Because I’ve received feedback that others got value when I shared the struggles from my current personal project, I’ve decided to build this project in public and share my ups and downs openly.

Current Personal Project: Reading Books about Entrepreneurs and Sharing What I Learned from Them via Blog Posts and Audio Podcast

What I struggled with:

• Frustration – Sunday I relistened to everything I created this week about Wayne Huizenga. The content quality isn’t where I want it to be or what I’m capable of. That frustrated me because I’ve put a lot of energy into this over the last three months. I went back and listened to episodes from early May—and cringed at how bad they were. It dawned on me that I’m making progress, but it’s hard for me to see it because I’m doing this every day. I’m in the weeds. I need to focus on improving each day. Over time, small improvements should compound.

What I learned:

• When I meet with entrepreneurs, I listen to their current situation and struggles. If applicable, I share journeys and lessons learned from books I’ve read that apply to their situation. This tailored feedback excites them about the book and my project, and they want to learn more. Not sure how to replicate this broadly, but I’m seeing a pattern.
• I did a five-part series on Wayne Huizenga. I could have stopped at four, but I did a fifth episode focused on my insights and takeaways from the entire book. In the other four episodes, I shared parts of his journey related to specific book sections (e.g., pages 0–100). Creating the fifth episode forced me to zoom out, think about his entire journey, and answer the questions I wanted answers to when I began reading the book.
• Publishing a five-part series on a book Monday through Friday and publishing reflections about it on Saturday and Sunday felt like a good, sustainable pace.
• Adjusting my reading schedule to finish a book in five days instead of seven was beneficial. It gives me two buffer days in case life happens. If I finish on plan, I can get a jump start on the next book and get ahead, which gives me more processing time before I start writing or recording.
• Creating outlines from book highlights and notes is helpful in the distillation process. It takes more time than I’d like, but it improved my distillation process and helped me discover insights.
• Podcasts spread more easily by word of mouth. A childhood friend texted me asking for a link to my pod. I’ve had this podcast for three months and my blog for four years. I never had that happen with my blog.
• I stayed up late one night working on this project. When I woke up early the next morning to start reading, it was a struggle. My reading comprehension and pace were significantly diminished compared to the day before. I didn’t read as much as I’d planned and fell behind on my plan for the week. Being mentally fresh every day is important for this project. I can’t pull all-nighters to catch up.
• Amazon affiliate links on iPhones have a known glitch. For whatever reason, users can't stay in the Amazon mobile app after clicking the link. Linking to product pages opens the mobile app, but the user is quickly redirected to the Safari web browser, which breaks the data tracking of the affiliate link. I learned to get around this by linking to the search result page (example), not the product pages (example). It’s not 100% foolproof, but it’s a good enough hack.

Those are my struggles and learnings from this week!

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!