LinkedIn Newsletter — Why I'm Starting this Series

Dear strange people,

Welcome to my experiment. If you clicked on this series I’m assuming 1). You're wondering what this “LinkedIn Newsletter” feature is all about or 2). [like me] you’re a little weird 😉 and you are itching to leave your mark on the world.

Why I'm Starting This Series

My little brother passed away a few weeks ago. I still don't have the words to explain how hard it has been for me. I don't know if I will ever have the words. I haven’t really spoken to anyone outside of my family. I took a break from LinkedIn and all other social media platforms. I took a leave of absence from my company. I have been re-evaluating my life & what truly matters to me. Today is my first step back into the real world. I'm back in Milwaukee. I'm back in the office. My pup Levi sitting under my desk as I'm typing this early morning.

*Deep breaths*

I’m starting this series for a few reasons:

1). To act as a business journal. I’ll be touching on topics ranging from personal branding, community building, and the occasional business tactics/strategy. Diving deep into the decisions that I'm making and why I'm making them. All from my perspective. I want to keep it real. To not only show the success, but also show my failures and shortcomings. And hopefully, from that I can help a few of you as well. Learn as I learn. Grow as I grow. Build as I build.  

2). My brother's passing has been rough on me. But I know that when everything is said and done for me, at the end of the day I would like to look back at my life and say that I had fun. That I did things that mattered to me. With people that mattered to me. I want to go back to my roots and create for the sake of creation. Writing has always been a big part of my life and it's something that I want to do on a regular basis. That's the kind of person my brother would be proud of.

What to Expect from This Series 👇🏽

To start, (because this series will totally evolve) I can promise the following:

Experiments

I test everything. It’s in my nature. And I’d like to do a better job of sharing my findings with those that follow me. 

Every week I’m going to be running a new experiment and talking to you about it here. Anything that I'm testing with our community, my personal brand, or business. I want others to be able to replicate and take away what ever may be helpful. I also plan on rolling out a new business model for our events company & I will be documenting a lot of that here.

Our company has grown fairly quickly...

And I guess as a person, my brand awareness has grown fairly quickly as well. And from the outside looking in it all looks dandy. It's not. I want to show more of the failures. And open up my mind a bit to those that follow me. Success is romanticized far too much. I think everyone could benefit from a little more scientific thinking.

Lessons from People Smarter than Me 🙃

Each newsletter I’ll be diving into a conversation that I have on my companies podcast (Strange on Purpose). Strange on Purpose is a show hosted by misfits, entrepreneurs, and creatives. We interview some of the top minds on the planet; highlighting their stories, accomplishments, and delivering it to you in an actionable audio experience. I’ll outline the findings in an actionable way for all readers & dive deeper into the points that resonate the most with me. 

Growth in Real-Time

My little brother & I talked about starting an esports team together. On my drive back to Milwaukee from the funeral — my girlfriend fast asleep in the passenger seat — I listened to esports podcasts for 5 hours straight. It reminded me of him.

During that drive I realized this...

My entire life has been about helping other people be successful: from ghostwriting to strategy, content creation, etc. And somewhere along the line of starting Urban Misfit Ventures, the community that I started building became less of "my" thing and more of a team & community thing. Which is great. I love the impact that we have been able to have in such a short amount of time. We don't plan on stopping any time soon. But I want to tackle something I've wanted to do (for me) for a while — an esports podcast. I'm not going to cover esports (at least not directly) in this newsletter, but I will walk you through the success & failures of the show. And hopefully you will be able to take away some lessons and implement them into your own content. The podcast will launch this Sunday!

Also expect video to be included in this newsletter as well.

About Me — I'm just Q 🖖🏽🖤

I co-founded Urban Misfit Ventures. We are a small startup, team of 7, based out of Milwaukee. We own two companies. 1). A video agency. Our team helps people, companies, and brands tell their story, build influence and make more money through video storytelling. And 2). an events company focused on creating signature experiences for our community.

I was also one of the first video creators to use LinkedIn. Collectively my videos, thoughts, podcasts, and writing have been viewed over 10 million times across platforms. I spend most of my time (outside of my company) speaking, creating, running experiments, learning about everything video games/esports, and petting way too many dogs. I'm also set to appear in the Amazon Prime TV show, The Social Movement in 2021.

That's me. And that is what you can expect from the 'Dear Strange People' newsletter. For those that have already subscribed, welcome to the madness. I'm looking forward to taking this journey with all of you. Smash the subscribe button to keep up with this experiment.

And if you've read this far, comment below: introduce yourself and let everyone know what's your main goal before 2020 hits. I will read & respond to them all. :)

Stay strange,

#justQ 🖖🏽🖤