A letter from future Rob

this morning, i was feeling a bit down on myself. i was full of self-doubt—about my ability to commit to writing, and about my ability to build ungated into the business i want it to be.

so on a whim, i wrote a letter to myself.

i stepped into the shoes of future rob, 12 months from now, and gave myself some words of encouragement and affirmation. and i also made some predictions about how this next year will play out if i stick to my gut and consistently ship new writing.

and you know what? just writing it made me feel better. it broke the spell of disillusionment i was feeling, and got me back to a place of excitement and wonder and possibility. pretty cool stuff.

chances are, you won’t get any “value” from reading this. but the reason i’m publishing it is that it’s an artifact of the kind of work i’m doing behind the scenes. the internal work. the messy emotional stuff.

in my experience, no one really talks about the idea that the health of your business is often a direct reflection of your emotional health. it doesn’t matter if you have the best marketing strategy and the fanciest tools and solid value to offer. if your internal world is out of order, you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time building a business you’re proud of.

trust me. i let my insecurities run the show for years with my first business, and it was like trying to build a house on top of quick sand.

so yeah, that’s my preamble to this very strange and personal piece. regardless, i hope you enjoy my words of encouragement to myself 😂

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dear rob,

it’s new years eve 2022 as i write this, and i want to express to you just how magical this year was.

you remember that feeling of possibility when you first launched ungated? that feeling of “if i get out of my own way and publish a lot this year, it’s only a matter of time before i have a thriving true fan business?” remember how exhilarating it felt? the warmth and pride and joy you felt coursing through your heart? well that turns out to all be exactly true. amazing things happen when you just commit to writing and keep at it.

i know this because i wrote up a fucking storm this year. that goal of 2 pieces a week you’re starting out with? turns out that’s child’s play. because the more i hit publish, the better i felt, and the more i wanted to write. the more i wrote: the more people gravitated into my world. and the more the membership started selling like hotcakes.

it was a trickle at first. in february and march getting new members felt like pulling teeth. and i definitely had some inklings of scarcity and self doubt. but then it was like the floodgates broke wide open. it started with 1-2 members a week, and then by spring, it was in the range of 10-20 a week. and by the end of fall, i was averaging that many new paying members each and every day. i shit you not. as i write this, i’m at 1219 true fans.

it really does turn out that these things compound and pick up more steam over time. it’s so hard to trust in the early days. it’s so hard to truly believe that you’re on the right track when you’re working hard and not seeing the results. but please keep writing. important things are taking root beneath the surface, and you need to keep watering those seeds. trust me.

as for me, there are a lot of things i’m proud of this year. for one, i kept writing and hitting publish, even when i didn’t want to. there were a LOT of times where i felt like a fraud, like i was intellectually bankrupt, and like i had nothing to stand on. but i kept hitting publish anyway. and you know what, many of the pieces i thought were shitty connected with people. go figure.

i’m proud of how i treated my fans and customers as well. i always took the time to do right by them. i got active in the community again and started talking to more people. and sure, all of that helped with the business, but i have so many more internet friends now. it’s incredible what happens when you start making connection a priority.

but more than anything else, i’m proud of the work i put out into the world this year. i lived up to my aims of laying the foundation for a new philosophy of business and creativity. it is indeed very different than what anyone else is talking about in the creator space, but it turns out that the world is ready for an alternative to business as usual. i didn’t realize just how much creators felt trapped and oppressed by the best practices of this industry. so when i really laid the foundation and started calling things out, word started to spread through all of these communities that i never would have reached on my own.

the last thing i’ll tell you, past rob, is that i still love this work and this community, and that love just grows with every passing week. it just keeps getting better and better.

right now, your heart knows what to do. your intuition is screaming at you to double down on writing and not let anything get in the way of that. and i’m here to tell you your gut is spot on. if you listen and commit and do the writing you know you’re capable of, you will have the best year of your life.

go get ‘em tiger,

-future rob, december 31st 2022