There's a feedback system I use with my children every day that's changed how I praise them (or correct them).

It's called DLP, which stands for Describe, Label, Praise.

Here's how it works (short thread) 🧵 Here's a simple example from coaching youth sports:

Describe the action: "You hustled back on defense"
Label the behavior: "You were very determined"
Praise it: "Your determination is a big part of our success!"

Here's why it works...

I have 3 kids, a full-time job, workout 4x per week, coach baseball, volunteer at church, and spend the majority of my weekend time with my family.

Here's what a normal week looks like 👀

The Simple Time Block Breakdown ⏰
🔴 Work = 40-45 hours, little early/late
🟢 Social = Church, kids baseball, football
🟢 Family = 90% of wknd time and all evenings
🔵 Workouts = 3-4x CrossFit, BJJ, plus playing with boys

A few things to point out and how I work around the inevitable changes of entrepreneurial work, raising 3 young boys, and staying connected to my wife and friends.

I stick to core hours at work between 10a-4p every day except Thursday (BJJ). My best work days are the ones where I go straight from a morning workout to the office. I stay dialed in and get a lot done, which carries to the rest of the week.

I avoid work on the weekends (hence the "event" note) but often write my newsletter late Friday or early Saturday when kids are sleeping. I'd rather work on the edges and keep my weekends free.

My wife and I set our workout times and stick to them. If I want to go to Jiu-Jitsu, then I need to go at 6am. If I'm tired, that's fine, but I don't get to go in the evening instead. I have my time and it's up to me to go.

Speaking of my wife - she's incredible. She homeschools the kids and runs the house day-to-day. There's tension, sure. We are always tired and often feel like we're pushing a boulder up a hill.

We would like more 1-on-1 and 1-on-none time. We're very focused on providing that balance for each other, but it's always a bit less than we planned for. But it's also a season of life with young kids that we are embracing for their joy and energy.

We try to bring friends to our activities, e.g. the farmer's market, workouts, hikes, the zoo, kids games, or host watch parties during football season. I call this "happy stacking" because I'm doing multiple things I enjoy at the same time. Like sitting in an old van at a brewery.

It's hard not to want to do MORE. I honestly want to work more than I do, there's so much energy and momentum in the business. But I also want to spend more time with my kids, and hell I want to train more than I do (CrossFit and BJJ).

That's the biggest challenge
- Fitting in everything I want to do
- Realizing I can't do everything I want to do
- Not comparing to other people's social posts
- Remembering I'm on my own path and timing

One more thing: I have been recognizing and rewiring old beliefs about what the perceived limitations of my own path are, i.e. "guess I'll make less money then."

It's striking a balance between gratitude for what I have (and there is so much to be grateful for) and openness to the opportunities that come my way.

Thanks for reading all the way down. I'd love to hear from other people (especially parents) on how they make a busy, ambitious, but still pretty balanced life happen. Rooting for you all!


Here’s more about how we’re scheduling “parents time off” to balance child care and give each other (especially my wife) some free time.

https://twitter.com/mattragland/status/1683089266442743808

Not gonna lie.

I used to get really bummed out when my 4 year old woke up at 6AM after I had done the "hard work" of waking up at 5AM.

"This is my time! I need to work/exercise/meditate/read!"

I was fighting reality and no one was winning.

So I tried this instead. I decided to make 6-8am our special time as father-son.

He's the middle child and doesn't always get the same attention as the oldest or the baby. I started looking at this time as our golden hour.

We get up, have a quick breakfast, and head out the door.

I ran all the numbers, and I believe 25,000 email subscribers is the "smallest" audience needed to generate $1,000,000/year as a creator.

This is with 5 revenue streams and realistic conversion rates.

Let's dive in ➕ ✖️ ➗ The 5 Revenue Streams, Prices, and Conversion Rates

1. Sponsorships = $1K/email
2. Impulse Products ($100) = 8%
3. Commitment Products ($1K) = 2.5%
4. Coaching = 4 at all times for $2,000/month
5. Memberships & Subscriptions = 3% of list at $200/year

The puzzle piece strategy of content 🧩

How a tweet, post, or short becomes the starting point of an entire business. Think of every tweet you send as a single piece of a bigger puzzle.

It’s an experiment to better understand which pieces of the puzzle resonate with a bigger audience.

Dads → you should coach your kid(s) sports teams.

And when you do, remember these 12 things... 1. Learn every kid's name and the names of their parents or guardians.

No nicknames, buddies, champs, or tigers... say his or her name. It's the most beautiful sound in the world to a person.

Note: I'm going to say parents the rest of the time, but I mean any caretaker ❤️

I'm downloading my writing—and in a way my brain—to ChatGPT.

The internet has already captured my words. I want to recapture it all and rebuild my writing into a tool that works for me.

Quick step-by-step of this simple process 🧵 A couple weeks ago I fed the chat several of my email newsletters and asked it to analyze the style.

Every day I feed a couple newsletters or blog posts into the chat.

Why? I'm developing a baseline for AI to follow.

7 ways podcasters can grow their email list - my favorite is number 5 ✌️

You don't have to do them all, but you should choose one to start immediately. 1: Create a show-specific landing page 📧

1a: Talk about the email list at the beginning (and the middle, and the end). Make it a brief 15-30 second callout, but tell the listener and link at the top of the show notes.

I hate using a mouse when I'm writing 🖱️

So I started using these 10 keyboard shortcuts (on a Mac) to make my writing more efficient ⌨️

honestly, I didn't even know about 7 of these before my research (and # 10 is my favorite)! I'll start with my favorite: word selection(s).

1. Cmd+Shift+Arrow keys - allows you to select text word by word.

2. Opt+Shift+Arrow keys - allows you to select text by the row.

I love doing this for quick text selection!

I've built a career on finishing creative projects — but that has NOT always translated to other parts of my life 😬

What I learned this week about fixing the little things and adopting a "finishing" mindset. [a short thread 🧵] In an episode of @jockowillink Underground he told a story about taking 3 years to put shelves up in his locker.

Was it a big deal? No. It was a little thing. But the accumulation of little things taken care of makes life a lot smoother.

(and btw, I still owe Jocko an email)

https://twitter.com/mattragland/status/1621606018504441856

It's the last day of 2022 🎉

To celebrate, here are 23 ways to grow your email newsletter list in 2023 (in only 8 tweets) 🚀 1. Send at least two emails per week — 1 is topical, 1 is curated.

2. Organize your content into 4-6 primary topics — then you'll need to figure out 8-12 essays per topic to write for a year.

3. Take notes, lots of notes — they become the building blocks of future newsletters.

8 strategies to accelerate your newsletter growth in 2023 🚀

A short thread 🧵 Do the boring things (don't skip this)

✍️ Write consistently
🤔 Share an interesting point of view
📣 Tell people about the newsletter

These are table stakes for the newsletter game — more in this other thread

https://twitter.com/mattragland/status/1576187687567908864?s=20&t=U33LVsKmqbWbIL4jLt3k1A

My 4 Step Annual Review Process 👀

(with personal reflections from 2022) I use a simple memory aid for my review prompts, no matter if it's a day, week, month, quarter, or year.

W.R.A.P.

🏅 Wins
📊 Results
🎯 Alignment
📝 Pivot

More notes in the next tweet 🔽

Men → want to lead your family in a happy, healthy, intentional direction?

Read these 12 books 📚 Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

If you read it—or have read it—this is the most controversial book on the list.

Emphasizes masculine/feminine polarity, the importance of masculine direction and clarity of purpose. Heavy on responsibility to guide the family.

How a one-hour call becomes a month of done-for-you newsletter content 📧

A thread on process and organization 🧵 (which you can steal or hire me to do for you) 1/9 - Define the primary theme before the call. Don't let the talent (client) come in cold.

- What topics are being discussed?
- What 4 sub-topics can become the theme of each email?
- Are there stories, studies, or systems that need to be included?

Come prepared ✅

10 Books Every Newsletter Writer Should Read 🐦 Bird by Bird by @ANNELAMOTT

The chapter on "$hitty First Drafts" is worth the entire book, but the entire book IS a classic. Helps you get over your insecurities and taking the work bird by bird

The most effective way to grow your email list is to make *everything* about growing your email list.

8 examples of extreme focus on list growth that most people don't do. The million sub man himself, @JamesClear. When you click on James's link in bio, it takes you directly to an email capture page.

Not a links page
Not a place to buy the book
Not a way to book him to speak

Sign up for the email list. That's it.

Copy and paste these 5 lines of liquid syntax (code) in your @ConvertKit emails for a better reader experience. {{ "now" | date: "%Y"​ }}

This line automatically updates to the current year. Great for footers, e.g. Copyright {{ "now" | date: "%Y"​ }} or referencing best practices, e.g. People who do this will be successful in {{ "now" | date: "%Y"​ }}.

Don't be too hard on yourself if it's tough to get started with an email newsletter.

Here are 4 mistakes I see people make, regardless of the number of subscribers.

1. Emails are too long
2. Are inconsistent
3. Have no theme
4. Have no CTA

Let's dive in to each 🧵 Emails are too long 🥱

Most emails are too long and not written for mobile. The majority of your opens will be on mobile and should reflect that fact.

Keep your content around 500 words

Look for natural breaks to become next week's email instead of extending the current one

I recently stumbled onto a website called "Farmer and Farmer". It's a short series of thought provoking essays on technology and society.

My favorite (so far) is "The Heart of the Builder" which explores building what people want vs what is best for the future. It's an almost parent-child relationship.

My kids may want to eat ice cream for dinner, but as the parent I know there are better meals (though I also want ice cream).

I was especially challenged by this passage...

Here’s an unconventional opinion. You don’t need many product ideas.

You only need one idea, scaled from $0-10k. Here are the tier levels...

🎁 Free
💵 Low
💰 Mid
⭐ High
🏅 Elite

This is all you need to run a creative business. Here’s how 🧵 My product idea is a (metaphorical) toolbox of productivity skills a person can combine and apply to whatever goal or challenge they face.

Once mastered, it’s like you can “gear up” for the week knowing what tools you need for the job. So how do I scale that?