100.

The end of Adamant Insights?

“Until you have written 100 posts, you generally have no clue what you enjoy writing about or what people enjoy reading from you. You have not developed anything close to decent writing chops, and you have no chance at ever monetizing.” – Mark Manson

In November 2023, I was folding laundry in my apartment while listening to the “How I Write” podcast. The host, David Perell, had a writer named Mark Manson on the show.

Manson, the NYT best-selling author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” talked about how people would come up to him at writing conferences and ask for writing advice.

And he’d answer:

“Write 100 posts and come back and ask me again, and I will be happy to spend as much time as you want.”

At that point, I had written about 30 issues of Adamant Insights in as many weeks. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Adamant Insights — or what I was trying to do with it — but that podcast gave me my answer:

I was going to write a blog every week for 100 weeks.

And this is week 100.

---

I wrote the first edition of Adamant Insights at Aldea Coffee in Grand Haven, Michigan in April 2023. The streets were oozing snow. The sky was the sort of gray that makes you wonder if the sun needs to get on Zoloft. I had recently moved back to Michigan from Hawaii. And I was lost.

A year before, I had quit my 9-5 finance job with this cockamamie idea of being a writer — whatever that meant. When I was in Hawaii in 2022 and 2023, I led tours on a coffee farm and I’d always joke with my guests:

“I’m going to have to figure out how to make money someday. But today is not that day.”

And they’d laugh and I’d laugh, and then that Voice in the back of my head would remind me that it was actually very much not a laughing matter. And so I’d drown that Voice in another cup of coffee with a splash of avoidance.

And then, at that table in the middle of that coffee shop in Grand Haven, that Voice came roaring back.

“TODAY IS THAT DAY. TOLD YOU IT WOULD COME!”

I was making a couple bucks at the time, but not enough to live on long-term. But I told myself if I got enough reps in — and if I kept writing — things would work out.

And I realized I needed somewhere to write, so I picked Substack and I wrote a post.

Then, I published it.

It got 26 views.

Banger.

---

I don’t know what I expected this blog to become. It wasn’t this.

Here’s what “this” is:

• 52,319 views

• 1,163 subscribers

• 63 countries reading

And now, I’m at a crossroads.

It’s week 100.

So what’s next?

On one hand, it feels silly to kill something I’ve spent 100 weeks building.

On the other, I want to work on different things.

Truth be told, I’ve been looking forward to today. My heart hasn’t been in this blog for a while. In January, I turned off payments — it didn’t feel right to charge people for something I was blasé about.

I don’t think this is the end of Adamant Insights, but I do think it’s time for a break. Who knows? Maybe I’ll take a week off and decide I want to come back for another C-note. I really have no idea other than I know you’re not going to get an email from me next week for the first time in 2+ years.

It’s funny, though. The concept of Adamant Insights became a lesson in and of itself.

---

Around the same time I started writing this blog, I started posting on LinkedIn. Over the last two years, I’ve written more than 700 posts for myself. I’ve also ghostwritten LinkedIn posts for more than 15 founders and CEOs over that time. In total, I’ve written ~2,500 LinkedIn posts.

Between LinkedIn posts, blogs, emails, books, websites, tour scripts, and sales copy for trundle beds and dog backpacks, I’m sure I’ve published more than 1 million words on the internet in the past 100 weeks.

When I started Adamant Insights, I barely had a business.

Today, I have more business than I know what to do with.

The lesson?

You can eliminate the variables that keep you from success by making your inputs so extreme that the only possible outcome is the one you want.

If you want to achieve something, you can just brute force your way there.

---

So, yeah.

I don’t know what’s next. I think this blog will still live on in some capacity. But I really don’t know.

What is do know is this:

You changed my life.

You, reading this. Specifically you.

Over the past three years, I’ve read a lot of stories from people who did something similar to me — quit a career to pursue a passion, or some equally inane endeavor.

Most of those people say something like this:

“My family told me it was a bad idea. My friends told me I was crazy. Everyone doubted me. Everyone laughed at me. Everyone expected me to fail.”

I have experienced the exact opposite.

Everyone supported me. Everyone encouraged me. Everyone expected me to win. And everyone tried to help make that happen.

People became paid subscribers to this blog for no reason other than to support me. People shared my posts on their social media profiles. I can’t tell you how many times someone introduced me to a friend and said, “Adam writes a blog. You should sign up for it.”

Emily Bush, Brynne Simpson, Rachel Clousing, Jess Walter, Stanley Ezeobele, Paul Long, Anthony Carlton, Dominic Chambers, Maribeth Samenus, Joe Rodriguez, and so many more people became my unpaid word-of-mouth referral program.

Robbie Nicholson, a friend I made during a 48-hour trip to Santorini in 2015, emailed me to tell me he read one of my posts to his 6th-grade English students on the last day of the school year.

Danae Howe, a Michigan friend I met in Hawaii, printed a few of my blogs and hung them in her workplace.

Jordan Mulder, my buddy and my insurance agent (look him up), told me he read one of my blogs to his team at work.

I have dozens more stories like this.

You have any idea how cool that is?

Writing this blog every week has literally given me a career. But the most beneficial thing about it has been how this blog has given me a physical representation of just how supportive the people in my life are.

And, regardless of where we go from here, that’s what I want you to take away from this.

In writing this blog, I’ve gotten to see it. The messages and the support and the subscriptions.

And that level of support is so much deeper than I had ever imagined. And I guarantee yours is, too.

So many more people are there for you than you realize. So many more people love you than you realize. So many more people care about you, your happiness, and what happens to you than you realize.

You might not always see it.

But they’re there.

---

So thank you. Thank you for reading and sharing and encouraging.

Like I said, I don’t know what’s next.

I might be back in April.

I might be back in December.

I might be back never.

But for now — if you’ll excuse me…

I have to go reach out to Mark Manson.