Hello my favorite reader who loves reading my emails every week.

How's the festive season coming along?

Have you decorated your Xmas tree and overdosed on hot chocolate yet?

No?

Well… me neither…

For the past 2 weeks I've been slammed with finals.

But I'm not here to tell you how I did on my finals (it's definitely not because I did poorly).

Instead, I'll share with you my story of how I ended up being a writer/creator.

A Humble Beginning

It's late 2022, I just finished a summer internship with the biggest developer in Dubai.

After I was done with internship I had to go back to finish my final year—but I made a promise to myself:

"I have to find a way to build something for myself and not be an employee"

You see, during my internship I was assigned to work on one of the company's biggest project.

I got to meet 100s of other engineers (from different companies) and all of them had 1 thing in common:

They were all miserable and looked like robots.

They didn't have a life.

All they did was work, sleep, repeat.

None of them had any ambitions or dreams. Whenever I asked them something they were always negative towards life—and I like to think of myself as a positive person who doesn't let negativity get to me easily.

But after spending 3-4 months with them every day for 8 hours, it seeps in.

Like a ship that has a small hole where water can get in.

Eventually, the ship is going to sink.

So when I got back to college, I knew I didn't want to go to the workforce.

I figured that academia was my best shot at living a good life.

That year I:

• Got a 3.9 GPA

• I got 3rd place in a national research competition (lost to 2 PhD students)

• Finished a research paper with my professor (still waiting for him to publish it)

• Won 3 national bridge competition (destroyed the other kids from different universities)

  

  An absolute masterpiece was built that night

Even though I had made some progress in my career as a student, still I was struggling with something…

Confidence.

The Lonely Chapter

You see my friend, I'm 5'8 and used to weigh 110 lbs…

So I made a promise to myself:

"Build a new, better version of yourself."

It looked something like this:

• Confident

• Felt comfortable with his body

• Knew what he wanted to do and was disciplined

• Can easily start and hold conversations (I'm an introvert so talking to new people always makes me anxious and shy)

So in January of 2023 I started going to the gym.

At first it was tough.

People who knew you would doubt you the most and make jokes.

"You'll only do it for 2 weeks max"

"So what are you now? A bodybuilder?"

"Stop lying to yourself, you'll never change"

But having a set of friends helping you goes a long way.

A few weeks into 2023, I joined my first half-marathon with my friend.

The experience was brutal.

Muscles were cramping. My kidneys felt like they were stabbed. Blisters covered my feet.

But my friend and I kept pushing and finished the race.

This gave me the motivation to start running along side the gym (and hence the 2x training session a day was born).

Again, people called me dumb for doing it cuz I was "killing my gains" and not having enough time to recover.

But who cares?

If doing something makes you more creative, productive, clears your mind, gives you time to disconnect from the internet and contemplate life, think about your relationships, and much much more.

Then is it really bad that you're killing your gains?

But back to my journey…

In February, while I was eating my dinner in the dorms, I found a video of a guy with a mullet titled "Become A Digital Renaissance Man (And Join The New Rich)".

That man was the infamous Dan Koe.

I spent the next 2 weeks binge-watching his content and it gave me the idea of writing online.

But it took me almost 6 months until I graduated and started writing online.

I told myself that I'd have to make it in the summer of 2023 otherwise, I'd have to go back to the workforce (which is my worst nightmare).

I bought a $4,000 course that promised me to make $20k/mo (how naive I was)…

I don't wanna spoil things for you, but it didn't make me a single penny…

Who would've thought, eh?

The summer has ended, I went back to the developer with my tails between my legs and got a job.

The pay was great.

Most people thought that I was successful because of how much I was making as a 21-year-old.

But most people didn't know that I hated my life every time I woke up and had to go to work.

All I wanted to do was 3 things:

• Write

• Learn

• Workout

The fulfillment, purpose, and drive I got from them was all I cared about.

So I had to create a plan, a smoke screen you could say, on why I would leave quit my job.

That plan was me deciding to get my Masters in environmental engineering in August.

But that was just a hidden excuse for me to write more.

The First Sign of Hope

In December of 2023 I made my first WiFi dollar.

The dream of monetizing myself was all of a sudden a real thing.

Sweet passive income baby!

Turns out, people can actually make a real living from their personal brands...

This gave me hope and the motivation to keep going—even though I barely had an audience at this point (I had like 300 followers by now)

But 2024 started off with a bang…

Fitness related…

I just joined my first marathon ever.

This was even more grueling than any half marathon I ran before (at this point I already ran like 6 half-marathons).

It took me 4:56:22 to complete it.

I spent 4 months training for it and I ran it all by myself.

But one thing that kept me pushing was the idea of completing the marathon.

For some reason I had a voice at the back of my head shouting at me telling me to do better.

That voice was Goggins’ voice.

But after completing the race the sense of accomplishment you get from doing something that most people think is impossible is next-level.

And 4 months later, I had enough of working a job that I hated.

So I went to the office, kicked my boss’ door open, grabbed him by his shirt and told him “I’m out and if you don’t like it, you can stick it up your a**.”

…Kidding, that didn’t happen.

I just sent an email to him when I was at home.

Now I finally have more time to:

• Learn

• Obsess over writing

• Work on more research

Nothing Happens For A While, But Then Everything Happens At Once

After I resigned, I bunkered down in my room and got to work.

Worked on 2 research projects during the summer break.

Grinded away with writing, but seeing little hope…

I was still stuck at 800 followers and ~100 email subs…

At this point, I signed a few more clients and made a few thousand dollars writing, but nothing was sustainable.

Everything was random.

I'd make $2k one month but the next 1-3 months I won’t make a single sale…

So in September I decided I'd obsess over 1 thing:

Threads.

On the 29th I posted my first attempt at going viral. I spent 2 weeks writing it.

So when I posted it I expected 100k impressions MINIMUM.

But I only got 29k…

I was devastated…

"That's it… I should accept reality and quit." I told myself.

However I decided to give another crack at it and wrote another thread.

This time it was about my little self-made experiment and not having any caffeine for 3 months.

It absolutely blew up!

After that I had a couple more threads that also did well—but still, I had a problem.

…Money

I didn't know how to monetize.

So I asked for help from a creator I look up to a lot, Kieran Drew.

He told me to monetize my ability to go viral and help others do the same.

And before I knew what was happening I signed 2 clients and got invovled with cool projects with bigger creators.

But things really took off after I wrote another thread, this time it was my experience with focus and how hard it was for me to study during my school years and how I had overcome it.

That was the ADHD thread.

Most people now know me because of that post.

And the creator who inspired me to write online in the first place took notice of it.

And since then I even got asked to do a few favors from big creators (which feels surreal to me even now)…

Let's not also forget that I still kept my training up despite everything.

Now I weigh 140 lbs and ran 932 miles in 2 years…

So What Can You Learn From My Journey?

1) Intention over everything

You see my friend, before I tried to do everything at once.

I tried to write emails, short forms, threads, and monetize all at the same time.

Your effort is the same as light.

If you concentrate it hard enough into one spot it turns into a laser that could cut through steel.

But if you spread it over a wide area, it becomes a like light bulb.

2) Stop forcing things to go a certain way

My biggest mistake was forcing things.

For the longest time I only tried to monetize through digital products.

I hated coaching and saw no value in ghostwriting.

But a great digital product isn't created out of thin air.

It's created out of iteration and feedback from people who have gone through the process—and there is no better way to get feedback than to coach people. You get to see first-hand what people like, don't like, and struggle with.

Sometimes you have to do things you don't like to do the thing you like.

And one thing you'll notice when you stop forcing things:

Everything would turn out better than what you have expected.

3) Obsess over the craft, not outcome

I've seen many people start writing online only to quit 2 weeks later.

They realize that it's way harder than it actually is.

Learning a skill is hard, learning how to write is even harder.

But it’s one of the most rewarding skills you could learn.

Throughout my journey I've spent close to $8,000 on online courses and mentorships to learn how to write better.

When I bought them I didn't have the intention of making money from those offers, but I just wanted to become a better writer.

Because here's one thing most people won't tell you:

Yes signing clients is fun and all…

But the ultimate goal is to get paid for the quality of your thoughts.

Therefore the only way you can reach that level is by becoming the best at what you do and developing yourself as a person through learning new skills and experiencing new things.

Now I'm writing about things I love for a living.

4) Be present.

Throughout my journey I always struggled with imposter syndrome and self-doubt.

It's only after I went on a run last week that I figured out why that was the case.

You feel anxious because you're thinking too far into the future.

You feel depressed because you're thinking too far in the past.

But when you think about the present moment and do the best you can do, you feel the calmest and happiest.

Because you realize that the only thing that is in your control is your effort. Nothing else.

Once you’re focused on the present, things start to go as planned.

5) Trusting the process

On the outside looking in, it seems obvious that I was doing everything the right way.

It was only a matter of time before I'd have my big breakthrough.

But the truth is, it was never like that.

Every step I took felt like I was moving backward, not forward.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to do a recap of my entire journey.

Because it's only today that I realized how far I have come in the last 2 years.

Now I don't know where you are in your self-improvement journey, but I can tell you this:

Stay consistent for a long enough timeframe and the results will come in.

Every day compounds.

It's only a matter of time before you start seeing the results you want.

Thank you for reading.

I'll see you next week.

Hussain <3

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PS:

I'm thinking of launching a course early next year (I'm thinking February).

It's gonna be about how you can monetize your passion through writing online without having to deal with all the rubbish advice that's out there.

This will be my exact system of how I generate ideas, build a brand that you're excited to work on every morning, attract an audience (without sounding like a total knobhead), and have your writing ooze with personality (so you can make sales without having to cold DM people).

If this sounds interesting to you, let me know by replying to this email.

Cuz I'll only build it if you're interested.