The Power of Small, Weekly Habits.

a screenshot of one folder of newsletter examples

A year ago, I realized that clients were asking me, over and over again, for examples of certain things:

Dan, do you have any examples of great pop-ups to convert readers from our website to our newsletter?

Have you seen any good examples of promotions on Instagram?

Do you have any examples you can share of amazing welcome emails?

So I started compiling examples into a big Google Drive file, and shared it with clients. But then I made another choice: I added a weekly note to my calendar to keep adding to the Drive. I created a folder on my laptop where I could store examples that I’d noticed over the course of the week, and then, every Friday, I’d upload them to Drive.

Sometimes I only have an example or two to upload on Friday, and sometimes, I’ll have dozens. But over the course of a year, I’ve uploaded hundreds of examples that I can refer clients to. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this one project has changed the way I work with clients. It’s one thing for me to be tell them about the concept, but it’s another to be able to show them a handful of great examples from their peers.

And had I decided to, say, update the file every month or every quarter, I’m not sure I would’ve stuck with it. (It took a lot of work to upload that first, giant batch of examples!) Instead, by focusing on a small, weekly habit, it feels so much more manageable — and the long-term result has been so much more than I ever could’ve expected.

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That’s a screenshot of the pop-ups folder. There are now more than 30 examples of pop-ups I love that I can share with clients.