In early 2021, I was in trouble.
I broke up with my girlfriend of 2 years, moved out of the Philippines, and moved back IN with my parents for 6 months.
For the first time in years, I faced a long, dark Maryland winter full of snow, greyness, and misery. Alone.
The first few months were okay, but in March I caught COVID and unwittingly brought it back home to my Mother who ended up in the hospital with double pneumonia.
Needless to say, I felt I was outstaying my welcome.
She got better, but that didn’t stop me from packing my crap up, buying an Airbnb in Mexico City, and taking off to visit our southern neighbor for 2 months before anything ELSE could go wrong.
I knew maybe 5 phrases in Spanish.
I was so broken back then. I had no confidence. And Medium.com, the engine of my business, was starting to nosedive into oblivion.
Perfect storm, eh?
Luckily I met my future wife within a few weeks of staying in Mexico City.
She helped me so much in this dark time, and I knew within a few weeks I wanted to marry her.
Mexico was the personal reset I needed it to be, but my business continued to suffer as Medium nosedived into the ground.
Just like my future wife was the savior I needed in my dark time, I needed a hero for my business, too.
Luckily I’d been posting on LinkedIn for the last 5 years.
I loved it there. Posts that took me 20 minutes to write got me 10,000+ views. On Medium, I’d spend hours writing posts that maybe got 500-1,000.
I thought, in a moment of clarity, that maybe I should focus my business on LinkedIn for a while.
So I did.
This was right around the time that cohort writing programs were popping up like daisies.
I never liked that my online courses only had a 30% completion rate, even though that’s incredibly common, so I decided to make this LinkedIn course a cohort program.
‘Why not get together 30-40 creators to post together for 30 days straight ON LINKEDIN?’ I thought.
It seemed like a great idea. I sent out an application to my email list to join the first one FOR FREE, and I got 120 responses.
I selected 40 creators to join me, sent invitations to them, and most of them accepted.
Here’s a photo of one our our first calls:
I kid you not, it was one of the best experiences I ever had in my life.
And my fellow writers agreed..
I called it “The LinkedIn Sprint,” and we averaged a 70% engagement rate through 30 days of posting together.
BEAT THAT, ONLINE COURSES!
It was SO TRANSFORMATIVE and popular that I monetized it and started offering it to everybody. Since August of 2021, we’ve had over 400 people do the LinkedIn Sprint with me, and we’ve had some pretty rave reviews, like this one from psychologist, author, public speaker, and business strategist Liane Davey.
She called it "The best money I ever invested in any kind of development activity.”
Coming from a person as massively successful as her, those words mean the world.
These sprints have helped people write viral posts, like this one from Sasja that got over 1,800,000 views.
I named this newsletter “How to build a writing habit in 2024.”
What’s the secret? Community.
It’s hard to build it by yourself, so that’s why I’m doing it for you.
We’re starting our first LinkedIn Sprint of 2024 on Monday, January 22nd, and we won’t have another one until May.
Instead of 30 days, I shortened this one to 15 days.
This is your shot to not just build a writing habit in 2024, but to join a family of online writers, our family!
What’s included?
3 hours of storytelling lessons teaching you how to write viral stories on LinkedIn.
3 live write-with-me calls to help you keep the habit alive.
40 writing prompts in case you get stuck.
25 writing templates in case you need guidance.
Our community Slack channel to share your posts and get initial likes/comments.
Orientation call before the sprint to set ground rules.
We come in to the Slack channel every day at 10 AM ET to share our posts together.
We post Monday-Friday for three straight weeks, taking weekends off.
This is your shot to start 2024 off with a bang.
This is your shot to FINALLY start writing online consistently.
The doors close tomorrow at 5 PM ET.
Feel free to respond to me with any questions.
I hope to see you inside.
Tom Kuegler
Way to be creative, that's awesome!