💡✍️ADN #156: What I've learned from 3 years of writing the ADN

Today is the 156th Artist Development Newsletter.

By my math that is (3) consecutive years of sending (1) newsletter every Sunday.

To mark the occasion I thought I’d give a bit of the backstory behind what got this going and give a look under the hood at what has and hasn’t happened from writing consistently for 156 straight weeks.

Let’s start at the beginning…

How It Started

It was November of 2022, I was in a hotel room in Germany thinking about 1000 little things I’d learned in my 20+ years of touring, songwriting, managing, and playing drums in bands.

More and more friends and artists were asking questions about “how to tour on a budget”, “how best to release their album”, “how to be more effective on social media”, etc.

It hit me that most of what I “know” came from hard earned experience and often times mistakes.

One song, one gig, one post, one deal, one fan at a time.

With that, it was easy to see an endless list of little tips, tools, and tricks I’d picked up along the way

I’d also been fortunate to learn from countless other artists, bands, tour managers, A&R’s, artist managers, marketing directors, social media managers, and more.

So during that winter tour throughout Europe and the UK with my band The Cadillac Three, the Artist Development Newsletter was born.

The premise was simple.

Write (1) email per week until there’s nothing more to say about making progress in the music business.

It seemed like a good way way to gather my learnings, share them with others, and have a stockpike of answers for the next time someone asked “how do I post consistently on social media” or “how do I find my first 1000 fans”?

So, the Artist Development Newsletter was born.

It has been one of the most consistent things in my life.

Effectively a letter to my younger self about things that I wish I’d known sooner.

Along the way it has been a pleasant surprise to find that some of what I’ve written has been helpful to others as well.

So, let’s get into what has been working and what could be working better.

How It’s Going

In November of 2022, I posted that I was launching the Artist Development Newsletter on LinkedIn.

At the time I was posting daily (sometimes twice daily) with thoughts and stories from the road and industry, so it made logical sense to let people know.

Over the first few months a couple hundred people signed up.

I built a quick website to host the emails in a blog.

At first not much happened, no replies, not a lot of sign-ups, etc, but it didn’t matter, because it was providing something that I didn’t have before, which was a consistent way to document and release thoughts that were otherwise just stuck in my head.

I was clearing my mental hard drive and repurposing it out into the world.

Week after week, I found myself building accountability, learning how to create a system for consistency, and slowly but surely I became a better, faster, and more efficient writer. (Far from great, but better than before.)

Year 1 was slow, but something began to happen in year two.

By November of 2024, the website began to see some visitors.

As you can see, it wasn’t millions, but from where we were at first when it was 100 or less a day we began to see some days where page views would spike over 1000.

What was most encouraging was that almost all of those views were to blog posts.

The consistency of writing about Artist Development, utilizing seo keywords, and then doing it again week over week was beginning to catch the attention of search engines like Google.

Fast forward to the past 12 months and you can see that this compounding has continued.

Are these numbers massive?

No, they aren’t.

Are they proof that being consistent compounds?

Yes, they are.

As of the last 30 days, the website is seeing over 28,000 views per month.

As you can see below we are above 500 views per day now and reaching over 1000 more than ever.

To put that in context, the site is bringing in as many people as a club like the Bowery Ballroom every day.

What It’s Led To

Writing weekly has brought opportunities I never planned for:

• Consulting and management work
• Songwriting collaborations
• Speaking on panels and podcasts
• New partnerships born from shared ideas

I haven’t made millions from writing — but I’ve made meaningful connections, side income, and something even more valuable: clarity.
Writing every week forces you to know what you actually think.

What Could Be Better

Despite all the growth, I’ve fallen short in one area:
Building around the attention.

I haven’t built more tools to support what I am writing about.

What You Can Take From This

If you take nothing else away from these 156 weeks, take this:

1. Consistency is undefeated.
There’s no hack that beats showing up.

2. Controllable goals create momentum.
I didn’t aim for a million readers, just one newsletter a week. Start small, stay steady.

3. Curiosity compounds.
Every post is another shot on goal. You don’t know which ones you’ll make, but the more shots you take the better chance you have.

Your Turn

Ask yourself:

“What’s one thing I could commit to for the next three years consistently”?

Pick that thing.
Show up for it every week.
Watch what happens.

Thanks for reading, and for being part of this.
If you’ve got thoughts on what you’ve loved (or what could be better), I’d love to hear from you — just reply or email me at [email protected]

See you next Sunday,

Neil