Starting Over and Finding Your Pace

Life, Money and Gratitude # 23 Starting Over and Finding Your Pace

I took a break from social media, writing my newsletter and listening to all the gurus out there.  Too much noise.

I’m  relatively new to social media, I got my first Twitter (X) account a year ago in 2023 then  

I spent countless hours: 

• watching tutorials on YouTube 

• I took 3 separate courses 

• I read dozens of articles 

• and experimented with different styles

Here is what I found out.  

Unless you know exactly what you're trying to do and why, it will probably take you some time(usually longer than you think) to figure it all out.  If you're in it for the long haul you’ll be all right, if not - see ya, there are no shortcuts. 

There are a lot of methods to achieve the same results, and many opinions as well.   This holds especially true with content.  There are a bunch of wonderful people teaching online (I’ll give my short list at the end) as well as what I like to call “gurus”  who seem credible but they are not.

 You have to experiment to figure out what works for you and that requires getting started and patience (still working on that).  You have decide what medium works for you, 

• videos 

• short format

• long format

• blog  etc...

and whose advice you want to take. 

Are you sharing information?, educating?, entertaining? trying to make money?, all the above?   Well, just get started and keep plugging away.  

Or, maybe you’ll have to stop and start over like I did. No matter. Learn your lessons and keep going. 

I took a break from it all (what a relief) and this might have been an indefinite break if it weren’t for a  friend who asked, “what happened to the newsletter?”

(Thanks Jan) I didn’t think anybody would miss it.

Jan reminded me of what I was trying to do in the first place. I was trying to share resources about money management and life skills through a book I wrote (Graduation Gift) and a weekly newsletter.  That’s where I was happy,  putting out a weekly newsletter and telling stories, not spending hours on Twitter each day trying to get the word out and reading every comment and replying to each tweet.

Figure out what  works for you, that’s the goal.   For me, it’s slow and steady, a newsletter every week that’s my pace.  I’m sure over time I’ll make adjustments and get back on social media but for now, just a good newsletter and maybe a tweet every now and then.

Until next time, God Bless and be well.

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Here is my short list of teachers that were helpful to me based on my desire to self publish a book (I did it all wrong) and learn to write online:

Nathan Barry - @nathanbarry , nathanbarry.com, author of the book Authority, A step by step guide to publishing.  If you’re self publishing a book you should read this. It would have saved me thousands of dollars and 100’s of hours of fumbling.

Dickie Bush- @dickiebush and Nicolas Cole @Nicolascole77 put together ship30for30.com to teach about writing online, design, copywriting, layout, and eye-catching hooks.  The complete beginners guide to writing online.

Justin Welsh - @thejustinwelsh , justinwelsh.me , Justin is the Solopreneur and a master of systems, once you have some content he can show you how to organize it, automate it, and get it in front of a lot of people quickly.

Austin Kleon - @austinkleon , austinkleon.com , If you don’t know where to start check out Austin’s book Show Your Work it’s a wonderful book about how to share your ideas, your work, hobbies and interests.

Starting Over and Finding Your Pace

M. Joseph Benric is the author of Graduation Gift ,A Step-By-Step Guide to Financial Literacy for Young Adults