A letter to my former self

You don’t know what to write about.

You don’t know what you’re doing.

You’re waking up early. 5:30 in the morning. You need to bust out some tweets before work. They suck.

Now you’re hiding in the office cubicles to watch YouTube videos from Nicolas Cole, Dan Koe and how to write online.

They seem to have it so locked down.

They speak about gaining hundreds of thousands of followers like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

You’ve watched them, on camera, whip together a tweet that would take you literally all day to write.

Meanwhile… you can’t even think of a single thing to say.

As soon as you get an idea, it seems to vanish into the ether.

Everyone’s shouting at you to become an authority.

An authority on what, though?

You don’t have any skills.

You’re a fucking software developer, not a writer.

And every time you think you’ve finally found something to write about, you spend 2+ hours banging your head against the table trying to turn it into something that doesn’t sound like complete and utter shit.

But even after all that time, you’re still left staring at a Google Doc that, if it was written with pen and paper, you’d happily scrunch up and bury in the nearest bin so no one could see it.

How do they do it?

You stare, enviously, at other creators. Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, Alex Hormozi.

They grab your attention every single time. You find yourself immersed in their content without even realising. 20 minutes later and you don’t know where the fuck the time went.

How though?

HOW?

Do they have something you don’t?

Were they born with something you weren’t?

Or are you just a fucking moron that can’t figure this thing out?

And then there’s the whole “make money” thing?

You’ve listened to everyone’s advice.

You’re hopping on free calls.

You’re trying to help the other person. But in all honesty, you’re just as confused as they are.

Fuck me, this is hard.

How can you ever expect to persuade someone you’ve never met to hand you thousands of dollars over the internet when you feel like you should be refunding this person for wasting their time on a FREE fucking call.

When will you figure this shit out!

Listen.

Right now, this fucking SUCKS.

But stick with it.

Because it is going to get better.

How do I know?

Because I’m you, only 7 months older.

Those ideas you once desperately clutched for? They come to you at the snap of your fingers.

At this point, you’ve racked up so many hours under your belt that any given moment you’ve got a pool of 50 (or more) high-performing tweets. You’re no longer shooting in the dark. You’ve built a system. And, barring the odd flop, you can ping our banger after banger (almost) on command.

But it’s not just that.

Those long mornings where you spent 2+ hours trying to write a long form or email that wasn’t complete and utter garbage? You can now can bash one out in a 15 minute walk on your phone. You’re doing it right now. And not only do they take 1% of the effort they used to, but they’re 100x better. (Well, some people seem to like ‘em anyway).

And the money thing?

It’ll figure itself out.

It seems like a black box right now, a thickly veiled mystery.

My advice - don’t think about it.

Just keep getting better.

Learn. Implement. Learn. Implement. Learn. Implement. Build your core skills. Not just one thing. Everything. Offers. Writing. Sales. Marketing. Emails. Lead gen. Funnels. You need it ALL. Don’t understand something? Dive deeper into it that any other fucker out there. FORCE yourself to become useful. That’s the ONLY way this works. But you can do it. I’m proof of that.

Keep going.

You have got this.

This is going to work.

And in 6-12 months you’ll look back on what you used to write about and your jaw will hit the fucking floor at how far you’ve come.

Listen.

I’m a harsh fucker. I’m rude. I’m brash. And sometimes these emails might come across as though I’m shouting at you. Sometimes I am.

But it’s only because I genuinely want YOU to win. I need my message to get through. I need you to know what’s waiting for you on the other side.

Is it paradise?

No.

You still have to work hard.

You still don’t have it all figured out.

You still have days where you wake up not knowing what the fuck you’re supposed to do.

But you also have the ONE thing you wanted when you started on this fucking whirlwind of an adventure:

Freedom.

The ability to create.

And to never again be told how to live YOUR life.

And that’s literally everything to you.

You’ve made friends.

You’ve got a good income.

And even if you lost it, you now know how to get it back in an instant because of the evergreen skills you’ve developed.

And that’s all nice.

But the autonomy?

That’s what you really came here for. And that’s what you’ve now got.

You set the tone of your own life now. No-one else.

And that’s something you’d be willing to work 6 years for, not just 6 months.

I hope you’ve realised by now that this letter isn’t to my former self - he has, of course, long gone. And I can’t write to him anymore.

But I can write to YOU.

I can tell you what’s waiting for YOU.

And if you’re doubting yourself this Saturday morning and asking yourself “is it really worth it?”, then I can give you a perspective of someone who has asked himself this very same question literally HUNDREDS of times…

Yes, yes it is worth it.

You got this boi.

Even if you don’t realise it yet.

Now, the next time you hear from me, I’ll probably be in Croatia.

I’ll still be writing while I’m out there - it’s what I love to do.

But if I don’t speak to you before then…

Have a great weekend.

Work hard.

Do what you need to do.

And get better than you were yesterday.

But remember to have fun too.

After all - you only get 4000 of these in your life.

Make sure it’s a good one, genuinely.

Talk soon,

Harry