This week marks 2 YEARS of The Lightbulb!

To mark the occasion, I thought I’d share 5 highly scientific trends I’ve noticed from sending 518 daily Lightbulbs to an audience of curious and inspiring solo consultants.

And please, if you enjoy this newsletter, please fill out the annual Lightbulb reader survey - it's anonymous, takes just 1-minute and really helps me keep this email fresh and relevant.

On to the learnings:

1/ Growth + churn have equalized

Daily emails are a lot for a subscriber to sign up for, so you’re bound to see higher unsubscribe rates than your typical weekly/monthly newsletter. The upside is that you’re left with a tight, curated list of engaged people who want to hear from you daily.

(This is the right-sized mindset for building an audience meant to support a niche 1:1 expertise-based business.)

So yes, I see churn, edged out slightly by a steady trickle of organic growth - I don’t do active promotion or ads.

But by far, most of my subscribers come on the days of live speaking events. Then it’s up to me to maintain your interest. Or not…

2/ Unsubs sting less over time

Like I said, unsubscribes are part of the game, particularly in this format - I see typically 1% churn per week.

In the beginning, each one was a gut punch. The constant wondering of what inspired someone to actively Irish-goodbye your party.

But I've learned to remind myself — 99% of folks didn’t churn this week. So I must be providing some value.

3/ Idea backlog has stabilized, but I don’t really use it anymore

If you’re going to publish daily, it's helpful to have a running backlog of ideas, especially at the beginning. And the faucet of lightbulbs really turns on once you start publishing at a regular cadence. Execution breeds inspiration, and I now have over a floating average of 200 Lightbulb ‘seeds’ in my Trello repository.

But over time, I’ve become more reactive, writing about something that inspired me on that specific day - a client interaction, a piece of content, a peer conversation, a terrible visual spotted in the wild, etc..

So I use the backlog to park half-baked ideas and let them simmer for a while. But mostly, the backlog is just a backstop now — not a go-to for a daily spark.

4/ Daily creation time has remained consistent

I write every Lightbulb fresh every day. No content calendar. No pre-writes.

I fully expected to get “better” at pumping these out over time. (Better meaning faster.)

But even after 500+ of these, one hour has continued to be the time it takes me to hit the quality bar that makes me feel ok to hit Send and hit hundreds of inboxes.

I'm ok with that. It's become a ritual.

5/ Y’all are slow to warm up - and that’s ok

You hear from me often (very often), but I don’t typically hear from you until you’ve been here for a while, if ever.

After you find your way to The Lightbulb, you’re either really excited and book time to meet with me right away.

Or you slow-burn read in the digital shadows, and reach out once you know me better. Typically it’s 4-6 months.

But guess what — what’s most exciting is that those of you who reach out to talk after 4+ months, have read every day for those 4 months.

So when we do finally talk, we have A LOT to talk about, and we can go very deep, very quickly applying Lightbulb concepts and frameworks to your solo business.

That’s it! On to Year 3. Thanks being here, truly.

If you’re thinking about starting a regular email list, feel free to send me your questions. This is also my annual plug for Jonathan Stark’s E365 workshop if you need some cohort-based accountability to get started.

And one final ask—please fill out the annual Lightbulb survey— it takes just 1 minute and helps me keep The Lightbulb relevant for you.

💡

-Wes