Podcasts about ness labs

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a former Googler, decided to go back to university to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. The founder of Ness Labs and author of the widely read newsletter, Anne-Laure is the foremost expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity. As a neuroscientist, Anne-Laure writes about evidence-based ways to navigate uncertainty and make the most of our minds and shows us how to apply scientific insights to our real-world challenges. Her new book, 'Tiny Experiments', embraces this idea, taking small, low-risk steps to test new habits, ideas, and ways of thinking to navigate the liminal space, the messy middle between where we are and where we think we want to be.   LINKS   Anne Laure's website https://anne-laure.net   Book on Amazon Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World   The Mojo Sessions website www.themojosessions.com   The Mojo Sessions on Patreon www.patreon.com/TheMojoSessions Full transcripts of the show (plus time codes) are available on Patreon.   The Mojo Sessions on Facebook www.facebook.com/TheMojoSessions   Gary on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/gary-bertwistle   Gary on Twitter www.twitter.com/GaryBertwistle   The Mojo Sessions on Instagram www.instagram.com/themojosessions   If you like what you hear, we'd be grateful for a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Happy listening!   © 2025 Gary Bertwistle.  All Rights Reserved.  

Okay, DREAM THINK DOers… get ready! Because today's guest is creating a new and inspiring path when it comes to embracing curiosity, thinking differently, and doing life in bold and unconventional ways. We're talking with Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Anne-Laure is a powerhouse neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and the brilliant mind behind Ness Labs—a platform dedicated to helping people to think better, learn faster, and work happier.  Her weekly newsletter inspires over 100,000 curious minds, diving into the science of creativity, lifelong learning, and mindful productivity. But that's just the beginning! Anne-Laure (Ann-Lor) is also the author of the new book… Tiny Experiments—a game-changing book that challenges us to ditch rigid goals, embrace uncertainty, and turn our lives into a series of small but powerful experiments. She's currently researching the neuroscience of curiosity and adaptability at King's College London—digging into how different brains learn in different ways.  And before all this? She was at Google, leading digital health projects and shaping the future of wellbeing through tech. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, WIRED… and more. She's lived in Paris, New York, Tokyo, and London… and whether she's researching, writing, or challenging how we think about success—one thing's for sure… she's living a life of dreaming bigger, thinking better, and DOing life with more curiosity, freedom, and fun! ENCOURAGING THE ENCOURAGERS: Remember… you can now check out Mitch's OTHER podcast called “ENCOURAGING THE ENCOURAGERS” anywhere you listen to podcasts.   It's specifically designed for Coaches, Speakers and Content Creators and provides a quick dose of inspiration, strategy AND… of course… encouragement! Find it on Apple Podcasts:  Click here Find it on Spotify: Click here Find it on Anchor: Click here Find it on Google: Click here Resources Mentioned: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World – Get the book on Amazon

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of the wildly popular Ness Labs—a platform focused on mindful productivity and creative experimentation. A former marketing executive at Google, Anne-Laure brings both scientific rigor and real-world insight to the conversation. In this episode, she shares ideas from her new book Tiny Experiments, revealing how to break free from rigid goal-setting and design small, curiosity-driven experiments that foster personal and professional growth. Listeners will walk away with a powerful mindset shift and practical tools for embracing uncertainty and unlocking creativity through experimentation. Today we discussed: 00:09 Introduction to Anne-Laure and the concept behind Tiny Experiments 02:11 How a health scare triggered Anne-Laure's career shift 03:41 Why we're obsessed with goals—and how it can be harmful 05:42 The myth of public accountability: Why telling people your goals might not help 06:47 What exactly is a tiny experiment? 07:36 Reframing weight loss or health goals as experiments 09:33 Applying the PACT framework to business and marketing 11:47 How fear of failure—and fear of success—affect experimentation 13:23 Practicing curiosity-driven intelligence in life and business 16:54 Using AI as a tool for reflection and experiment design 17:57 Personal stories: How tiny experiments shaped Anne-Laure's life and work 19:53 Where to connect with Anne-Laure and learn more More About Anne-Laure Le Cunff: Check out Anne-Laure Le Cunff's Website: https://nesslabs.com Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tiny+experiments+anne-laure+le+cunff Rate, Review, & Follow If you liked this episode, please rate and review the show. Let us know what you loved most about the episode. Struggling with strategy? Unlock your free AI-powered prompts now and start building a winning strategy today!

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by traditional goal-setting, stuck chasing someone else's version of success, or paralyzed by the fear of getting it wrong, this conversation will feel like a breath of fresh air. Joining me is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, an award-winning neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and the founder of Ness Labs, where her insights on lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability reach more than 100 000 curious minds every week. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online Businesses Connect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! Together, we dive into her new, incredible book, Tiny Experiments, a transformative guide to living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity and forging a path of self-discovery one step at a time. Anne-Laure has beautifully captured what so many of us are feeling today about growth, achievement, and navigating a world that's constantly changing. I'm so excited for you to read this one! Episode Highlights Golden Handcuffs: From Working at Google to Reframing Her Goals [0:01:49]  Why Our Approach to Goal-Setting Makes No Sense in a Changing World [0:07:00] What It Might Look Like to Approach Life with an Experimental Mindset [0:10:35] How an Experimental Mindset Might Actually Support the Sustainability of Your Business [0:23:58] Learning in Public: What's Different About Experimenting Together [0:29:05] Designing Your First Tiny Experiment [0:37:12] Our Sponsor: FreshBooks get 50% off for 6 months Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to bossproject.com/podcast.

What if the key to lasting behavior change, personal growth, and feeling more confident wasn't about setting epic goals—but running tiny experiments? In this mind-expanding episode, Angela sits down with Anne-Laure Le Cunff—founder of Ness Labs and author of Tiny Experiments—to explore how small tests rooted in curiosity can lead to powerful transformations in every area of your life. From alcohol-free living to productivity hacks, sleep rhythms, and navigating health advice in the age of information overwhelm, this conversation will shift your perspective on goal-setting and self-optimization. Anne-Laure shares why most people get stuck trying to rationalize decisions instead of following data from their own lived experience—and how becoming an “agent of change” helps us reclaim control in an ever-changing world. KEY TAKEAWAYS: The Problem with Pros & Cons Lists: We often use them to justify decisions we've already made rather than explore truth objectively. How to Run Tiny Experiments: Focus on curiosity, one measurable variable, and a fixed timeframe to discover what truly works for you. Why Habit Challenges Often Fail: Without curiosity and internal motivation, behavior doesn’t shift—experimentation creates sustainable change. The Plus-Minus-Next Framework: A simple self-reflection tool to assess what’s working, what’s not, and what to try next—without judgment. Letting Go of Epic Goals: Big dreams can be paralyzing—often, purpose and passion emerge through action, not planning. Becoming Your Own Scientist: Whether it’s a new supplement, workout time, or meditation habit, take charge with your own data-informed experiments. TIMESTAMPS AND KEY TOPICS 00:00 – Introduction 04:30 – Angela’s alcohol experiment and how it evolved into 1000+ days 08:45 – What defines a “tiny experiment” and why it’s powerful 16:10 – Internal vs external signals as better decision-making tools 20:55 – How to track experiments without high-tech tools 25:10 – The importance of a stable environment during experimentation 28:30 – Tiny experiments for productivity and writing routines 34:00 – Daily vs weekly reflection and when to stop tracking 43:45 – The trap of “epic dreams” and how real purpose evolves VALUABLE RESOURCES Click here for discounts on all the products I personally use and recommend Check out my blog to learn How Spermidine Can Reset Your Sleep and Hormonal Balance During Perimenopause A BIG thank you to our sponsors who make the show possible: Oxford Healthspan Primeadine: Target 9 out of the 12 Hallmarks of Aging - click here and use code ANGELA to save 15% LVLUP HEALTH: Slow aging, repair gut health boost collagen and recovery and more with LVLUP Health’s amazing products. Save 15% with code ANGELA at https://lvluphealth.com/angela ABOUT THE GUEST Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King’s College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity, and carving a path of self-discovery. Previously, she worked at Google as an executive on digital health projects. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, WIRED, and more. ABOUT THE HOST Angela Foster is an award winning Nutritionist, Health & Performance Coach, Speaker and Host of the High Performance Health podcast. A former Corporate lawyer turned industry leader in biohacking and health optimisation for women, Angela has been featured in various media including Huff Post, Runners world, The Health Optimisation Summit, BrainTap, The Women’s Biohacking Conference, Livestrong & Natural Health Magazine. Angela is the creator of BioSyncing®️ a blueprint for ambitious entrepreneurial women to biohack their health so they can 10X how they show up in their business and their family without burning out. The High Performance Health Podcast is a top rated global podcast. Each week, Angela brings you a new insight, biohack or high performance habit to help you unlock optimal health, longevity and higher performance. Hit the follow button to make sure you get notified each time Angela releases a new episode. CONTACT DETAILS Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Affiliate Disclaimer: Note this description contains affiliate links that allow you to find the items mentioned in this video and support the channel at no cost to you. While this channel may earn minimal sums when the viewer uses the links, the viewer is under no obligation to use these links. Thank you for supporting the show! Disclaimer: The High Performance Health Podcast is for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of professional or coaching advice and no client relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast, or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for medical or other professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should seek the assistance of their medical doctor or other health care professional for before taking any steps to implement any of the items discussed in this podcast.

Award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins Google to talk about her book, “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.” Her book is a guide for how to live a more experimental life, turn uncertainty into curiosity, and carve a path of self-discovery. Anne shares why we should replace the old, linear model of success with a circular model of growth, where goals are constantly discovered, pursued, and adapted in conversation with the larger world. Anne is the founder of Ness Labs and writes a weekly newsletter that's read by more than 100,000 people. Her research at King's College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. She previously worked at Google as an executive on digital health projects. Watch this episode at youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle.

Wellness + Wisdom | Episode 732 Have you ever wondered if the dream you're chasing is really yours? Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins Josh Trent on the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 732, to share how to stop living someone else's life by removing unconscious scripts, the key to living an authentic life, and how embracing liminal spaces, questioning societal scripts, and running tiny experiments can free us from the pressure of finding our purpose. "We always think that we're following our own definition of success, but it's just amazing how many of our scripts are copy-pasted from other people. And not wanting to disappoint your parents is actually a really strong driving force." - Anne-Laure Le Cunff  

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes. This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Go to www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader At 27, Anne-Laure had her dream job at Google. She quit. "Are you sure?" "No." She was focusing on a narrow vision of success. Anne-Laure was most curious about the brain, neuroscience, and why we think the way we do. She went back to school to learn more. Writing - First, to clarify thinking. Works as a forcing function for that. You need to create your own version of it. You do that by writing. The generation effect. You remember it better that way. Next, it created a magnet of people to her. The meaning behind the name "Ness" is "The state of being." Goal setting - What are the traps of linear goals? We think we know what we want. We assume we'll always want the same thing. The arrival fallacy. Think we'll be so happy when we get it, but usually we aren't. Instead focus on the process, the daily behaviors. And run continual experiments. Through those experiments, you'll probably figure out what you want to accomplish. Or you might even stumble into it. Practical goals - Was it useful? Focus on the process. There is nuance. How do you hold others accountable? It's more than just the number. Do the work to understand the nuance, the details behind the number. Too many managers are lazy. Collaborate with uncertainty. Understand why you're scared of it. Comes from a long time ago. That's no longer a thing. You don't just want your team to survive. You want them to thrive. Don't cling to the first obvious conclusion. Do more work. What about vision for a CEO? Instead of focusing on being #1 in the marketplace, focus on your approach. Your values, your mission. Focus on your company's daily behaviors more than beating someone else. Be curious and ambitious.  Escape the tyranny of purpose. People are obsessed with finding theirs. People have more than one purpose. It changes over time. You can reinvent yourself. It can make people miserable if they haven't found it. I suggested that hers is what she has on Ness Labs website: "To help people become the scientist of their own lives." She said that it is for her work. Procrastination - Instead of getting rid of it, reframe it. Say hello, you're here again; what are you telling me? A tool for it: Triple check - Head, Heart, Hand. Her grandmother Oma was the final person she thanked in her acknowledgement. Moved from Algeria to France. Didn't speak the language. Her parents always encouraged her that she could do anything. Show up. Do it. Try. How do you keep going after the honeymoon of a new project or idea? Keep iterating and trying new things. Have others help you. Sergey Brin got tired of the ad business at Google, so he had someone else run it and he created a lab inside of Google for new ideas. Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.—Mae Jemison, American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut

In this episode, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, joins the show to discuss her experimental approach to goal-setting and personal growth. Anne-Laure, a neuroscience enthusiast and founder of Ness Labs, explores how shifting from traditional goal-setting to small, iterative experiments can lead to greater fulfillment and personal discovery. In this conversation, we explore: • The Flaws of Traditional Goal Setting: Anne-Laure explains why linear goal-setting, with its rigid outcomes and assumptions, often leads to burnout and disappointment, and how this approach can be replaced with more flexible experimentation. • The Power of Small Experiments: We dive into how small, manageable experiments allow you to explore your curiosity without the pressure of fixed outcomes and why this method encourages learning and growth rather than focusing solely on achieving goals. • Reimagining Success and Failure: Anne-Laure discusses how adopting an experimental mindset allows you to redefine success and embrace failure as a crucial part of the learning process. • Shifting from Kronos to Kairos: Anne-Laure introduces the concept of Kairos, or qualitative time, and how it contrasts with the rigid, quantitative time-focused mindset (Kronos) that often fuels productivity anxiety. • Practical Tips for Conducting Tiny Experiments: We discuss how to start small with experiments—whether it's trying out new routines or learning new skills—and how to evaluate and adjust based on your results. Anne-Laure's fresh perspective offers a way to navigate the pressures of a goal-obsessed world with curiosity, flexibility, and a willingness to embrace the unknown. Her approach empowers you to live intentionally without the rigid constraints of traditional goal-setting. Learn more about Anne-Laure and her book Tiny Experiments at TinyExperiments.org. Connect with Erik: LinkedIn  Facebook  Bluesky This Podcast is Powered By: Descript Descript 101 Castmagic Ecamm Podpage Rodecaster Pro Top Productivity Books List Make sure to support the show by checking out the sponsors! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It's time to replace the old linear model of success with a circular model of growth, in which goals are discovered, pursued, and adapted,” says Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She left a successful tech-marketing career to study neuroscience, and now writes the popular Ness Labs newsletter, which features insights about how our brains work that can help us navigate uncertainty and nurture innovation. She joined WorkLab to discuss what leaders can learn from neuroscience, and how to tap the potential of AI in more creative ways. WorkLab Subscribe to the WorkLab newsletter Microsoft Podcasts – Stay connected, informed, and entertained with original podcasts from Microsoft

Anne-Laure Le Cunff (@neuranne) is a former Googler who decided to go back to university to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. As the founder of Ness Labs and the author of its widely read newsletter, she is the foremost expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity. She writes about evidence-based ways for people to navigate uncertainty and make the most of their minds. Her new book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World is out now!In this conversation, Adrienne and Anne-Laure explore the themes of the book, including mindful productivity, the societal obsession with goals, and the importance of embracing uncertainty. Anne-Laure shares insights from her book 'Tiny Experiments', advocating for an experimental mindset that focuses on the process of learning rather than binary outcomes. They discuss the protective mechanisms of cynicism, escapism, and perfectionism, and how metacognition can help individuals navigate their fears and doubts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs and author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. On paper, Anne-Laure had it all: top grades, a high-flying job at Google, and a life that seemed to hit all the markers of success. But something was off. No matter how “traditionally” successful she became, she felt… “empty.” So, she decided to do something about it. A neuroscience PhD, 100,000+ newsletter subscribers, and a newly published book later, she's developed a new model of success — one built around conducting “tiny experiments” that help her build a life on her own terms. She joins me to discuss how we get trapped in cognitive scripts, the hidden dangers of productivity culture, how we can experiment our way to a better life and MUCH more! I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that's interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: Anne-Laure's Twitter/X Ness Labs Tiny Experiments Book Show Notes: How do you know you are bored out? People who love us the most might turn out to be our biggest blockers Don't confuse activity with effectiveness We will do virtually anything to gain what is really an illusion of control The map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. And yet, words are magic spells. The Winner's Script and the Loser's Script "You got to run at the top speed if you just want to stay in place.” Let go of the linear and replace it with the loop- a more cyclical approach for growth Can you sit alone in a room for 15 minutes? Procrastination is just a signal from your brain that something is not quite working right now We know nothing AI is a rocket ship for the mind In 100 years, nobody will remember you Books Mentioned: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned; by Ken Stanley Thinking in Bets; by Annie Duke Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose Maybe Logic; by Robert Anton Wilson Beginning of Infinity; by David Deutsch Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics; by Alfred Korzybski The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better; by Will Storr

In this episode of The HeyCreator Show, Matt sits down with Anne-Laure Le Cunff—author of Tiny Experiments and founder of Ness Labs—to talk about the power of small, low-risk experiments in boosting creativity and productivity. They break down how micro-experiments can help creators avoid burnout, build momentum, and make smarter decisions.Anne-Laure shares the behind-the-scenes of writing her newsletter, growing a thriving community, and completing her PhD in neuroscience—all while balancing her creative work. They also dive into the writing process of her book, Tiny Experiments, and unpack real-world strategies for book promotion that don't feel salesy.If you're looking for practical ways to fine-tune your habits, stay creative, and make sustainable progress in your creator journey, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways you won't want to miss!Buy Tiny ExperimentsSubscribe to Maker Mind newsletterTimestamps00:00 Introduction to Tiny Experiments02:04 Balancing Multiple Projects05:15 Weekly Review Framework10:07 Designing Tiny Experiments14:31 The Goal of Learning21:45 The Start of a Writing Journey26:39 Crafting Content for Your Audience33:28 Starting the Ness Labs Community36:49 Cultivating a Self-Sustaining Community39:44 The Journey of Writing a Book45:37 Book Promotion Strategies48:00 Navigating the Book Writing Process59:49 What's Next for Anne-Laure?

Writer, neuroscientist, and Ness Labs founder Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares insights on redefining success, writing in public, and using tiny experiments to fuel creativity. She talks about growing her newsletter from 0 to 100K+, transitioning from writing articles to a book, and the neuroscience behind sustainable ambition.*ABOUT ANNE-LAURE LE CUNFF:Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs and author of Tiny Experiments. A former Google digital health lead turned award-winning neuroscientist, her research explores curiosity, lifelong learning, and mental adaptability. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, and WIRED.*RESOURCES & LINKS

In this episode of A Productive Conversation, I sit down with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of Ness Labs, to discuss her new book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. Anne-Laure is known for blending science with practical strategies for thinking, learning, and working better—without burning out. We explore how small, low-risk experiments can lead to big changes, why curiosity is a powerful productivity tool, and how to break free from rigid goal-setting. Anne-Laure also shares how she applies scientific thinking to everyday decision-making, along with strategies for balancing structure and flexibility in personal growth. Key Discussion Points How Tiny Experiments challenges traditional goal-setting and promotes flexible, curiosity-driven progress. Why experimentation is a powerful approach to productivity, creativity, and decision-making. How small, low-risk experiments can help overcome perfectionism and fear of failure. The importance of intentional imperfection in balancing work, personal growth, and well-being. How curiosity can serve as a guide for making meaningful progress. Why journaling and self-reflection play a critical role in evaluating experiments. How to create sustainable productivity habits that adapt over time. This conversation is a great reminder that productivity isn't just about efficiency—it's about experimenting, learning, and growing in a way that works for you. Links Worth Exploring Connect with Anne-Laure: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube Get the book we discuss: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World Related Conversation: Episode 448: Tiago Forte talks about Building a Second Brain Related Blog Post: Why You Should Play Productivity “Small Ball” Thanks to all of the sponsors of this episode. You can find all of the sponsors you heard me mention on this episode on our Podcast Sponsors page. Want to support the podcast? Beyond checking out our sponsors, you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts. Not using either of those to get your podcasts? Just click on this link and then paste the podcast feed into your podcast app of choice. Thanks again for listening to A Productive Conversation. See you later. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of A Productive Conversation, I sit down with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of Ness Labs, to discuss her new book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. Anne-Laure is known for blending science with practical strategies for thinking, learning, and working better—without burning out.We explore how small, low-risk experiments can lead to big changes, why curiosity is a powerful productivity tool, and how to break free from rigid goal-setting. Anne-Laure also shares how she applies scientific thinking to everyday decision-making, along with strategies for balancing structure and flexibility in personal growth.Key Discussion Points How Tiny Experiments challenges traditional goal-setting and promotes flexible, curiosity-driven progress. Why experimentation is a powerful approach to productivity, creativity, and decision-making. How small, low-risk experiments can help overcome perfectionism and fear of failure. The importance of intentional imperfection in balancing work, personal growth, and well-being. How curiosity can serve as a guide for making meaningful progress. Why journaling and self-reflection play a critical role in evaluating experiments. How to create sustainable productivity habits that adapt over time. This conversation is a great reminder that productivity isn't just about efficiency—it's about experimenting, learning, and growing in a way that works for you.Links Worth Exploring Connect with Anne-Laure: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube Get the book we discuss: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World Related Conversation: Episode 448: Tiago Forte talks about Building a Second Brain Related Blog Post: Why You Should Play Productivity “Small Ball” Thanks to all of the sponsors of this episode. You can find all of the sponsors you heard me mention on this episode on our Podcast Sponsors page.Want to support the podcast? Beyond checking out our sponsors, you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts. Not using either of those to get your podcasts? Just click on this link and then paste the podcast feed into your podcast app of choice.Thanks again for listening to A Productive Conversation. See you later.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of Ness Labs. Her research at King's College London explores the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide to rethinking goals, embracing uncertainty, and using curiosity as a tool for growth. In this episode, we dive into redefining success, the power of experimentation, distraction, and much more!Tiny Experiments: https://nesslabs.com/bookNess Labs: https://nesslabs.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neuranne

This week, I'm bringing back one of our most popular episodes—my conversation with neuroscientist, writer, and Ness Labs founder Anne-Laure Le Cunff. When we first spoke in 2024, she was deep in her PhD, balancing academic rigor with writing for a broad audience, all while sharing her journey in public. Now, she's releasing her new book, Tiny Experiments, which explores how small, intentional experiments can unlock personal growth and creativity. Anne-Laure's approach to navigating uncertainty, following curiosity, and designing an intentional life is something I deeply align with. And I wanted to revisit this conversation because it's packed with insights on how world-class creators forge their own paths—without a roadmap. Whether you're familiar with Anne-Laure's work or hearing from her for the first time, this episode is a must-listen. Let's get to it! In this episode: [00:00] - Intro [01:59] - Liminal moments and navigating life's crossroads [05:41] - Lessons from neuroscience on embracing the in-between [10:44] - The power of intuition in decision making [30:07] - Cultural roots and identity [40:03] - Learning from failure [46:38] - Ness Labs [48:34] - The journey of learning and growth [49:22] - The power of authenticity and community [50:07] - Embracing personal evolution [51:35] - The impact of public learning and mistakes [53:00] - Exploring inner growth through psychedelics [54:47] - Ayahuasca experiences [57:42] - The significance of ancestral pain and healing [01:09:41] - Creative process and the virtue of writing in public [01:15:44] - Navigating between academic research and public engagement [01:19:30] - The personal content diet and the anti-library concept [01:27:53] - Envisioning the future and reflecting on personal growth Get full show notes and links at https://GoodWorkShow.com. Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrettabrooks.

On the 112th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD. Anne-Laure is an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King's College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity, and carving a path of self-discovery. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, WIRED, and more.In this wonderful conversation, we explore the themes of curiosity, connection, and the journey from a linear to an experimental approach to life. Anne-Laure shares her personal experiences of feeling lost yet free and of embracing uncertainty and designing playful experiments in various aspects of life. This conversation is an invitation to experiment more with our lives.For more of Anne-Laure's work, check out the following:Tiny Experiments: https://nesslabs.com/bookAnne-Laure's Newsletter: https://nesslabs.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neuranne/Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, take part in my 5-week Silent Conversation group courses, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams, or you simply want to get in touch.- For the What is a Good Life? podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/- The Silent Conversations: https://www.whatisagood.life/p/the-silent-conversations00:00 Introduction01:17 Embracing Curiosity and Connection03:11 The Journey from Linear to Experimental Living06:06 Finding Joy in Uncertainty10:20 Designing Playgrounds for Experimentation12:30 The Structure of Freedom in Experimentation15:09 Redefining Success: Cycles of Learning18:31 The Intimacy of Curiosity and Growth21:08 Quality of Life Through Adventure and Experimentation29:19 The Importance of Play and Time30:28 Understanding Time: Chronos vs. Kairos36:56 Curiosity and Age: The Impact of Time Perception40:17 The Industrial Society's Effect on Curiosity42:53 Finding Joy in the Process46:18 The Emotional Journey of Completing a Book48:27 Reconnecting with Curiosity51:34 The Surprising Connection Between Curiosity and Emotions52:52 What is a good life for Anne-Laure?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains the problem with how we approach goals—and why experimenting is key to fulfillment. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) The two approaches to setting goals 2) The fallacy that leads to regret 3) How to handle frustrations and disappointments Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1037 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT ANNE-LAURE — Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a former Googler who decided to go back to university to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. As the founder of Ness Labs and the author of its widely read newsletter, she is the foremost expert on mindful productivity and systematic curiosity. She writes about evidence-based ways for people to navigate uncertainty and make the most of their minds. She lives in London, where she continues to research and teach people how to apply scientific insights to real-world challenges. • Book: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World • Website: Ness Labs — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Tool: Roam Research • Book: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides) by Marshall Rosenberg • Book: Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant• Book: How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now by Stanslas Dehaene • Podcast: The Hilarious World of Depression— THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • Earth Breeze. Get 40% off your subscription at earthbreeze.com/AWESOME• BambooHR. See all that BambooHR can do at bamboohr.com/freedemoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can an experimental mindset help you navigate your transition to retirement? Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of the new book Tiny Experiments, discusses how to become a scientist of your own life and unlock new habits, interests, and behaviors for your next phase of life. Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins us from Austin. ________________ Bio Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.  She's a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. A former Google executive, she went back to university to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology & Neuroscience from King's College London. As the founder of Ness Labs and author of its widely read newsletter, she writes about evidence-based ways for people to make the most of their minds, navigate uncertainty, and practice lifelong learning. Her work has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals and mainstream publications such as WIRED, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and more. ________________ For More on Anne-Laure Le Cunff  Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World Ness Labs ___________________ Best Books for Retirement ___________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg Design Your Life and Get Unstuck – Dave Evans Growing Old, Staying Rad – Steven Kotler _________________ Get Wisdom Notes Once a month updates on featured conversations and noteworthy articles. What Will Your Next Story Be? Wisdom Notes keeps ideas coming your way once a month to help you create it. ________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You'll get smarter about the investment decisions you'll make about the most important asset you'll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren't quite done yet, discover what's next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn't just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He's the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn ____________________ Wise Quotes On Becoming a Scientist of Your Own Life "An experimental mindset is one where we have both high ambition and high curiosity. This is really embracing the fact that you need both if you want to grow in life. And if you want to achieve more than what you think is currently possible, if you want to achieve more than what is within the realm of your imagination with what you know today, you need hard work, sure, but you need to keep some doors open for exploration, surprises, serendipity, and those kinds of collaborations that we can't really plan for. And an experimental mindset is really about becoming the scientist of your own life, treating everything, every challenge and uncertainty in general as an opportunity to expe...

[Excited to connect with you! If you'd like to schedule a personal 1-on-1 Zoom conversation with me, the host, simply email bogumil@talkingbillions.co (that's .co, not .com). Looking forward to our conversation!]Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King's College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity, and carving a path of self-discovery. Previously, she worked at Google as an executive on digital health projects. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, and WIRED.Please paste any links that you'd like me to include: https://tinyexperiments.org/ https://nesslabs.com/ https://x.com/@neuranne https://instagram.com/neuranneSummaryIn this captivating episode, Anne-Laure Le Cunff takes listeners on her remarkable journey from Google executive to neuroscience PhD candidate, revealing how this unconventional path shaped her philosophy of "mindful productivity" and "systematic curiosity." Drawing from her book "Tiny Experiments," Anne-Laure challenges traditional notions of linear career progression and offers a refreshing alternative: an experimental approach to personal and professional growth.The conversation with Bogumil Baranowski explores profound themes that resonate with anyone feeling trapped by conventional definitions of success. Anne-Laure introduces transformative concepts including the distinction between Kronos (chronological) and Kairos (opportune moment) time, encouraging listeners to reconsider their relationship with productivity. She advocates for "intentional imperfection" as a pathway to growth and introduces "growth loops" as a practical framework for continuous learning.Particularly compelling is Anne-Laure's discussion of "dancing with chaos" – embracing uncertainty not as something to fear, but as a catalyst for creativity and unexpected opportunities. She thoughtfully reframes the concept of legacy, suggesting that "generativity" – making meaningful contributions in the present – matters more than posthumous recognition.The episode culminates in a powerful redefinition of success: not as the achievement of predetermined milestones, but as the freedom to experiment, explore diverse paths, and remain curious throughout life. Anne-Laure provides practical strategies for breaking free from limiting cognitive scripts and implementing tiny experiments that can lead to profound personal transformation.Podcast Program – Disclosure StatementBlue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm's employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives, and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments, joins us to discuss how an experimental mindset can offer teens a refreshing, exploratory approach to personal success, allowing them to break free from linear goal setting and conventional expectations.Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.Full Show NotesIn our quest to guide teens toward successful futures, we often urge them to set concrete, linear goals. We believe these goals offer structure and direction—yet this mindset may inadvertently restrict creativity, unique pursuits, and personal growth in our teens. What if, instead of marching along predetermined paths, teens explored a series of small, impactful experiments that revealed their interests and potential?Today, we're exploring a whole new way of setting teens up for success. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, ex-Googler, neuroscience Ph.D. candidate, and author of Tiny Experiments, reveals how embracing an experimental mindset can help teens navigate life with creativity and freedom. Through her work at Ness Labs, Anne-Laure encourages adopting experimentation over goal-setting to discover personal and unique paths.In her book, Anne-Laure proposes that teens be encouraged to test "tiny experiments" in various areas of their lives—whether it's trying a new hobby, exploring a budding interest, or learning a different skill. Instead of focusing on long-term commitments or the fear of making mistakes, these experiments allow for trial, error, and—most importantly—learning. This approach empowers teens to gather experience and data from which they can draw conclusions for the future.Cultivating CuriosityTeens are naturally curious, and Anne-Laure asserts we should nurture this trait. She suggests parents help teens create a "curiosity circle," where they can explore interests in a group setting, driving communal and personal growth. Recalling how adulthood urged us to “figure it all out,” Anne-Laure invites parents to reminisce about their own teenage years and prioritize exploration over immediate resolutions for their children.Energy and Decision MakingManaging energy, not just time, is crucial for effective experimentation. Anne-Laure highlights the importance of tracking one's energy and aligning activities with peak times for productive engagement. Reflecting on energy levels can enhance experiment outcomes—ensuring that teens feel empowered to optimize their personal schedules for better results.Overcoming Activation BarriersA significant challenge lies in initiating the first step. Anne-Laure introduces frameworks like “the pact” and “plus, minus, next” which scaffold the experimental process, breaking down larger tasks into manageable pieces and prompting reflection. This helps teens confidently explore new initiatives by emphasizing commitment, action, and reflection over mere completion.ConclusionAdopting an experimental mindset allows teens to approach uncertainties in life with agility and resilience—turning challenges into chances to learn. By encouraging experiments, we can prevent the analysis paralysis that often accompanies teen decision-making processes, fostering a more balanced, engaged approach to life.In the Episode…On top of the above, Anne-Laure and I also discuss:How perfectionism undermines opportunityThe role of community in shared learning experiencesPractical examples of setting up a teen-led experimentTracking progress and understanding setbacksFor more insights from Anne-Laure Le Cunff, visit Ness Labs or sign up for her newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, help us spread the word, share with friends, and subscribe to Talking to Teens for more enlightened discussions.Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.

In this episode, you will learn from Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Founder of Ness Labs and the author of a new book called Tiny Experiments, about the power of personal experimentation. Anne-Laure shares how she crafted an experiment to write a book on experiments, and explains practical methods for designing your own life experiments. She emphasizes the importance of setting deadlines and embracing uncertainty. She also touches on the emotional aspects of letting go of desired outcomes and her own definition of success. Excited for you to build and grow your Portfolio Career!Learn more about the book Tiny ExperimentsConnect with Anne-Laure on Instagram!Connect with David on Instagram!

In this episode of "Just Press Record" on Cultish Creative, host Matt Zeigler brings together two fascinating thinkers for an engaging conversation about curiosity, burnout, and creative processes.The episode features Chris Mayer, an investor, author of books like "How Do You Know" and "100 Baggers," and advocate of general semantics - a discipline focused on understanding the assumptions behind our abstractions. Joining him is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs and author of "Tiny Experiments," who shares insights from her journey from Google burnout to creating a thriving learning community.Throughout their conversation, Chris and Anne-Laure explore how they navigate creative projects, from recognizing when an idea has critical mass to managing feedback while preserving one's vision. They discuss the value of journaling to track evolving thoughts, the power of learning in public, and how attractors naturally pull us toward certain ideas.Both guests share practical wisdom about battling burnout, harnessing curiosity as a habit, and finding the delicate balance between structure and serendipity in creative work. Whether you're interested in metacognition, creative processes, or personal knowledge management, this episode offers valuable insights on becoming "the scientist of your own life."

Is the fear of uncertainty keeping you stuck? Feeling drained or unfulfilled isn't a personal weakness. It's a sign that you're operating on outdated scripts, following paths that no longer serve you. But breaking free doesn't require a massive leap… just a tiny experiment. Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment®, Blake welcomes Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer and is the founder of Ness Labs.  She explores evidence-based methods for people to make the most of their minds, navigate uncertainty, and practice lifelong learning. Her work has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals and mainstream publications such as WIRED, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and more. In this episode, you'll learn how to embrace uncertainty through times of transition. You'll hear how “tiny experiments” can help you break free from cognitive scripts and build self-confidence. You'll also learn how to schedule in time for curiosity and exploration so that you can start making small, incremental changes that will eventually help you achieve true personal and professional fulfillment.   What You'll Learn: Anne-Laure's personal journey through experimentation (3:12) Why we should treat struggles and burnout as signals for change (13:23) Embracing uncertainty rather than looking for answers (20:06) "Tiny experiments" to progressively build self-confidence (28:10) Focusing on learning rather than success or failure (40:10)   Favorite Quotes: "It's really about starting small and just trying to do something different, maybe something that goes against what advice you would get from friends or from your employer, and seeing that the world doesn't end." –Anne-Laure Le Cunff "It's really about progressively building that self-confidence through cycles of experimentation, instead of trying to make the big change straight away."  –Anne-Laure Le Cunff “When I began to realize that [experimentation] was the only way to get what it is that I wanted, it really helped me learn to embrace that uncertainty and to recognize that uncertainty was actually the gift.” –Blake Schofield "As long as you learn something new, that's success." –Anne-Laure Le Cunff “The things that we're experiencing are actually signs and symptoms that our life is in misalignment. They are warning signs. But because we're surrounded by other people experiencing the same thing, our brain will pattern match and say, nothing's wrong with me." –Blake Schofield   Additional Resources:  Connect with Anne-Laure Le Cunff: https://nesslabs.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecunff/ https://x.com/neuranne https://www.youtube.com/@neuranne/featured https://nesslabs.com/book  For programs and opportunities to work with Blake, go to www.BlakeSchofield.com

Show Notes: Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments and founder of Ness Labs, shares her approach to understanding her own life and why she does things the way she does. Anne-Laure explains that self anthropology is a powerful tool for problem-solvers and doers to understand their own lives and prioritize their priorities. By embracing uncertainty and turning it into curiosity, individuals can overcome procrastination and achieve more in their lives. She emphasizes the importance of self-anthropology in helping people become anthropologists of their own lives by observing themselves throughout their daily lives and asking themselves why they are doing things the way they do. This allows them to understand what is happening right now before planning for the future. Overcoming Procrastination with Curiosity One example of how self-anthropology can be applied to procrastination is by focusing on the problem with curiosity rather than trying to beat it. Procrastination is often seen as a signal from the brain and body that something is not working for you right now. By approaching procrastination from a place of curiosity, individuals can learn useful things from it. By identifying the problem, learning more about it, addressing it constructively, and seeking mentorship, coaching, and the right tools, individuals can design tasks in a more fun and enjoyable way. This approach allows individuals to move forward and get unstuck from the pressure to beat the problem. Anne-Laure explains that self-anthropology is a powerful tool for problem-solvers and doers to understand their own lives and prioritize their priorities. By embracing uncertainty and turning it into curiosity, individuals can overcome procrastination and achieve more in their lives. A Framework for Overcoming Procrastination The conversation turns to the effectiveness of a framework that treats procrastination with empathy, and overcoming procrastination by asking questions and experimenting with different approaches. This approach can be applied to various challenges, such as managing anger, managing health, and examining patterns in emotions and anxiety. Journaling is a great tool for reflecting on experiences and understanding the root causes of issues. Journaling is a mindfulness practice that allows for non-judgmental observation and self-anthropology. By taking notes about thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns, one can ask questions about why they happen, what could be different, and what new approaches or ideas could be explored. Regular reviews of journal entries can help identify patterns and changes in one's life, which can help in dealing with challenges in the present moment and providing material for future reflection. Tiny Experiments and Atomic Habits Anne-Laure discusses the concept of making PACTs and how they can be used in conjunction with habits. PACT stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable and they work well with habits.  Atomic habits involve building habits by making tiny experiments with specific durations and outcomes. A tiny experiment is a type of PACT that involves choosing one action and a specific duration to collect data. The main difference between a tiny experiment and an atomic habit is that the experimenter withholds judgment until the data is collected, allowing them to decide if the habit is beneficial or not. The main difference between a tiny experiment and an atomic habit is that the experimenter withholds judgment until the data is collected. This allows them to determine if the habit is beneficial and if it is something they want to continue with in the future. Anne-Laure also discusses the importance of reflection in small experiments, as it helps individuals identify what they enjoy and what they should continue with.  Anne-Laure suggests aligning the data with the measures of success at the end. She suggests tracking internal and external signals, such as mood, heart rate variability, stress, or sleep score, and collecting quantitative data through journaling. The Power of Learning in Public Anne-Laure also emphasizes the importance of learning in public, such as announcing the experiment to others and building accountability. This can be done through social media, WhatsApp groups, or even with a few friends, or even just one accountability factor. She stresses remembering that dips in motivation are also important signals. If you notice procrastination or dreading, you can observe those responses and behaviors and try different things the next day. She explains how to keep going, noting any days where you missed it, and then trying something different the day after. If you find yourself bored or unable to stick with the experiment, you can either pause it and go back to designing a different version or consider that you have collected all the necessary data for one version. Additionally, success for an experiment is learned even if it is discarded, as it has allowed you to learn that it is not a direction you want to follow. Greek Concepts of Time and a Shift in Perception Anne-Laure Le Cunff discusses ancient Greek concepts of time, Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is the quantitative approach to time, where every minute is an identical box that needs to be filled efficiently. Kairos, on the other hand, is a qualitative approach that recognizes that time is elastic and each moment is unique and has a special quality. This approach is crucial in decision-making in daily life and work, as it embraces losing a sense of quantitative time, allowing deeper flow in projects. Anne-Laure goes on to talk about generativity, which is about focusing on the impact one can have today on others, rather than building something that will be forgotten after one or two generations. This approach aligns with an experimental mindset, as it allows for better understanding of what works and what doesn't, and allows for adjustments to be made in the present moment. She mentions her PhD research in ADHD and how it inspired her to adopt an experimental mindset and scientific method. She learned that success is not about getting to a specific destination but about learning something new. By applying this approach to her daily life and work, she noticed more progress without clinging to linear goals. A Community for Curious Individuals Ness Labs is an online community created by Anne-Laure. The community initially started as a newsletter, where she would translate concepts into practical applications for daily life. However, during the pandemic, people felt lonely and missed the opportunity to connect with others. Anne-Laure decided to create an online community for curious individuals who enjoyed discussing topics in her newsletter. The community allows anyone to host workshops, especially those still in the process of learning, and run Tiny Experiments together. During the pandemic, the community hosted events on various topics, such as meditation, creative collages, mental health, psychosis, psychedelics, and philosophical movements. The community also offered co-working sessions, guided creative exercises, and small experiments. Participants could create a log in the community, taking notes based on their experiments, and receive support from the community. The format includes a mix of Pomodoro sessions, intentions, and conversation, with participants sharing their progress and resources related to their projects. Anne-Laure shares a few examples of sessions and Tiny Experiments within the community and how she chose the design of the cover for her book Timestamps: 03:30: Explaining Self-Anthropology  05:40: Addressing Procrastination with Curiosity 10:38: Implementing Self-Anthropology in Journaling  13:49: Introduction to PACTs (Productive and Curious Trials) 14:04: Collecting Data and Building Discipline for PACTs 23:38: Time Shift from Chronos to Kairos  26:29: Focusing on Generativity Over Legacy 29:46: Influence of Academic Studies on the Book  31:33: Introduction to Nest Labs  36:22: Examples of Community Activities and Personal Experiments  Links: Book: TinyExperiments.org Ness Labs website: https://nesslabs.com/ Anne-Laure Le Cunff website: https://anne-laure.net/   Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.  

Read the full transcript here. What is "mindful" productivity? Is impostor syndrome linked to main character syndrome? Must increased productivity always come with an increased risk of burn-out? What mistakes do people most commonly make when trying to improve their productivity? Is the best productivity system also the most minimal? What is "plus-minus-next"? How can we use our time more efficiently? What does it mean to have an "experimental" mindset? How many of our passions do we discover at first sight? What are the differences between habits and routines? What are some good ways to set up self-experiments? How important is quantification in self-experiments? How often should we expect self-experiments to yield useful results? What does it look like to exhibit "systematic" curiosity?Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an award-winning neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter about mindful productivity and systematic curiosity is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her upcoming book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity, and carving a path of self-discovery. Previously, Le Cunff worked at Google as a global lead for digital health. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, the Financial Times, WIRED, and more. She serves as an advisor for the Applied Neuroscience Association and the All Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship on themes of mental health at work. Based in London, she continues in her writing and research to explore the intersection of neuroscience and personal development. Learn more about her research, and sign up for her newsletter, at nesslabs.com. StaffSpencer Greenberg — Host / DirectorJosh Castle — ProducerRyan Kessler — Audio EngineerUri Bram — FactotumWeAmplify — TranscriptionistsMusicBroke for FreeJosh WoodwardLee RosevereQuiet Music for Tiny Robotswowamusiczapsplat.comAffiliatesClearer ThinkingGuidedTrackMind EasePositlyUpLift[Read more]

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an award-winning neuroscientist, entrepreneur and writer. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter about mindful productivity and systematic curiosity is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience of King's College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her upcoming book, Tiny Experiments, explores how to live a more experimental life, turn uncertainty into curiosity, and carve an ambitious path of self-discovery. Topics-The Curiosity Prayer-Myths and misconceptions of curiosity-Research, data, and why we decrease curiosity over our life time-The science researched evidence of being curious-3 Habits of curious minds-How to fail like a scientistDownload my FREE Top 30 book list at www.djhillier.com/30booksOrder my brand new book, Push the Sled at www.PushTheSled.comCheck out our NEW YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@deejayhillier?si=6ZX98cq7Vwy7bbZw

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a Choose to Be Curious trifecta: researcher, theoretician -- and practitioner. A neuroscientist and deep thinker about the personal and social implications of our curiosity, she conducts tiny experiments to focus closely on how we use our time and energy to best effect. Anne-Laure is the founder of Ness Labs, a collective platform for curious people, where “ambitious knowledge workers come together to achieve their goals without sacrificing their mental health.” Ness Labs offers content, coaching, courses and--perhaps most importantly--a community for learning in public together. I am excited to see how her vibrant and collective study-and-practice culture shapes how we think about curiosity in the years ahead. More about Anne-Laure Le Cunff: https://anne-laure.net Theme music by Sean Balick; “Discovery Harbor” by Cloud Harbor, via Blue Dot Sessions.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, writer, and founder of Ness Labs, a platform dedicated to exploring the intersection of neuroscience and personal development. Not only has she cultivated a thriving online community, she also has a remarkable track record of academic achievements coupled with a deep passion for making scientific research accessible to all. Anne-Laure's journey is one of impressive breadth — from leaving Google to pursue her Ph.D., to embracing her Algerian roots, she embodies the spirit of intentional living and learning. Anne-Laure  This week, Barrett talks with Anne-Laure about a wide range of subjects revolving around personal growth, intellectual curiosity, and authentic living. They discuss the value of maintaining an anti-library, highlighting the perpetual journey of learning, as well as share their unique approaches to reading and book collection. They also touch on pivotal career decisions, intuitive business partnerships, and the transformative effects of openly sharing knowledge. Anne-Laure also shares her insights on the importance of intuition, acknowledging emotions in decision-making, and embracing one's cultural identity while navigating the intricate webs of relationships and community building. In this episode: [00:00] - Intro [01:59] - Liminal moments and navigating life's crossroads [05:41] - Lessons from neuroscience on embracing the in-between [10:44] - The power of intuition in decision making [30:07] - Cultural roots and identity [40:03] - Learning from failure [46:38] - Ness Labs [48:34] - The journey of learning and growth [49:22] - The power of authenticity and community [50:07] - Embracing personal evolution [51:35] - The impact of public learning and mistakes [53:00] - Exploring inner growth through psychedelics [54:47] - Ayahuasca experiences [57:42] - The significance of ancestral pain and healing [01:09:41] - Creative process and the virtue of writing in public [01:15:44] - Navigating between academic research and public engagement [01:19:30] - The personal content diet and the anti-library concept [01:27:53] - Envisioning the future and reflecting on personal growth Get full show notes and links at https://GoodWorkShow.com. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrettabrooks.

Embark on an inspiring journey with a French-Algerian neuroscience enthusiast turned global entrepreneur, as they share their remarkable transition from Google's London offices to the inception of Ness Labs. This isn't just another success story—it's an exploration of adaptability's power, learning's art, and the undeniable significance of meta-skills in our rapidly changing world. Our guest peels back the layers of their personal growth experiment that evolved into a celebrated newsletter, offering listeners pearls of wisdom on the symbiotic relationship between neuroscience and mental health.Prepare to challenge the arrival fallacy head-on and embrace the transformative power of neuro-plasticity. We dive into the mind's exquisite ability to rewire itself, proving that growth and adaptation aren't limited to early years but continue throughout life. By fostering curiosity and questioning our habitual responses, our guest illustrates how we can steer our neural pathways toward positive change, culminating in enhanced personal development and mental well-being. Join us for a mind-bending episode that promises to shift your perceptions and inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning and self-discovery.Connect with Anne-Laure Le-Cunff:https://nesslabs.comInstagram - @neuranne APG EliteMentoring - Management - ConsultingDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

Are you a curious person with a lot of ideas and little time? Anne-Laure Le Cunff can show you how to do it all. Anne-Laure is the founder of one of my favorite internet communities for curious minds, Ness Labs, a prolific writer, and a neuroscience PhD candidate. She's also writing a book, Liminal Minds, that'll be out later this year. And she said that the reason she can run a business, write a book, and do a PhD all at the same time is ChatGPT. Anne-Laure is one of the busiest people I know, and in this episode we dive into how she uses ChatGPT to get everything done. We get into: How to use ChatGPT to be more efficient Tips to break down research papers into digestible insights How she leverages ChatGPT to revamp her YouTube thumbnails Tips on using ChatGPT to write prolific articles Doing deep research on the internet using ChatGPT How to use ChatGPT to generate advice tailored for your needs How to surface useful insights from your journal using ChatGPT This is a must-watch for curious, creative people who want to get more done. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT. It's usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every Follow him on X Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Teaser 00:01:10 - Introduction 00:02:11 - How to use ChatGPT to save time 00:05:17 - Tips to breakdown research papers with ChatGPT 00:09:38 - How to use ChatGPT to generate explanations tailored to you 00:19:51 - Leveraging ChatGPT to find hidden gems on the internet 00:33:47 - How to create awesome YouTube thumbnails with ChatGPT 00:51:13 - Incorporating ChatGPT into your writing process 00:56:52 - Rapid fire questions from X 01:13:01 - Surfacing useful insights from Anne-Laure's meditation journal 01:29:04 - The case for journaling in the age of AI Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Anne-Laure Le Cunff Anne-Laure following ChatGPT's recipe to make an obscure Algerian cheese Anne-Laure's meditation journal Nathan Labenz's podcast, The Cognitive Revolution

CryptoThe Investor's Podcast (TIP) Clay Finck is joined by Sahil Bloom. Sahil is the writer behind the spectacular newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle, which has garnered 500,000 subscribers in just a few years. During this discussion, Sahil and Clay explore the philosophies and frameworks that Sahil has used to build a meaningful life that has impacted hundreds of thousands of people while also staying true to what is truly most important to him.IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro.02:57 - Sahil's framework around finding the right work for you.08:31 - How we can utilize career leverage.10:10 - What it means to “swallow the frog” for your boss.12:20 - How authenticity plays into success.23:14 - Why Sahil keeps his focus on playing long-term games through his work, relationships, and health.25:30 - Whether he finds it difficult to remain consistent.26:57 - How big goals can destroy your happiness.32:13 - The mental framework Sahil uses to determine what projects to focus on.35:51 - How Sahil thinks about asset allocation as a business owner.42:14 - Jeff Bezos's business approach of turning cost centers into profit centers and how Sahil applied this in practice.53:03 - How Sahil finds the right balance to prioritize the things that are most important in his life.59:41 - How Sahil ensures that he is continually consuming high-quality content.64:01 - What is to come in Sahil's new book.Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESJoin the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members.Sahil's newsletter: The Curiosity Chronicle.Anne-Laure Le Cunff's writings at Ness Labs.Related episode: Listen to TIP336: Mental Models used by Billionaires w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Related episode: Listen to BTC055: The Cantillon Effect w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Follow Sahil on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Clay on Twitter.Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcasts here.NEW TO THE SHOW?Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.SPONSORSInvest in Bitcoin with confidence. Get $5 in Bitcoin when you invest $100 with River.Start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Be in control of every sales channel with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period today.Invest in some of the top private, pre-IPO companies in the world with Fundrise.Learn how Principal Financial can help you find the right benefits and retirement plan for your team today.Experience real language learning for real conversations with Babbel. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription today.Beat FOMO and move faster than the market with AlphaSense.Choose Toyota for your next vehicle - SUVs that are known for their reliability and longevity, making them a great investment. Plus, Toyotas now have more advanced technology than ever before, maximizing that investment with a comfortable and connected drive.Get the benefits of portfolio diversification AND optimize your retirement strategy by minimizing your tax burden with funds from tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Start investing in alts with Alto today.Be confident that you'll be small businessing at your best with support designed to help you reach your goals. Book an appointment with a TD Small Business Specialist today.Earn more where your business spends the most with American Express Business Gold Card! Enjoy 4x Membership Rewards points, Up to $395 in annual statement credits on eligible business purchases, flexible spending capacity, and access to 24/7 support!Reach the world's largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!Get a customized solution for all of your KPIs in one efficient system with one source of truth. Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance for free.Feed your body the nutrients it craves with Ka'Chava, an all-in-one, plant-based superblend made up of superfoods, greens, plant proteins, antioxidants, adaptogens, and probiotics! Get 10% off on your first order today!Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

CryptoThe Investor's Podcast (TIP) Clay Finck is joined by Sahil Bloom. Sahil is the writer behind the spectacular newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle, which has garnered 500,000 subscribers in just a few years. During this discussion, Sahil and Clay explore the philosophies and frameworks that Sahil has used to build a meaningful life that has impacted hundreds of thousands of people while also staying true to what is truly most important to him.IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro.02:57 - Sahil's framework around finding the right work for you.08:31 - How we can utilize career leverage.10:10 - What it means to “swallow the frog” for your boss.12:20 - How authenticity plays into success.23:14 - Why Sahil keeps his focus on playing long-term games through his work, relationships, and health.25:30 - Whether he finds it difficult to remain consistent.26:57 - How big goals can destroy your happiness.32:13 - The mental framework Sahil uses to determine what projects to focus on.35:51 - How Sahil thinks about asset allocation as a business owner.42:14 - Jeff Bezos's business approach of turning cost centers into profit centers and how Sahil applied this in practice.53:03 - How Sahil finds the right balance to prioritize the things that are most important in his life.59:41 - How Sahil ensures that he is continually consuming high-quality content.64:01 - What is to come in Sahil's new book.Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESJoin the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members.Sahil's newsletter: The Curiosity Chronicle.Anne-Laure Le Cunff's writings at Ness Labs.Related episode: Listen to TIP336: Mental Models used by Billionaires w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Related episode: Listen to BTC055: The Cantillon Effect w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Follow Sahil on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Clay on Twitter.Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcasts here.NEW TO THE SHOW?Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.SPONSORSInvest in Bitcoin with confidence. Get $5 in Bitcoin when you invest $100 with River.Start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Be in control of every sales channel with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period today.Invest in some of the top private, pre-IPO companies in the world with Fundrise.Learn how Principal Financial can help you find the right benefits and retirement plan for your team today.Experience real language learning for real conversations with Babbel. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription today.Beat FOMO and move faster than the market with AlphaSense.Choose Toyota for your next vehicle - SUVs that are known for their reliability and longevity, making them a great investment. Plus, Toyotas now have more advanced technology than ever before, maximizing that investment with a comfortable and connected drive.Get the benefits of portfolio diversification AND optimize your retirement strategy by minimizing your tax burden with funds from tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Start investing in alts with Alto today.Be confident that you'll be small businessing at your best with support designed to help you reach your goals. Book an appointment with a TD Small Business Specialist today.Earn more where your business spends the most with American Express Business Gold Card! Enjoy 4x Membership Rewards points, Up to $395 in annual statement credits on eligible business purchases, flexible spending capacity, and access to 24/7 support!Reach the world's largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!Get a customized solution for all of your KPIs in one efficient system with one source of truth. Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance for free.Feed your body the nutrients it craves with Ka'Chava, an all-in-one, plant-based superblend made up of superfoods, greens, plant proteins, antioxidants, adaptogens, and probiotics! Get 10% off on your first order today!Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 383 features Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a neuroscientist, writer, and entrepreneur. She founded Ness Labs, a learning community for knowledge workers. Her weekly newsletter, where she writes about mental health, workplace wellbeing, and lifelong learning, has more than 80,000 subscribers and you can subscribe here - https://newsletter.nesslabs.com/Find Anne-Laure Online:Website: https://nesslabs.com/Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/alecunffInstagram: https://instagram.com/neuranneTwitter: https://twitter.com/neuranneYouTube: https://youtube.com/@neuranneTikTok: https://tiktok.com/neuranneConnect with the host, Brian OndrakoWebsite: https://brianondrako.com/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brianondrakoTwitter: https://twitter.com/brianondrakoInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianondrako/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianondrako/Newsletter/Blog: https://brianondrako.com/subscribe=============================This episode is brought to you by LMNT, the delicious, sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. As someone who is active with CrossFit and other activities, I take LMNT 1–2 times per day. LMNT is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs as electrolytes are vital to helping relieve hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness.For a limited time, listeners of the Just Get Started Podcast can get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase. This special offer is available here: DrinkLMNT.com/justgetstarted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clay Finck is joined by Sahil Bloom. Sahil is the writer behind the spectacular newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle, which has garnered 500,000 subscribers in just a few years. During this discussion, Sahil and Clay explore the philosophies and frameworks that Sahil has used to build a meaningful life that has impacted hundreds of thousands of people while also staying true to what is truly most important to him.IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro.02:57 - Sahil's framework around finding the right work for you.08:31 - How we can utilize career leverage.10:10 - What it means to “swallow the frog” for your boss.12:20 - How authenticity plays into success.23:14 - Why Sahil keeps his focus on playing long-term games through his work, relationships, and health.25:30 - Whether he finds it difficult to remain consistent.26:57 - How big goals can destroy your happiness.32:13 - The mental framework Sahil uses to determine what projects to focus on.35:51 - How Sahil thinks about asset allocation as a business owner.42:14 - Jeff Bezos's business approach of turning cost centers into profit centers and how Sahil applied this in practice.53:03 - How Sahil finds the right balance to prioritize the things that are most important in his life.59:41 - How Sahil ensures that he is continually consuming high-quality content.64:01 - What is to come in Sahil's new book.Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESSahil's newsletter: The Curiosity Chronicle.Anne-Laure Le Cunff's writings at Ness Labs.Related episode: Listen to TIP336: Mental Models used by Billionaires w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Related episode: Listen to BTC055: The Cantillon Effect w/ Sahil Bloom or watch the video.Follow Sahil on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Clay on Twitter.NEW TO THE SHOW?Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members.Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.Help us understand our audience better so we can create a more intentional user experience by answering this survey!SPONSORSInvest in Bitcoin with confidence. Get $5 in Bitcoin when you invest $100 with River.Start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Be in control of every sales channel with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period today.Invest in some of the top private, pre-IPO companies in the world with Fundrise.Learn how Principal Financial can help you find the right benefits and retirement plan for your team today.Experience real language learning for real conversations with Babbel. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription today.Beat FOMO and move faster than the market with AlphaSense.Choose Toyota for your next vehicle - SUVs that are known for their reliability and longevity, making them a great investment. Plus, Toyotas now have more advanced technology than ever before, maximizing that investment with a comfortable and connected drive.Get the benefits of portfolio diversification AND optimize your retirement strategy by minimizing your tax burden with funds from tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Start investing in alts with Alto today.Be confident that you'll be small businessing at your best with support designed to help you reach your goals. Book an appointment with a TD Small Business Specialist today.Earn more where your business spends the most with American Express Business Gold Card! Enjoy 4x Membership Rewards points, Up to $395 in annual statement credits on eligible business purchases, flexible spending capacity, and access to 24/7 support!Reach the world's largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!Get a customized solution for all of your KPIs in one efficient system with one source of truth. Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance for free.Feed your body the nutrients it craves with Ka'Chava, an all-in-one, plant-based superblend made up of superfoods, greens, plant proteins, antioxidants, adaptogens, and probiotics! Get 10% off on your first order today!Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's episode, I speak with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Founder of Ness Labs, on productivity & the creative process. We discuss 4 different creative processes: - diffused vs focused thinking- idea sex- generation effect and- combinational creativityWe also go into Anne Laure's work of mindful productivity, the different ways to identify why we procrastinate, and her journey from Google to Ness Labs. Website: https://nesslabs.com/blogTwitter: https://twitter.com/ness_labsAbout Anne-Laure: https://anne-laure.net/

Want to grow at work? Get out of a mixed mindset and head toward growth—and develop a long-term growth mindset. PhD neuroscience researcher, Anne Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs, is teaching us how to use growth loops and why they work better for long-term success.Weekly Newsletter Sign-Up: http://bit.ly/37hqtQWFollow Career Contessa: http://bit.ly/2TMH2QP The Confidence Crunch: https://bit.ly/398IFzvNess Labs: https://nesslabs.com/ Article on Growth Loops: https://nesslabs.com/growth-loopsEpisode Perks:Zocdoc is a free app where you can find amazing doctors and book appointments online. Find a top-rated doctor today by going to zocdoc.com/CONTESSA. Produced by Dear Media

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an ex-Googler, writer and founder at Ness Labs, and PhD candidate in Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College in London. We talk about treating life as a series of experiments, mindful productivity, redefining ambition, combining perspectives across domains, and more. — (00:55) Developing a love for science & writing (03:49) Research & the scientific method (06:31) Building on the shoulders of giants & adding your own perspective (10:40) Her unique perspective on productivity & work (13:45) Mindful vs. traditional productivity (15:53) The importance of metacognition (20:15) Small experiments > finding your passion (24:51) Redefining ambition (28:44) Decoupling your self from the experiment (32:17) Ambition vs. contentment (35:42) When to start a new growth loop (40:36) Combining perspectives from different fields (44:29) Anne-Laure's final question for listeners — Anne-Laure's Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthilemoon Ness Labs: https://nesslabs.com/ Spencer's Twitter: https://twitter.com/SP1NS1R Spencer's Blog: https://spencerkier.substack.com

Greetings Friends! Our podacst guest got caught up on a mountain top :) So we had to freewing this episode and talked about: How NOT to find a Collaboration Partners - and how to do it in a good way. Know thyself what do you - need - want - is fun for you The Operating Manual of Me Editing is OK for me but STARTING the editing process ist REALLY hard Tim Ferriss Five Bullet Friday Great for Sharon Too structured can equal boring for Alex Live Collaborating :-D Sharon is the right person for podcasting for Alex too Alex would be not curious enough on its own and too concerned that a topic is not interesting enough. Sharon is naturally great at getting a conversation started Some things you CAN do alone but they are better with a partner: Like sparring or playing tennis Sharons widsom podcast Wizecracking Sharon's filter of everthing: 2 choices to start a project with this or with this person with which person you would like to be stranded for 8 hours in a shady airport in? Alex story when he did travelling around the world in 80 hours in germany. Do you feel save saying no? Does the person has a sense of humor about themselves? Being adapt plug-pullers With all that is in our heads: How do we get these things out? [[FRT BOOK WRITING SUMMER CAMP 2023]] the Tucker Max - Book in a Box Workshop and Sharons Happy Meal of Meatball Sundae Why it is hard to collaborate for Alex in real life researching, learning, throwing legobricks of content on the floor and build a space station Montessori Methods in agile companies Sharons TV-series Recommendation: Ted Lasso 4th principle **We Don't know** We have a Book Title there! :-D Back to how to find a collabortive partner? Where to find one? - LinkedIn and put it out in the universe and see what you get back - Start your own movement - WhatApp Story / Status and ask if somebody knows somebody - that is a bit more private - Write a DM to people on LinkedIn or other contacts and ask them if the would collaborate with you - join a community like NESS LABS (free or low priced) or cohort courses (often expensive) like altMBA from Seth Godin or the Book in a Box course or Youtuber Academy by Ali Abdaal - Discord Servers or Reddit Groups - Start a Working out Loud Circle Sharons closing question about the opposite thing of Death by a thousand papercuts Freudensprung Glücksmoment Alex and the ONE word nothing rimes to in german is APFEL

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a writer, community builder, student, and founder. While in school, she decided to learn in public by writing articles and then sharing them online about what she was learning at school. This led to her writing 100 articles in 100 days. During this writing journey and adventure, Ness Labs, the company and community, was formed while she was in school. In this episode, you will learn about finding her first customers, the generation affect, how building a community can help you creatively, and much more. Excited for you to build and grow your Portfolio Career!As always, this episode with notes is available on my websiteConnect with Anne-Laure on Twitter!Connect with David on Twitter!

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is our guest on the 331st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. After deciding to go back to school to study neuroscience, Anne-Laure created a newsletter that turned into the thriving business known as Ness Labs, a science-based learning community to become more creative and productive without the burnout. Anne-Laure shares how business owners can minimize content overload and make their lives simpler. Here's how the conversation goes: Why Anne-Laure decided to go back to school and shift her career path. What is the generation effect and how it'll help you learn more effectively? How a newsletter became a full-fledged business. The importance of finding the learning output that works for you. The reality of being an “expert.” Is there such a thing as the curse of knowledge? Why everyone could benefit from becoming a teacher. How do you connect all the things you've learned? What is mind gardening and how does Anne-Laure use it in her life? Are you holding onto too much random information? How she organizes her notes and filters through her mind as she takes notes. A book reading process – is it effective? How to decide what to learn next. What does creative chaos actually consist of? The benefits of breaking up your work into smaller tasks. How to work with your team in creative chaos. Do you have to change your work style for other people? Time management and themed days – could it work for you? How she balances her Ph.D. program and running a business. Anne-Laure's advice for creating your OWN ladder and path. Do you have transferable skills? Assess before you pivot. How to run experiments on yourself, collect data, and conduct personal check-ins. What to watch out for to avoid burnout. AI and the future of copywriting. Tune into the episode or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira's website Rob's website Ness Labs Anne-Laure's Twitter page  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  There's a term renaissance man or renaissance woman that refers to people like Leonardo da Vinci, who had many interests in hobbies from writing and art to engineering and architecture. Another word used to describe people like this is Polymath. Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin were Polymaths. And Polymath or Renaissance woman are the terms that come to mind when I try to describe our guest for this week's episode of the Copywriter podcast. She is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and she knows a lot about a lot. She's a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and ex-Googler, expert note-taker, and all-around genius. Not to mention that she's a really cool person to hang out with. I have been following Anne-Laure for a few years and was thrilled when she agreed to join us to talk about learning and neuroscience and expertise and getting things done and so much more. I think you were going to love this interview. Kira Hug:  But before we jump into the interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That is our mastermind for copywriters and creatives and other marketers who want to figure out what's next in their business. That could be anything from stepping on a stage for the first time or creating a new product, maybe a new podcast, maybe a new video channel. Maybe you want to build out an agency or a product company. Maybe you just want to be the best-known copywriter or expert in your niche. Regardless of what it is, or even if you don't know what it is exactly, but you know there's something out there for you, this is how we help copywriters in the Think Tank. You can learn more if you're interested in being a part of a mastermind and joining us at retreats.

Bienvenidos y bienvenidas a un nuevo episodio de Feliztividad, productividad y salud.  Hoy os traemos un episodio cargado de contenido e información sobre cognición humana y sobre cómo gestionamos la atención.  Os recomendamos la web de Ness Labs, un lugar muy interesante que comparte recursos y post de los que nos gustan.  La idea detrásSigue leyendo "Efecto Zeigarnik y Ovsiankina, los open loops de David Allen y la solución a la procrastinación"

This week's retirement reading is from Ness Labs titled, The default effect: why we renounce our ability to choose. Listen in as Casey Weade breaks down the article and shares what he thinks! Today's episode can also be accessed by visiting RetireWithPurpose.com/334.  Show Notes: RetireWithPurpose.com/334 Rate & Review the Podcast: RetireWithPurpose.com/review Sign Up to Casey's Weekend Reading Email! Sifting through the copious amount of conflicting financial advice and retirement information can be daunting - but it doesn't have to be! Each week, Casey makes it super easy. He hand-picks 4 of the most important articles you need to read, that are beneficial to you whether you're at, near, or in retirement! If you want them sent straight to your inbox, sign up by visiting RetireWithPurpose.com/weekend-reading

¿Te gustaría leer más? 🫡 Un artículo reciente de Ness Labs propone algunas ideas para leer más tiempo. Vamos a analizarlas una a una, porque me parece que tengo una opinión distinta. 😲 ----------------- 🏠 efectivida.es

Join our community event! https://app.session.com/entrepreneurs-handbook/community-ama-october-2022?s=1Inspirational stories plus practical takeaways from the entrepreneurship world.Today's guest is Anne-Laure La Cunff, the founder of Ness Labs which has over 40,000 subscribers. Anne-Laure burnt out while trying to build a Silicon Valley start-up. She then went back to school to study neuroscience and started sharing her thoughts online. She now has a huge audience and provides cutting edge insights into how the mind works for people who are ambitious just like you.If you want to understand how an entrepreneur's brain works, this is the episode for you.We hope you enjoy the episode and don't forget to share it with others. You can learn more at http://www.entrepreneurshandbook.co.Take your writing to the next level through the Founder Writing Crash Course: https://www.amardeep.co/a/2147521024/ZpCPcNpWAnne-Laure's Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthilemoonNess Labs: https://nesslabs.com/newsletter

This week, we're talking about goal setting and how the traditional means of setting goals may not be serving you, and what you can do instead.Before we jump in, a little housekeeping…1. We are on Patreon! If you enjoy the show and want to be sure our lights stay on around here, you can contribute to the show on our Patreon account. Your support is greatly appreciated.2. Learn everything you need to kickstart your remote voiceover business today. It's only $50 and you can access the material immediately and anytime forever.3. The WFH Voice Actor will now be producing commercial demos for Voice Actors. If you've been itching to get your commercial demo cut but you just don't know where or how to start, connect with us at info@workfromhomevoiceactor.com or learn more on our website. It's time to get your VO business off the ground by showcasing your greatest business asset - your voice! Links & Resources:Episode #31Article from Ness Labs about PACT goalsWant to get in touch with us? We'd love to hear from you! >> Podcast Request FormCheck out our demo production and coaching servicesSubscribe to our newsletter and never miss a beat!

Today we spoke with Anne-Laure Le Cunff - Entrepreneur and Founder of Ness Labs, PhD Neuroscience student - and ex-Googler. Anne-Laure worked at Google, promoting digital health products, and is now back in school studying the brain; she is a PhD researcher at King's College London investigating how different brains learn differently, with a focus on supporting neurodiversity in online learning. She is the founder of Ness Labs, a little corner of the Internet where ambitious and curious minds come together to achieve their goals without sacrificing their mental health. It's packed with content, a thriving community, and coaching based on the science of learning, creativity, and productivity. Her very popular newsletter has highly practical content at the intersection of neuroscience, entrepreneurship, and education; we both are subscribers! Some of the topics include cognitive biases, mental models, learning how to learn, mindful productivity, and mental health at work. Reminds us of Trever Ragan of The Learner Lab, episode #64. Today we spoke about her journey from Google to Ness Labs and Kings, burnout - and what she does now for her own self care. Anne-Laure unpacked habits, routines and rituals, how they are different...and what her typical hybrid week looks like - of PhD work, and building her business, Ness Labs. Many things came up in this conversation, from Stephen Hawking and Salvador Dali, to a goat in a cabin in a forest. It was fun, and we learned loads! Key Talking points

I'm a big fan of Atomic habits and I credit a lot of how Lunch Pail Labs operates to the framing but I haven't been investing enough energy into deliberate practice which is also related. I explore what all that means, why it matters and what I'm trying to change moving forward in today's episode. Resources mentioned in the podcast: Farnam's blog on deliberate practice Ness Labs on metacognition This youtube video by James Clear on Deliberate practice

The many marriages model has helped us manage to stay both committed and independent over the long term. In this episode we are talking about what happens when a marriage goes through inevitable change, because change is the only guarantee we get in life. So, when change shows up, what do you do? Do you resist and try to keep your marriage as it always has been or do you transition with grace? Once again, rituals can facilitate strong, growth-oriented transitions. Check out chapter 12 in Project Relationship for an easy template to create a ritual that will help you make the most of change in your love life: Get the book Project Relationship. One of the tools we suggest is learning to tolerate ambiguity because there are big gains to be made when we can do that. Here's an article from Ness Labs that explains the theory https://nesslabs.com/ambiguity-effect Learn about Joli and how to work with her If you want to stay up to date on Joli's jealousy work be sure to join the Project Relationship mailing list

Subscribe to Ness Labs - https://nesslabs.com/membershipFollow Anne-Laure on Twitter - https://twitter.com/anthilemoonFollow Ness Labs on Twitter - https://twitter.com/ness_labs

LISTENER SURVEY Click here to complete our listener survey Leave me a voicemail *** VOTE FOR CREATIVE ELEMENTS Creative Elements is a finalist for TWO Discover Pods Awards! Please consider voting for Creative Elements in: Peoples Choice Best Arts Podcast It only takes a minute and it goes a long way. Vote for Creative Elements *** Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an entrepreneur, an ex-Googler, and a neuroscience student. She's the creator of Ness Labs and a Masters of Science in Applied Neuroscience candidate at King's College. She writes a lot about "mindful productivity," and every week she sends a newsletter called Maker Mind with practical content at the intersection of neuroscience and entrepreneurship. Her work has been featured in WIRED, Forbes, FT, Rolling Stone, and more. In this episode we talk about how Anne-Laure quickly grew her Twitter audience, Ness Labs, and how Mindfulness has allowed her to be prolific in her writing while getting a graduate degree in applied neuroscience. Transcript and show notes can be found here *** IF YOU LOVE CREATIVE ELEMENTS Leave me a voicemail Complete our listener survey Subscribe to weekly episode emails Leave a review on Apple Podcasts Buy Me A Coffee *** ABOUT JAY CLOUSE Learn more about me Subscribe to my newsletter, Creative Companion Connect with me on Twitter Connect with me on Instagram Join #Tweet100 *** FOR PODCASTERS Enroll in my podcasting workshop Enroll in my course on podcasting, Podcast Like The Pros Learn more about Podpage *** SPONSORS Try Podia and save 15% for life as a Creative Elements listener Start your free trial of SavvyCal and get your first month free using promo code ELEMENTS Get a free month of Blinkist Premium *** PODGLOMERATE NETWORK This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Creative Elements, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Rocketship.fm and Freelance to Founder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

783- This curiosity would be the foundation for many of my achievements and the realization and recovery to understanding my self-doubt. A continuous desire to learn builds stronger decision-making through building a practice of self-control. This self-control is then absorbed into our business performance. For business owners who do not practice self-control, they experience an internal conflict which in turn reflects into their business patterns. During my research, I found a study from the blog of Ness Labs which sampled 280,000 people and found the benefits to curiosity are: 1. Curiosity keeps you young if you're looking for another way to find eternal youth. 2. Curiosity helps you learn. If you're forgetful, this can help your memorization. 3. Curiosity fosters better relationships. If you're looking for deeper meaningful relationships. A snip-it from Chris Arredondo's book The Curious Business Owner. ________ Want your customers to talk about you to their friends and family? That's what we do! We get your customers to talk about you so that you get more referrals with video testimonials. Go to www.BusinessBros.biz to be a guest on the show or to find out more on how we can help you get more customers! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/businessbrospod/support

Episode 31 of BrainTools is a guest interview with someone we really admire, Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs, the mindful productivity school. She's an ex-Googler who went on to an MSc of Applied Neuroscience at King's College. And now, she's the founder of Ness Labs - an online mindful productivity community teaching at the intersection of neuroscience and entrepreneurship. Her work has been featured in WIRED, Forbes, Rolling Stone, and more.  This episode was packed with frameworks, tools and strategies from the Makers Mind creator (Anne-Laure's newsletter) herself. Where to find more of Anne-Laure Le Cunffs Work: Build a lab for your mind with neuroscience-based content and conversations. https://nesslabs.com/ https://twitter.com/ness_labs https://www.youtube.com/c/TellMeMoreAnneLaure https://www.instagram.com/ness_labs/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/nesslabs/   Follow Anne-Laure on twitter https://twitter.com/anthilemoon  

Mindful & Intentional is brought to you by Idenati.    Steve Jobs famously referred to a computer as a bicycle for the mind. I think my latest guest, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, would agree with that sentiment. Anne-Laure is a neuroscience student at King's College London and an entrepreneur. She describes her company, Ness Labs, as a school for mindful productivity. She creates content and courses, hosts events, and moderates a community, all centered around helping curious humans achieve more without sacrificing their mental health. This is one of those episodes that you'll want to devote your full attention to. Enjoy!   Resources: Subscribe to the Ness Labs newsletter: https://nesslabs.com/newsletter Follow Anne-Laure on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthilemoon   Timestamps: (2:45) What comes to mind when you think about your childhood? (5:45) Was mental health a part of the conversation when interacting with your family? (7:15) When did you begin to develop a love for writing? (9:15) What did you study at university and what was your thought process behind choosing that subject? (12:00) After you school, you landed a job at Google where you ran into some unexpected turbulence. What happened? (16:15) When you decided to leave Google, what did your internal monologue sound like? (19:00) What is Ness Labs? (24:05) Having done so much research about productivity, what does your average workday look like? (28:10) Do you ever run into challenges with focus and productivity?

Highlights What is personal knowledge management? (00:47). “Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is the practice of capturing the ideas and insights we encounter in our daily life, whether from personal experience, from books and articles, or from our work, and cultivating them over time to produce more creative, higher quality work” (Forte Labs, 2019). Ness Labs creator, Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes the 5 C’s of PKM as: creation, circulation, curation, collaboration and communities (Ness Labs, 2020). My interpretations of the 5 C’s (02:08): creation: managing knowledge derived from learning allows the creation of new knowledge. circulation: that new knowledge can be circulated/shared. curation: it’s also a way to collect and curate things that make you think. collaboration: collecting information in this way can lead to collaboration. communities: you can share anything collected or created in communities (e.g. Twitter). For me, PKM is about ensuring the content I consume is not wasted. How many times to you read or watch something and then forget it straight afterwards? (03:56). While I don’t expect to learn from everything I consume (ahem.. dog videos on TikTok), if I am consuming to learn and/or generate my own content afterwards, I want to increase my chance of retention. Furthermore, from an ethical standpoint, if someone’s work influences my thinking, I want to give credit. The best way to design a system for PKM is to draw it (I used Excalidraw) (05:28). Work out (07:18): Input: where do you consume content? (Examples: YouTube, web, academic papers, reports, Kindle, Twitter etc). Also include ideas. Output: what do you want to achieve? (Examples: share notes, write blog posts/articles, write a dissertation, write a book, create a podcast etc). I then divide my workflow into three levels (09:21): Quick capture (temporary repository) Literature notes (notes taken while consuming content) Permanent notes (notes in my own words - usually atomic) See diagram on show notes - loosely based on Zettelkasten. Tech stack (11:39): Quick capture: Drafts, Highlights and Readwise (clear weekly) Literature notes: Notion (knowledge hub), Highlights and Readwise Permanent notes: Obsidian (public) Obsidian is my digital garden (15:20). A Digital Garden is personal, but public learning space for live, interconnected notes. Or, more eloquently, “A digital garden is an online space at the intersection of a notebook and a blog, where digital gardeners share seeds of thoughts to be cultivated in public” (Le Cunff, 2020). Obsidian allows you to see connections between notes. Things planted in my digital garden might eventually become articles, podcasts etc (16:49). Wrap up: let’s discuss in the community! (17:12) Helpful links Martine’s Digital Garden Excalidraw for diagrams. Shower notepad. Notion Obsidian Readwise Drafts Highlights Zettelkasten method. Martine’s Twitter thread on this topic. Notion Mastery course. The Teaching Space Community.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Copyblogger Podcast. My name is Tim Stoddart (@timstodz), thank you so much for joining me. Today is an exciting day. After a year of hiatus, I am starting the Copyblogger podcast back up. We've had an exciting year with the launch of Copyblogger Pro. Our online business community is thriving and the results our members are seeing has been a priority. In addition, we launched Digital Commerce Partners, which is an industry leading content and SEO agency, dedicated to help entrepreneurs market their products and make more money. Things are in full swing, and the time has come to bring back our podcast. The Copyblogger podcast is returning with a familiar format. I will be interviewing the worlds most successful online entrepreneurs, and dissecting the tricks, habits and processes that has helped them establish profitable online businesses. Each episode of the Copyblogger Podcast will be published on YouTube. It's an exciting time for online entrepreneurship, and I can't be more excited about this week's guest. My guest this week is Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She's the founder of Ness Labs, which is an online platform and dedicated to helping you build a lab for your mind with neuroscience-based content and conversations. In this episode, Anne-Laure and I speak about her writing process and why she thinks Ness labs has been so successful. We talk about her plans to grow an in person community, and why building her newsletter has been one of the best business choices she has made. Anne-Laure is intelligent and honest. I had a great time speaking with her. She gives so many tips and pointers to help you become a better writer, a better marketer, and help you grow a bigger more profitable business. With that, please help me welcome, Anne-Laure Le Cunff. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/copyblogger-podcast/message

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Copyblogger Podcast.    My name is Tim Stoddart, thank you so much for joining me.   Today is an exciting day. After a year of hiatus, I am starting the Copyblogger podcast back up. We've had an exciting year with the launch of Copyblogger Pro. Our online business community is thriving and the results our members are seeing has been a priority.    In addition, we launched Digital Commerce Partners, which is an industry leading content and SEO agency, dedicated to help entrepreneurs market their products and make more money. Things are in full swing, and the time has come to bring back our podcast.   The Copyblogger podcast is returning with a familiar format. I will be interviewing the worlds most successful online entrepreneurs, and dissecting the tricks, habits and processes that has helped them establish profitable online businesses.   Each episode of the Copyblogger Podcast will be published on YouTube.   It's an exciting time for online entrepreneurship, and I can't be more excited about this week's guest.   My guest this week is Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She's the founder of Ness Labs, which is an online platform and dedicated to helping you build a lab for your mind with neuroscience-based content and conversations.   In this episode, Anne-Laure and I speak about her writing process and why she thinks Ness labs has been so successful.    We talk about her plans to grow an in person community, and why building her newsletter has been one of the best business choices she has made.   Anne-Laure is intelligent and honest. I had a great time speaking with her. She gives so many tips and pointers to help you become a better writer, a better marketer, and help you grow a bigger more profitable business.   With that, please help me welcome, Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

In this episode, I interview Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of NessLabs.com. We talk about her experience working for Google, how she built Ness Labs, and her daily writing process. https://www.chasepotential.com/Anne-LaureLeCunff

Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop, an email newsletter referral program where you can have each of your subscribers refer their friends to unlock cool rewards.SparkLoop is amazing. They're growing really quickly in the audience-building space and ConvertKit actually gives away free SparkLoop accounts to all of our creative pro customers.In today's show, Louis talks about how to increase your email list growth rate by more than 30% with a referral program. He also gives his (hot!) take on paid newsletters, discusses how best to monetize your audience, and so much more.Links & Resources James Clear Tim Ferriss Brennan Dunn Anne-Laure's Ness Labs Art of Newsletters 018: Anne-Laure Le Cunff – Building a Loyal Audience & Growing Your Newsletter Louis Nicholls' Links SparkLoop's Referral University Personal site: LouisNicholls.com Twitter: @louisnicholls_ Episode TranscriptLouis: [00:00:00] I think you should be creating content probably in other places. Most often people who get to a hundred subscribers and carry on, they get there relatively quickly because they've been being useful in other places. For example, on Twitter, in forums, you should focus less on getting more subscribers through the door and more on being useful and creating content. Nathan: [00:00:25] In today's episode, I talked to Louis Nicholls from SparkLoop and SparkLoop is an email newsletter referral program where you can have each of your subscribers refer their friends to unlock cool rewards. So, for example, if you refer three friends to a newsletter, you could get access to the special content, 10 friends, you get a t-shirt 50 friends, you get something extra incredible.SparkLoop is amazing. They're growing really quickly in the audience, in the audience building space and, ConvertKit's actually an investor in SparkLoop and we give away SparkLoop accounts for free to all of our creative pro customers. So the article is so good. Talk about how to grow your email list by more than, or increase your email list growth rate by more than 30% with a referral program, as well as Louis' take on paid newsletters, how best to monetize your audience and so much more.So let's dive in.Louis, welcome to the show.Louis: [00:01:17] Nathan. Thanks for having me, excited to be here.Nathan: [00:01:19] All right, so let's talk SparkLoop right at first. you've been in the newsletter industry for awhile. You've been watching this whole space, building lists of your own. What was the impetus for wanting to start SparkLoop?Louis: [00:01:32] Yeah, I'm kind of half from me, but also half from my co-founder Manuel. So Manuel had been running a, like a generic referral tool called referral hero for a couple of years. It was, or it still is pretty successful at a lot of clients, you know, larger fortune five hundreds as well as smaller ones. And that was in like the generic referral space.So mainly e-commerce SaaS and so on. And I was at that point where I just sold my last company was kind of looking around for things to do and keeping myself kind of engaged. So I was running a small newsletter, doing a small course teaching founders, how to do sales and doing kind of like that classic.I call it marketing consulting, but really just kind of helping other founders who reached out with some kind of like consulting gigs. And one of them ended up being a paid newsletter in like the flight steals space. And they, I think they probably, at that point seeing what morning brew was doing with their referral program and they were really eager to add one in.So they asked if I knew of anyone who could help do that. And I said, well, I've done referral programs before. And the software I've used is from my friend, Manuel, who runs her federal hero. So I thought, well, if anyone knows what tool to do or what, what tool to use, it's going to be Manuel. So I'll ask him, reach out to Manuel.And he says, well, you can kind of make referral hero, do this with a lot of work. there isn't really a better option out there. But it's funny you say this cause you're like the fourth person this week has asked me if we can get referral here at working with newsletters. So maybe we should look a bit into this together.And, that's kind of, I think where it starts, if we didn't originally planned the Spock week to be a new tool necessarily, we thought it could be kind of inside of referral Europe. But as we. Kind of understood more about exactly how it was supposed to work and kind of the integrations that newsletters need to be successful. We've realized it really needs its own dashboard and its own integrations. And at that point it may as well be a separate product.Nathan: [00:03:46] Yeah. And so we're recording this in January, 2021. when was that? That, you two started working on.Louis: [00:03:55] I think the first time we probably started talking about it was in summer 2019. Yeah. So about a year and a half ago. Nathan: [00:04:03] Yeah. And so now, I mean, SparkLoop powering referral programs for a whole bunch of people. I know James Clear, a lot of ConvertKit customers, who are some other examples that you could share?Louis: [00:04:15] Yeah. James Clear, Tim Ferriss would be two big ones from kind of that personality author space, I guess. then we have a lot of info-product creators using us people like Vernon Dunn. and Anne-Laure from Ness Labs, who I know you had on the, on the podcast recently. And then we're seeing a lot of interest from kind of the, the media companies as well.So, Punchbowl news, we just recently launched a using us front office sports, people like that.Nathan: [00:04:46] Nice. Okay. So when someone's thinking about a referral program, What are some of those misconceptions, right. Someone comes in and they're, they're like, I'm going to copy. What morning brew does exactly. Like, and then it's going to explode. We're going to have viral growth. Like it's going to solve all of my, user acquisition problems.What are some of the things that people come in with and where do you either say, no, this is actually the best practice or like sort of reset their expectations.Louis: [00:05:16] Yeah. I mean, how long do you have we could, we could go at this all day, I think. so I'll start with some common ones. The, I think the most common one we see straight off the bat is that some people that newsletters are just too small for it to be worth one. so if you have, if you're a hundred or 200 subscribers, yes, you can grow.I don't know, 20%, 50% faster with a referral program, but 20 or 50% of five new subscribers a week, just isn't worth the time you'd put into it. Right. And you could be cross posting or doing something way more useful at the time instead. so that's the main one when we seeNathan: [00:05:55] What sort of minimum threshold that it, that it does make sense.Louis: [00:05:59] Yeah. Good questions. So I think if you don't monetize your newsletter yet, or you monetize it via sponsorships, Then you're probably looking at somewhere between the thousand to 2000 subscriber. Mark is when it starts to really be something you should think about. If you do monetize, especially if you have, you know, courses or something like that, where you're like the value of a lifetime value of a subscriber is, is high, is 20, 30, 40, $50.Then it can make sense, you know, with hundreds subscribers. I mean, I use it for sales to founders, my newsletter and cost because. I only have about 1,500 or I did only have about 1,500 subscribers on that list, but each of them was worth about $56 on average. So even getting two or three new subscribers for me a month is a big deal.Nathan: [00:06:51] Yeah, that makes sense. when you're looking at. I feel like I have so many different questions, but when you're looking at the revenue per subscriber across lists, since you have this insight now across a whole bunch of different newsletters, what are some of those defining things? Is it always the highest when someone has a paid course?Louis: [00:07:13] These are, I think one of the things that we've seen so far that do tend to have the highest lifetime value per subscriber, it depends. So yeah, I think cost is probably like the highest consistent one that we've seen on average. And then you also have services, which are super hard to define because you'll have maybe 5,000 people and list.And one of them is going to pay $200,000, but you don't know which one it is. So like leaving them aside. Cause that's like a whole different thing. Nathan: [00:07:46] I would say it's to average that where you're saying like, Oh, I made $200,000 off the list. So every subscriber is worth $200. It's like, no. Yes and no. Like, technically that is the average and no, you shouldn't make business decisions based off of that.Louis: [00:08:01] Totally. Yeah, totally. So I think info-product creates is probably at the top. And then you have paid newsletters, paid communities as well, which tends to be a tiny bit lower. then after that you have sponsorships affiliates, stuff like that. Yeah.Nathan: [00:08:15] Yeah. Okay. So going back to the, the difference in what people are expecting from a referral program, you know, versus what they should actually do, what are some of those things that come to mind?Louis: [00:08:26] Yeah. So we talked about already about the, the idea that you don't want to start when you're too small. The other thing you have to bear in mind is that you have to be sending regular emails for it to be worthwhile because. You need to be asking people often to share. And if you only send an email every month or every three weeks or so, that doesn't give you very many opportunities to, to nudge people to, to refer.So they tend to see pretty poor results. And it, it does tend to be the daily newsletters. Like the morning brew Punchbowl will get the best results. And then, you know, twice a week weekly, they get great results as well. Anything where you're not sending at least once every week tends to be more difficult.Nathan: [00:09:10] Yeah, that makes sense. And is that, is that a call to action that you're putting in every email? is that something that you do dedicated emails for? How, how does it perform best?Louis: [00:09:23] What we tend to see is that you want to have a, a call to action, like a referral section inside of every email that you sent out. Unless that email has some other really important call to action in it. So if you're launching a new course or you really want to drive people to a particular link particular website or video, then maybe skip that week because you don't want people going off in different directions and doing different things.But in general, you'd have it in every single newsletter. Normally either towards the bottom or somewhere in the middle, where people are going to see it. And then we also recommend that you probably want to. Have a specific welcome email. So when someone joins your newsletter, you presumably have a welcome sequence or several welcome sequences, depending on whether people, you know, where people joined from or why they joined.And what you normally don't want to do is to introduce the referral program in email one, because they haven't had a chance to, to trust and get to know you yet, but normally a couple of days later. So between. Seven and 14 days after they sign up, you want to say, Hey, you know, I, I hope you're really enjoying the content.It's all free. It would mean the world to me. If you would share it with a couple of people that you think will get value as well. And I'll have that email somewhere in that.Nathan: [00:10:42] That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're effectively asking for a sale in some way, right? In this case, they're not paying with dollars. They're paying with, A bit of their time and their reputation, right. Where if I'm saying, Hey, you know, my friend Barrett, like Louie's email is really good, you know, go pay attention to it.I'm like attaching a little bit of my reputation to that. And so if you're doing that before, there's trust built up where you're saying, Hey, you should, you should go pitch your friends on this. And you know, we're on email one or email two. It's probably premature.Louis: [00:11:16] Sure. Oh, yeah, for sure. I think that's an interesting point that you raise about the, I mean, the trust is absolutely spot on, but also that you're, you're asking people to pay, like to pay you in a way. we do see that you can almost separate. The approach that you take with the referral program out into two kind of distinct ones where what most people are used to is kind of like the really transactional approach of morning brew, where it's quite obvious, they're saying, Hey, please go and do this work for us.Please go and refer. These people actively work towards it to get this reward, this price that we're giving you in return for the work. And that can work well. But it's also like once you have that, once you state that relationship with your subscribers, then it's very difficult to roll back from that from asking them to do work for you.So what we normally recommend is to start off with more of a nudge and to say, Hey, we're not asking you to go and do work for us, but we know for example, Nathan, we know that you enjoy. Might newsletter about whatever it is. we know that that must be a lot of other people on the ConvertKit team who really should be reading this as well, that you should be sharing it with.So as a thank you for sharing it with them, he has a small little thing just to say, thank you, basically.Nathan: [00:12:34] And so what's an example of one of those small things that you would do where it doesn't feel as transactional, or like this big ask.Louis: [00:12:43] Yeah. So that's, that's a really interesting thing as well. So most people they come in and they naturally assume when it comes to rewards that they need to do either some kind of discount, so money off something, or that they need to do some form of physical swag or gift. So maybe mugs t-shirts ad pod cases, stickers, even something like that.And. Those are expensive. Firstly, you know, you don't necessarily want to be paying for those and then shipping them and coordinating all of that. It can be a pain, but also secondly, they tend to underperform from what we've seen compared to what makes really good rewards, which is rewards in our experience that are based around either exclusivity or around urgency.Either getting access to something that there's no other way for them to get access to often that's content, maybe in your case, it could be. and so James clear, for example, has a secret newsletter that he sends every month, which you can only get, if you make three referrals or we've seen people do, kind of small coffee chats via zoom once a month of inside of clubs.We've seen all of this, for example, who will say, you can get a, a chapter from the book that I ended up removing from the book, and then no one else has read. For example, that kind of thing. It's something that you can only get if you, you know, if you make the referral something exclusive or on the urgency side, which works really well for infoproduct creative schools creates us, is to say, I'm going to give you early access to something.So when I had my last launch at the sales of founders course, for example, the course was launching on a Monday, on a Wednesday. I emailed my list and said, Hey, on Monday on Monday, you're going to get access to this thing for free. If you'd like to get it on Friday, just share this link with two people.And just that act of doing it grew my list by about 30%, even though it was only a two day difference, which you'd never think of it working like that.Nathan: [00:14:49] Well, and there's no marginal cost to it, right. Where I would assume coming in that. I need to be on the other camp of, do this thing and I will send you a t-shirt and you're like, well, that's a, that's a $15 all in cost, you know? And so what I hear you saying is sure, you can do that, but here's a digital version that has no additional costs that performs just as well, or even sometimes better.Louis: [00:15:16] Yeah, totally. I mean, if you think about where the sweat comes from, it's often because the really big newsletters that got popular with referral programs, the main two really are morning brew and the skin and that both very strongly branded newsletters focused mainly on college students and college students were really identify with it and they would really like to have a free t-shirt.If you're selling to, or if you're writing emails, if you're creating content for people who are maybe professionals that all of a sudden a free t-shirt, if you're making 150 K a year, it doesn't really move the needle that much. Whereas, a coffee chat with other people who are in your industry would be super interesting for you.Nathan: [00:15:59] Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So, let's put on our free consulting hats for a second. And let's say hypothetically, someone named Nathan Barry had a newsletter of. 26,000 subscribers and was considering starting a referral program. all hypothetical, of course. what would, what would you recommend, that program would look like?Louis: [00:16:22] I think the first, I mean, I'd have to ask some questions first. So I think the first question I would probably ask is why people are signing up for the newsletter. So what did they turn up there for?Nathan: [00:16:31] Yeah. that's a good question. So it's a lot of content on a design marketing and audience growth, combined with, You know how to run a startup or a money or that sort of thing. Honestly, it's a very, very broad newsletter, right? Things like this podcast are going out to it. and another point, you know, just for, for references, it's a list that, didn't go cold, but definitely got a lot colder as I focused on convert kit.You know, so for example, the list peaked at 30,000 or 32,000 subscribers, and I've just slowly kind of trimmed it down and cleaned it. as it, you know, it's not growing fast, it's growing, I don't know, 2010 to 20 subscribers a day, not the hundreds of subscribers a day that you would expect to get to those numbers.Louis: [00:17:21] Sure. Sure. Yeah. That's interesting. So then the other question that I tend to ask as well is, how you, or what you want the people on your newsletter list to do. So once someone subscribes, what is kind of the, the end goal for them, are you monetizing in some ways that something like them, some action you'd like them to take.Nathan: [00:17:41] I want them all to sign up for ConvertKit. but I'm gonna say at this point, convert, it is. So much bigger, whereas four years ago, five years ago, my audience was driving ConvertKit and, and now, you know, ConvertKit's email list is 10 to 20 times the size of, of my individual audience. So, Yes, they could buy the books and courses, but I don't push those very much.So I think it's, you know, I was talking to, on Malik who, started to gigging, years ago and now as a venture capitalist investor and he recently switched to convert kit and he had this, this thing that I hope he executes on this idea of. Saying, he's only going to allow 10,000 people on his email list.He wants the 10,000 most engaged people, right? So he wants like a 70% open rate or higher. And if someone doesn't open it consistently, he's going to kick them out and then let in the next like 500 as he clears out that, that slot. And I don't know that I'd ever go that extreme though. Like I liked the idea, but I would want people who.I would want the most engaged people who are there for a conversation or who are really fans of the work, rather than just getting to the largest possible list.Louis: [00:19:01] Got it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I love that idea, right? I'm not sure I'd have the audience to pull it off, but it's a, it's a fun one. so normally when people have a list they tend to have, they tend to be trying to monetize the list in some way, right. If you're using a referral program, So you would maybe, for example, with one of your books, I want to go eBooks.What you might do is to say, okay, well, I would really love people who sign up to buy one of the books and then maybe they will see through that. They will learn that they should use convert kit. Or they will take a course of mine or they will, I don't know, spread the word in some way internally. So the company buys convert kit or something like that.So what you normally do that is you would try and tailor the reward to be something that someone who's kind of on the fence about buying the book would want. So it might be a free chapter from the book, for example, and you'd set that up as. W when it comes to rewards strategy, which isn't something we really talked about, what you tend to want is to always have a reward that you can win.So making between one, three referrals. So that's really easy to win because if you have a reward at that level, then everyone who sees it thinks, okay. Yeah, sure. If I share this on Twitter, if I share this with a couple of friends, I'm going to get at least one or at least two people to sign up the short.So I'm definitely going to get this thing. So I would have something in that space for between one and two referrals. It's digital, it's easy for you to do, you know, you can set up an automation and convert kit or your email tool to just send them the free chapter as a, as a download link on. So they make the number for ferals and you don't really have to think about it again.And then what you might do on top of that is to have another reward somewhere between maybe five and 20 referrals. And that would probably be something that's slightly more, more exclusive. The people are probably going to have to work a tiny bit towards, or they're going to have to have quite a big list or quite a big kind of social sphere to be able to get straight off with one chat.And that in your case, again, it's difficult because you're not trying to monetize directly, but something you might do that, that we've seen work well is for example, to say, okay, a lot of the people on your list, for example, probably marketers and would probably like to get themselves featured or in front of other people who are also on the list.So you might say, well, I will give a shout out at the bottom to the three people each week who make the most referrals or, once you make 20 referrals, I will give you a big shout-out in the footnotes of the newsletter or something like that.Nathan: [00:21:34] Yeah, that makes all that sense. Something that comes to mind is, there's a lot of content that I. Am intrigued on or want to write a write about around money. And particularly like, I have a lot of people on my list who say, have followed whatever in authority or something else over time, they execute on that.And now they've made a hundred thousand dollars a year online, whereas before they were making 40,000 in their old job, or now they're making 250,000 a year. And they're like, what? Even. What is happening, you know, you, if you go from 60,000 to 250,000, which you can do from a single, you know, course launch product launch, your world is completely different.But if you post about that sort of thing publicly, then there's all like, you have to deal with everyone saying like, look at you. You're now in the 1%, or I don't know, like all the negative talk around it. And so one thing that came to mind is doing this like a secret course. That, you know, I'm on money that shares a bunch of these things that once you're at this level, you should pay attention to, but that requires, you know, three or five or 10 referrals.And I think that would be really interesting, cause it both is only for the most engaged people, which will prevent some of the public backlash. and you know, it could be a compelling reward.Louis: [00:22:58] Totally took. And I think, you know, that's a great title. And also with it being, I mean, it's, it's your like Nathan Barry newsletter write people up as to hear from you. And that has similarities with James clear with the Tim Ferriss newsletter, where really what they, what subscribers they want at the end of the day is they want more James.They want more Tim and they want more. Nathan. so having something like that, that's exclusive, that's an insider thing that you can give them is a great way of doing it. And maybe even layering on like, A monthly coffee chat or every quarter, maybe a coffee chat, something like that. Just some way that people can connect, that obviously in your case, you wouldn't want it to take up too much time, but something where, you know, people can get more of what they signed up for, which is more Nathan barrier, basically.Nathan: [00:23:44] That makes sense. What are some of your favorite programs that you've seen people put together? We talked about James. what are some other examples that people Vic's executed really well on the reward tiers or how they promote it?Louis: [00:23:57] Yeah. So something I've really liked is I'm a manual stacked marketer and he does a great job of mixing in. digital and physical rewards together. So he keeps the first couple of reward, referrals that people would make. So up to about five referrals, it's all digital things that are completely free for him to give away, like, access early access to conference tickets and stuff like that.And then from there he layers in physical rewards. So a mug, a t-shirt and so on, and he actually takes it all the way up to, I think for a thousand referrals, he will fly you to Vienna to get lunch with him. which I don't think has happened yet, but there are people out in that far away.Nathan: [00:24:44] I can see that I, in a post COVID world, I have an absurd number of airline points. I, you know, that could make them,Louis: [00:24:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we've had people make over a thousand referrals before. So I was saying this to, to Trevor mackendrick who uses us in his newsletter and he, his, his kind of big, shiny, reward tier at the top. And the motivational one that kind of grabs headlines and gets people talking about it is I think for a thousand referrals, he will buy you a billboard in San Francisco and put whatever you want on it.And so I was explaining that there's a chance that he may actually have to do that. So yeah.Nathan: [00:25:24] Yeah. what, obviously you get these outliers of a thousand referrals. Are those always coming from someone who has a big audience? or do you see it from, you know, a subscriber who is really just hustling, like crazy.Louis: [00:25:41] yeah, you don't tend to see too many people hustling, like. Crazy to be honest. And you, you don't normally want that because if they're working for it, then the engagement of the people that sending it away is probably going to be quite low. so that's fine. If you have like a morning group or a hustle style audience, where really they're happy to get a lot of people through the door and their audience is super broad and people will, you know, they do an amazing job in the first two weeks, making sure that people who aren't a good fit, segmented out and cleaned away.And it's all fine. if you were running a more niche newsletter, especially if you have like an info product or something like that, a paid newsletter, then you really are looking for engaged subscribers, people who are really gonna identify with it. So you, you almost don't want their awards to be too good to the point where people will start to try and trick the system and get people to sign up who maybe wouldn't have been too interested.Nathan: [00:26:33] That makes sense. I think a fear that people would have with a referral system or particularly. Referral system, is it that engagement would be lower over time, right? That those subscribers would be, less than one thing that I'm realizing is inside the reporting and convert, you could segment down to referred subscribers and then just see their open rates trending over time and compare that to, you know, the more general cohort or a cohort that came from paid advertising, or that came purely from organic search.What have you seen is that. Does that fear play play out or are they just as engaged as those that sign up organically?Louis: [00:27:13] Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm saying referral programs are the best for everything they're not, but when it comes to engagement, I think anybody who uses spark group and probably anybody who uses any referral program would say that the engagement is better than pretty much any other source they get.I've heard that engagement from people who've come. Fire influences is pretty good. I think that was the head of growth at morning brew was talking about that a couple of weeks ago when we were chatting. But other than that, everything I've heard so far is basically that the people who come from referrals, because the difference between like people coming from a giveaway, like a traditional giveaway, right?If you go on Twitter and say, Hey, sign up to my newsletter this week, and you'll be in with a chance to win a Mac book or something like that, which people do well, you get loads of people who sign up because they want to win that book. Whereas, if you tell your existing audience, Hey, I'm going to give away a signed copy of my book this week to one person who makes at least one referral, or the people who they've referred.They've only signed up probably through your existing landing page or through like a landing page, which is they're there for the newsletter. Right. But they're not only there for the newsletter that they have for their newsletter. They know that friend is subscribed to. And that they've had from like, recommended to them and that they can chat about with that friend.So that likely to be way back to quality than anything else. And what we actually see is that, especially if you're going to go out and do paid advertising. So if you're going to do Facebook ads, for example, to your newsletter, Then, what you really want to do is you want to add in a referral program first, you want to see which people are researching and which people are being referred.And then you want to build a custom audience around that because those people are likely to be much better, kind of acquisition sources through Facebook for a custom audience, then just, you know, trying to build an audience in general.Nathan: [00:29:02] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then, then you're going to get, you know, for every dollar spent on Facebook to get a subscriber, you're going to get a little bit more of an incremental gains of, you know, another quarter of a subscriber on average or something like that.What are you seeing on, like, on some of the numbers, you know, if we were to spin up a, a referral program and execute it, maybe it's not the most, perfectly executed referral program ever, but we're following these best practices, making compelling content and that kind of thing, say to a 25,000 subscriber list, I don't know, 30% open rates, something fairly average. where do you see in a left on, on subscriptions?Louis: [00:29:45] Yeah. So what we tend to to measure by is, is kind of the growth rate, right? So if you're growing, let's say. Take X percent a week or X percent a month. What difference do we make to that? It's kind of how we measure ourselves. And what we tend to say is all we tend to see is that anybody with completely free digital rewards that cost them nothing, not putting a lot of thought into it, not running regular referral giveaways, which make a massive difference at really kind of trying to do the bare minimum, of, of, of time and, and money investment.They can get to somewhere between 15 and 20% faster growth with a referral program. the average that we have across all of our sparkly customers is about 35% at the moment, which is just slightly higher than I think the morning brew has from what I've read. and I mean, it goes the whole rain track.We've had people who have consistently grown 300% faster, 400% vested, but. That's sending daily newsletters. They have a super like gamified sequence. They have this wide audience normally of, of teens or of college students who are really interested in signing up. So it's, if you have that perfect storm, that really the sky's the limit, but yeah,Nathan: [00:31:01] Anything could change on that, but that's a great way to represent it, of whatever momentum you already have. We're looking for a lift on that rather than, you know, again, it goes back to if you, if the subscribers aren't there to begin with it, doesn't, it doesn't work. This is only a lift on what's already happening.Louis: [00:31:22] Yeah, exactly. I mean, the truth is that people do even without a referral program, you will have some people sharing. You will have people writing about the newsletter. You will have people sharing it in Facebook groups. And if you're like without doing anything else, if you're seeing basically no growth.That's normally something that's gone wrong, that, that a referral program isn't going to fix in the same way, the probably paid ads. Also, aren't going to fix that. There's something more fundamental that needs to be, to be sorted out.Nathan: [00:31:51] can you break from referral programs for a little bit like newsletters in general, newsletters are having this, this resurgence, right. There's been various waves of it. One was in the blogging. I feel like when maybe it's just when I came into blogging, but when there's a big wave in 2008 to 2010 something, 2012, something like that, I feel like tiny letter push newsletters a lot.And. 2013, 14, somewhere in there and then died often. Then now it's sub stack and your view and convert kit and all of us, right? There's this big wave. And in newsletters, do you think that's something that is here to stay? What do you, what do you think is different this time from, other particular waves we've seen in the past?Louis: [00:32:33] Wow. Big question. I think it's, I think it's interesting. I think people, so what I've seen is over the last couple of years that, I mean, info-product creators have always known that they need to own their own email list. I think. And people have always been blogging and there's no, and yet it would be a good idea to be able to email people the same things that they don't have to come and discover me every time and check if something's going on.And then I think over the last couple of years, what I've seen is that people who are maybe more into like the, the nerdier kind of technical industries have kind of copied onto the same idea, right? So we've seen people moving from a tech journalism, into newsletters. We've seen. Podcasters realizing, Oh, wow.I should probably own this audience as well. people on certain platforms who've been kind of, especially, I think, you know, people with Facebook audiences, for example, who've seen, okay. Yes. I have this group with 70,000 people and, but tomorrow I may not be able to email or to reach even five of them.So they've kind of woke up to that threat and realized yeah. Any to, to own that audience in a way that really own the email. Makes it easy with the kind of content that you want to send them. And what I'm seeing at the moment, especially from like conversations with people who are, you know, talking to us at sparkly is that we're getting a lot of interest from kind of younger and maybe slightly more or less, less, less closely related to the tech industry industries.So people coming from YouTube, people coming even from Tech-Talk from Instagram, all those people that you wouldn't even necessarily think that they would have. A big email list, like, personal trainers who don't, who do most of that on, on Instagram, for example, they are suddenly really aware that they need to start growing their email list.And, I think that's kind of it. I definitely think it's here to stay at least, you know, for the foreseeable future. I think it's a really interesting time to be, to be an email for sure.Nathan: [00:34:37] Yeah, it's really fun. But like no one in the last two years is or said like isn't email dying, whereas before they did. And you're like trying to explain, no, it's not at all. You know, like we see, these. Trends and the numbers and it's just, it's crazy. But now it feels like the mainstream sort of, press in general sentiment is catching up where people are realizing that they should have this hub and spoke model where the email list is their hub and then the Tik TOK and YouTube and Twitter and et cetera, are all these spokes that drive backLouis: [00:35:10] Yeah, totally.Nathan: [00:35:13] Something else that. I've been wondering about your take on this? You and I are both fairly vocal on, on Twitter about, email lists, monetization methods. what's been your take on paid newsletters and how have you seen those play out?Louis: [00:35:27] Oh, I so difficult. I think a lot of people are going to get done by paid newsletters. And I think I see a lot of people right now who have been really struggling to get a hundred subscribers and who, if they had tried to monetize in some other way, wouldn't be making $500 a month, but we would be making closer to, you know, 5,000 or $10,000 a month.I mean, I was thinking about it with my own list of sales with founders. If that was a weekly list, an email where I would be just giving some sales tips each week or giving the same advice in a weekly format. I don't think I would be at even $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue with that as a paid newsletter.But I mean, in the first year of doing it, I was in the six figures with it, with courses and with, with coaching. so I think, especially at the, I think. People, a lot of people have gotten into that too enthusiastically without maybe realizing that you are on a treadmill at a certain point and you have to then decide, okay, do I, you know, hire, do I make this more professional?Do I want to keep creating content or outsource the content creation to someone else for a long time? you know, like long-term to be able to grow it to something sustainable or do I want to add in different monetization streams? I think labs who. Maybe originally kind of started off with the idea of it being a paid newsletter, but realized actually it's more of a paid community with other things going on there.And the newsletter again is really kind of just a way to get in that. I've seen other people like, like Dan from capital, he tried the, the paid newsletter and it didn't quite go so well. And you realized consulting and services were for a much better shout. So. That's one of the things I think also if I look at like substance, for example, that the challenge that they're going to have is that it's super difficult to layer other products and other services on top of that.And that's going to become, I think, a real, a real blockade when people realize, Hey, for the same amount of work I could be making, you know, two, three, five times as much money quite easily.Nathan: [00:37:37] Basically the same point that I made on Twitter a while ago is, let's say we're trying to optimize for. Earning a hundred thousand dollars as a creator, as an independent creator online, I want to go from zero to a hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue. What's the best path to do that. And if that's our goal, I don't think it's paid newsletter.Now, if the goal is I want to have the simplest business model and I want to make sure that money just shows up really consistently, and I have a straight, a difficult, but straightforward life. Of showing up writing one to three articles a week, promoting them in this way and making sure that I get the same $2,005,000 a month, that just shows up like clockwork.And then a paid newsletter is fantastic for that because it's going to be very predictable. You and I both know from product launches that you can have a bunch of like $500 weeks, and then you can have a $50,000 a week and then a bunch of. You know, and then it'll taper off again and, well, that's far more money, usually over the course of a period of time.It can be stressful, right. Especially if we wanted to hire employees and there was something like dealing with payroll when you have these spikes, but I'm totally with you when I see. I guess I'm of two minds on paid newsletters, one it's incredible. And I love that the willingness to pay is there in the market.And it just, it added a whole new monetization method for creators where you can choose whatever you prefer. and then the other side I'm like that is a whole lot of work for not as much revenue as you could through a course or through coaching or through, you know, so many other other methods.Louis: [00:39:24] Yeah, totally. And, you know, I don't think it's necessarily either, or, and I think there are just kinds of newsletters that need to be like that. Right. So, Isaac, over at tangle, for example, He's writing news. Like it needs to be up to date having an info product or a course or something to him. It wouldn't really make sense.Whereas, you know, a paid newsletter in that case, because it's a regular content that needs to be updated all the time. Then that's an absolutely amazing way of, you know, of supporting him. Whereas there are other people who, you know, the founders want to come to me for example, and learn sales. Well, they don't want to learn sales for three years.If they're learning sales from me for three years, that means I've done a terrible job at teaching them not to do sales. Right. So I want them to sign up for my newsletter. I want them to stick around for a couple of months and then I want them to not need my newsletter anymore. And, you know, I think that, you know, you just have to kind of, there will be a good mix of business models depending on what your audience wants.And I think understanding what your audience wants is the most important thing.Nathan: [00:40:24] You see, in platforms of people choosing, you know, sub stack, review is just acquired yesterday by Twitter. so that's exciting. New news. I guess in full disclosure, ConvertKit is a shareholder in SparkLoop, through an investment earlier this year. No, last year I keep forgetting it's 20, 21. but what are you saying?Because SparkLoop integrates with a lot of different platforms, and takes over this platform, agnostic approach, which I think is fantastic. where are you seeing in why people are choosing each platform?Louis: [00:40:58] Yeah. It's it's so I think we honestly don't see. I hope I don't get told office. We don't see that many people choosing review. I think, it's just not, I think that will change now with Twitter. But up until now, it was kind of pricey. And they had like, you know, more limited features and maybe we're focused more on, kind of the slightly larger media companies, when it comes to sub stack, I think the advantage, the reason people go for what are the advantages sub stack has that people go for them a lot is also kind of the downside for the creator that makes them move somewhere else, which is that it's very strongly subset, grounded.You know, you're on sub stack and sub stack considers. You as a subscriber to be a substance subscriber, what just a, a subscriber to a particular newsletter that happens to be using sub stack in the backgrounds. So again, it's that they make it very, very easy to get in and to get started. And I think that's a great thing.And I think, you know, having as many people as possible blogging and creating newsletters and sharing what they, what they know with people is, is absolutely amazing. But I also think that there comes a point quite quickly when you start to realize with a tool like that. I mean, there are new ones popping up every day.You do get to the point where you realize, well, if I could just send a welcome sequence, if I could just do this one thing, if I could just tack people here or give them this link or just. If I could just sell for this one specific thing, or even just change this one tiny thing, then without doing any extra work, I could be making twice as much money.And I know that kind of, you know, I can take this audience with me wherever I want to go. And I think that is the big reason that I'm seeing that you have a lot of people coming into sub stack and finding newsletters and being inspired by substance and things like that, but then quickly turning to other tools that give them that kind of, You know, give them the flexibility to actually own their audience and actually, you know, make money and give their audience what they want.Nathan: [00:43:04] Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think that's why you're seeing a lot of publications start really easily on sub stack and then graduate from sub stack over time. I mean, just, just last week, Mario moved the generalist often sub stack and over to convert kit and then. ConvertKit and Pico and, and, you know, collection of tools.And then, Dan and Nathan moved every off to their own custom built platform. And so I think you're just going to see more of that as people come in and then grow and, and, and graduate out.Louis: [00:43:40] Yeah, I think it is, it is, it is graduating, right? That's how people, it's almost, it's, it's a consistent word that people use. They graduate from subsect to something else, which I think is a, it's a really accurate way of putting it, but also maybe not the best thing for sub stack as a company that. That people graduate from them when people call it graduating.Nathan: [00:44:01] It's not a dig on sub stack in particular because. Like when you graduate from high school, you're not like, Oh, that was a terrible waste. Well, maybe it depends on your high school experience. Right. But, but you're like, I learned all of this and now it has set me up for university. Right. And, and so it's sort of that thing of when you get started, I think in writing a newsletter, there's so much to do, and we see this with convert kit where you'll get someone say who has 200 subscribers.And they're like, let me launch a referral program. Let me, look at this crazy automation. I segment this so many different ways and they're learning all of that. And you're like, hi, quick point, you have one person that made it down. This like obscure branch of your automation. Like by the time you took 200 and, and branch all the way down, what you actually need, the habit you need to work on is writing consistently and publishing and promoting that content.And that's what sub stack has done so well. And so it's. It's this initial training rounds. And then once you're at the thousand 5,000, 10,000 subscribers, and you have the writing habit, then it's like, okay, I'm here. Now I can graduate and use, you know, a tool like ConvertKit or something else that is going to have the sequences and segmentation.The challenge that we have is ConvertKit is building a tool that, that beginner can start on as well. cause I think sub stack has demonstrated that they can make the market so much bigger.Louis: [00:45:27] Yeah, totally. I love that. It's like that analogy I just reminded me of, I didn't know when you were a kid and playing sports, whether you you'd see those, like you'd always want like the best, you know, running shoes or like the best. And in my case, like the best like goggles or the best swimming, like, They're like the best, like swimming trucks and stuff like that.And it's always like, well, you don't necessarily need to have like the perfect best equipment to get started. You just need to actually go and practice. You need to go and run. You need to go to play and you don't need to spend $5,000 on a pair of shoes or something like that.Nathan: [00:46:02] I agree. as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear. You know, we talked a newsletter referral programs quite a bit. but I'd love to hear some of your more general advice for someone who's starting a newsletter and maybe growing from, I should start with getting any, any advice for someone looking to get those first hundred subscribers for their newsletter.Louis: [00:46:24] I don't know. I think the first 100, I, I'm almost more of a fan of, I think you should be creating content probably in other places. And when you, before you start your newsletter, I think if you're gonna start writing a newsletter about something in particular, Most often people who get to a hundred subscribers and carry on, they get there relatively quickly because they've been being useful in other places, for example, on Twitter, in forums.Maybe even, you know, physically in, in, in, in, in places like in a, in a company or somewhere like that, that may be less than them with COVID. So I think for those first 100. I, I almost think you should focus less on getting more subscribers through the door and more on things useful and creating content in other places by people can find it on getting the subscribers from there.I think people are very, they're very afraid to go and share this amazing blog post or this amazing email that they've written. In different places to stick it, maybe on medium to tweet, thread it out, to put it on indie hackers, or how can you use, or some Reddit sub forum, something like that. I think people should be sharing it much more often than if people like it.Then they're going to go and sign up to get more of that. They're not going to say, well, I've read this now, so I don't need to go and sign up. I think that's something that I see a lot of people making a mistake with.Nathan: [00:47:43] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And just building that habit of promoting and publishing consistently can start on something as easy as, as Twitter, you know, or whatever channel. So I think that's great. Something else that I often encourage people to do is to do direct outreach and to say. Like go find, start with 10 people.You'll reach out directly find, find 10 20, who might want to sign up. Even if that first group is just doing it, because they're like, not that interested in your topic, but I like you as a person. And so I'll support your thing. And that sort of gets that initial quick momentum.Louis: [00:48:20] Yeah. And you know, you can also piggyback off other people, right? Like, I mean, I only have only 3000 probably subscribers on Twitter, but if someone writes something about me or mention something that I've said in that newsletter alongside three or four other people that I would like to be mentioned alongside, and then they tell me that's on Twitter.Well, I'm. Almost certainly going to retweet it and share it with people that I know. Right. And I think most other people are not too close to being as vain as I am. So I think you can, you can pretty easily piggyback of other people's audiences to get those best hundred or 200 asNathan: [00:48:52] Yeah, that makes sense. It reminded me, I've been seeing more like newsletter collaborations, you know, that's something that's very common in the YouTube world. YouTube is direct advice to creators as you should. You should collaborate. Get, bring these two channels together. You'll both get a bunch of subscribers release one video on each channel. Have you been seeing more newsletter collaborations and how well have they been working?Louis: [00:49:15] Yeah, we have, we actually, it's something that people keep emailing me about when they sign up a spot group as well and saying, Hey, do you know anyone else who has a similar newsletter? and I think that that is a really interesting problem space that also hasn't quite been solved yet. For some reason.I think partly because it's very difficult for computers to work that out. But a recent one that I saw was it was again Trevor McKendrick and, and Josh Spector did it, a recent takeover that went really well, where they basically, they introduced each other in that weekly edition of that newsletter.And then set, this is going to be a takeover in effect. Josh is going to share some knowledge here. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So, you know, putting your personal, what behind it, your personal trust to say, this is what I'm reading and listening to. And at the end, you can go and sign up here.So I think we are going to see a lot more of that. And I think we're also going to see a lot more people is slightly different. I think we're going to see a lot more people building the framework, the structure of that newsletter around the idea of share-ability. So something that James clear does a really good really well is.Each of his bits of his three, two, one newsletter. There is a very handy link to, to share it, tweet out that thought or to share that thought somewhat. But I think we're going to see more people building that format in to make it super easy for their readers to, to share something that they found interesting.Nathan: [00:50:36] It's interesting. I was a person who always underestimated the value of a, like a tweet button or something being there. We recently added it where after you create a landing page and convert it, it has, you know, a share on Twitter or Facebook button right there. That's prominent. And there's now like 50 shares a day.That show up just from that button, like just on Twitter, like, on Facebook, I think it's actually double. And you're looking at this and you're like just coming from the explicit ask to share and promote makes a huge difference. So I can totally see that with James. And when he gets down to the quote or some thought, it's like tweet this, I knew the person who originally would say like, no, if they want to tweet it, they'll just highlight the text jumps at Twitter and do it. And the fact of the data is that that's actually having the button and making it, having the call to action makes a huge difference.Louis: [00:51:35] Yeah, I think, I mean, I I'd be the first to admit I'm a super lazy person. if you give me a button and just say, Hey, you could go and do this, then I'm much more likely to do it, even though maybe I don't think of myself as the kind of person who would be affected by that.Nathan: [00:51:48] that makes sense. Okay. So in the newsletter takeovers or the collaborations, I think the natural thing that I would have thought about is like, Hey, let's do cross promotions, you know? If you're enjoying my newsletter, you should also go check out the reason I really like these people you shared with Trevor of them.Basically they wrote the same content, right? Cause they've wrote their weekly newsletter and then they just, they just purely swapped. and so it was that same great value and it wasn't an additional lift for them. They have visits. Someone had to do the newsletter matchmaking, right. knowing each other and that sort of thing.But I guess I also thought yesterday, Lenny rigidity, who's been on the show before, did it with April Dunford or at least ran a guest post from April Dunford on, on pricing and strategy and positioning. And that's such a big thing. I don't think James talks about this a lot, but he did a ton of guest posts early in his career.That's how he built his very first audience was. Going out and guest posting like crazy. So I think we'll see a lot more of it.Louis: [00:53:01] Yeah, totally. No, I agree.Nathan: [00:53:03] Are there other things with SparkLoop that you've seen that people are doing, that it was working really well for newsletters or, or any, any final thoughts on. Like, as you put together your referral program, make sure to do these things.Louis: [00:53:18] I'm trying to think. So I think there are really two things we didn't necessarily touch on too much. That might be interesting. so the one is just that the, obviously the ease of use of the referral section is a big thing. So having the actual referral link itself inside of the newsletter and having shareable, like one click to tweet on click to, to share on Facebook, for example, having those links in there as well, so that you don't have people, you don't make your subscribers go and click on a button and then.In to the referral programs that generate that referral link and then share from that, that tends to,Nathan: [00:53:53] is a refer. Is there has a referral for account by default, basically.Louis: [00:54:00] exactly. Yeah. I think that's a big thing that some people that realize makes a massive difference and it's often you see people who try out to referral program where there are so many steps involved to getting like for people even to begin sharing that they don't get good results. And then they assume, you know, a referral program in general, it doesn't work for me not, Oh, the specific way that I set this up was just super complicated for my subscribers. and then the other thing I would say that we've been sleeping on a bed at sparkly. We didn't realize because no one else was doing this. Just, just how, how much potential is that is the idea of running referral giveaways.So of having like a time limited window where you basically say, okay, instead of. Let's say getting this reward for three referrals, this rewards for five referrals and so on saying, okay, on a Monday, email goes out, make one referral this week and you'll be entered into a giveaway, to win whatever it is.One of three of these, these things by Friday. So it adds in some urgency. And what we're seeing as well is that a people respond super well to it because they think, okay, everyone can make one referral and I'm in with a chance to win this big thing. And B we're seeing people using that either as a sponsorship opportunity.So saying, you know, reaching out to a sponsor and saying, Hey, can you give me. So the price for this and return to the exposure and also maybe pay for that as a, as an additional advertising slots, if you do advertising or even using it to reach out to, to potential sponsors, especially if you're a bit smaller and to say, okay, look marketing team at this company. You know, we know it's difficult for you to get the budgets, especially to work with us. Cause we're smaller. Why don't you just sponsor us? You know, why don't you give us two or three of your products to run as a referral giveaway. We'll mention you we'll include a link and we can use that as a way to build up a relationship.And then let's talk about you actually sponsoring us for money in a couple of months and that's, that's worked super well so far.Nathan: [00:55:58] Yeah, a lot of sense. I mean, thinking back to the early days of convert kit, when you know, you're doing, we would do content marketing, right. To try to get customers, but there's, there was no incentive to sign up. Right. Then it's like, Oh yeah, I can work it. Now I'll switch to that sometime this year, this decade, you know, and there, there's no reason to do it right then.And that's when we started webinars where you would have some time limited thing, and you're like, look, if you sign up for ConvertKit on this webinar, then we're going to give you this discount or these additional bonuses or something else. And it takes this thing that someone is intending to do at some point.And they go to like, great, I'm going to do actually do it right now. And that makes a huge difference. And then, you know, for those that don't sign up in the webinar, you add another timeline of like, if you do it by the end of the week or, Know tomorrow or something like that. And you're basically looking for any opportunity to take something of like, I want to do this and we'll do it someday.And you're just saying great, anytime you want so long as it is before Friday, and that's going to make a big difference. It turns out urgency matters. So I love that.Well, good stuff. we should start to wrap up. I'd love to hear you may, if you just want to let people know one where to go sign up for SparkLoop, if they're considering starting a newsletter, actually, if you have a getting started guide or sort of that it needs any content, around, knowing if a newsletter for our program is right for them, that would be good.And then where people should follow you on other platforms.Louis: [00:57:32] Yes. So I am @louisnicholls_ on Twitter. louis@sparkloop.app is a great place to reach me. If you have any questions, sparkloop.app is the website that SparkLoop. But the best place to go. And maybe this can be included in the, in the show. Notes is actually sparkloop.app/referral-university.And that's a free, five email course that we've put together. That includes a free month of SparkLoop where you can get, sorry. My video seems to have gone for some reason. Don't worry. It's not an important part. yeah, basically if you, if you go over that, you can get. A, a Fremont and sparkly and also a series of five lessons where we will walk you through what a referral program might do.See you, whether it's the right time, how to set one up, what rewards to use and that kind of thing.Nathan: [00:58:24] Sounds good. That's perfect. Well, I'm a big fan of SparkLoop, obviously, because. I invested in SparkLoop and we've been promoting it. And as part of creative pros, if you're using ConvertKit and you're on the creator pro account, you get it for free. so definitely take your newsletter, start a referral program, and you're going to see pretty significant growth if you've set it up correctly with a bunch of tips that, that living food itself, Louis.Thanks so much for joining me today.Louis: [00:58:49] Yeah, Nathan. Thanks for having me. It's been great.

The main problem we're talking about this week is how we even begin to communicate the benefits of Thunk to the people we made it for. We're solving it by getting a positioning hypothesis in place to test out, using a framework from April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome. We explain the major benefits of the writing method that inspired Thunk, from the book the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron— and why she'd be firmly against the idea of digital morning pages. Andrew tells the story of how he came up with the idea for Thunk's core feature to solve that problem, and how he leveraged his product design skills to bring it to life in just a few months. Through the community at Ness Labs, Andrew was able to get a ton of early customer interviews that helped shape the product, and will be our first beta invites this week. Using the interviews, Danielle walks through the starting point for positioning, and how to leverage the beta program to get actionable feedback. Try out the beta: podcast@thunkjournal.com Follow us on Twitter @nalband and @danielleismessy

Maps can visualize space, time, biological processes, social graphs, and much more. Anne-Laure of Ness Labs talks with Mark and Adam about the multi-thousand-year history of map-based thinking, and how we can use maps in our own creative work today. @MuseAppHQ hello@museapp.com Show notes Anne-Laure Le Cunff @anthilemoon winter solstice Algerian food Ness Labs @ness_labs mindful productivity the Dunning-Kruger effect How to Be Idle Thinking in maps Cassiodorus Babylonian map of the world the map is not the territory The Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt’s Chimborazo map Disney business process map (1957) Krebs cycle floppy disc save icon D3.js Parametric Press Connected Papers digital object identifier (DOI) babies using touch gestures on magazines heads-up display (HUD) Scapple by Literature and Latte focused mode and diffuse mode / Barbara Oakley affinity maps

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs, which applies neuroscience research to productivity and creativity. In addition to writing articles and running a growing community, Anne-Laure also writes a newsletter subscribed to by over 25,000 “mindful makers”. In this conversation, we talk about building up a newsletter audience from zero. Anne-Laure tells us why newsletters grow differently from other platforms, like YouTube channels, and why you shouldn't get discouraged when your subscriber numbers hit a plateau—often, if you just keep writing and sending great emails, the next wave of growth is right around the corner.We discuss the difference between Twitter and SEO as channels for gaining new subscribers, and the importance of saying “no” to all the things your business shouldn't focus on right now.Anne-Laure also explains why she's not pursuing brand awareness for her newsletter, and why she's focused on maintaining the contract with her readers first and foremost.Links & Resources Chris Guillebeau Tropical MBA Podcast Product Hunt Hacker News Quick Chat with Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs - The Indie Hackers Podcast SparkLoop & ConvertKit The Nathan Barry Show e017: David Perell – Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money - Nathan Barry Anne-Laure's Links Website: Ness Labs - Make the most of your mind Twitter: @anthilemoon Subscribe to Anne-Laure's Newsletter Episode TranscriptAnne: [00:00:00] Saying no. And always asking yourself, why am I doing this? And is it the right thing to do? That's the most important thing I thinkNathan: [00:00:13] In this episode of Art of Newsletters, I'm joined by Anne-Laure, talks about her journey from a product marketer at Google to running a very popular fast-growing newsletter. We talk about how she's earning a living her fresh products and so much more. So let's dive in. Anne-Laure, thanks for joining me today.Anne: [00:00:30] Thanks for having me, Nathan. Nathan: [00:00:31] So I would love to start with just why you started a newsletter. You've got a newsletter that's quite popular now, you know, you're, well-respected in, uh, all of our friend groups and all of that got a course that came out a ton of things. But going back to the beginning when you're like, all right, I'm going to create a MailChimp account.When I get going, like, what was the impetus behind that? Anne: [00:00:54] Initially that was more of a personal challenge. I went back to university a couple of years ago to study neuroscience and I wanted to have a forcing mechanism to write about it. And I'm someone who actually feels quite uncomfortable with disappointing people.So publicly committing to sending a weekly newsletter about the topics I was studying at school was a way to force myself. To keep on doing it. I didn't want people to be like, where's the newsletter. I should say she would have it. Right. So that's like, that's where I was just, I just told people, Hey, every Thursday you can expect an email about when you were a science for me.Nathan: [00:01:35] Yeah. So were you able to hit the every Thursday? Did you stay on that? Anne: [00:01:40] Actually pretty much. So I only missed three newsletters. In one year, two of them were planned. The other one is when was when I lost my grandmother and that was on the day I was supposed to send a newsletter. And what's crazy is that I almost went like, okay, I don't want to think about it.I'm going to keep on writing. And then I was like, that's like, no, that's not healthy. Are you doing stuff? Writing? This is okay. And, um, the two other times, I actually announced it in the, the edition before, because I read it out about mental health and balance and mindful mindfulness. And this is part of it too, knowing when it's better to just skip one newsletter so you can stick to it over the long run.Rather than burning out because you're trying to be overly sustainable to a point where you're hurting your own mental health. So I did skip a few ones, but I'm okay with it. I think what's more important is to be able to stick with it over the long run. Nathan: [00:02:37] Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And I like your point about being intentional about it and saying.I'm not missing a newsletter, I'm taking a break. And I think that's something that, um, Paul Jarvis has done really well where, you know, he's had his newsletter going for many, many years, and then he'll say like, okay, I'm taking December off or I'm taking the summer off, you know, something like that. And it's just, uh, a good way to give yourself that break so that you can, you know, have the consistency and then, you know, readers know what to expect.We are consistent with newsletters, so that. Readers can check in and know, uh, you know, really consistently what to pay attention to. I remember one of the, the first people that I followed is Chris Guillebeau. Uh, he wrote the a hundred dollars startup and a bunch of other great books. And he would post every Monday and every Thursday at like 10:00 AM or 9:00 AM on the dot.And I, for whatever reason, I wasn't on his email list. I don't know why. But I would actually just be like, Oh, it's Monday at 10. Like, and I would go and like, look for the poster. And if it was there on nursery day, it would go read it. And it's just interesting how like, well, you can get trained to, you know, go to the place where the good content is.If the creator sticks to the schedule. Anne: [00:03:51] Absolutely. And you see that in lots of areas of content creation, right? Some of the most successful YouTubers are also following a pretty strict schedule where they tell people they're very similar to what you just mentioned. Two videos a week one on Monday at this time one on Thursday at this time, same for newsletters, uh, same for blogs in general, any kind of.And they're very worried. The person is trying to build an audience. You need to have some sort of contract with your audience where you tell them, Hey, you're giving me your email address. You're giving me access to the most intimate part of the internet for you. You're giving me that that's precious in exchange what I'm giving youthe contract is going to be—is that you're going to receive. One or two newsletters a week from me on these days and I'm not going to break that contract. So I think it's quite important to be consistent if you want to build that loyalty with your audience. Nathan: [00:04:50] Yeah. It reminds me of, um, one other podcasts that I listened to a lot, uh, called the tropical MBA.And I'm even realizing that in there, like sign-off for the show, they say, we'll see you next Thursday morning at 8:00 AM Eastern standard time. And. Like it doesn't even matter. Like I'm not looking for the podcast at that. Like, I'll play it the next time I'm in the car driving somewhere. I'm on a run, but it, it has that like, you know, at this exact time you will get it.And it's just interesting how prominently they put it into their show. Anne: [00:05:22] Absolutely. And that I agree with you that it doesn't mean that people are going to wait that 8:00 AM on the dots to see it. But if every week when they checked and it was the day after, or it was one hour later, or the fact that they can trust that when they're on the next run or the next drive and that this content is going to get there means that they're going to keep on trusting you.And they're going to keep on checking, but if they check in three times in the row, It's not there, then they're just going to find someone else's content to consume instead. Nathan: [00:05:55] Yeah. That makes sense. What was the first milestone, um, for your newsletter that you felt like was substantial where you're like, okay, this is an actual thing.This is working. Let's keep going Anne: [00:06:07] to me. It was probably when I reached about 2000 subscribers was when I had this moment where I was like, that's. An audience. They are, I don't know, 2000 people in real life. So I felt like 2000 people, there are people in there I've never met in person who are not my close friends who are not my mom.So this is in the audience basically. So yeah, 2000 subscribers was when I started looking at it as something that could grow and that could become a more serious part of my life. Nathan: [00:06:41] What was like most impactful for getting those 2000 subscribers. And how long did it take? Anne: [00:06:47] I got there in a couple of months and as much as I'm a big advocate for consistency, the truth is that if you look at my growth curve—and it's the same with lots of my friends who run really big newsletters—there were spikes where something happens and sometimes it's something you control.in my case, for example, I launched my newsletter on product Hunt And I got a thousand subscribers just from that, which felt insane at the time because, you know, you just kind of double your newsletter in one day. And then there are others that I didn't control. Like one of my articles going viral on Hacker News and insane.You get quite a few subscribers. So, um, it's, uh, It's a mix of things that I control like launches and stuff like this, and a mix of stuff. I didn't control. The one thing though, that was really important was just to keep on posting every week. Right. And to make sure that I didn't wait for people to find my content, I would write the content publish the newsletter.And then I would promote the newsletter on Twitter and different places, etc And while I couldn't control which editions of the newsletter would go viral, by making sure that I would keep on doing this consistently, I was just increasing the chances one of them would be picked up by someone and shared with a bigger audience.Nathan: [00:08:10] Yeah. That makes sense. When, if someone was considering launching on product hunt, what are the, some of the things that. You know, you think would make that go well, like one thing that I can think of right away is you have very specific focus for your newsletter. It's, it's unique and engaging rather than just being like, Oh, these are Nathan's musings on whatever, if I'm a random percent approximate, I don't care about that.Um, so I'd love to hear your take on like what you think would work. Well there. Anne: [00:08:37] Few things. The first one is that it's called product con. So I think this is what you were saying by, it needs to have a focus. And this is, uh, you know, I mean, you, you nailed it. This is exactly that it needs to feel like a product.So I would really work on the landing page and try and think about it as a product. What's your value proposition? Uh, what are you offering here? What is the service, the product, uh, who is it for? Who's the audience? What are they going to get out of it, et cetera, et cetera. What are the features, which in the case of the newsletter, you can describe what the frequency is going to be the length.Is it something that's going to take two, three minutes every time to read so quick bites or are you offering more long form contents that people can read on their commutes? For instance, So features audience value proposition, et cetera, I'm really presenting it. Like a product has really been France.The second thing is that because of the way production works, you need your product to be quite popular in the first couple of hours when you're posting it. So I really recommend waiting until you have about a Keystone, a thousand or 2000 subscribers. With a good chunk of them who are fans of your work, because then when you launch on product hunt and you can't ask it's against the rules to ask for a votes.So you don't do that. If your audience is big enough and your content has been valuable enough to them, you don't need to do that. People are going to come and comment on your post on product condensate. I've been reading this newsletter for two months. It has been very useful for me. This is what I learned.I really recommend signing up, et cetera. This is the most powerful thing that can happen when you're not the one selling your newsletter anymore. It's members of your audience who are doing it for you. They become ambassadors. So for that to happen, if you only have a hundred subscribers and half of them only are opening it.So wait until you have an audience and make it look like an actual product. Nathan: [00:10:41] Yeah, that makes sense. Cause I think so many people, um, say like, Oh, it's just a newsletter and they treat it too casually and exactly how you position. It really matters because if you think about it, um, I'm trying to think of an example right now, but, uh, there are a lot of almost like software companies or a lot of real products that under the hood are just a newsletter and it's just in the, in the packaging and positioning.And how you talk about it. That you're delivering that value. And so that really matters. And going back to the contract idea that you mentioned earlier, you know, if you're spelling out, this is what you're going to receive on average is going to take five minutes to read, or, you know, like these are Epic long form essays, research driven.And if you're spelling that out on the product page, then, uh, you know, people will understand what they're signing up for. There's a lot clearer expectations. So that makes a lot of sense. Anne: [00:11:34] And I just want to add that the other advantage of making it very clear is that you're also making it easier for your audience to share with people who may also appreciate the newsletter.If it's not clear. Even if they enjoy your newsletter, but they're really struggling to articulate to a friend why they like it, right. It's very hard for them to share and making the effort as a reader to share the newsletter with someone else is already a lot of work. So you want to make it as easy as possible for them.And you should tell them, this is what it is. Here are three bullet points that explain what the newsletter is about and why it's so good, then they can just. Either copy and paste this or reformulated a little bit if they want to, but at least it's clear. So you're not on me making it easier for yourself to grow your audience bank directly acquiring it.You're also making it easy for yourself to grow your audience by increasing word of mouth by making it cure what it is about. Nathan: [00:12:31] Yeah. So I think that, that, you know, one or two sentence description is really important, um, for a newsletter or any product. What's, what's the description that you have now for your newsletter.Like if I, if I asked what what's your newsletter about? And then maybe how has that evolved over time? Or has it always been the same? Anne: [00:12:48] The current one is a neuroscience-based content for knowledge workers. Um, and the very earliest one, which didn't work well was make the most of your mind. I'm in really good and catchy, but I think lots of people were like, okay, cool.What is this thing? So now it doesn't sound as catchy, I think, but it actually works better because people are like, Oh, this is the content I'm getting, and this is the audience. Am I part of this audience or not? Do I think this content could be valuable or not. So, yeah, it's, uh, it, it took me a while to switch because I really liked like the sound of the first one, but sometimes you have to be able to fall out of love with your own ideas and to pivot.So that's what I did for the technique. Yeah. Nathan: [00:13:41] Yeah. Well, it's this balance between clear versus clever and you started with clever and then later went to like, okay, let's just be clear and direct and descriptive. And I think that makes sense. Uh, so the SIFO where the newsletter is that now you've, you've scaled it up quite a lot.What are some of the current numbers? Anne: [00:14:00] Uh, I'm at 24,000 subscribers now and yeah, I'm still at, around in between 45 and 55% open rates on the, the subject line that I'm using a lot. The, uh, the one that had the highest open rates in. And forever with was productivity porn. And the second one was idea sex.And now I'm thinking, is it the pattern here? Should I just talk about sex more? Is that where they say that sex sells? Right. So it really depends. Sometimes I have more boring subject science and so it goes a little bit more, sometimes higher and, um, yeah, that's, uh, I don't have other numbers in mind right now.Those are the two main ones. I look at how many new subscribers and what the open rate is like. Nathan: [00:14:51] Yeah, I think that's a good number to pay attention to because if you become too fixed to get too fixated on one or the other than, you know, like. It's actually not that difficult to grow a really large newsletter that no one pays any attention to.You know, and then, um, if you're only focused on open rate, then you'll probably end up with this really small group. And so I like to talk about engaged subscribers as the metric to optimize for, and that's just, you know, open rate times total this size. And then if you can grow that over time, then you're doing really well.Anne: [00:15:24] Yeah. One number I used to look at negatively before was the number of unsubscribers at the beginning, every time someone would unsubscribe, I would feel so hurt because I was like, are you breaking up with me Why are you doing this to me? And now I realized. Two things. Um, from a human standpoint, this is good that they're breaking up with me.It means I'm not bringing them the value they expected they were going to have, so it's good. We're not wasting our time anymore. Staying in a relationship. No one wants to be in on the business side of things two Most email service providers charge based on your number of subscribers, right?Actually Actually I Should thank them for unsubscribing. So I'm not paying for someone who's not going to read my emails. I've become actually quite positive about people unsubscribing where I'm like, this is great. Uh, we can both move on and I'm not going to have to pick up the bill. So that's great. Nathan: [00:16:28] That's right.Yeah. You don't want to be paying for dinner for someone that's no longer invested in the relationship. So, um, what are some of the things that are driving growth now? Um, on the, on the subscriber side, like what's working to you bring in the most subscribers, Anne: [00:16:45] my, the main one is still Twitter. Uh, and. It may stay like this for a while, even though my fastest-growing acquisition channel is search engines I'm very excited about that actually, because Twitter works great for me in terms of acquiring new subscribers, but it is definitely correlated to how active I am on the platform. And I've never actually run the numbers, but intuitively speaking, looking at my analytics in Twitter and my analytics in my newsletter, there's definitely some sort of correlation going on here where the more I tweet, the more people sign up to the newsletter, which is great because you can just tweet more and you get more subscribers, but it's not sustainable.And there are times where actually you want to take a break from Twitter. my newsletter definitely suffers from that in terms of growth. So that's quite interesting. Whereas for, with SEO and search engines I'm literally acquiring subscribers in my sleep I can go to bed. And then, you know, if an article I posted is actually doing a great job at answering the question people are wondering about, then I get a bunch of new subscribers.And I really like that. I like SEO because I can reach people that are Way outside of my personal circle with Twitter, it's one or two, maybe three degrees removed from me, but there's still a connection somewhere. Whereas with SEO, I can have access to people who probably don't even have a Twitter account have never heard about any of the people in my circle.And who just need help with a specific question and then I help them. And if they start browsing the website and the previous editions of the newsletter they're like great. I'm going to sign up because I want to hear more from this person, Nathan: [00:18:39] right? Oh, that's so interesting. I love that. You're making the correlation between.The active work versus the passive work or like which one is the treadmill? Um, which, you know, we're actually big fans of treadmills. Like you can use them to get really fit. Um, but, and then, which is the system or the flight. Oh, that's working for you. And so, yeah, cause for me, it's the same thing with Twitter.Um, my Twitter audience and my newsletter really grow when I invest the time into it. And so I guess in that way, it's good. Right. If you pour the time into it, you, you do really get returns from it. But then when you want to take a break, it's like a cool, well, we'll be here when you need it, but also you don't get anything in the meantime, whereas with search, you know?Yeah. There's these subscribers and this traffic that just keeps coming. Um, what are some of the things that you've done? Um, to optimize for search. Is that something that you've learned a lot about yourself or that you've contracted out to someone or is it that you just focus on great content and let everything else take care of itself?Anne: [00:19:38] Um, so I want to preface this by saying I'm not an SEO expert, everything I've learned on my own. I have, um, I've never worked with a contractor on this because I've been focusing. I used to work at Google before, and I knew some people who worked on the team, looking at the search engine. And even though.They never gave me any secrets because that's way too precious to be shared like this. So they never gave me any of the particulars, but definitely there's been a trend in the past few years where Google is focusing on the quality of the content, rather than at structural bits of the article that you're publishing.So in the past you could probably improve your SEO a lot by just saying, okay, I need to have a meta description and these tags and these things, et cetera. But now the they're using machine learning much more. You really need to think to put yourself in the shoes of someone who needs help with a particular question in kind of thing.Okay. And there are tools of to that help you look at that, like a RAF, et cetera, but. It's more about putting yourself in the shoes of the person looking up something and like, how would they ask that question? How would they phrase it? And if I was the one looking up this question, what would I find helpful?And what's interesting is that for some questions, actually, I want to read a quick one paragraph answer. I just want something really quick. Right. And for others, I need something that's more in that. So it's also changed the way I've been looking at it, where in the past, I always thought I needed to write.Really long articles to give value to people. And I feel really comfort. I have articles that are 300 words and they're doing really great because they're the only one answering that particular question. So it's like long tail content. The way I've been going about it is just experimenting, reading about it, looking at my own data rather than looking at it.Kind of like blanket statements, types of tutorials telling you what to do. I'm just looking at my data and looking at what are the articles are performing best and trying to figure out what works well. And I'm using a couple of plugins on WordPress as well. They're just flagging when I'm making. A massive mistake in an article where I'm trying to rank for a keyword and I'm linking on those keywords to another website.So I'm giving them all of my juice basically. So a couple of plugging and helping with this, but it's mostly trial and error. Nathan: [00:22:07] Yeah. That makes sense. So SEO is a big factor. Um, what are some of the things that you've tried? Have you done any partnerships with the people who are running newsletters or cross posts or anything like that?Anne: [00:22:18] I've done these. And so I have definitely tried exchanging links and newsletters with other people. It hasn't worked pretty well for me. I know that some people swear by that say that's amazing. I kind of suspect that it may work for maybe smaller newsletters where it's like, Hey, like everyone is so committed to you that they're just going to go and sign up to whatever you say.Um, for, for bigger newsletters, like me, it's really hard to find another newsletter that is hitting exactly what I'm offering to my audience. Right. And so I think one of the reasons why I didn't work really well was because. The newsletter I linked, you were only half relevant to my audience and it was the same for them.They linked to me and was kind of like half event. So yeah, for me, it hasn't worked when you, well, exchanging links like this. Nathan: [00:23:15] Yeah, that makes sense. I think that probably someone who has a really broad topic, like if you're talking to startup growth, then maybe there's 10 others on startup growth or writing or some of these things.Um, but yeah, you might be a lot better off. Like promoting a single article or something like that. You know, I I've definitely done like, cause I haven't done it recently, but years ago to grow my newsletter, I would do things like write a guest post, um, for another newsletter or a blog. And that would, I guess it would usually drive more awareness and an engagement than it would necessarily newsletter subscribers or like as directly.And so it worked, but it wasn't like, Oh, I did this thing and here's another thousand newsletter subscribers instantly. Anne: [00:23:59] I think what you're saying is very interesting because I, in the PA in a past life, I used to work in marketing and I think most people have heard of the concept of the funnel, right.Awareness and then conversion and then loyalty. And I think for a newsletter, especially when you're at the early stages, Uh, you know, even if someone has 20,000 or 30,000 subscribers—most people I know who are in this range there's still one person running the newsletter. They don't have a team. It's not like morning brew or whatever.The hustle, massive newsletters with millions of subscribers. I would say that for most people up to 50,000 people, you're still writing the content yourself, et cetera, in. Maybe to me working on pure brand awareness at the beginning of the journey, may be a bit of a waste of time because—it's notorious in marketing.That brand awareness is what costs the most time and money to put together and is also the hardest to measure in terms of success. And at the beginning of your journey, when you run a newsletter, It's probably more important to focus on stuff you can measure and improve, and that has a direct impact on your numbers.And once you become wildly successful and you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and you have extra money where you can start experimenting with more brand awareness stuff. Yes. It's not that brand awareness is bad. It's more about figuring out when you're kind of stretched at the beginning. What are the places where you should invest your time and your energy that.are having a direct impact. Nathan: [00:25:44] Yeah. And what's returning money. So it's trying to talk about, you know, monetization and actually earning money from the newsletter. There's a ton of different ways to do it. Uh, whether it's, you know, sponsorships selling digital products, memberships, um, you know, paid newsletters are really popular.Now I'd love to hear what, what you're doing now. And, and Y you know, out of all of the options you chose, what, what you're doing. Anne: [00:26:08] So I first experimented with paid. EBooks that I was selling on the website and the newsletter was just a way to drive people to that. And I made it a little bit of money, but really not enough to pay the rent.And I very quickly felt like either. And I know you've been, you've had some very successful eBooks for yourself, so. Either I would create a new book and make it the product I would be focusing on and give it all of the love and the, the, the energy time, et cetera, that it would need to be a successful launch, but just running a newsletter and saying in the newsletter here's my ebook was probably not a great way to go about it.So there's probably better ways to do it by, but that didn't work for me. What's worked really well for me. And what I'm still doing is running a membership community. Next to the news letter and the content of the newsletter is free. I know that some people do paid newsletters, but for me, the newsletter has been such an amazing way to attract people to the website and to start nurturing them that I don't want to close down this acquisition channel by putting it behind a people.So I want to keep the music for free. And this way, people who just need to read my content, they're still getting value and this is great. But for the subset of people who want more, they don't want to just read the content. They want to talk about it. They want to make suggestions. They want to ask questions.They want to ask, how can I apply what I read into my life and how are other people doing it? And how can I improve my own systems for all of these people who are. You know, probably like th at the time, it's about 5% of the people who are subscribed to my free newsletter for those 5%, I'm offering more.And again, I'm just one person running everything. So I'm giving them extra value. And I'm saying, do you want to pay for that extra value? And the ones who want you, they can vary the part of the community. So that's my model right now with the free newsletter and the paid community. Nathan: [00:28:16] Yeah. So I love what you're saying about not wanting to cut off the acquisition channel.Cause that's like, that's the biggest challenge that I've had with paid newsletters or what content you put behind a paywall, because if you write something incredible, you're like, Oh, this should go to my page like this, this is worth paying for, but then you're like, But I need that. I need that piece of content and to go attract new subscribers and it should be free because this could actually pick up another 500 or another thousand subscribers, maybe just from the single article.And so you're always in this tension between the best work that I put out, where should it go? And the conclusion that I came to is, well, I should do, I need to create more of my best work. And then that started to turn into like, okay, I'm actually not that prolific writer. I'm not, I don't have the ability to create incredible work for two different, uh, two different channels.So how do you think about, or like, what do you deliver to people in the paid community? Uh, that isn't for the newsletter. Anne: [00:29:22] First and in the community in itself, that's why for at first I launched with just the community features. So they have access to an online forum where they can talk about the articles.They have access to week fees, zoom, meetups, altogether. When you pick a topic that's been covered in the newsletter and we actually talk about it, um, We also have we invite experts where we do with them and they can tell us how we had one with Paul Jarvis, actually recent vivre. He came and talked about how he runs his newsletter.So the 80% of it is the community in and off itself. Recently I've started adding more exclusive content. And the way I do it is that I make them PDF reports. About something that I know the community is interested about. So one that we did a few months ago was cognitive biases and entrepreneurship. And another one I did last month was tools for thought and personal knowledge management PDFs are useless for SEO in any case.So there would be no point in just putting it on my website. So I optimize the page itself where people can build it for SEO. I tweet about it. So people know that this is available, but then only members of the community can download the full thing. And that's been really helpful because first it's been really good as an acquisition channel.Some people are like, I don't have time for another community, but I'm going to read this report. So I'm just going to go with this. And the current members of the community they're super happy because I never told them that they would be getting this. It's like just a surprise saying, Hey, you're a member.Thank you for being here. Here's some extra content for you and it makes them, I think, but like they want to stay for longer because getting extra content. Yeah. Nathan: [00:31:24] That makes sense. And then you also probably don't have the same, um, Burden on yourself of like, Oh shoot, what's the, what's the Epic PDF that I'm going to come out with this month because you sold them on the community and the connection and these other things that don't take nearly as much of your time.And then you're just delivering value over the top with a PDF, you know, a great report when you, you know, are inspired or have the energy. Anne: [00:31:50] Exactly. And that's probably one of the most important things in general. We talked about consistency earlier. But not creating artificial consistency where you can stick with it is also still plants.And that's why, what I love about having the paid community is that what I tell them is that here's a community. We're going to do stuff together, the exact stuff I didn't commit to anything. So I'm someone that we can get bored pretty easily. I'm never bored with the community because I can wake up one Monday and say, Ooh.What if we do a series of coworking sessions this week, let's do that. Like, I feel lazy and I'm procrastinating this week. You want to come and all jump on the zoom call and let's work together. Uh, Amy would like pull drivers that was planned a week before. And that was again, if you go on our landing page for the membership, I'm not saying you're going to get that.It just happened. So I think finding the right balance between saying I'm offering you a community and we're just going to do cool stuff together and I'm going to be here and you can engage with me the exact details, like just common. Find out. Obviously the landing page is a bit more detailed than this, but have her comment on stuff.And for the newsletter is the same. I'm not necessarily committing to an exact format or to what exactly people are going to get. What I committed to. And that's the contract is it's every Thursday and these are the general topics I'm going to be talking about. And that's what I can promise you. And I'm not, I'm never going to break that promise, but then if I feel a bit, yeah, like playing with the format or trying something new one week, I feel comfortable doing this because I'm not breaking the contract.Nathan: [00:33:40] Yeah, that makes sense. Um, can you share some of the numbers from the pay community? And I know you shared them on Twitter and you're very public with that, but I'd love to give people that context. Anne: [00:33:50] I'm, uh, I met for 200 members, paid members, I think now. And, uh, In terms of, uh, Jimmy can't remember, uh, I think that the monkey recurring revenue is around 6,000.Nathan: [00:34:09] Okay. Yeah. Cause you're at $50 a year for the community membership. 50 Anne: [00:34:13] to $50 a year. Yeah. But some of it, I have two pricing. I have a $5 a month and $50 a year. So that's why the numbers have been all over the place. And I've made so far. I launched back in March, made about $65,000 with the community. Nathan: [00:34:31] Oh, that's awesome.So one thing that I wanted to touch on, cause you have a course that you, you launched the firm created from collector to creator, and I thought it was really interesting that that is. Uh, that's not a separate thing it looks at and correct me if I'm wrong. It looks to be, you know, a new acquisition channel for the, for the community, because it's all one payment it's still the $50 a year.Uh, yeah. Talk about that. Anne: [00:34:57] Yeah. So two parts for this first, as I mentioned earlier, I really liked the idea of saying through the community join, and then you're just going to get a lot of good stuff and you. You have to do it. You can't tell people they're going to do that. I'm good stuff. And there's no good stuff.So that's the first part, surprising people like this becomes a way of them wanting to stay because they're like what what's coming next. There's always good stuff going on. The second part is yes. And the acquisition channels, for sure, because some people and I've had so many people tell me I've been on the verge on the fence of joining.For the past few months, but I wasn't sure exactly if it was for me. And now this is this time bound thing where it's like, Hey, it starts on this date. It finishes on this one. So if you want to join, you have to do it. Now. You're going to miss this thing versus something that's always there. And people just keep on pushing back from the time they actually.Do it, so that's another thing. The third one is just logistical. It's so much easier for me to manage everything as a community and say, Hey people, that's the community. Everything is happening there. And when you have so many different channels to manage between Twitter, between the newsletter, uh, you know, I'm part of several telegram groups.Obviously I have 24,000 people who have my email address. So I also get a lot of emails that I need to reply to. And having every, everything in the circle community is a great way for me to not have more channels than I can handle. And I can just log in there, replay to everyone, make sure that I'm present and that I'm here to answer their questions.So, yeah, there's also a massive logistical aspect to it. Nathan: [00:36:48] I think there's a lot of really good points in there, but the simplicity for you to manage as a creator is so important. I've watched a lot of friends and convert customers and other people over say like the last seven or eight years. One is like get to a good amount of success and get to the point where they're earning, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars from what they've created.And then they, you know, release higher price products and they layer on more products and they're cross selling to this other thing. And not only does their email marketing get really confusing and complicated, especially as you're like looking back like three years ago. Why did I. Why did I create that tag?I don't actually even know what that was for, but then also your, just your schedule and like mental space gets so crowded. Cause you're saying, okay, what is for this community? And what's for that. And hold on, did I promise updates for this product? Or was that just thing should this, you know, and so you end up with this really complicated, overwhelming, uh, you know, thing to maintain.And so what you're doing is basically saying. When I'm inspired to create something new, I can go, whether it be a PDF, a, uh, a zoom call with a friend on a particular topic, um, or, you know, a full new course, I can create that I'm going to promote it like a full lunch. So it gets all this attention out in the market, like, okay.And Laura just came out with this great course, you should pay attention to it. But then I get to fulfill it just through the same thing that I was always doing and have that simplicity, um, and then just drive more sales there. So I think it's brilliant because you're finding this balance between, you know, driving more revenue and keeping your life simple.Anne: [00:38:35] I love that you're saying this because I've seen so many of my friends quit their corporate job because the state, they wanted more freedom and they ended up creating this new monster of a bus for themselves. Where the committed to so much that I genuinely think that their life today as an independent creator is actually more stressful than it was when they were an employee.And I really don't think it has to be this way, and I'm not worried for them because I know that this is part of the learning process and they're probably going to figure it out and, and, you know, change their processes and simplify them. But. I think most independent creators have had to go through this space.And myself included, obviously, like I didn't just wake up and figure it out in one go. I've had weeks where I felt like this was too much work and this is why I'm being very mindful of my time time now. But there's always this tension between being able to, to do whatever you want to do, because you're technically your own boss.But also learning that it's not because you technically can do whatever you want to do, that you should try to do all the things you need to make choices. And you need to remember that there are only a certain number of hours in the day. And one of the big reasons you probably left your corporate job was to have some freedom and to feel less stressed.So it's important to keep that in mind. I think. Nathan: [00:40:07] Yeah, that's good. And it was listen to, uh, your India hackers podcast episode. And you talked about burnout on there, um, and how, like that's such an important thing to be mindful of and be aware of. Um, because yeah, like I am my own boss and it turns out I can be a terrible boss, you know, especially if I'm also the only employee.Um, are there any other things that you've done in either systems and processes or things you've committed to, or, or deliberately said no to. To maintain that level of freedom. Um, yeah, as you've gotten the audience?Anne: [00:40:42] One of the things that have helped me so much, and I felt so uncomfortable doing it at the beginning is that I added to my website into my newsletter form too.Paid for my time. If people want to talk to me, they can book there for one hour and we have a zoom call together. But as my audience has grown, I've had more and more people reaching out to pick my brains, which just gets my opinion on their product or on their newsletter. And it's not that I don't enjoy doing it that you love doing it.This is great. I love connecting with people. As I said, we only to have a certain number of hours in the day. So the number of days in the week and. At some point, I found myself in all of those calls with people from all around the world, which very quickly went from exciting to overwhelming. So now I have this form where people reach out to me.I'm like, yeah, I'm very happy to talk. Uh, you can sign up here. And if you want you, if you're willing to pay for an hour of my time, I'd be more than happy to review whatever you want to review together. So that's been a great way to protect my time. And that's also been a source of revenue, which is great.And yeah, that's like the only thing I can think about right now, I think that the main, the main rule that I'm trying to have is to try to say no more often. I've been asked for example, by so many people, I generally get two, three people asking me every week. When are you launching your podcast? And I know it's ironic because we're currently recording for us together, but I have no plans of launching a podcast right now.I don't have time. I don't have the energy. I don't think this is what I would be doing best. I'm great at writing. I don't think I'm that good at interviewing people kind of like talking and stuff like that. So. No, I'm not going to do it and it's not big. I could technically do it, but I'm not going to do it.And as an independent creator or a solo founder, this is the most important thing saying no more often than you're saying yes and always asking yourself, am I saying yes, because this is what everyone seems to be doing, or am I saying yes, because it's the right thing for my own content business, the paid newsletters you talked about earlier, for example, if, for me it's a great example.I feel like everyone and their mother and their dog are launching paid newsletters right now. I'm not saying they're good or bad. They're just a tool. And a communication channel they're completely neutral. But as such you need to ask yourself, is it the right thing for me and for my business, is it really what I should be doing?Or am I doing it because it's the latest trend and it was the same for podcasts last year. And it's probably going to be the same for something else next year. So saying no, and always asking yourself, why am I doing this? And is it the right thing to do. That's the most important thing Nathan: [00:43:38] Yeah, I, that makes so much sense. And having that awareness, um, really matters because. I mean, I always think of the Richard Branson quote, uh, opportunities are like buses. There's always another one coming. And as a founder, you know, as a creator, you can look at that and you're like, Oh, this would be amazing.Oh, that's working. You know, I heard on a podcast that, um, you know, paid newsletters are incredibly good or that sort of thing. So let me jump on it and always. Uh, you know, hop on all of these buses and instead you can sit back and go, okay, that is great. I'm really happy that that's working so well for that creator.That's not me, or that will be me after I do this thing that I've already committed to and I'm going to protect my time. I'm going to protect my energy and, um, you know, follow through on this one thing. That's something that I've given, um, a lot of advice to people. Who are starting multiple newsletters, which to me is, is a little bit crazy, but one newsletter is enough work, but I think you see how, how fun it is.And, you know, the growth is like, Oh, let me start another newsletter on this topic. And I always try to encourage people to bring it back and like pour all of that energy into this one thing, right? Like if you have 5,000 subscribers today, then if you, if you stick with it and pour energy into it, then you'll get to the 25,000 subscribers.And. I think the other thing that people miss with newsletters is the ceiling is incredibly high. Like Tim Ferriss, James clear Ryan holiday, Gretchen Rubin, they're all in the like, say, well, I guess I threw a couple of people in there who are the 300, 400,000 subscriber range, but most of that group is in the million subscriber or more range as individual creators.And so that's the crazy thing with the newsletters. If you keep with it for a long time, Then like, like, I wouldn't be surprised if you and I are talking, you know, I don't know, two, three, four years from now. And you're like, yeah, I have 200,000 subscribers on the newsletter and this is what results from it.If you stay really, really consistent, Anne: [00:45:43] it's a great point is there's no ceiling or the ceiling is very high as you say, but. The growth can be very inconsistent and compared to platforms like YouTube, where there's an algorithm that is going to keep on bringing people through your content. So lots of people on YouTube, for example, they see exponential growth.If they manage to stick with it for, let's say one year, a year and a half, and they do one or two videos a week for that time. And the content is good, obviously like you can never. I mean, I don't know about YouTube because there's backpack I'm doing really, really well, but you have good content, then you're consistent.The algorithm is going to help you and help here and use our growth, your sorry, your YouTube channel grow. Whereas with a newsletter you don't have such a mechanism that you need to get to quite high numbers before this starts having some sort of a feedback loop. I know you're working with for example.So I'm going to change in the future, but up until now, there was no viral element to build into the newsletter because of this. I think lots of people get discouraged whenever there's two weeks or three weeks or one month where the growth seems to be kind of, flat and that's when they fall prey to the shiny-toys syndrome and they're like let's launch a second newsletter or let's start a podcast or let's do something else.Whereas what I have found in my very short amount of time of experience in my one year, and some months with my newsletter, Is that if I managed to keep going during those couple of weeks where it felt quite slow, then it would pick back up again because of an edition that did particularly well. lots of my friends, they have this staircase type of growth also with their newsletter where you can see spikes when something happens.But these spiked spikes happen only because they stick with it. So, yeah, I think you do need. More persistence and patience with the newsletter than you would with other types of platforms. Nathan: [00:47:50] Well, I think you bring up a really important point that there's no built in distribution or, um, discovery platform for newsletters.It just doesn't exist. Whereas on Instagram, Tech-Talk YouTube, um, even search right for blogs. That it's there and, and you can grow an audience from it. And so that is a huge negative for newsletters. If that is not built in, on the flip side, the big positive is that all the distribution channels are available to you.And this is like a double-edged sword where on one hand, they're all available to you. And so you can grow in all of these ways in, in a way that like, say if I'm going all in on YouTube, It's I'm pretty much doing YouTube's algorithm. Like I'm not also going to use Twitter to grow my YouTube channel to the same extent, um, because the, the value of each subscriber isn't nearly as high on YouTube as, as it is sound newsletter.Um, so you have this, like with the newsletter, you can use any channel, but also which one do you focus on? And that's where I was. I'm really encouraging people to like, It's sort of a hub and spoke model. And so you have the hub, which is your newsletter. And then instead of saying like, here's the 10 spokes that we could be doing, you actually just choose two and start with that.And it sounds like for you, you've chosen a search and Twitter, and those are the two. And then when you're focused just on two, like it's a lot easier. It's not as overwhelming as trying to be like, let me pull subscribers from YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, search and everything else. Does that sound accurate?Anne: [00:49:29] Yeah, absolutely. I think you can have more channels in the future once. It's exactly what you saying earlier about. It's not that I'm never going through these things that I'm going to do them once. I nailed the first few channels, most big newsletters that are also doing YouTube, who are also doing all sorts of different platforms and channels.There's a team. Behind the, the newsletter, like the face of the newsletter, you could get Tim Ferriss. If you look at James clear, she looked at all of these very successful people with their newsletters who are doing podcasts and lots of different things. Did you start doing all of these things in their first year, they only started doing it once they had the payment energy and people to help them do it.So I a hundred percent agree with you, I think at the beginning. And at least once it's just you and you haven't figured out your channels, two is great. It already takes a lot of work to get to channels rights. So get this to right. Once that's the case, you'll also know a lot more about your audience.And where else it makes sense to reach them. Whereas at the beginning, you may not even know, you may be investing a lot of times in five different channels and three of them are actually useless for you. So, yeah, I agree with you start with two channels. And once you get your way later in your journey, why not explore it more channels, but you'll be much better equipped to do it.Nathan: [00:50:57] Yeah. One, going back to the point you made about product hunt early on. As you pursue this new channel or new growth opportunity, having the momentum and subscribers already makes a big difference. So like in the same way that you're saying, you know, get 500 or a thousand or more subscribers before you go on product hunt, because they'll help you get momentum in that distribution and discovery algorithm.Uh, it's the same thing. Let's say, if we're like, okay, we're now ready to do YouTube. Then you show up there and you bring your 25,000 friends with you and they like watch your videos. And then the YouTube algorithm says like, Oh, Wow. People are coming from outside, YouTube watching this, sticking around, subscribing, you know, getting more, watch time on it.You too let's this must be a really good video. Let's promote it. And the same thing is true of let's say later, you know, you decided to write a book and release it on Amazon. Well then instead of like, hoping for readers there and like begging every reader to give you a view, it said, you just come in and say, Hey, all of you, will you please buy this and write a five star review.Thank you very much. And then magically you're like, Oh, how how'd I get 500, five star reviews, you know, within a week. And it's just because you like leveraged their stairsteps, you know, one platform into the next. Anne: [00:52:17] Exactly. Yeah. The network effects of your audience can be incredibly powerful if you're using it wisely.I would say because it's the same with everything you mentioned. Like if among them launching YouTube and then I'm fighting, I'm asking them to write reviews on Amazon and you always need to keep a balance in terms of value you're delivering and value. You're asking from your audience. Right. So just, you know, focusing on one or two things at the same time is also a really good way to not confuse them and to get the most out of the help.They're very willing to give you a, you need to be clear as to what you're trying to achieve and not ask too much either. Nathan: [00:52:57] Yeah, that makes sense. Um, one of the last things that I want to dive in on back in the monetization topic is. You've gone with, um, a very low price point of the $5 a month, $50 a year.Um, what are your thoughts on that versus say that the very opposite end of things, you know, like David Perell was, uh, the, the guest before and he's got his, um, Write of Passage, uh, course, and he's charging thousands of dollars for that. Um, what's your thinking on choosing one end of the spectrum versus the other.Anne: [00:53:31] I would need to ask David exactly how he got to 2000, but the first I think most creators I know around me, they didn't start with 2000 straightaway. Right? Most of them, they start at a way lower price point and most of the ones that are, or today around the 2000 price point, they've been running their course for a little while.They've had a few cohorts and they raised the price every time because there's more and more value in the course. And it makes sense to raise your price when there's more value. So. First, I think it's a full secret to meet you say cure here's 2015. So 15 for me is my very, very first course. Um, and in terms of just your general question about price point, um, two things first, I think, can you think about, are you delivering something that's useful for work or that's more personal because then your audience is going to be a little bit different.And I know that lots of people, if it's something they can use for work, they can expense it. So the friction is a bit lower. They can tell their boss, Hey, I'm going to take this writing course, because obviously you want me to be a better writer and. Manager is going to say, okay, I'll cover half of the price or I'll just pay for it.Whereas for people in my community were like, Hey, I want to take care of my mental health. I want to feel more creative. These are very valuable things on the personal level, but they're harder to sell to your bus. So they're paying with your personal card. So that's one thing to take in mind. The second one is what are you going to Denver?And if you charge 2000, you need to have. Incredible levels of support for the community and, you know, David and Tiago, they have a team of several people working with them. They have extra sessions, they have all of this incredible content. And so it makes change. It makes sense to charge 2000 because you're almost positioning yourself against.The cost of a course in elite university that wouldn't have the teaching assistant access to the labs and all of this material and the library, et cetera. So, yeah. Okay. 2000. That's nothing compared to what it would be paying for an Elliot university, whereas in my case and what I'm telling people, very honestly, as I curious this community, and I'm going to give you live workshops together and it's just me and it's very new.And there are going to be technical hiccups. And the reason why charging solo for this first version is because I've really want your feedback, help me build this become co-creators of the course. So that's why I'm charging at this price point. And I've also made it very clear with people that the second cohort is going to be more expensive.The third one is going to be more expensive and then may get to a price point that is similar to what they visit sharing is charging at some point. But I'm not there yet. So that's how I'm thinking about pricing. Nathan: [00:56:27] Yeah, I think that's so good. And that's exactly what I wanted to, to focus on because when you start at the level that you did, and I love the way that you like, you even position it as a founding member, right.If someone comes in, they're getting in early, they're getting rewarded for that. They're helping shape this with you. And you're being very direct and upfront about where you are on your journey as a, as a course creator, you know, and everything else. And so you're not saying like you're not coming in and charging a ton of money for something where, you know, you might not be a hundred percent confident that that level of value is there because to your point earlier on freedom, like that completely messes up, um, You know, the whole freedom equation for you.Cause then you'd be constantly stressed about it. I would be constantly stressed about am I providing this level of value, but if I charge a low enough amount, then I'm like, Oh, I'm providing 10 X that value easily. And then as I add to it, I, you know, you also have the, uh, the urgency in that side of things.So like, okay. You know, founder membership is, you know, doubling to a hundred dollars a year now and get in before that happens. Or, you know, when you get to step it up with the value and, you know, not only are the early fans even more invested in and think you're great, but then, you know, you get to have launches all the way.Anne: [00:57:50] Yeah, exactly. And I just, I really liked the idea of co-creating a community with the members versus just me broadcasting stuff. So, you know, I've already got lots of feedback on the first session of the course that I did yesterday, and I don't think people would be so comfortable sharing this feedback if I didn't insist so much on the fact that I really wanted it at the end of the first session, I told people.Did you enjoy this? If you did, the best thing you can do is take the time, like right back to me telling me what you liked, what you didn't like, what could be better, et cetera. And when they launched the second cohort, I'm also hoping that because they participated in the first one and they co-created the second one with me, they'll probably also feel more comfortable sharing it with other people saying, Hey, I took part in the first one and I know the second one is going to be even better because I helped making it better, Nathan: [00:58:52] right? Yeah. That's so good. Well, I think that's all the time that we have. Thanks for, thanks for sharing everything. Where should people go to sign up for the newsletter and join the community? Anne: [00:59:02] So for the newsletter, they can go to nesslabs.com/newsletter. And, uh, there's going to be a link in there for the course.So that's probably the easiest way to go about it. Nathan: [00:59:13] That sounds good. Well, it's been really fun to watch you, you know, take off on Twitter and with your newsletter over the last a year or so. And I'm just excited to see where you take it. Anne: [00:59:23] Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. That was a fun conversation.

In 2017, Anne-Laure Le Cunff left her job at Google and began her journey to build Ness Labs, a learning platform comprised of the popular Maker Mind newsletter and the Ness Labs community.While building Ness Labs, Anne-Laure has become one of the most prolific writers on the internet. She has written over 200 essays in the past year alone, growing her subscriber base to well north of 15,000 subscribers at the same time.How is it even possible to produce so much in such a short time?On this private call for Foster and Ness Labs members, Anne-Laure shared all that she's learned about reliably producing original, insightful work at a breakneck pace. She explained her unique system for turning raw ideas into polished, timeless pieces.

Today's guest is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder and CEO of Ness Labs. Ness Labs is a research studio dedicated to building mindful productivity. Anne-Laure has helped a lot of people integrate creativity into their "productive work," which not only helped them accomplish more meaningful goals but also tap into their own unique strengths. Her philosophy is, “We are at our happiest when we're our most creative and productive self.” She writes articles on mind framing and personal development on her blog at Ness Labs and also regularly publishes a newsletter aimed at anyone wanting to live more creatively. As an entrepreneur herself, Anne-Laure enjoys helping fellow entrepreneurs live more mindfully. Check out Ness Labs: https://nesslabs.com/ Audio Editor: Tejas Bharitya Editors: Amanda Vu, Daewon Kwon, Scott Blender & Serene Feng Hosts: Scott Blender and Serene Feng Graphic Designers: Sasha Tunsiricharoengul & Sharanya G A Marketers: Inchara Athreya & Sara Emira