screens and chats on my phone.
So, here’s the real reason I’m writing this. Thank you, thanks for being my people this year. It’s been a funny twelve months, a bit bumpy, but I’m glad I didn’t have to navigate it alone.
But really, I hope your November is going well; I hope December is good to you, and whatever you’re working on, I hope it goes your way. And if you want to go for a walk, chat, or sit on the couch and eat too much and do nothing, I’m here. I’d love to hear what’s been happening in your world before we hit the new year.
Have a Merry Christmas, everyone. Here’s to the soft year to come, and spending more of it together. Lots of love.
The Founder Voice Audit (10% off for Westenberg readers)
Sunday, I finally got the offer page for SELF sorted. It had been on my mind for a while, and the solution was to get specific. I’m probably most excited to open my Founders Voice package.
This is for founders, CEOs, and investors who want a compelling and powerful brand voice. I’ll read and analyze every piece of writing and speaking you’ve done publicly and explain how you sound to your market right now.
You’ll be left with clear instructions on what you should say and how you should say it.
This is a one-off, flat fee of $5,000. It’s not a long-term engagement. After we agree on your voice, you can either: use the playbook as-is, undertake a Positioning Sprint to align the broader narrative within your organization, or come back to me as a monthly retainer client to start writing.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you can get 10% off and pay just $4,500. Email me: joan@thisisstudioself.com
Half my posts this week were all about telling stories as a founder – from origin stories to venture storytelling and why you (sorry) are not Steve Jobs. The Founder Voice Audit is essentially the hands-on 1:1 version of those posts.
What I’m thinking about
Doomerism (and Bobism). Wednesday night, I started watching Bob’s Burgers again. Bob’s way of viewing life – doom and gloom, predicting bad outcomes – resonated with me too. I also live with that kind of dread running in the background, feeling like it’s all about to go to hell. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I really don’t. Easy to say in my journal. Harder to live up to. At the same time, the Belchers have so much love and joy. They honestly care about each other, and they make the hard times work. Where I tend to act out of fear - the fear of having another kid, the fear around where the economy’s going to go, etc. I think this week needs to be about…courage, more than anything else.
Taglines. Last week, I wrote about setting a newsletter tagline to focus on a one-person, billion-dollar business. On Tuesday, I decided it was a bad tagline. On Wednesday, I wrote an essay about the coming of one-person unicorns. So, not entirely abandoning the concept. Just the tagline itself. I’m still thinking about how best to sum up my vast range of Things I Give A Shit About and bundle them into a blog I’ll wake up excited to write every day.
Growth. I wrote that growing this Substack should be one of my key metrics this week. Need to create a free email course, I think. Should SELF also have a Substack? I mean... probably. Still tossing up the idea. If I do it, I’ll call it SELFONOMICS.
Thursday and Friday were a good shout. On Friday I finally made myself take an Uber into Surry Hills for some Joan time at PCP. A BKE roll, a maple almond latte, and a morning of editing. Lesson learned: getting time on my own matters, and I don’t need an excuse.
What I’m saving
I spent the week bookmarking sales advice. I can’t imagine why…
Eric Nowoslawski. An X Article on testing offers with one-line cold emails, which his team calls “The Gauntlet.” The email is a single line asking whether the offer would be useful. If nobody replies, the offer failed, because there was no first line or social proof to get wrong. He sends each version to 1,000 people before judging it.
@dickiebush. Outreach is the most reliable way to win service business.
@jsngr. You can slop-clone anything now, but a clone only copies a point in time, not the original ideas behind it.
What I’m working on
SELF. New offers, finally. Besides the Founder Voice Audit, there’s a two-week Positioning Sprint for leadership teams who can’t agree on who they sell to or why they’re different, plus an ongoing retainer for founder thought leadership, company content, and crisis comms.
Books. I spent Friday morning editing Permissionless and Heretics for Hire.
The 30-day challenge. One video, one run, and one fast every day until December 4. I posted four videos to the Substack this week (they’re listed below). I’ve also swapped Descript for Tella, which has made the editing much less painful.
Last week’s essays
The One-Model Market: Why Every Consumer App Eventually Becomes an Ad Company
Meta’s advertising revenue hit $63.06 billion last quarter, meaning a staggering 97.6% of its $64.60 billion in revenue came from showing consumers a buttload of ads.
Why Every Startup Needs an Origin Myth
Every business has an origin story. Either the founders themselves create it and tell it, or their customers, employees, and reporters will cobble together a version from whatever’s available. The la…
If You Want To Raise $10m In 2027, Read This
I. By the end of 2023, the U.S. venture community had amassed around $303 billion in dry powder while money market funds totaled over $5 trillion. To founders, this felt like a drought. And to a certa…
The Great Content Hyperinflation
When German hyperinflation peaked in autumn 1923, the price of an entire wheelbarrow full of paper currency had fallen so low it couldn’t even buy a single loaf of bread. People brought their pay hom…
If You’re 21 And Terrified, Read This
The job is this: You’re twenty-one, which means you’re not a beginner, but you’re not at the end either. You’re hanging off the edge of a cliff, somewhere in the mi…
Thanks for reading. If one of these essays was useful, forward it to a friend.