Mighty Creators

How to Start a Content Business
Suppose you have an idea for a content based business. There are at least two questions you need to answer: 1/ What should it be about? audience. 2/ How can you stand out from everyone else writing about the same topic? In this interview, Joe Pulizzi, answers these questions using his concepts of the Sweet Spot and the Tilt.

Joe Pulizzi
Joe Pulizzi is the author of Content, Inc., and founder of CMI, the Content Marketing Institute. So what are the sweet spot and the tilt?

Sweet Spot
This is the content area that you are interested in, and for which there is an audience. Joe talks about how to find your sweet spot and how to move towards it.

Tilt
This is your unique spin that makes you stand out from the crowd. Joe talks about how he figured out the tilt for his own content business, the Content Marketing Institute, and how you can find your tilt.

Full Interview
Here is the full interview.

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Conversation with Sahil Lavingia https://twitter.com/shl

- Why Sahil wrote “Minimalist Entrepreneur”
- How to solve chicken-and-egg problem of starting with product or market 
- Too much research can be worse than too little research
- How to scale your time

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How to start a business
Suppose you want to start a business. There are two approaches many founders take. (1) Pitch the idea to VCs to have them fund the business. (2) Bootstrap the business and self-fund it.

Daniel Vassallo talks about a third approach which is not discussed as often in technology circles: The portfolio of small bets. The problem with both VC-funded and bootstrap startups is that they are big bets. The portfolio of small bets is the opposite.

Tips and techniques Daniel shared
Here are some of the tips and techniques that Daniel shared in this podcast conversation:
1/ What is the portfolio of small bets idea and why does it work?
2/ Daniel’s Portfolio of Small Bets course, which only admits 25 people and is sold out.
3/ Given a choice should you try to limit the downside or maximize the upside?
4/ Between surviving and thriving, which should you choose?
5/ One reason why small wins are better than small losses, and how to use small wins to build a business.
6/ When should you give up on an idea, and a technique that lets you almost never give up.
7/ How to create businesses in a way that turns time into an ally instead of an adversary.
8/ How to evaluate your ideas and figure out the best ones.
9/ How to use the VC-mindset in your small bets portfolio, and how to run multiple projects in parallel.
10/ The advantages of running projects in parallel instead of running them sequentially.
11/ How much money should you save before going independent, and the downside of having too much savings.
12/ An incremental technique for gradually moving from full-time employment to entrepreneurship.
13/ A specific visualization technique that you can use to evaluate bets before starting.
14/ How to evaluate new ideas and how to choose between ideas, even when you have no idea which one will succeed.

Where to find Daniel’s products
Here is link to Daniel Vassallo list of products (his portfolio of bets):
https://bio.link/dvassallo

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In this episode I talked to Samantha Postman @SamanthaPostman about automating creator workflows for capturing meeting notes. I met Samantha in a writing class called #Ship30for30, where she continuously posted class notes into the chat. In this session Samantha tells us how she was doing this so quickly and without getting distracted from the class.

Samantha talks about why automation is so cool, tools she uses, and how she combines the tools to create powerful workflows.

Apps
Here are the apps she talked about:
1/ @Otter_ai: Transcribes speech to text. Useful for capturing meeting notes and for brainstorming on walks.
2/ @TextSniperApp: Converts slide images to text by using OCR.
3/ @Paste_app: When you copy/paste into the clipboard, paste remembers it so you can go back.
4/ @Setapp: Bundle of tools that gives you access to many useful tools for a flat price.
5/ @MindNode: Create mindmaps to brainstorm, write books, plan projects.
6/ @CleanShot: Quick screen capture for the Mac.

Discount links to apps
Here are Samantha’s discount links to the apps that were mentioned in the podcast.
1/ Otter.ai
2/ Setapp (Setapp includes PasteApp.io, TextSniper.app, MindNode, Cleanshot X)

Subscribe
If you liked this episode subscribe to this podcast, on iTunes, Google, Spotify, or YouTube.

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Ev Chapman @evielync describes specific techniques she uses to produce content, to quickly learn what content resonates, and to attract more followers. Details below.

Ev is a content creator from Sydney, Australia. In the last 5 months, Ev has launched 3 digital products, and grown her audience by several thousand followers.

Key Takeaways
1/ How did you grow your audience? Consistently produce content. The more content you produce the more people resonate with it. Produce content that is interesting to you and it will resonate with a lot of people.

2/ Why did you create Consumer 2 Creator? Writing daily for Ship30for30, a cohort-based writing practice. People kept asking, “How do you come up with these ideas?” So I opened up my system. C2C consists of a workshop with Notion template to support it. Enables you to never be out of things to write about.

3/ How can we turn from consumers to creators? Comes down to consuming with intent. Take intentional notes. Instead of notes that capture everything, use notes to capture the things that you find interesting and that resonate with you in your own words. For details see How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

4/ What are lead and lag measures? Lead measures are things we control that feed into lag measures that we don’t control. Daily writing is a lead measure that we control. The followers are a lag measure that follows from writing daily. For details see the 4DX book: 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling. So

5/ What is 30 Day Experiment Field Guide + Template about? How to loop back on yourself and experiment with habits. How to experiment with habits for 30 days and see whether they take you in the right direction and whether they are sustainable. Includes Notion template.

6/ Why Notion templates? Notion gives you flexibility of page layout plus power of databases. You can track daily activity then roll it up to see trends.

7/ Why release before content is perfect? Releasing faster leads to flywheel of feedback. You get feedback on what resonates with your audience. You don’t have to wonder. Everything is in motion. This is the new way of writing.

8/ What advice would you give for creators on day zero? 1/ Start! 2/ Find a community. Writing is lonely, but when you do it with other people it helps to get that thing going. 3/ Keep publishing.

Products
1/ Consumer 2 Creator Lab is a workshop to turn people who are consumers into creators: https://evchapman.com/templates/consumer-2-creator-lab
2/ 30 Day Experiment Field Guide + Template is a template for habit formation and experimentation: https://evchapman.com/templates/30day-guide

Books
1/ 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling.
2/ How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

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Podcast interview of Leo Guinan, serial entrepreneur, automation expert. Quick summary of interview follows.

https://superchargeyourtime.com is Leo’s automation course.

Why automation? Automation enables you to scale, prevents mistakes, and is actually fun.

How do you decide whether to automate something or not? Leo’s process: Automate things you do more than once. Create quick minimum viable automation on first pass. Then on each following pass incrementally automate it more. Most-used processes get the most automation.

http://feathercrm.io is Leo’s CRM for Twitter.

What does it do? It lets you send custom messages to your followers and manage the relationships at scale.

How do you get so much done with ADHD? Leo uses his ADHD as a strength to create. He works on many things at once. He uses deadlines to get things out. Building in public, releasing things on time even if they are imperfect, being vulnerable, creates authenticity, which people appreciate and connect with.

Listen to the full interview in the podcast.

Promo Code
Leo shared a promo code for listeners of the podcast. Use code mighty at http://superchargeyourtime.com for 25% discount.

Resources
https://www.superchargeyourtime.com is Leo’s automation course.
https://super.fans is the hosting platform for Leo’s cohort-based course.
http://feathercrm.io is Leo’s CRM for Twitter. 

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I spoke with Eric Jorgensen today. Eric is a software developer I worked with at Microsoft. He shares his ideas about how to come up with ideas. Here is a summary.

1/ How to sell ideas: instead of saying “I have an idea that cars should drive themselves” say “I wish cars drove themselves”. People are receptive to wishes, but might want to shoot down ideas.

2/ How to keep ideas: Turn off the editor that wants to protect you by editing out your idea.

3/ How to generate ideas: Create a mindset that the ideas are not something we create, which creates pressure to produce, but that we receive.

If you enjoyed this interview please subscribe.

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Welcome to Mighty Creators. I am your host, Asim Jalis.

So what is this podcast all about? In the Mighty Creators podcast I will interview successful creators, and we will learn from their experiences. We will look at questions such as: how to find your niche, how to create engaging content, how to attract followers, how to grow your revenue, and how to do all of this while staying authentic, being yourself, and loving what you do.

If you want to listen to interviews with successful creators and learn from their experiences, subscribe to this podcast.

If you want to get updates, provide feedback, or to get in touch with me, follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/asimjalis

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