Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter, and choosing to spend your time with me each week 🙏🏽

Your time, energy and attention are precious (and limited) resources so I don't take them for granted.

After a year of sharing 1 actionable guide each week that covers everything I'm learning about building a powerful personal brand through digital storytelling, we're changing things up.

Going forward, the frequency of these emails will shift from weekly guides to ad-hoc updates.

Why?

As I don't commit to anything I can't sustain, I'm pivoting my commitment to sharing updates whenever the time allows it.

I'll also be moving to a new email address: hello@danielmambaodoi.com instead of the current mamba@creatorswithcharisma.com. If future emails land in your Promotions or Spam folder, make sure to move that address to your primary inbox.

Still here?

I appreciate ya!

And in case you're wondering how I started and sustained sending 1 newsletter each week, here's the origin story.

The War of Art

Just over a year ago, I published what would be the first of a year of consecutive weekly newsletters, missing just 1 week for the holidays.

I still remember how much resistance I faced when working myself up to writing the SFD ("shtty first draft") of the first edition, focused on helping people take their own professional headshot*.

"The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it."

― Steven Pressfield
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

I kept finding reasons, excuses and distractions to avoid starting.

So to pound my procrastination, I planted myself at a nearby cafe with:

And nothing else to distract me with.

I could either sit there and do nothing.

Or write.

Because sometimes we just need to cut off all other options so all that's left is the work to be done.

"The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding"

— Dipen Parmar

What felt like hours later, I finally had the first draft down on (digital) paper.

And I'll be honest.

It was sh*t.

Because I was sh*t.

But at least I had something to work with, that I could use to:

🐘 🍽️ How do you eat an elephant?

For a long time, I struggled to find a sustainable content format to document and share everything I was learning about growing a powerful personal brand with digital storytelling.

I always felt overwhelmed by the idea of building an entire online course (and didn't really want to).

I had no idea where to start, or how to attack it.

But as Desmond Tutu once wisely said:

"There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time."

By breaking down my knowledge into weekly chunks, I experimented with a range of different formats and platforms to see what would work for me.

Here's what didn't:

❌ YouTube: I tried (and failed) to revive my YouTube channel but I couldn't sustain the time-intensive process of creating a new video from scratch each week.

❌ Podcast: I experimented with a few solo podcast episodes, riffing on questions and challenges that I'd previously received. I enjoyed the open format but I just didn't have the energy or appetite to fully lean into it.

❌ LinkedIn: I also went big on LinkedIn but stepped away after 6 months when I realised how creatively uninspired I was by all of the self-aggrandising content being posted in the newsfeed.

However, when it came to writing just 1 guide in a newsletter format each week, I was able to comfortably maintain this format because:

☝🏽 The last point is perhaps the most important one I want you to take away from this.

If you don't enjoy the process, you won't keep it up.

— Mamba

So in summary

  1. Frequency: You'll be hearing from me on an ad-hoc basis (instead of weekly)

  2. Email Alias: When you do, it'll be coming from hello@danielmambaodoi.com so make sure to move that to your primary inbox if it lands in Promotions/Spam

  3. Pick the format you can sustain: Lean into your natural strengths and preferences to pick the content format that you can sustain for the long term.

Mamba