Happy Birthday: A Founder's Life for Me
(6 Minute Read) What Writing FLFM Taught Me and What It Will Look Like Going Forward
👋🏼 I’m Alek, a repeat founder. I’ve built and sold one company so far. I share what I’ve learned from building companies in 5-minute reads.
Happy Birthday: A Founder's Life for Me
Happy Birthday! Welcome to the one-year birthday celebration for A Founder’s Life for Me (FLFM). I started FLFM to:
Share my experiences building companies. I wanted others to learn and try it themselves.
Grow an audience. I wanted a larger group of people to market my new products.
I shared my experiences. I didn’t grow a huge audience. Most articles end up with about 70-100 readers. Here’s the post from one-year ago where I shared those goals.
I didn’t get exactly what I wanted from this blog. Instead, other benefits surprised me. Today, I’ll share what I gained from writing FLFM every week for the last year, and what it will look like going forward.
Becoming a Better Writer
I’ve become a better writer since starting A Founder’s Life for Me. How exactly? The two things I’ve learned are concision and clarity. These two skills are improving all forms of my communication, too.
Concision.
When I look back and read early versions of FLFM articles, I’m embarrassed. There are run-on sentences that are hard for me to follow. There are two-to-three sentences in a row that all say the same thing.
I’ve always thought of myself as a concise communicator. Looking back, I don’t know that I was. I have room to improve, but I’m far better now than I ever have been.
Clarity.
The articles that took me the longest to write are ones where I hadn’t formed an opinion. When my thinking wasn’t clear, the writing wasn’t clear. In these moments I’ve learned to mentally take a step back and think, “Say what you want to say.” Often, the problem is, “I don’t know what I want to say.”
I’ve learned to ask myself, “What is the goal of what I’m writing?” I start from the top-down. “What is the goal of this article? What is the goal of this section of this article? What is the goal of this part of this section of this article?” And then, as I am writing, “What am I accomplishing with this sentence?” Always having a goal helps me communicate my thoughts with more clarity.
Learning & Documentation
Ask yourself, “What have you learned in the last year?” If you take 30 seconds, a handful of things may come to mind. FLFM has forced me to learn at least one thing every week, and I have documentation to look back to.
Learning.
There were some topics that I felt I already “knew” when I sat down to write. I still learned by writing. The reflection forced me to understand why I held opinions. In some cases, I my opinions needed to change.
For other topics, I didn’t have a clear opinion when I sat down to write. The act of writing itself helped me develop an opinion.
The time I put into writing has helped concepts “stick” better than passive learning. I’ve listened to a lot of content about effective sales, but it didn’t never led caused me to change my day-to-day habits. Do you know what did? Creating my own sales content!
Documentation.
I’ve never had a steel-trap memory. So, cataloguing these learnings has been a huge help. Otherwise, I’d forget the things I’ve learned.
Top-of-Mind: Hey, it’s me again!
Think of your last job. Think of a handful of people you worked with at that last job. Now, ask yourself, “When was the last time each of these people thought of me?” Posting FLFM every week has resulted in me being top-of-mind for a lot of people.
The weekly reminder of “Alek” has contributed to several of my consulting contracts. When people have a problem, and they see me posting, they’re more likely to visualize me as the solution to their problem.
What A Founder’s Life For Me Will Look Like Going Forward
Going forward, I’ll be transitioning A Founder’s Life For Me to roughly a monthly cadence. There may be some months where I post more or less. Here’s why:
Becoming a Better Writer. My writing has improved. I’m at a point of diminishing returns. Writing articles weekly vs. monthly won’t lead to dramatic differences.
Learning & Documentation. Learning and documentation is something that linearly scales with my time writing. That’s still something I’m considering.
Top-of-Mind. The constant reminder of “Alek” has diminishing returns, too. Social media algorithms raise the visibility of your next post if you haven’t posted in a while So, I suspect, posting once per month vs. once per week won’t lead to significant differences in impression counts.
Adding Bandwidth for Other Posts. I don’t want to be the type of person who spams social media. I want to limit myself to post once per week. For the last year, that weekly post has been FLFM. Now, I can free up some of my “posting bandwidth” to share updates about my company and other topics.
Transitioning out of a weekly cadence feels bittersweet. I’m sad to lose the routine of weekly writing, but I’m happy to gain that time back for other things.
As with all things, we learn as we go. I’m treating this new era of FLFM as an experiment. Before FLFM, I’d rarely posted to social media. I’d never managed a newsletter. So, I’ll see how this new experiment goes and get back to you soon.
Shoutouts
I want to take this opportunity for some overdue shoutouts to the friends who’ve supported me in my writing:
Jacob Muccio - I can always count on you to share my content with your network, help me write code, or give great design feedback. Thank you for amplifying everything I do.
Josh King - I would have never thought to write anything myself if not for watching you do it yourself. You’ve also taught me how applicable this content is to people of all backgrounds. Thanks for your inspiration and perspective!
Jeremy Juliane - My secret to learning concision was asking myself, “Would Jeremy read this?” Thanks for being protective of your time and challenging me to respect the time of all of my readers.
Jeffrey Bryant - Thanks for being a sounding board for sales-related content. Having never been in a sales role, it was helpful having you there to validate and improve ideas along the way.
Armen Hagopian - Thanks for teaching me that, despite relevance or family ties, some people will never read what you have to say. It keeps me humble! Let me know if you see this!
#Entrepreneurship #SelfEmployment #Startups #Bootstrapping #Founders
By sharing my experiences, I hope to provide insight and advice to entrepreneurs facing similar challenges. Please leave a comment or email me with any questions.