👛Our Wallets Are Tapped Out👛
I don't have anything clever, just don't skip this please.
Imposter Syndrome
The following words that fill up this article aren’t excuses but a self reflection on what I recently researched and discovered about myself & content creation & my next projects. Anything can be talked about in the later paragraphs.
It may sound like excuses but it’s not. My experience for 2023 isn’t the same as anyone else’s. So here we go.
Despite having very good and fond memories during the year such as releasing my first ever wrestling planner and debuting for Invictus Pro Wrestling as commentator for the women’s match and the main event…for 2023, it brought on a weird emotionally unbalanced energy that’s affected my ability to stay confident in my work.
Please listen. This fucked up everything for me. 2024 will be a better year.
This is a proud moment for me to be on commentary for J Boujii who became PWI (Pro Wrestling Illustrated) #368 in the Rankings!
You hear it all the time: Content Creation is hard. It’s not just a phrase but actually can and does happen to content creators that want to make the best content for friends and fans possible without half-assing it all and lying to you while taking your hard-earned money. We dream big as content creators…well I do at least. I dream big and it gets overwhelming. Maybe as the months continue, I’ll work on that and learn how not to dream so big but still dream to where I can control it.
As a big dreamer, I often get imposter syndrome and negative thoughts quickly flood my mind. For 2023, it’s been controlling for the longest. I’ve taken days of self-care while also pushing myself by sending out emails and getting bookings and thinking about my next projects.
I sometimes want to know if my content is good enough. If the opinions I express on podcasts are sound or if you disagree or if the video interviews are good enough — informative enough — interesting enough? If you ever wonder why I don’t ask for questions for the interviews, it’s because no one floods the comments or at least reply with a brainstorming idea that I might have not thought about to improve the interview.
As much as the wrestling community is toxic, the good apples always want to see their friends succeed. So I want to see us succeed together. Let me tell you some stories.
Storytime
I understand that our wallets may be tapped out. I get it. Our funds need to be used in a strategic way and you’ve probably had subscriptions and bills and other important things ahead of my newsletter. Which is perfectly fine — priorities first — but because I’m in a constant mental battle about what I should truly put behind a paywall and not and I don’t stand firmly on such content being paid because I want to share it all with the world. I learned that I like to people please by doing that.
I also learned that I am Tundra content creator which means I like to create an excitable environment around wrestling — the way I gush about wrestlers and stories and how I’m always at the fore helping wrestlers by watching their work — that’ll get you excited about wrestling too all while bringing attention to what I do behind-the-scenes and create and anything new I have going on. Tundra archetypes are launchers of content creation and knows how to get a small niche audience excited about something cool.
Or at least, I think and hope so. Lately, it hasn’t been feeling as such.
I understand that our wallets are tapped out. I understand that our time is precious. That’s why I never want to waste your time with hearsay wrestling news bullshit. The dirt sheets make money off lies because there’s money in drama. We all know this. The Squared Circle Podcast and Society is about non-drama and giving you a deeper love for wrestling from the various sections like the Tape Study series, to the Road Stories as behind-the-scenes uniqueness of my commentary journey and wrestling career in general.
I used to do wrestling vlogs whenever I traveled to wrestling events to support JD Alpha back in the day. Those were fun. Good times. I stopped doing wrestling vlogs because the promoter of IWA had a falling out with everyone (including me) and that experience in itself was horrible while on top having three “wrestlers” that thought they ruled everything and would look down on content creators like me because “i’M noT iN ThE BuSinESs” when I’m the only one to make it to WWE and they’re still in the indies. Well one retired. The other one not sure what he’s doing and the other one is still being booked but luckily isn’t trying not to steal power from the promotions he works for.
That incident (and the next one after it) completely broke me, my content, my relationships (I feel like one of my relationships never recovered), and it sucks but I moved on, recovered and still making content. It could’ve been handled better, but it is what it is.
That’s why when I vlog, it’s all about relearning how to do it and feeling comfortable. Those IWA vlogs were awesome, and I was happy doing them. I learned lessons since then. You can see my growth from then to now.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvdAzQnNY_Pjxa0dar0dumcnHM6EC0XfR
I understand that our wallets are tapped out. And I’ll try my best in the future to alert you on my upcoming events that might need a sponsorship or donations. These acts of kindness help me with travel when our guaranteed ride isn’t available. In the last article I talked about how you could help me out. I called it: Ring-Side Partner Program. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
Ring-Side Fan+Partner Program
Substack is great. It gives me a blank canvas and I paint whatever I wish and hope you enjoy it too. Substack makes things simple. Sometimes my mind loves to go complicated which is a bad thing for me. I started to think about how to best serve my community through content creation and the subscription model. On Substack there’s only two tiers with a founding member tier and check box for a 7-day free trial. I always struggle with the two-tier system mainly because of price point. As creatives, we underprice our content to get anyone to subscribe rather than pricing the content correctly because those that spend time, money, effort, and joy into their projects brings value. I have the two-tiers priced and gladly provide discounts of 20% off to make that choice easier to support my work. Nothing really happens at moment.
In addition to thinking about this subscription model, I thought about the Ring-Side Fan+Partner Program and this is exclusive for you to know. The wrestling niche is small — it feels like it is — and as I use different platforms to grow an audience through livestreaming, podcasting, and anything else, no one from the outside network of Substack is signing up to this newsletter. So, if I combined having an outside membership network, I wonder if that would work? Example, like a Patreon or a Ko-fi. If I combine this Substack with Ko-fi, you can freely give a one-time donation for a post, interview, or write up you like as encouragement rather than subscribing monthly or yearly. I also recently thought of turning off paid subscriptions mainly because I don’t think I understand completely how to work it, like, how do I turn free readers into paying readers to support the vlogs, the writing, the videos, the interviews, the wrestling novel, the media press, and more?
Subscribing to someone is a choice. I understand that. But when there are more crickets than encouragement or engagement on posts, it’s gets lonely and frustrating, and creatives wonder if they are the problem for talking about issues or needing to rant for clarity.
And so, this new idea I’m thinking about is mainly for those outside the network bubble because maybe that’ll work. I’m not sure. My mind has shifted focus as well. I want to create a wrestling course for wrestlers. I want to help them succeed. That’s your exclusive and that’s why I was thinking about a Ring-Side Fan+Partner Program.
The Fan side would be for the vlogs, writings, interviews, novel, but this isn’t limited.
The Partner would be for the wrestlers to attend the course I intend to create, 1 on 1 consulting about their character, story, or talk things out about wrestling, watching their matches and given real time feedback, but this isn’t limited.
This Saturday
Did you know how I got the commentary position for Goddesses of War Wrestling? Originally, I was their official podcaster. That went super great. I loved it. I vlog it. I talked about it via the podcast.
Issues arose within the original commentary team in Goddesses. Things happen in wrestling. Next, I was contacted and offered the position. Doing wrestling commentary was something I wanted to do. I started practicing and now I’m calling matches for Goddesses and the latest for Invictus Pro Wrestling. I’m the main voice on Goddesses and I’d love to take you along for the ride with me — take you along for the journey.
We don’t have much time and I understand that our wallets are tapped out and we’re tapped out from the daily struggle — inflation is ridiculous; bills are ridiculous — so putting more stress on you isn’t my intent. Apologizes if this is causing you the same stress as me: not knowing what to do next.
Goddesses of War Wrestling will have the following matches this Saturday:
Nadia White vs Adena Steele
Tiffany Avatar vs Taylor One Shot
Vita Vonstarr vs The Amazonian (Funhouse Women’s Champion)
Ivy Malibu vs Marie Valdomina (Goddesses Championship Match)
And my guaranteed ride isn’t available so I’m booking public transportation in order to get to New Jersey. The vlog content will be an adventure and I want you there.
Below is the link to donate and sponsor. I’ll give you a shout-out, loving on the vlog and content creation. Thank you for understanding as all our wallets are tapped out.
Goddesses of War Wrestling Commentary
Please and thank you.
Marie
Almost everyone does. We only released this methodology 3 months ago
Thanks for linking to my article! The real strength of a Tundra is to stack evergreen tropes on top of each other to generate excitement for a launch. They tend to launch in very short bursts with a lot of recovery time. The recovery time and audience building time before and after a launch are even more important than the launch period. Tundras tend to burn through subscribers faster than any other ecosystem because of the hard push of their launches, so they need to be critically focused on audience building during the building period.
We have not released our new findings, but for tundras, they really need to have a secondary ecosystem to create a flywheel for their work, either a Grassland content marketing strategy or a Forest community strategy. Otherwise, they are just a sales funnel with nowhere to send people to build a flywheel.