This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

First, apologies for the delay in getting this edition out. They say time and tides wait for no man, in this case, the tides were dragging me out to sea for a bit.

In this edition:

• The Dark Forest

• Dungeon news

• The Answer Engine

• Wild Beast, or a God?

The Seeker ⭖ Quaestor Lucis

"The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost" ― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

The quote above is a perfect analogy for building internet businesses on the fringe. I’m not talking about VC-backed, SaaS, software startups, etc. I’m talking about the kind the rest of us build, out here in the cold beyond the walls of The Citadel.

If you’re just starting out, or building your lonely, anon, micro, or highly-leveraged business out here on the fringe with you… the Dark Forest is a concept worth exploring and incorporating into your mindset.

It may sound dystopian, it may sound grim, it may sound lonely, but there is power in truth and in owning the reality: if you are building a solo-internet business, you are the armed hunter, the prey, the civilization, all wrapped in one, stalking the Dark Forest.

There is only one goal in this zero-sum forest, kill or be killed. Unique advantages in Intel (alpha), knowledge, skillets, and financing (leverage) are the best weapons you have.

Seek leverage.

The Dungeon News

• Yuki and I had our second space, the topic was “Black hat strategies working now,” and it was an eye-opener. We discussed local Rank & Rent, parasite SEO, doorways, and more. I especially enjoyed the alpha dropped by the homie Sonny in the last 5 minutes or so… Here’s the recording.

• Speaking of Black Hats 🎩, check out this Black Hat here, only for the bitter and jaded SEOs tired of sucking it up to the Citadel.

• Member e-SEO built a CTR bot and needs people to test it out, give him a shout in the Discord. Link.

• #Follow-Along News: IDID started a new Follow Along: Semantics Tomfoolersy - Local SEO

Alpha occurring now in the Dungeon (like RIGHT now, if you’re reading this, head over to the Discord and jump in - remember that Alfa is fleeting, sometimes comes and goes in seconds - jump in now.)

The Sovereign

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. - Aristotle

You can growth-hack your solo business the same as a startup. True story, I once Growth hacked a real estate startup to $100K/mo from zero cold emailing scraped lists, running automated webinars, and straight up selling over the ol’ phone. You can do the same with any business.

Some light reading:

• Scaling TikTok channels with VAs. (Thread).

• SEO turbo autist X post on dom vectoring. (Over my head)

• Building niche job board sites instead of just niche sites. (Link)

• A solopreneur doing $291K/mo selling his programming courses. (Link)

The Year 2050

This section explores where it's all going.

• Your own AI-CTO is on the way, and it’s coming sooner than you think.

• An AI that tests 100s of variations of your prompts to arrive at the best one? Yes, prompt engineering agents are here.

• Search is dead, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Google doesn’t want to be your search engine anymore, they want to be the Answer Engine, the middle-man to the entire Internet - long live search:

Respice Finem - Look To The End

• Slow down, to speed up. I realized recently that I’m only productive for so many hours in a week, therefore, I now take Mondays off completely and cram it all in Thurs-Fri. Because fuck Mondays. Give it a try.

• If you’re hitting a wall and it’s impossible to get into any kind of flow state, something somewhere is trying to tell you something. Call it the universe, God, or your own subconscious. Go outside and get lost and find a new path.

• The best business advice I received lately was to plan your business activities around things you love to do in your life, not the other way around. 

• “Perfection” is an anthropocentric concept that doesn't exist anywhere in nature and only exists in the minds of men, women, and unfortunately - and especially - children. Nothing else in nature worries about achieving a state that is antithetical to creation.