Write of Passage Weekly - Leveraging Internet Serendipity

Yesterday, I told you the story of a talented alum, Yehudis Milchtein, who puts her personality on the page and has reoriented her life around a weekly publishing cadence. Last night, I hosted a Twitter Spaces event with some Write of Passage alumni, including Amanda Natividad. And today, I want to tell you how Amanda has used writing to build a massive audience and accelerate her career in digital marketing.

No matter your level of talent or expertise, creating can make you feel like an imposter. The “publish” button is a trigger for self-doubt. Crickets from your friends signal that you’re washed up or out of line. 

The fears of publishing prevent you from writing. 

That is, until you learn to cope with imposter syndrome and join a supportive peer group that keeps you motivated.

Amanda Natividad started her career as a journalist and has written for Adweek. She’s been the Head of Marketing for Growth Machine and grew their podcast to over 20k downloads. Amanda has years of experience and valuable industry expertise. 

Despite all that, Amanda didn’t deserve attention. Her ideas weren’t interesting enough to be read. At least, that’s what she told herself. That’s why she didn’t publish. But it’s not true!

Since she started publishing her ideas online, Amanda has seen herself differently. She has an audience of over 125k on Twitter, 10,000 newsletter subscribers, and 30,000 LinkedIn followers. Undeserving? Uninteresting? Amanda is exactly the opposite.

Not only has Amanda amassed an impressive audience. She’s also accelerated her career by writing online. Early on in her Twitter journey, one of her marketing role models followed her back: Rand Fishkin. She was stunned. For two days, she stopped posting. She was worried about what he would think. 

But she pushed past her fears. Amanda continued to publish her unique perspective. “The beautiful irony is that when one of the people I admired most started paying attention, I actually felt more comfortable being myself,” she said.

Can you guess what happened next? Amanda became close personal friends with Fishkin, they realized their shared vision for the future of digital marketing, and now they’re co-workers. Fishkin is the co-founder of SparkToro, and Amanda is the VP of Marketing.

Publishing online has changed Amanda’s life. 

Her journey to over 100k followers and landing her dream job started just two years ago in Write of Passage Cohort 6. Amanda’s biggest win from the five-week course was writing outside of her niche and learning about herself in the process. Her first essay of the course was “Sleep Train Your Baby and Reclaim Your Life.” Fellow students encouraged her and the tools of the course enabled her to write and publish ideas she’d kept to herself.

“Write of Passage gave me that forcing function to figure out what I really care about, and it gave me a safe space to test new ideas.”

Flash forward two years. Amanda now has thousands of people applying her marketing insights, relating to her quips about parenting, and trying out the recipes she shares on her newsletter: The Menu. She has appeared on podcasts, been profiled on the Demand Curve website, written guest posts for high-power marketing firms, and launched her own cohort-based course.

“If you set a clear goal for yourself, home in on your unique voice and stick with a topic consistently over time, you’ll turn yourself into a magnet that attracts relevant, even life-changing opportunities.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

To leverage the Internet’s serendipity and invite unimaginable opportunities into your life, join us for Write of Passage Cohort 10. Within five weeks, you will kickstart your writing and join a peer group that will help keep you going. Enroll before April 12 to secure your spot.

Chat soon,

David

P.S. We are accepting scholarship applications for Cohort 10 through April 7. If you find the cost of the course prohibitive, please apply. (You can also use a payment plan, options are on the enrollment page.) We also have a limited number of Educators Fellowships for talented education professionals and teachers. 

Join me for a free workshop on April 11th at 2pm ET: Making Your Writing Sizzle