A New Adventure

Going all-in on Think Piece

👋🏻 I have an exciting announcement today: Think Piece is going weekly, I’m going all-in, and you can now subscribe as a founding member.

The Short Version

There is a large gap in the business writing being produced for founders, creatives, and other entrepreneurially minded folks. Hard news is well-covered, and it’s increasingly possible to find smart, tech-critical reporters. Marketing blather we do not lack.¹ Threadboi word salad is easy to come by. Motivational content from internet coaches floods our feeds.²

We’re missing the deep thinking.

The majority of researched, philosophical, and interdisciplinary writing being produced about business is from venture capital firms. VC firms use think pieces and white papers to make the case for the worldview that dictates their investments. This writing is designed to create a new reality, one where the worldview is enfleshed through the allocation of funding. Some of this writing is good. Some is not. All of it is motivated by the need to validate the existence of a fund and the associated jobs. There is also academic work in this space, but much of it misses the practical application for smaller companies, solo founders, and creators.

The deep thinking for founders, creatives, and curious minds has to come from somewhere else.

Think Piece is a home for deep written work at the intersection of business, knowledge, and culture.

I’ve already been writing these pieces. I placed the anxiety produced by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter into the context of lead generation collapse for online businesses. I reviewed the Substack crowdfunding round and exposed the financial risk behind the co-opted language of solidarity. I explored the rise of generative AI models in the tradition of anarchic antiwork critique. I outlined the financial incentives of the online education space and showed how they are ripe for disruption.

I want to write more for you. I want to help you think. I want to make your job easier, or at least help you feel less alone with your big questions.

Think Piece has already become a reference point for entrepreneurs, employees, and companies creating the future of knowledge-driven and culture work.³ With my full attention and your financial support, Think Piece will carve a space as a must-read, providing the analysis and criticism required for you to be agile and responsive in a swiftly changing business world.

I invite you to join me as a founding subscriber.

As a subscriber you will receive:

• timely analysis of events and trends in tech, business, and the online industry

• researched and creative essays exploring deeper connections and questions about business, productivity, and pursuit of a good life

• personal essays about founder life, culture, and other tangential tidbits

When you upgrade to a paid subscription, you not only receive my undying gratitude, you also get to join the Think Piece community with:

• commenting privileges

• full archive access

• paid subscriber-only writing

• the Brain Trust monthly business coaching and advice column

• and more to come

Bonus: you can probably expense it or write it off. And if you have the means to do so, there is a higher priced yearly “business expense” tier where your subscription will directly impact my ability to make Think Piece a sustainable resource.

Thank you for reading along with Think Piece so far. I am grateful for your investment of attention, and thank you in advance for considering a paid subscription.

The Long Version

It’s my birthday. I’m 37. And only in the past couple of weeks have I full acknowledged what I truly want for the next stage of my life: to think and to write.

If you’ve paid attention to me at all for the past year or so, this will not come as a surprise. That is exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve pulled back on marketing content and social media. I’ve closed my core programs. I started this newsletter and relaunched my popular podcast. I’ve created room for these activities that I so deeply value.

But it still took me a long time to admit that it was what I wanted to do full-time.

Burn the bridges if you have to. I posted this on Threads and Instagram yesterday as I sorted through my feelings about this shift.

When I started to close the Holistic Business Academy, my core product of four years that had over 1,000 paying clients and generated multiple six-figures each year, I was trying to fit the writing and the thinking into the existing framework of my business, what I thought I was supposed to do, and what I knew would sell.

Make it a membership! Make it a course! Make it part of a funnel! Use your skills, Sarah! You’re literally the expert!

None of this quite worked. Or it worked well enough, but it didn’t give me what I was seeking: the space to do the deep work coupled with a robust community to engage with and push me to think deeper.

My beta test of a Think Tank community program got close, but during the beta I realized that this information and this level of discourse shouldn’t be behind a large fee.⁴ I needed more voices, more perspectives, more business stages to participate. And I needed more time to actually research and write, time that I was spending on live calls and other activities that weren’t quite creating the results I wanted.

I fought this. I’ve spent much of the past year criticizing Substack in particular, and much of my career as a business strategist warning folks not to get sucked in by low-cost offers. I can do the math. I know that it will be hard for me to reach the revenue I need to write full-time.

But I have to try.

That’s what changed. I’m 37. I don’t want to spend more time pretending that I am happy doing what I think I’m supposed to do or what has worked for me in the past when I know I can create powerful, industry-challenging work. I don’t want to be afraid to write the piece that will unlock something for YOU in your business because I’m annoyed by Substack’s fees.⁵

After almost eight years of teaching in memberships and group programs and courses, I believe that my best possible impact will be at scale through my writing. Perhaps I’m delusional, but I’d like to think that I have the reputation and the reach now to serve more widely without feeling like I have to hold back because I need you to buy something else from me.⁶ I am, obviously, asking to be paid for this labor. And I continue to coach and consult. But those projects are so intense that I can only do a handful at a time, they are never going to scale.⁷ I want to make sure that more people can get what they need from my experience, and Think Piece can make that happen.

I’m nervous. I can easily talk to you about a five-figure coaching program. I have no problem quoting consulting projects that are more than I used to make in a year. But a few bucks a month for the analysis, criticism, and community that will help you stay informed and make strong decisions for your work? This is on my growing edge.⁸

You can be part of this from the beginning and join as a founding member. You can help shape the topics and conversation. You can ask me questions, participate in the monthly coaching and advice column, and meet other founders, creatives, and curious minds building the future of work.⁹

And yes, it’s my birthday. If that helps you go over the edge, I’ll take it.

1. I should know, I’ve written plenty of it.

2. I have also written plenty of this.

3. Seriously it is very very cool to see folks referencing my writing and using it in their work and decision-making THANK YOU.

4. I have no problem with more expensive programs (I have sold many), but they serve specific purposes that are not aligned with what I’m seeking from Think Piece.

5. I will write about why I ultimately chose Substack despite my dislike of the business model in a paid-subscriber post next week.

6. This has not been a very conscious thing, but I know it’s in my brain. It’s hard to share everything you can when you need to position your paid work as more/better/something. I have often shared it all on the podcast or social media, but never without anxiety.

7. I will continue to teach, too, but probably not at the scale I did before. I’m craving intimacy and connection in my programs.

8. I’m not kidding for some reason this is way harder! Brains are weird! Money stuff is weird!

9. The one thing I truly miss from HBA is hearing how many folks became friends, started working together, started businesses!!! That can happen here, too.