Sup nerds, you're reading Cyber Patterns.

Today I’m gonna tell you about one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had.

If you want to join 4,721+ readers learning how to develop their Content Strategy, subscribe below.

Today’s issue is brought to you by Olly Richards:

As the founder of a $10M foreign language education business, Olly is a pro in the online education space.

He’s writing a newsletter about growing online education businesses and released a free 117-page case study about how he grew his business from scratch — essential reading if you’re an educator, creator, coach or expert.

Why can’t I?

“I can’t do this,” I told my therapist Troy repeatedly in spring 2019. Work, dating, family stuff, whatever. My response to life was “I can’t.”

At some point, Troy finally had enough. He looked at me and almost yelled it, “Dude who’s saying you can’t? Why can’t you? I think you can! Shit man, why don’t you think you can?”

I looked at him for a second and I smiled.

At that moment, I realized all the negativity was in my own head. No one was holding me back besides myself. “They don’t believe in me” was an excuse. “I’m not good enough” was self-sabotage. “I can’t” was a cognitive distortion. It wasn’t the truth; these were all opinions from a depressed 21-year-old.

“Act as if you can do it and maybe you can,” Troy told me.

Acting as if you can do it simply means doing what you would do if you knew that you would succeed (eventually).

If you knew you were going to succeed, what would you do today that you’re currently afraid to do? What dream would you pursue if you knew you could make it happen over a long enough time horizon? If you were 100% sure you’d win, what game would you play?

At 22, I wanted to make a decent living writing. It felt impossible. I was in school making $75/article writing for the local newspaper. I wanted to go pro and I wanted to make good money doing it.

I looked at what professional writers were doing on Twitter and then I did the “Act as if” strategy. I acted like a professional writer: I started a blog, grew my social media, built myself a portfolio, and got freelance gigs. After about 7 months of acting like a professional writer, I was in fact a professional writer.

Voila!

Now at 25, I’m in the process of becoming an author. I always thought of “author” as this big magical word. It turns out to become an author all you have to do is act like one — which means sitting down and writing a fucking book.

Yeah yeah yeah, there’s the whole how-do-I-get-it-published thing. Well, it turns out that you’re still an author even if you self-publish it. So while I’m self-publishing this first book, perhaps I’ll be able to use it as leverage to get a deal on my second book I have half-written. Perhaps the people I meet while writing it will change my life! Optimism!

Optimism is the ultimate career hack

Optimism will push you to do things pessimists are afraid of.

Everyone knows I love to send cold DMs and emails.

The most common objection about cold messaging is “They won’t reply” or “They’ll think it’s spam”. What a pessimistic hopeless view of the world. What if they do reply? What if they also used cold messages to advance their careers and they respect your hustle? This is what I nearly always find to be the case.

When sending a cold message, launching any venture, or starting a relationship, it’s easy to see the bad; but you should always consider the possibility that an incredible scenario may happen. Why can’t it?

Optimism opens doors.

My buddy Jackson Rodriguez just raised $3.5 million for his startup. “Let this be a case study on shooting your shot with 1m cold DMs,” he told me. “Cold DMs have opened every door I have ever wanted to walk through 🤝 shoot your shot!” How do you know a cold DM won’t work if you don’t send it?

I talked about my Justin Fineberg a lot. He was making TikToks about tech for probably 6+ months with minor success. He was up to 2,000 followers. But he kept on making them. In the last 3 months, he grew to 125k followers and is now partnering with prominent tech companies.

“It’s just essential to stay optimistic because most of the work you do won’t pay off until it does,” he told me. “You’ll be sitting at 0 for a while. But you keep learning, you keep improving, and then when it hits, it’ll hit. Your only chance of getting a ‘hit’ is if you’re optimistic that it will.”

Stay optimistic, but not idiotic

We all know someone who is optimistic to the point of delusion and foolishness. These tend to be obviously idiots.

What’s hard to discern is the type of person who pretends to be a realist, but is actually a pessimist. It’s easy to sit back and complain and think of 1,000 reasons why not to do something. What schmucks like that don’t realize is that the optimists who go out and do cool shit also thought of the reasons not to do it, but they pushed through the resistance and did it anyways.

Building a company and raising venture capital requires an insane amount of optimism and perseverance. “Founders need to have a strong internal locus of happiness and motivation,” Launch House cofounder Michael Houck told me. “They need to truly believe in the importance of what they’re building and the impact it will have on their users.”

I want to zoom in on Houck’s last point. If you keep thinking to yourself “No one will find this helpful,” then you’ll never do shit. You’ll be too scared. An optimistic, but realistic way of building a company or posting a blog is “hey some people might find this useless, but others will think it’s super helpful”. Cyber Patterns may be useless to 99% of the internet. “Luckily, almost no one multiplied by the entire population of the internet is plenty if you can only find them,” writes Henrik Karlsson.

The only way to have the balls to do something cool is to be an optimist.

The cool optimist goes up to the girl and gets the number. The pessimist thinks she’ll reject him so he doesn’t try. The thing people don’t realize about the cool optimist is he’s nervous too. He knows he may get rejected. He’s a realist. But he pushes down the nerves, says fuck it, and makes his move.

The same goes for any content creator.

All of us on here putting shit on the internet are nervous that people won’t like our stuff. Some of us just push it down better than others. Think of optimism as the muscle that pushes the nerves down and forces you to be brave. The only way to build the muscle is by repeatedly using it.

So today, I hope you take a moment to build up your optimism muscles. Instead of thinking about everything that can go wrong, think of the best case scenario. Post something you’re scared to post. Ask out the girl you’ve been wanting to. Send the cold DM to someone who could very well change your life.

Creators Corner

3 things that helped me be a better creator this week:

☕️ I read Ali Ahmed’s Open-mic #01 and am feeling super inspired to grind harder on making goofy TikToks and doing stand-up. Don’t forget monkey business can become big money business.

🐦 I started using a free app called Birdy to A/B test my Twitter bio to track conversions from profile clicks into followers.

📘 I’m finishing up A Hacker’s Mind by Bruce Schneier. Epic book all about hacking the system while still following the rules. Must-read for creators, founders, and nerds.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin

P.S. Want to really upgrade your content strategy?

🥳 Looking for content strategy guides? Check out my shop.

📞 If you want 1:1 advice on your content strategy, book a call with me.

🤖 For monthly brand case studies and exclusive blogs, upgrade to premium.

Until next edition, see you on Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

P.P.S. Want to learn the secrets to meme marketing?

My first book Memes Make Millions is available for pre-order.

Through a series of funny essays and interviews, I take you behind the scenes of the meme marketing world. You’ll get advice on meme marketing from the wisest and wealthiest memelords in the game.

Perfect for all marketers, growth hackers, and meme connoisseurs.