The Humbling Hustle #1

This Week’s Successes

• Shipped our first SKUs for our Amazon FBA business.

• Set up and sent out the first weekly post for a new newsletter.

• Scored well on two midterm exams.

• Developed my thesis for my Law Review article.

This Week’s Business Ideas

Newsletter Agency Model - This is the business model that really gave me the boost to start my own newsletter in the first place. This business is one of the purposes to write this newsletter in the first place.

Writing has always been a skill of mine, not telling stories necessarily but looking into truths and explaining them really gets me going. I have fun sitting at my laptop and building something with words. This naturally led me to copywriting. In my opinion though, email copywriting is superficial and does not carry meaning, especially if the sole purpose of it is to create a sale. Using unnatural language and different templates to create the best copy did not really make sense to me. It feels manipulative. So this naturally led me think about writing newsletters for other small businesses.

But back to the business idea, an agency that specializes in newsletters to help businesses not only stay connected with valuable customers but also build an intimate brand story that fosters deeper engagement than social media alone can provide.

The example that I keep playing in my head is the karate studio near my house. They constantly have events, challenges, and exciting things happening, but their social media is too unorganized for customers to keep up. A newsletter, on the other hand, would provide a structured timeline, making it easy for customers to stay informed while also allowing for deeper storytelling.

Here are all the benefits of writing a newsletter for a business:

1. Builds Customer Loyalty - Keeps the brand in front of customers and helps businesses stay top-of-mind.

2. Promote Sales and Discounts with natural CTAs.

3. Establishes Authority and Trust - Sharing content like industry insights and case studies proves that they are experts in the field.

4. Boosts Website Traffic and SEO - Drives repeat traffic and results in higher ranks in search engine results.

5. Low-cost and High-impact Marketing

6. Understand your Audience - Tracking email open rates, clicks, and responses helps businesses refine their marketing strategies.

7. Generate Leads.

From local businesses to larger brands, the goal is to create newsletters that don’t just inform but build a real sense of connection. Now, the next step is figuring out how to get this idea off the ground—how to find the first clients, refine the offering, and make it something businesses truly need. That is the challenge ahead, and I’m excited to take it on.

This Week’s Reading

This week I read The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. I was gifted this book by my maternal grandfather. The book is allegedly taken from “historical writings” that date back over 5,000 years ago. There are about 15 insightful lessons about becoming wealthy and maintaining your finances that are all told through stories keeping the book engaging throughout the whole way. The author puts you in the shoes of young ambitious settlers and takes you step by step on how to turn from a normal civilian to the richest man in Babylon. I would compare it to Dave Ramsey’s steps to becoming a millionaire.

The biggest lesson I personally took away from this book was The Second Law of Gold:

Which basically says that you should use your money to make more money so essentially the money is working for you. As a Muslim, I stay away from stocks and interest but there are different ways you can make money work for you.

The example that really made sense to me was creating a business that works for you as you hire others to do the service. Essentially being the middleman between someone that can do the service and someone that wants the service. The initial investment starting all of that up, wages, LLC, and customer acquisition all requires money but soon enough the money will be multiplying itself (in theory). Another example of how this would most logistically work for me is buying real estate. It is one of the safest ways to build assets and make your saved money work for you.

The most important lesson for me though is:

There are a lot of get-rich quick schemes and courses online that allure me but most of the time they are just scams. That’s why I should give up the dream and the emotional reaction I get when I see new videos that say “You can start making $10k a month THIS MONTH doing this.” Anything that I’m going to build will take a long time and a lot of effort so it’s better I realize that from now.

Overall, I would say it was a decent book but got a little repetitive at the end. I would highly recommend this book if you are having concerns about your lean purse and want to understand a step-by-step breakdown on how you can fatten your purse.

This Week’s Academics

Last week I got accepted to the Undergraduate Law Review of my university as a Staff Writer. It’s pretty exciting especially because I would like to be a lawyer inshallah. This week I had to choose my topic and do the preliminary research and submit a source analysis for each source.

It took me three full days just to choose my topic. The challenge wasn’t just picking one—it was dealing with cognitive dissonance over which side of each argument to take (the right or the left). I struggled to finalize a topic because I couldn’t be fully confident in any choice. Either there was already extensive research on it, making it hard to add something new, or there wasn’t enough research to build a strong foundation for my own argument.

Ultimately, once the deadline was really close, I was able to just pick something and move on. I chose to write about the impact of new media on the divisiveness of political factions, which in simple terms just means how social media is making each side of politics farther apart from each other and more extreme. I’m probably going to write algorithmic accountability from social media as the solution. Let’s see where this goes.

I had two exams this week which were both topics that I had to study for. Alhamdolillah, I did great in both.

Tableau is a new data processing and visualizing software we are learning in our information systems class and it seems really useful for turning ugly raw data into something I can actually understand. This application and the skills I learn with it will come in handy for business analytics.

Next week is Spring Break, so hopefully I will have more time to work on businesses.

This Week’s Struggles

Getting work done at home during Ramadan is a pain. Getting myself up everyday for suhoor and being hungry while having a mountain of tasks feels impossible. I often get really tired and fall asleep for hours longer than I usually do. It’s hard to stay on schedule especially with a new due date or new event I have to tend to. One-third of the month is already over and I have still not gotten used to the schedule.

Another struggle I am facing is overstimulation. My brain feels like it has 15,000 tabs open with things I want to do and need to do, making it hard to focus on just one task at a time. The only thing that forces me to concentrate is an impending deadline. But that is a risky game, like this week when I planned to complete my law review assignment between 9 PM and 11:59 PM, only to feel overwhelmed, lose hope, and ultimately ask for an extension.

One way I tried to fix this without any avail was creating a mind map with all of the things I need to put energy in but the mind map kept growing and growing and growing and still doesn’t feel complete. Which just goes to show there is not enough of me to do all of the things I want to do. Not only that, because there is so much going on I end up just doing the easy things because of the overstimulation. I will hopefully look for more solutions next week to help this. I think it might be dopamine detox and cutting out a lot of the useless inputs (my phone).

Let’s see if I can be consistent with this new venture every week. 🤞

This Week’s Quote

This Week’s Pictures

I need to take more pictures.