Why I'm Creating Stacking Days

In August 2022, I propped my iPhone against a stack of books on my desk and recorded a 60-second video about how to organize your thoughts before speaking. I posted it on TikTok. It got 47 views.

I posted another one the next day. Then another. Most of them floated in the 100-300 view range for weeks. I remember checking the app obsessively during lunch breaks at work, refreshing the analytics page like it was going to suddenly show me different numbers.

It didn’t. Not for a while.

Then around month four, a video hit 3.5 million views. I woke up to 30,000 new followers and hundreds of comments. My phone was buzzing so constantly I had to turn off notifications.

Over the next year and a half, I grew to 375,000 on TikTok and 268,000 on Instagram. I launched a cohort-based coaching program. Students paid real money and got real results. Testimonials came in. Revenue started flowing.

From the outside, it looked like I’d figured it out. Communication coach. Growing audience. Profitable business. Clean narrative.

From the inside, something felt off.

Boxed In By My Own Brand

I’d built a brand around one thing: helping professionals speak clearly and confidently. And the brand was working. People found me because of communication tips. They signed up for coaching because of communication content. The whole machine ran on that single topic.

But I’m not just a communication coach. I never was.

I spend hours every week building AI automations. I geek out over content systems and creator business models. I have strong opinions about career strategy, about how to build leverage while working a full-time job, about what most people get wrong when they try to “follow their passion.”

None of that fit the brand. So I kept it bottled up.

I’d write a newsletter about AI workflows and then delete the draft because my audience expected speaking tips. I’d have an idea for a video about building a creator business and talk myself out of it because “that’s not my niche.”

The niche was working. And it was also slowly making the work feel like a chore.

The Third Cohort

My third cohort launch was the wake-up call. The first two cohorts had filled well. 20-30 students each, strong engagement, great outcomes. I assumed the third would follow the same pattern.

It didn’t. Nine students signed up. Less than a third of what I’d planned for.

I can point to tactical reasons. My launch sequence was weaker. The timing was off. The market for live coaching is competitive and getting more so. But the deeper reason was that I’d lost energy for the thing I was selling. And that showed up in the content, the marketing, the pitch. When you’re not fully behind what you’re building, people can tell.

I had two options. Double down on communication coaching and grind through the plateau. Or expand into the things I actually cared about and see what happened.

Not Quitting. Expanding.

I want to be clear: I’m not abandoning communication coaching. That expertise is real. It’s what got me here. And I’ll keep creating content about it because it genuinely helps people.

But I’m done pretending it’s the only thing I have to offer.

Stacking Days is the newsletter where I talk about everything I’m actually building. Communication skills, yes. But also AI experiments. Content systems. Creator business strategy. The real numbers behind what’s working and what’s not. Automation workflows that save me hours every week. Lessons from building a business on the side while working full-time in BD at Lucid.

The name comes from a belief I keep coming back to. You don’t build a life you’re proud of through some single dramatic bet. You build it by stacking days. One after another. Small, intentional effort that compounds over months and years.

It’s how I grew to 650K+ followers. Not from one viral video, but from posting consistently for years. It’s how I built a coaching business. Not from one perfect launch, but from iterating on cohort after cohort. It’s how I’ll build whatever comes next.

Who This Is For

If you’re someone with a demanding job who’s building something on the side, this is for you.

Not the person who quit their job to be a full-time creator. Not the person with a trust fund and unlimited runway. The person who wakes up at 6am, does their real job from 9 to 6, and then spends the evening building their thing. That’s who I’m writing for, because that’s who I am.

I know what it feels like to have more ambition than time. To be recording content at 10pm after a full workday. To wonder if any of it is going anywhere. To feel stuck between the stable paycheck and the thing you really want to build.

Stacking Days documents the process of navigating that tension in real time. I share what I’m experimenting with, what’s working, what’s failing, and the actual numbers behind all of it.

The Philosophy

Success isn’t about one breakthrough moment. It’s about creating systems that buy back your time.

Every automation I build, every process I systematize, every task I delegate gives me back hours. And those hours go into building the next thing. Which creates more leverage. Which buys back more time.

That’s the cycle. That’s the whole game.

Stacking Days is where I document that cycle, openly and honestly. No curated highlight reel. No pretending everything is going perfectly. Just the real process of building something meaningful while juggling the rest of life.

If that sounds interesting, welcome. Let’s see what stacks up.

Preston