Addictive stories and embarrassing tell-alls from the front lines of online business. Written by reformed girlboss who learned a better way. Read by 10K+ consenting adults.
Reading list for the week
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What you see on Instagram is never Let’s start by stating for the record: My client Sam Vander Wielen paid me for that ad ☝️ but she didn’t pay me to write a whole email about her. I feel compelled. I learned a valuable lesson reading Sam’s book, and you’ll know what it is if you read this entire email, whether you buy her book or not. Sam booked a Newsletter Intensive with me last Spring, to work on her newsletter Sam’s Sidebar (affiliate link). She’s one of those dream clients who doesn’t just trust you and take your recommendations, she executes with precision in a timely manner. I wish I was like that. Sandra will confirm I never take her advice without being a whiny baby for at least three days. Sam also pays on time, runs ads in my newsletter, and refers me to her friends. Like I said, dream client. When she told me the title of her book, my first thought was, “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.” But that wasn’t the only thing that made me burn in the hellfire of business-envy. During my near-decade in business, I occasionally meet people who don’t realize how successful they are, or how rare their level of success is. Sam executed Amy Porterfield’s evergreen webinar funnel perfectly, and built a 7-figure business selling her two thousand dollar digital course on getting the legal side of your online business squared away (affiliate link). That almost never happens, especially not at that price point. It is very. fucking. rare. In our first meeting, I felt compelled to tell Sam, “You know it almost never works out this way, right?” Usually it takes a few devastating failures, niche changes, and unscheduled pivots. Amy’s system is very good but in my decade of being in business I’ve only met TWO PEOPLE* who nailed it on the first try. Sam is one of those people who shot out of the womb knowing exactly what to do. It’s kind of annoying, honestly. But then I read her book and realized something embarrassing: My internal narrative about Sam was completely fabricated. She did not shoot out of the womb hosting webinars and recording podcasts. She’s just a normal-ass person who had a bunch of flops but decided to keep going anyway. She started with a food blog. Then she got a health coaching certificate, started seeing clients, and created her first online course but ultimately shut the business down for reasons you have to read her book to hear about (it’s juicy). In Sam’s words, “Starting a different business before my current one gave me a dry run at starting and growing an online business. My prior business ‘failure’ directly contributed to the nearly-immediate success I had when I pivoted.” All I saw was the nearly-immediate success. Not the embarrassment of two businesses that flopped publicly. Not the emergency brain surgery she had four weeks after her first successful product launch. Not the years of chemo appointments, picking up meds, calling doctors, even administering treatment to her dad as he battled leukemia during COVID, or the terrible loss of both her parents in the same year. Not the emotional whiplash of going from “I’m the world’s smartest!” to “I’m gonna burn this bitch down” every other day. It’s so easy to look at other people’s lives and think, “If only I had their business, then everything would be easy. Then I would be happy.” It takes a ridiculous amount of tenacity to be a business owner. It’s nothing like it looks on Instagram. Sometimes I can’t believe Sandra and I are still standing. I forget to appreciate that we beat the odds every day just by showing up at our desks and doing it. Sam’s book is extremely real about this. But it’s also incredibly hopeful. Her book When I Start My Business I’ll Be Happy is practical and actionable, and entirely unlike any of the forty-five other boring business books on my shelf that I will never read because they are essentially 300-page lead magnets containing three thousand ways of saying “buy my program.” Not Sam’s. Her book is as good as the title, I promise. Whether you buy it or not, let this email be your reminder. It’s never as easy as it looks on the outside. Everyone has a story. Everyone fails at stuff. Everyone has challenges you couldn’t possibly imagine, and days when they would truly rather be working the checkout at Costco. You will too. What matters is that you keep going. And if you need more inspo on that count, buy Sam’s book. XOT
*The other person is Rose Han. I lose sleep thinking about her. Sam seemed to have a hunch about her own brilliance, but I really think Rose had no idea. She thought it just worked like that for everyone.
Kate Northrup’s Good With Money workshop It’s free and I’ll be talking lots about it this month. Kate is someone I spent a lot of money learning from as a member of her Origin Mastermind for two years. It was some of the best money I’ve spent. I am a proud affiliate for her program Relaxed Money.
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Emails, but better.
Addictive stories and embarrassing tell-alls from the front lines of online business. Written by reformed girlboss who learned a better way. Read by 10K+ consenting adults.