Today’s Lineup:

•  My business isn’t fun. I don’t think it’s supposed to be. 🤷🏻‍♀️
•  My exact YouTube numbers from Q2. 📊
•  Mel Robbins is corrupting me. Please weigh in. 😳

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I paused my true crime podcast so I could commit a small crime of my own.

I was in a San Antonio coffee shop before a speaking gig. Two women were at the next table, both around forty, both running their own businesses.

So I left my earbuds in with nothing playing, eyes on my laptop, and made their business my business.

Then one of them said it. “You come into the world with nothing, you leave with nothing, so everything in between should be fun.”

Her friend loved it. I cocked my head. 😏

I grew up with a blue-collar dad who worked hard and never missed a day. Hard work. Dedication. Commitment. That was the gospel in my house.

Nobody ever told me any of it was supposed to be fun, so I made the challenge my fun.

Seventeen years in, I still do.

I’m recalibrating my whole business model right now, out of course launches and into coaching.

Hard… uncomfortable… constantly in my head… yes. Fun? No.

However… the challenge is the thrill. That is my playground.

The women at the next table are building toward something lighter, and I commend it.

But I will still challenge the math.

More fun does not necessarily equal more money.

I know the behind-the-scenes of women having their biggest year right now.

Missteps, payroll math, the 2 am worry. The entire Tuesday you spend fixing something is not fun. 

I am happy, and grateful for the life I have. My biggest joy lives outside my business, and my business funds all of it.

Blackberry Farm on a random weekend. A surprise trip to Italy for my mom, every mile and plate of pasta covered. Friday nights at the lake with no plans and a sunset.

Here’s what I want you to hear, because I’ve watched it take down good women.

If you think growing a multi-million dollar business should feel fun all the time, it won’t.

And when it doesn’t, you’ll decide you’re doing it wrong, that everyone else got the easier version. You’ll beat yourself up over a standard nobody actually meets.

So define fun on your own terms before someone on the internet defines it for you. Mine turned out to be the challenge, which I did not choose so much as inherit. Where does yours actually live?

What Our Own Numbers Told Us Last Quarter 📊

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We are going all in on YouTube this year, which means we are finally reading our own data instead of guessing about it. Three things surprised me. 👇

📚 Our old stuff is doing the heavy lifting. 55% of last quarter’s downloads came from episodes we published before the quarter even started. Our 2022 episodes are still pulling thousands a quarter. Most platforms run on urgency. A post works for 48 hours, then disappears. But search compounds. Your new thing does not have to beat everything you have ever made. It has to join a library that keeps earning.

🔀 Two assets, two jobs. Our Shorts pulled 82% of our channel views last quarter. Our long-form pulled almost all of the subscribers, converting about thirty times better per view. If you just look at one blended number, it looks confusing. But if you look at the two separate jobs, both are wins. Shorts find strangers. Long-form makes them stay. 

📈 Read three numbers together, not one. Our views grew 55%. Watch time grew 19%. Subscribers grew 10%. But here’s what it means. Views tell you who arrived. Watch time tells you who stayed. Subscribers tell you who came back on purpose. When views run way out ahead of the other two, that tells you that your next job is depth, not more reach.

Pull those three growth rates for your own channel this week. Two minutes, and a far better report than views alone.

Mel Robbins Is Trying to Get Me Into Fairy Smut 🧚‍♀️

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You know that true crime podcast I mentioned earlier?

I need to break up with it. I listen on walks, getting ready in the morning, cooking dinner, and at some point I have to admit that marinating in murder all day is probably not doing wonders for my brain.

Enter Mel Robbins, who has officially ruined me.

She was talking about A Court of Thorns and Roses, the fantasy series by Sarah J. Maas that her daughters bullied her into reading.

Her pitch: “You can listen to these books on audio… and it’s not just any audio. It’s dramatic audio like a movie in your ear. There are actors, there are sound effects, there is so much sex in this book, it’s unbelievable.”

Ma’am.

I am not a fantasy girl. I have never once wondered what a fairy was up to.

But Mel says she’d be folding laundry in Vermont and mentally flying through the skies of Prythian, and that is exactly the kind of brain vacation I have been looking for.

Five books are already out. Book six releases in October. If I start the dramatized audio now, I’d be caught up right on time.

Nice chat! Let’s do it again next week.

Until then, embrace that hard work might not be fun, but the results always are, un-lump your growth metrics, and counsel me on trading felonies for fantasy.

Amy

P.S. It’s faster if I just do it myself.” Sometimes true. Also the exact sentence that has you doing that same task every week for the next three years. Tune in here to make it stop 🎧