Last year I admitted the real reason I was sabotaging a key part of my business. Today I’m sharing how I’ve been getting in my own way for years, the potential consequences, and what I’m doing now to break the pattern.

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As soon as I put it in writing, I couldn't unsee what I had

just admitted. I hit reply having confessed the real

reason I was sabotaging my own progress with a key

area of my business, my email list. Now today

I'm sharing what I admitted, how it changed my perspective, and also what

I am doing about it right now. And I'll give an update on how

everything's going. Now, if you're new here, welcome. I'm Kat, and on this

podcast, I'm sharing behind the scenes as I try real-time

experiments to help me follow through on what matters and find

momentum as a speaker and writer.

So this email that I mentioned at the start of the episode, it was

last April and my friend Chanel Basilio, she writes

a newsletter called Growth in Reverse. It's where she reverse

engineers how successful entrepreneurs grow their newsletters.

And if you are someone who creates content on the internet as part of your

business strategy, you know how critical it is to have a

direct line of communication when at any moment

platforms like YouTube, Meta, LinkedIn, they can suspend

your account even if you did absolutely nothing wrong. You can just

wake up and poof, it's gone. But more than that, when you

get the right match of people who are joining your newsletter, who

could also benefit from what you offer, that's a key part

of how you run a business and earn an income. So

even though I know deep down I would actually

do this kind of work for free, if I won the lottery, I'd still be

helping people in some way, but I have to earn a living

because I didn't win the lottery. So back to

this email. Now Chanel was starting a 30-day email

series with real examples of tactics. And

strategies for growth. And I had signed up because

I knew that I needed to work on this.

And I was, oh, okay. Hold on. I

got a little bit lost here. Um, I signed up

for this because I knew that this is something I needed to work on.

And this was, this series was all on real tactics and strategies

for growth. I knew that I had been ignoring this for a

while. Now in the email

confirmation, she asked everyone to reply with their

biggest challenge right now when it comes to newsletter growth.

And so this is my actual reply, by the

way. So I said, your question about

the biggest challenge has me thinking of a core issue I have.

and have had for a long time. I don't

advertise or actively grow my newsletter because I'm not

proud of it... yet. I am

100% self-sabotaging my growth because I

don't want people to find out I'm a disappointment.

So that's a fun admission to make. Melting face emoji.

Okay, let me repeat. The core fear?

I don't want people to find out I'm a disappointment.

Even if a little part of that belief is

true, then it actually makes perfect sense why

I'm not actively promoting my newsletter. So

instead, I just played it safe and I stuck with the

lovely humans who had already joined my list within the past 6

years. since starting it, which brings me to now,

because one week after sharing my public tracker

for my goal to reach a million people through speaking and writing,

being confronted with the fact my email list has been a

similar size for about 4 years, 4 years,

that was a big deal. It was kind of a tough pill to swallow. Now,

to be fair, when I shifted the focus of my business from more

virtual presenting content to talking about momentum and follow-through, I

did experience a drop-off. I invited people to, you know, you are

welcome to exit, no hard feelings, and I meant it. And so there

were people who dropped off. They didn't want to stick around, and that's okay. So,

and there have been new subscribers since then. So there has been a change

in the numbers, but overall it stayed about the same. Also,

if you are one of the new subscribers who joined in the past sort of

year and a half, hi, I'm really glad that you're here right now.

Today though, I'm not actually talking about the number I'm talking

about what the number represents,

because when I see it, to me it represents

years of holding myself back. I mean

actual years. There is no way

to know for sure, but I am confident

that the cost of my inaction has been a

meaningful amount. And this, like

what I am describing right now is what happens when

your dreaded identity is stronger than your desired

identity. To put it another way, it's what happens when

your why not is stronger than your why.

And it's one of the reasons that I talk about what I talk about,

because there are some just genuine things that can hold us back from

following through on things that matter, even if we have a strong

desire. To get on the other side, this can

happen to us. And I share this today

because I, one, I'm trying to be very public with what

I'm doing. And when I showed those numbers, I felt

like I needed to confront it. But I also wanted to share a little bit

about that because for me, I'm not actually embarrassed by the number. If I

picture a room of over 3,000 people, That's

a pretty big room of people to be talking to. So

it's not the number, it's the fact that that number has just kind of stayed

in a certain area for a while. And I just wanna touch on this

idea of dreaded identity. So when I say dreaded identity,

I am actually talking about this version of ourselves that

we don't want others to see or think of us, or even for ourselves, we

don't want to see ourselves that way. Yeah. And

it's not that I don't want to disappoint people, it's that I don't wanna be

a disappointment. Like, I don't wanna be the reason that

somebody says, oh, that was a waste of my time, or why did I even

bother? This person is not worth it. That is this

dreaded identity. And imagining that that might happen is something

that holds me back from putting myself out there. Now, I

have actually been doing some active work, so I wanted to share So

what that means now. So over the past couple of months, I have been

taking advantage of coworking sessions. So I'm in Chanel's community

and every Monday there is a coworking call. Um, if you know me at all,

you know, I love a coworking call and I have that time dedicated

on my calendar for at least 1 hour a week I will spend

on my newsletter. Now it's not to date, it hasn't been a

ton of like growth stuff and trying to get in front of more people, but

I have been making changes so I can feel more confident in

what I'm sending out. And some of those changes have been to the structure

and deciding to have it formatted a little bit more like an intro, an

article, maybe my, my podcast or what I'm reading, et cetera. So

I, I've switched up the actual format. So that's new. I've

also switched up the look of it a little bit. Nothing crazy. Just

added some dividers and some color and some headings. And, and actually I

like it. And so it makes me happier, but it just, I think it has

a nice polish to it. But more than that, one of the other things I

did recently is as I was working on

my newsletter on those Mondays, I recognized the importance of

social proof. And I'm, I am going to talk about social proof and testimonials

because that is an area that I am also experimenting with. But

I decided that I wanted to ask people

that I could trust if they would be willing to share testimonials with me.

So I used Kit, uh, so Kit is my email service

provider and they have an MCP so that I could

say, basically say, can you tag everyone who opens almost

all of my emails? If somebody is opening almost every single one of my emails,

tag them with the highest engaged subscriber. And I

sent an email to those highest engaged subscribers and just said,

hey, I don't love asking for help, but I, uh, would you please send me

a testimonial for this newsletter? This is what it looks like and

showed a couple of screenshots of what it looks like. I didn't send this to

everyone on my list because one of the things you want to do when you're

trying to push back against a belief. So if I'm trying to challenge this belief

that my newsletter is a big old disappointment and I'm a disappointment,

well, then I don't want to just ask everybody for feedback. I just

want the people who regularly open all my emails and just say to them,

I feel uncomfortable asking, but could you just ask me? Because that's just the honest

truth. I don't love asking for help. I'm working on it though.

And when I started to get the replies, when I started to have people actually

give testimonials about the newsletter and what it means to

them, that started to shift for me. I started to really

change my belief about what I am sending and the

value of my email. And so taking that risk and

asking people that I felt confident weren't gonna be mean to me

was a really, really helpful change and exercise

and experiment for me. And I have noticed a shift and I

do feel better about my content. And I've even had a close friend of mine

who's on my email list say, I can, I sense the shift just

even in your writing and how you show up in my inbox. Now, of course,

she's a close friend, so she can also see that in other ways, but

just getting that feedback has really, really been meaningful to me. And

it's starting to challenge this fear that I've had that's been looming over me.

So that's been a really, really important thing for me. The other thing

is that I have started to look towards the other direction, which is,

okay, now that I'm feeling a little more confident, a little bit more proud of

what I am putting out there, then I, now how do I

actually get in front of people who could benefit from the work I

do and what I share? And so doing that, I am looking at, or I

have started actually developing a quiz, and the quiz is

to help people to figure out Okay, why am I stuck? So I talk a

lot about identifying which, what's the real reason? Is it logical,

biological, or psychological? And I want a quiz

so that I can help people figure out which one. So I've started to craft

it. As I started to test my initial quiz, it's 15 questions.

I realized got a couple of things that are snagging and need to be

edited a little bit. However, the way that I

have shifted this is, uh, or not the way that I've shifted it, but

Now I know it's on the way and it is something I'm working on. And

by telling you and sharing on the podcast that I'm working on a quiz,

then it's something I'm more likely to follow through on and make sure it happens.

I don't want to rush it because I want it to be good, but I

also want to have a version 1 that is out this month. So this is,

as I record this, this is August 2026. And so to have

at least a version 1 that is out this month, and

maybe I'll even ask for some testers, maybe a small group of people who are

willing to test the V1, maybe the alpha,

and then I can put this out a little bit more widely. Because if I

can have a good tool like that, when I do talk about the different ways

we get stuck, and if someone's just not quite clear or they want some more

insight, then I can direct them towards the quiz. And then they're also

likely a person who could benefit from, okay, well, now what? And

that's what I talk about in my newsletter. So

that's what I wanted to share today is really this, this newsletter

I'd say issue of mine, not newsletter issue, like the one

that's coming out, but the issue I have had with really, really holding

myself back. And for a moment I thought maybe I'll actually

try to calculate the cost of my inaction, but

it's really hard because I cannot A/B test that. I can't say

here's what it would be one way and here's what it would be the other.

But based on people that are in my

you know, in my circles, in my networks, and, and who, who do similar

work, or even if it's a different topic, I know that I could run a

similar business. I know I've been leaving a lot on the

table, and it's something that is worth overcoming

and worth addressing. And I would just say for you, if you're listening to this

and there is something in your life where you feel like there is a real

cost to your inaction, it is worth doing the exercise of

asking, what are you afraid of if you do follow through? Are there any

worries that come up for you? And for me, it was this idea of picturing

a person subscribing, opening the email or

emails, and just feeling like, nah, this is not worth my time.

This is not valuable. And here's the thing that could still happen

because not everyone is going to be a fit. And I know

that. And I think really what I had

to work on is being proud of my own work and

feeling good about it, having clarity of what I'm actually saying. Mm-hmm.

And that way I can separate the fact that someone might be

disappointed, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a disappointment.

And the way I work on that is through my confidence and how I see

my writing and what I'm actually putting into it and working

at getting a little bit better every single week. And those are some of the

ways that I am doing this. And, uh, I'll check back in and I'll

report back on the, how the quiz is building

up. And then I guess also, what am I doing to get out in front

of other people? Because That's another really big part of this. I know

this sounds like Business 101. Anyone who's starting

a business that has an online component where you are trying to get in

front of new audiences knows the importance of an email list.

And, but I also have a suspicion that I'm not alone with other people

who are playing it small and holding themselves back when it comes to actually

growing the list and getting in front of more people. And that's been my experience.

Now. I wanna do a little tracker update. I

don't actually have it in front of me at the moment, but I did. I,

I know it because it's only been a few days. It is currently August

5th as of me recording this. And when it

comes to posts, it's, uh, it's only been one.

I've only posted one in the first 5 days of this month and my target

is 20. So I have 19 more to go.

And the exercise of just actually entering the

tracker and saying one. Yeah. was enough to make me say, okay, you gotta,

this, you have to start to deliver. So I need to pick up the

pace on that. However, appearances, I was also able

to add a 1 because yesterday a podcast that I was a

guest on with Jay Clouse is the Creator Science Podcast that just

was released this week. And I already have some

DMs from people who listened to that episode. And so I was able to

check off that I have 1 appearance there, uh, which is just

really exciting. And then for the newsletter, I actually. Have to, I'm going to

report on that next week because I realized as I was prepping for this,

that when I created the tracker and I put in the number for

till the end of July, it actually wasn't the end of the month yet. So

I need to update what the true number was towards the end of July,

and then I can update it week to week and it will be accurate of

how many new people have joined since then. And that's

also something that's directly related to today. So I think.

I, this is my hypothesis that if I'm reporting each week, it's

going to help light a fire to make sure that I stay on top of

that. Those are my, those are my experiments. Those are

my updates. And I'm excited to keep on

show, just sharing the real numbers and talking about this in public because woo,

it definitely, yeah,

it's, it's something I'm feeling it, but. Hopefully some

of this has landed with you, and maybe if there's anything that you've pulled today

from the conversation, you can use it to help find you or find

your follow-through and your momentum with something that matters.