Special Edition | Sept. 22, 2025 | Read Online
Nearly 20 years ago, a man named Kevin Kelly wrote a now-famous essay about the importance of congregating 1,000 true fans. His essay mostly holds up even if some of the numbers have changed over time.
Here’s the thesis.
To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
A thousand customers is a whole lot more feasible to aim for than a million fans. Millions of paying fans is not a realistic goal to shoot for, especially when you are starting out. But a thousand fans is doable. You might even be able to remember a thousand names. If you added one new true fan per day, it’d only take a few years to gain a thousand.
Kevin Kelly
This has been a guiding light for me throughout this Normal Sport journey. There is nothing particularly special about the number 1,000 other than that it’s nice, round, a bit larger than 999, a bit less than the Bananas’ goal of 1 billion fans and, for reasons beyond me, somehow synonymous with Cam Young.
Our goal coming into this year was … well, 1,000 true fans.
In our situation, that meant 1,000 Normal Club members. We are so close to reaching those four digits — dangerously close at 978 — and we need your help in getting across the finish line during this Ryder Cup week.
Two notes on this that may encourage you to join.
1. I think we have done a good job of incentivizing with content. Example: Almost all of our upcoming Ryder Cup content will be partially paywalled.
Alternatively, we have not done a very good job incentivizing you to become a Normal Club member in almost every other way. We don’t believe we have provided enough value beyond 1. Our majors-focused paywalled content (which has been good!) and 2. Noting that you are helping us stand up a business in the short term.
In light of that, we are announcing today that all Normal Club members will receive 15 percent off to everything in the Normal Store. If you are logged in to your account at normalsport.com, the discount will be automatically applied when you check out.
More to come on member benefits in the future, and we are restocking our store with Johnson Wagner shirts as we speak, but this is a good place for us to start.
2. Additionally, we want to commemorate our first 1,000 true fans. This group will never change. It will always remain the same 1,000 people. You can still become a Normal Club member once we pass 1,000, but you can’t ever be one of the first 1,000.
We will celebrate this milestone once we reach 1,000 in four ways …
• We will select three (3) of our first 1,000 members and send them their choice of a box of either Normal Sport or Ryder Cup gear.
• We will send fifty (50) of our first 1,000 members a free member bag tag. (We would love to do this for all 1,000 but can’t quite afford that … yet).
• We will give five (5) of our first 1,000 members a free lifetime membership.
• We will send all of our first 1,000 members a link that they than can send on to a friend/family member so that they can join you in the Normal Club for the next year at an enormous discount.
One of the goals we talked about as a team last week was beginning to build up some better community among our group of Normal Club members such as the meetup we did last Thursday in Dallas.
We are grateful for our first 1,000 true fans.
Literally, we would not still be doing this without you because you have helped fund our first year of business. It has been a joy to create our hearts out for you, and we are hopeful that we get to continue doing that exact thing.
There are no aspirations around here to become wealthy off a little golf newsletter and show. Our desire is simply to make enough money for it to continue to exist. Jason and I like to say that we have found the work of our lives.
All we want to do professionally is exactly what we’ve been doing.
Thank you for encouraging that — for an entire year! — with your two most valuable assets (outside of FedEx Cup points): your attention (time) and your financial support (money).
We remain grateful.
Kyle Porter
Founder | Normal Sport
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