My First Quarterly Review in 2023 | RP 90

Hey friend!

Welcome to Rox’s Picks — a weekly newsletter that applies history to business, technology, and media.

Last week’s newsletter had a 45.8% open rate. The top link you clicked on was the book 12-Week Year for Writers by A. Trevor Thrall and Brian P. Moran. Welcome to the 8 people who joined since then!

Hallo from Markham 🇨🇦! The weather has been warm this past week. I have my iced latte in hand. I’m wearing shorts. Life is good.

This week’s newsletter is different. Instead of an industry analysis, I’m doing a recap of my first quarter spent writing and building this newsletter full-time. I’ll take you behind-the-scenes of the newsletter and outline my broader vision for it. I’ll also share a new format I’m testing out to make sure it’s as valuable as I can make it each week.

Before we dive in, a quick note on the purpose of these reviews.

As a professional practice, I’ll publish three quarterly reviews and one annual review each year. These are meant to help me reflect on my work, but also to document my business journey, so you can support and help me build this thing!

And with that, let’s get into it.

My Q1 2023 Review —

This year, I committed to doing everything I can so I never have to work for anyone else ever again. Based on these, I came up with my main objective for 2023 when I did my annual review: Kickstart my media company.

But in January, even after saving up, preparing, and honing my skills as a creator and an operator over several years, I still didn’t know what my writing would be about. Neither did I have a broader vision for my professional life. All I knew was that:

1. I enjoyed learning about history and using its patterns and lessons to make informed business decisions.

2. I didn't want to spend two years getting an MBA.

3. I enjoy writing and have always wanted to do it full-time.

I knew that I wouldn’t figure it out by talking or thinking about it; I needed to publish and put my work out there. This thinking informed my key results for the year:

1. Publish at least 40 pieces of writing, along with 40 Twitter threads

2. Have 10,000 subscribers with a 50%+ open rate by the end of the year

3. Make $20k in revenue by the end of the year

I then gave myself a quarter to focus on each piece of the media business puzzle:

• ✅ Q1 ’23: Content. Figure out what to write about and commit to a publishing cadence that will allow me to produce 10-12 pieces of writing each quarter.

• Q2 ’23: Growth. Continue executing on Q1 + pick a growth channel and get into a regular distribution routine.

  • Goal: 1,000 subscribers with 50% open rate

• Q3 ’23: Growth. Everything in Q2 + Publish 3-6 long-form pieces as part of an essay collection. Prepare to monetize with sponsorships (surveys, CPA campaigns with existing affiliates, media kit, sell initial sponsorship spots.)

  • Goal: 5,000 subscribers with 50%+ open rate.

• Q4 ’23: Monetization. Everything in Q3 + sell out sponsorship spots for the rest of the year.

  • Goal: 10,000 subscribers with 50%+ open rate + $20k in revenue.

Now that you know what I’m aiming for, here’s how I did in Q1.

Q1 Goal: Figure out what to write about

Summary

I knocked this goal out of the park. I hit my goal of publishing 10 pieces of writing. As a result, I figured out the categories I wanted to write about (business, tech, and history) and how I wanted to write about them (weekly newsletter, then long-form essay collections). As a bonus, I developed a broader vision for my career: building a media company.

• My audience currently sits at 582 subscribers with an average open rate of 47.6%.

• My goal for Q2 is to hit 1,000 subscribers with a 50%+ average open rate.

Context

I applied a simple strategy for figuring out what to write about:

1. Pay attention to what I already paid attention to

2. Get others to pay attention with me

I began with history. I read Will and Ariel Durant's Lessons of History and after that, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. This led me to publish my first official essay of the year: "The Paradox of Progress”. While I’m incredibly proud of it, the writing process itself took a frustratingly long time — almost the entire month of January! I knew I wanted to publish more frequently so I shifted gears.

Instead of publishing a long-form essay every 2-3 weeks, I revived Rox's Picks, my weekly curation newsletter. The weekly cadence has allowed me to devour articles and publish ideas on a variety of topics consistently and sustainably.

This led me to write about my interest in business strategy. I began with an examination of the basic premises of Clayton Christensen’s disruption theory, followed by a more nuanced commentary of it, featuring for and against disruption theory.

Next, I applied this new knowledge to current technology. I took on a side quest to understand AI's past and present development. I’m not too interested in AI, so I left that exploration there.

Finally, I explored what led to the mass adoption of new technologies. This led me to study modern business models. I became particularly interested in how advances in technology forced the audio, video, and film industries to adapt.

I ended the quarter with an analysis of what is arguably the most successful entertainment company of the 21st century, Disney, and its synergy with Marvel.

I feel comfortable moving into the next stage of building my media business: growth. The channel I’ll be focusing on is text-based social platforms: Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve already begun publishing threads on Twitter and reposting them as carousels on LinkedIn. I’d like to get into a cadence of publishing two Twitter threads and LinkedIn carousels each week.

I’m also studying classic copywriting books like The Boron Letters to help me write more effective copy.

What’s next: Rox’s Picks as a 10-minute MBA every Friday

I don’t want my newsletter to be just another curation of links I find interesting. Instead, I want it to be an extremely timely, culturally relevant, and historically informed body of work. I want to publish great stuff consistently so that new readers will go back to read back issues of the newsletter!

In the preamble to "The Paradox of Progress”, I listed a few questions I want to answer in my writing:

• Why is crypto and blockchain such a breakthrough technology (or not)?

• What is web3? And when did the other “webs” happen?

• What problems are crypto and blockchain solving? What’s the scale of these problems?

• How do these new technologies affect the lives of regular people like you and me?

I still intend to answer these questions. But to answer them well, I need a deeper understanding of the history of business, media, and technology.

With this in mind, expect a continuous reinvention of the newsletter.

The work won’t ever stop.

But at least for the next few months, Rox’s Picks will be a weekly 10-minute MBA. Each week, I’ll share:

• One or more trending topic or current event in tech

• One or more evergreen business concept, pattern, or case study

• One or more wildcard idea from entertainment, media, or the liberal arts

As of January 2023, growing this newsletter has been my full-time job. A sincere thank you to YOU for coming along for the ride. I appreciate your feedback, patience, and support throughout the experiments and tweaks as I build this newsletter and this business in public.

I’m looking forward to all these new experiments — and of course, I’d love your feedback all along the way

And with that, it’s time to get back to work.

😉 You're welcome

A selection of fun links & interesting recommendations.

• 🤓 Engelsberg Ideas. From the website: "Home to great writing from the world’s leading thinkers on history and culture, featuring essays, historical portraits and regular podcasts." I recommend starting with "The Intelligent Use of History" and "How 1970s California Created the Modern World".

• 🎵 Disney Goes Classical (2020). In this album, London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs classic versions of the instrumentals for iconic Disney films like Aladdin, Lion King, and Frozen. I kid you not — I almost cried at the first notes of "A Whole New World" because it sounds exactly like the original. Just pure auditory delight, if you’re a grown-up Disney fan like me.

• 📺 This is me being deep and mysterious in museums. I love spending entire days at museums. I’m the type to read all the plaques, though, so I usually go alone.

• ❓What are some must-sees and do’s in Tokyo in July? I’ll be there for 4 days. I love food and will eat almost anything. The Studio Ghibli Museum and TeamLabs exhibit are already on my list. Looking forward to your recommendations!

Have a great weekend!

Stay strong, stay kind, stay human.

Till next week,

roxine