The main reason I started this newsletter was to run experiments to see what sticks. But I also did it to become a better writer by getting in the habit of publishing.
I’m running the experiments, but doing a poor job of publishing.
So I thought I’d get back on the horse by publishing a brief experiment update.
Healthy
I’ve added 30-45 mins of zone 2 training to the end of my normal lifts for my healthy experiment.
Zone 2 training is steady activity at 65-75% of your max heart rate for extended periods of time. Basically, a run or a bike ride where you don’t get out of breath and can hold a conversation.
I’ve been tacking on 30mins of zone 2 running to the end of my normal workouts for the last 2 weeks now. And boy, am I going slow.
Trying to keep my hr between 120-140 bpm means I have pace at an uncomfortably slow creep. A grandma walking on the trail actually passed me up. I end up running 13 - 14 minute miles.
I still have no idea how this does anything but the interwebs tells me it’s good for my mitochondria (yes, the powerhouse of the cell mitochondria). I’m not tired afterwards and have barely broken a sweat. But apparently that’s the point?
I’m going to continue doing this for the next month. Hopefully I’m able to pick up the pace in that time.
So why am I doing this?
I’m doing this for two reasons:
I want to see if it can speed up my 1 mile time (baseline is just under 7 minutes). Maybe that’s stupid. Actually, now that I’m writing it out, it definitely is stupid.
I want to increase my enjoyment of running. I’ve ran before but never truly enjoyed it. I’m always ready to quit after the first 5 minutes because I go to fast.
Wealthy
I built and launched a digital product in 10 days.
Instead of a traditional ebook, I decided to sell a 365 day daily email product. Ebook just didn’t sound as compelling to me as “365 daily emails”.
I created the product using ConvertKit, listed it on my Shopify store, and “launched” by sending an email blast to all my existing customers and posting to social.
The first 4 days were amazing as 6 people trickled in to purchase the $10 product. All were from the email I sent out. Since then, it’s been crickets. There have been no more sales.
This is a bit disappointing, but I’ve had 3 pieces of positive feedback recently that aren’t sales.
The first very positive 5 star review came in and the person said they “love the emails” among other things
The emails didn’t go out on time for some reason one day and a customer emailed in letting me know they missed it. Very positive signal here because it means they missed the product.
The open rate is literally 100%. I know it’s a paid product with a limited number of subscribers, but still…this is incredible.
I’m testing more (free) ways to drive traffic to the product page and get people to see the value.
Wise
The whole shtick of SWS is to run healthy, wealthy, and wise experiments.
But I don’t have a wise experiment going on right now.
I’m currently reading How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis so I guess that’s some form of wisdom. More to come on this but takeaways so far are:
Getting filthy rich requires extreme sacrifice from you and those around you (I guess this is obvious but he really makes you feel the pain)
It’s probably better to make a bag and get out while you’re young rather than trying to accumulate more wealth
It pays to be a great writer because people will read your stuff. He is a talented writer and I find myself lost in his words even if the content isn’t all that enthralling.
Hopefully you see more published from me soon. If not, it means I’m lazier than even I expected.