Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

I am finally back from all of my vacations and will be home in Austin, Tx for the foreseeable future!

This past week I was at an event called DragonCon. Think of it like Comic-Con if Comic-Con was run by fans instead of a corporation, and if it was always in the same place every year.

Since DragonCon is always in Atlanta, Georgia every year at the same time, you have a lot of people that choose to go to it every single year. I am one of those people, as is my favorite author and his family.

It's the place I go each year to get excited about writing fiction again because I get to interface with other authors and fans of writing, and it reminds me what a fun world that is.

It also reminds me how prevalent Imposter Syndrome is even at the highest levels of artistic success.

And that is the core of what today's newsletter is about.

Today I write about:

• Imposter Syndrome and how to combat it
• How two weeks of increased exercise has made me feel
• Crypto volatility

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here. 

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🧠 Wisdom Tip(s) of The Week: Fighting Imposter Syndrome

This week at DragonCon reminded me of a powerful lesson. No matter how popular or successful you are, you probably still struggle with imposter syndrome. Especially if you are popular or successful at an event like DragonCon.

My favorite author is Will Wight. If you know me personally but didn't know that, you haven't been paying attention.

Will and his family attend DragonCon every year, as do I, and I make it a point to see them at least once during my time at Con. This year their publishing company Hidden Gnome Publishing had an event where fans could show up and asking Will questions about anything. What also made this year slightly different was that the well-known and beloved voice-actor of many of Will Wight's audiobooks, Travis Baldree, was in attendance!

The event went well, but there was a part of the event where both Will and Travis shared that they both struggle with imposter syndrome, and Will suffers quite a bit.

In Will's mind, everything he writes is the worst thing ever written. Even when his friends, family, and beta readers tell him differently. In his mind, he is convinced that no one wants to read his work. It gets so bad that Will has even had arguments with his Book Cover Artist about how large his name is, and how he thinks his name should be removed from the cover altogether!

He told us this story at a fan meetup in his honor. In a year where DragonCon is at half-capacity, at a hotel that is a 10-20 minute walk from most other Con hotels, his event still drew around 70 fans! That's almost double the number of people that showed up two years ago.

The point I am slow to make here is that even at Will's level of success, with constant evidence to the contrary, imposter syndrome does not go away.

I was surprised to learn that Travis Baldree deals with this issue too, although to a slighter degree. Travis is an NYT best-selling audiobook voice actor due to his amazing work on Will Wight's Cradle Series. That series alone has over 52,000 reviews, averaging five stars!

And yet both Will and Travis feel like imposters. That someday everyone will learn that they're not as good as we think they are.

The important message here is that if you do suffer from imposter syndrome, you're not alone.

Every week when I write this newsletter I feel like it is the worst newsletter I've ever written. Every youtube video I make is the worst youtube video out there. Creating content for others to consume is terrifying.

What do I do to combat this?

I struggle every day to combat my own flawed perception of myself.

What has worked for me are the following:

1) admit that I am dealing with it.

For whatever reason starting this kind of conversation helps. It's like a release of pressure that I didn't know was built up. Once I open up and talk about it, that pressure is gone and I can focus more on the creative work, and less on how bad I think the creative work is.

2) always focus on adding value

My number one goal when I write anything is to add value. Even if just one person that reads this finds it valuable, then it is worth it. Sure this might be the worst newsletter ever written, but that doesn't mean there isn't some value in here somewhere.

Focusing on adding value has always made it easier to push the "send" or "submit" button on a piece of writing.

Will does these things too.

My favorite part of Will Wight's fan panel was his admission that he struggles with this, and then the mentioning of his desire to bring value back to his readers. He's self-aware that this is something he struggles with, so he focuses on adding value.

He gets it. Will struggles with this on a much larger stage than I do, so to see the principles at work at scale is pretty damn comforting.

So if you are a creator or a would-be creator, and you're afraid that the work you produce isn't good enough, then admit that you feel that way and focus on adding as much value as you can.

That way you're constantly improving your craft while still getting value out to those that consume your work.

💪🏻 Health Thought of The Week: Vacation Movement/Exercise

Anytime you go to a convention you end up walking a lot. This year I went to DragonCon for a week right after spending a week at the beach. A beach is also a place where I find you exercise more than you would at home.

I now have two weeks back to back where I have exercised more than I would at home and my body feels fantastic as a result.

It's just another reminder of how important daily movement and exercise is to how one feels.

At the beach house, I averaged 10-15 flights of stairs a day, and at DragonCon, I averaged 15,000 steps a day.

This is easier to do on a vacation since I'm not at my desk working all day, but that is no excuse not to try to ride this momentum back into my normal life.

Travis Baldree, the audiobook narrator I mentioned in the section above, was absolutely jacked (in shape) at DragonCon.

Here is a picture of Travis and Will Wight at DragonCon for reference.

So I asked him at one of the other events what he is doing to stay in such good shape.

It's pretty simple:

1. he follows a specific strength exercise routine five times a week
2. he eats quality food
3. repeat steps 1 and 2 over and over for continued success

That is it.

If Travis can do it, so can I.

He did tell me the program he used, so I'll try it out and see how it works for me.

🤑 Wealth Thought of The Week: Crypto Volatility and Ethereum News

Yesterday, September 7th was a rough day in the Crypto world.

I believe at one point the whole market dropped 15-20% at one point.

Why? I'm not 100% sure.

What I think it might have been though, is the following.

Yesterday was the first day a lot of investors and traders returned to the market after a three-day weekend. Second, there was a 44 million dollar BTC sell order executed on a smaller exchange.

Those two things together meant that a lot of casual crypto investors as well as poorly built "trading bots" freaked out and sold too.

Either way, it doesn't change the value of Ethereum or the strategy I recommend following.

Buy, hold, and stake. Every week.

But also, it's crazy how much impact one (very large) poorly timed sell order can have.

Ethereum Stats:

Total ETH burned - 240,000 ETH (or $840 million)

ETH burned in the last week - 82,500 ETH !!!! 😱

Avg ETH burn per minute (all-time) - 4.90 ETH/min

My favorite website for watching the ETH 🔥 is ultrasound.money.

Quote/Meme of the week:

During a week where imposter syndrome is front and center, I am reminded of this amazing quote by Steven Pressfield.

Usually, if you realize you're suffering from imposter syndrome around a subject, that probably means you should definitely be working on that subject as much as possible. Don't let your brain trick you into doing what is easy and comfortable.

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 4% interest on BTC, 4% interest on ETH, and a whopping 7.5% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.