Behind the Scenes of Running the Brainwaves Platform - Q4’Y1
Quarterly Update
Hello!
Welcome to the quarterly update for the Brainwaves platform. As another quarter draws to a close, I’m pleased to present our comprehensive update. In the following, I’ll walk through quarterly highlights, discussing successes, obstacles overcome, and the exciting opportunities that lie ahead. I’ve built this platform on the value of transparency, so I’ve compiled this piece to give you a clear picture of where we currently stand and where we’re headed.
A Key Insight into Producing Content: Balancing Effort and Reward
A quote I heard recently goes like this, “People choose the paths that give them the greatest reward for the littlest effort.”
I thought that was an interesting perspective on the value structure of why we do what we do in life. So, like always, let’s talk about how this relates to running a content platform.
Content creation is a spectrum. See below:
As you can see, the best tasks are those with a low effort that provides a high reward, similar to the quote above. For instance, this could be posting on Reddit and going viral, driving hundreds of followers to your platform. But, these tasks are few and far between.
Many tasks fall into buckets #2 and #3, where effort directly leads to reward. For instance, the rebranding process I went through last quarter was a high-effort, high-reward affair. Posting daily on Twitter has been a low-effort, low-reward activity.
Yet, it’s difficult to determine the difference between tasks in buckets #2 and #4. Let’s touch on the topic of rewards for a second. What does a reward mean for a content platform? Well, it could be a variety of things: new subscribers, increased views, sponsorships, interviews, money, etc. Yet, for each one of these, it’s hard to draw a straight line between a task and the reward. For instance, say I start working really hard one week on marketing. Who’s to say that I will get any reward for that?
That’s why, when it comes to content platforms, it’s difficult to work in buckets #2 and #4 because the guarantee of a reward is uncertain. If this were a job, and I was working towards my bonus, I would be pretty sure my effort would correlate with a reward, but since content platforms are not this linear, it’s difficult to jump to these conclusions.
So, what should you do? By this logic, you should primarily focus on low-effort tasks as they have the highest probability of reward for effort.
Yet, in most scenarios that I’ve experienced, low-effort tasks completed over the long run won’t drive lasting value. You must have a mix of low- and high-effort tasks to succeed.
Broadening this discussion to life in general, you need high-effort tasks to drive your life and expand your horizons. Why do people go to college? It’s a high-effort, high-reward activity. Finally asking out that girl you’re scared to talk to and eventually will get married to, that’s a low-effort, high-reward activity, etc.
Thanks for listening to my short monologue, and with that, let’s get into the quarterly update.
Brainwaves: What Happened This Quarter?
This quarter involved quite a bit of branching out when it came to Brainwaves content. To begin, last quarter I rebranded from Insights, Innovation, and Economics to Brainwaves. Since then, this quarter has been full of figuring everything relating to this transition out.
It feels almost like I restarted from scratch. Every road I had previously been down with Insights, Innovation, and Economics I had to go down again with Brainwaves: I had to continue redesigning all of my marketing material, figure out new social channels, continue broadening the reach of my content, and my platform, and more.
It’s been a great journey of rediscovery and renewal. I’ve become much of a graphic designer this quarter with all the work I’ve put into the website, marketing, infographics, the new Instagram account, and much more. As someone who naturally sits in Excel and PowerPoint for a living, this is right up my alley.
Articles You May Have Missed This Quarter:
The Kessler Effect - Space debris poses a large threat to future space commercialization efforts, dramatically increasing the possibility of a collision.
Current State of Nuclear Energy - Nuclear energy is continually developing as countries shape and reshape policy, with significant developments each day
Book Report: 7 Powers - Explaining the 7 Powers framework, essential for long-term business value creation and capture
Luck, Timing, and Success - Determining whether luck or timing (or a combination) is more integral to your success
Mergers & Acquisitions - Dissecting the common rationales often cited for mergers and acquisitions using economic principles
Space Commercialization (Part 3) - Identifying the backbone of space commercialization, specifically space infrastructure, space laws, and space economics
Externalities & Decision-Making - Every decision we make has consequences and externalities associated with it. Understanding these helps us make better decisions
The Power of 1% - A flawed, overhyped framework of continuous improvement that has solid foundations with too much historical extrapolation
Value Proposition - Each business needs to propose value to their potential customers in order to attract them to buy their product/service
Geothermal Energy - Introducing the subject of geothermal energy and its potential to be a large source of energy in the future
Veblen Goods: Demand for Luxury - Luxury goods have an abnormal demand profile, yet we can still garner some economic insights from these consumption patterns
We’re All Dying - Looking at life from the lens of death to see what we can learn about ourselves and our eventual goal
Personnel Economics - Discussing how people should assess potential employment opportunities to achieve the best outcome
Brainwaves: By The Numbers
Significant progress has been made this quarter, with a strong uptick in subscribers at the very end. I’ve grown 24 subscribers since last quarter (around 40% growth) which is huge. Having more subscribers helps increase the chances that someone benefits positively from my content each week. I hope to continue this steady growth trend in the next quarter to come.
Growth has majorly stabilized over the past quarter, with open rates continuing to be 40%+, average views between 50-100, and my average number of words per article continuing to be 2,500 - 3,000. With more subscribers, these trends might increase, but it seems as though I’ve found my place in the market.
It’s been the first quarter of The Saturday Morning Newsletter and performance has been very consistent. Each newsletter ranges from 1,400 - 2,000 words and receives around 40-60 views which is super solid. I’m excited to see how this project grows in the coming quarters, especially given some of the updates coming to the content structure.
The Twitter account has been on a tear this quarter. One of my posts went viral this quarter, achieving over 700 views, a huge milestone. Views went up this month, but engagements went down (on average) over the same time period. Not sure what’s the rationale behind this, but I guess I’ll take it? It’ll be interesting to see what happens next quarter.
The website has been slowly puttering along, with a large blip when I went viral on Reddit. This was better than expected as Google search has a proverbial “chasm of death” where they don’t push search traffic your way for the first 6-12 months to make sure your website is legitimate—I believe. Hopefully we’ll see significant growth in the next quarter or two.
Last Quarter Goal Execution
1) Dive into my unique brainwaves each day, write about them, and publish my in-progress views each week, hopefully making a positive impact in someone’s life each week
Success.
It’s been a fantastic quarter from a content point of view. I recently finished writing the year-in-review post (out tomorrow), which is one of my favorites I’ve ever written. As for making someone’s life better each week, I hope that continues to happen, but quantitatively that’s extremely difficult to measure.
2) Curate an experience that readers enjoy, one that makes them want to return for more
Success.
As this platform continually grows and develops, I’m figuring out how to cater my content to my readers more and more, hopefully creating more of an enjoyable experience for each and every one of you.
3) Subscriber Goal In 3 Months: 80
Success (ish).
We made it to 79 subscribers, just 1 away from our goal! Honestly, I didn’t expect us to reach this so I was super astonished when we began to gain momentum and the subscribers continued to funnel in.
4) Drive views to the new website
Neutral. I didn’t fail, but I also didn’t succeed.
The website did not receive as many views as I had hoped, but there are some solid plans in the works. Granted, the average number of users per week is trending positively (which is a good sign for the future).
5) Execute the new marketing strategy
Success.
With the recent success of the Twitter account, this marketing strategy seems to be going well. I’ve been investing slightly more time in marketing to extend the reach of my content. In addition, I’ve been providing more differentiated content this quarter which has had better reception online.
6) Get the new Reddit account up and running
Neutral.
The Reddit account is up and running but I haven’t been good about posting regularly. From the limited posts that have happened, the reception has been decent, but nowhere near the previous success I had.
Goals For This Quarter
1) Dive into my unique brainwaves each day, write about them, and publish my in-progress views each week, hopefully making a positive impact in someone’s life each week
This goal is the first and most important goal of this platform and the reason that I started this journey in the first place. I view this platform as a great excuse to dive into my unique views on some of my favorite topics, trying to understand and constantly improve my viewpoint on each subject.
I created this platform as a way to produce content surrounding each subject I’m interested in. I subscribe to the mantra that you learn more about a subject when you have to teach someone else about it. Through the Brainwaves platform, I’ve created an artificial obligation to produce content each week, meaning I’m building in time in my schedule to learn about new topics that I might not have made a priority before now.
This platform also allows me to publish my in-progress views on each subject I learn about each week. This is a great opportunity to get feedback from readers who maybe know more about these subjects than I do or maybe they have a unique viewpoint that I haven’t considered.
Surrounding this entire process is the pursuit of making a positive impact in someone’s life each week.
2) Curate an experience that readers enjoy, one that makes them want to return for more
The goal of this platform is to create an experience that readers enjoy so much that they want to continue coming back each week for more and more content. Now, that’s an incredibly lofty goal, but one I continue to strive towards each week.
If you have come to this platform, but haven’t enjoyed your experience thus far, please let me know (brainwaves.me@gmail.com). I’d love to learn about your situation and hopefully provide a better experience.
3) Subscriber Goal In 3 Months: 115
I hate asking people for help, so I normally keep my “ask” to share/subscribe to this publication very short, and usually most people just brush right past it.
Today, I’m putting it front and center.
If you enjoy and/or get any value from the Brainwaves platform, help me get to 115 subscribers by the end of February by doing any of the following:
Forward this email to friends and tell them to subscribe,
Share on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook with a short note,
Share within your existing community or your company Slack channel.
Getting to 115 people shouldn’t be hard. To put it into perspective, with 79 of you currently subscribed, we just need a referral rate of 0.45 to get to 115. I’d really appreciate it if you could spend a couple of minutes helping me broaden the reach and impact of this platform.
To reiterate, the goal of this platform is not to become famous or to generate an income stream, it is purely to educate people, like yourself, about things I believe are critical factors to our future lives. So, the goal to increase subscribers is not to grow larger (although that is a nice economies of scale byproduct), it is simply a goal to reach a broader audience consistently, and an audience that I will hopefully have a positive impact on every single week.
In addition, more people subscribing means more views and more likelihood that one of my readers knows more about a subject than I do—meaning there are more opportunities for me to learn and grow through this process.
4) Take a Step Back From Weekly Content Creation
It’s been a year of producing long-form content (usually 10+ pages long) each week and a quarter of doing 2 newsletters a week.
And… it’s been a lot.
So, a semi-large change is going to be made. I’m continuing The Saturday Morning Newsletter each week to keep on top of current events and trends. But, I’m switching our weekly long-form content to every other week instead of each week. Nothing else is changing, the content topics, and structure will all remain the same.
5) Curate an Email Course
Over the past quarter, I’ve been working with my little brother Josh to help him understand more about economics and how he should be thinking about his side welding projects.
Throughout this process, I’ve seen the potential for this content structure to be a valuable analysis of how to create value as a business.
It’s just an idea at this point, and it’ll take some time for me to properly craft it into a course that provides valuable insights to a variety of different people across many walks of life.
It might be a journey over multiple quarters, but eventually, there will be an email course up and running.
6) Redesign the Website
The initial draft of the website (currently viewable here) has helped drive traffic to the brand and increase subscribers. Yet, it’s a little primitive for my liking.
From viewing other popular newsletters and other platforms, I think the website might be due for an upgrade.
I’ve put together some initial drafts of the website that seem promising, but it’ll require a big lift to redo it, so I’ll just have to see when Tyler and I will have time to put together an initial draft. I’ll let you know when the new version is published (hopefully by the next quarterly update).
7) Expand the Instagram Account - @brainwaves.me
Brainwaves has a new Instagram account! Feel free to view it and give us a follow here. I’ve thought about starting an Instagram account in the past but never went through with it.
Why? Newsletters are very text-based platforms, so they naturally cater to social media platforms that are text-based, such as Twitter/X or Bluesky.
Yet, I’ve finally decided to expand my content to hopefully reach a new audience. Will it work? It’s still too early to see. But, it’ll be a fun experience either way.
Thank You + Bonus Content
Thank you for sticking around. For anyone new here: thank you too! I hope you’ve enjoyed your time and will continue to return for more content each week.
I’m excited to see what happens this next quarter. This passion project continues to grow and develop, astounding me every single day. Like always, this is purely for fun and learning, and so far it’s been great.
As a little thank you, here’s a little hint at what’s coming down the pipeline:
A Year in Review (read it tomorrow)
Using Company Funds?
Saying Sorry?
Secrets to Quality Growth?
….and more
With that, thank you again for your support! As is customary, here’s a Kardashian + friends quote to brighten your week:
“You can use the same motto for everything in life. If you put that effort in, you’ll get what you want.”
- Kim Kardashian
Thank you again for another great quarter!
Drew Jackson
Twitter: @brainwavesdotme
Email: brainwaves.me@gmail.com
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