The Future Belongs to Creators

In today’s Q&A Friday, we talk about why we have a board as a private company, generating side income, podcasts vs. YouTube for creators, and more!

• Why does ConvertKit have a board?
• If we wanted to earn $10k over the next six months, how would we do that?
• Where should an offline creator start when thinking about going online? 
• Do all ConvertKit employees have a side project that you encourage them to work on?
• What’s the best way to send an online poll to my email subscribers.

Creator of the Day

• Courtland Allen
• Charles Heath

Resource of the Day

• Full Page Screen Capture Chrome Extension
• Apple Music - Sort by Number of Plays

Thought of the day

Links

• Ladders of Wealth Creation: A Step-by-Step Roadmap to Building Wealth by Nathan Barry
• James Clear
• Seth Godin
• Typeform

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Building relationships is challenging even when you’ve been in an industry for a long time and have domain expertise you can demonstrate with your work. It’s even harder when you are trying to break into a new industry where you have yet to prove yourself and don’t have many connections.

Relationships are the cornerstone of everything that we do personally and professionally. As a company, we wouldn’t have gotten where we are without strong, foundational relationships. 

In today’s episode, we talk about breaking into new industries, building strong relationships, and making creators the center of the work that we do at ConvertKit. 

Main Takeaways

• When you have a genuine interest in another person, are an advocate for them, and approach the relationship from a perspective of service, you grow a strong, mutually beneficial relationship. 
• Transparency and humility go a long way toward building relationships with mutual trust and respect. It has to be a good fit for both sides from the beginning. 
• Most of the time, you’re not actually starting from zero. It may be a small foothold, but it’s something on which you can build and generate momentum. 
• Go where the people are (this works digitally, too) and ask them what they are working on now or are hoping to do in the future. This can help you identify pain points and possible ways you can help them. 

Creators of the Day 

• Edward O. Wilson
• Gopi Shah Ceramics

Resources of the Day

• Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson

Thought of the Day

Links

• Haley Janicek on Twitter
• Creator Sessions
• Tim McGraw
• How to Win Friends and Influence People: The Only Book You Need to Lead You to Success by Dale Carnegie
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
• On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson

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Premortems are a tool for decision making with confidence. This exercise allows you to think through all the ways a project might fail and how to move forward anyway.

Once you identify the things that could go wrong, you can begin to understand the why behind each point of failure. Then you can plan preventively and pad your downside before you start the project. 

In today’s episode, we go through some real-world examples, and talk about when and how to use premortems to plan your projects better.

Main Takeaways

• When you think of a project as a failure and you identify the why, it allows you to take preventative measures before you even start. 
• You shouldn’t use premortems for all projects. They’re most useful for projects with a risk of misinterpretation or people using it in a way you didn’t intend. This is especially true if you plan to spend a lot of time, energy, or money on the project. 
• Start by understanding your goals and desired outcomes. Then, given that plan, assume things go horribly wrong. This enables you to poke holes in your plan that may actually exist rather than just taking a contrarian role or playing devil’s advocate. 

Creators of the Day 

• Ta-Nehisi Coates

Resources of the Day

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Thought of the Day

Links

• Black Panther Comic Books

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Getting into the habit of creating content is a lot of work, but it’s only the beginning of the process. Creating quality content is about connecting with your audience and one of the most sustainable ways to do that is through email automation. 

Once you get someone’s interest, you have to keep it. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay on the content hamster wheel. Leveraging your existing content through email automation enables you to build relationships without having to constantly churn out your best work. 

In this episode, we dig into using email automation to bridge the gap between initial contact with your readers and why they should stick around. We also talk about pillar content, how to organize your sequence, and how to get vulnerable with your readers. 

Main Takeaways

• Building a strong, authentic relationship with subscribers is critical. A strong relationship is what opens to the door to everything that comes next, including sales.
• Your best content has nothing to do with the day it was published. Good content should be something you can always leverage to create relationships with your audience. 
• Email automation allows your audience to be on their own schedule and meets them where they are in their journey. It also allows you to control the sequence of content that your audience receives so you can better set them up to understand who you are and what your business can do for them. 
• Be vulnerable and share with your audience. This enables you to build a personal relationship with each reader. 
• Use a separate email address for email replies. This is the lifeline to your audience and developing those relationships. 

Creators of the Day 

• Tim Grahl
• Asad Chaudhry 

Resources of the Day

• Running Down a Dream: Your Road Map to Winning Creative Battles by Tim Grahl
• Trestle 

Thought of the Day

Links

• The Power of When: Discover Your Chronotype--and the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More by Michael Breus 
• Nathan’s Daily Journal
• Build a Body of Work Worthy of a Lifetime by Barrett Brooks
• Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday Newsletter
• I Am a Blogger - Asad Chaudhry Episode

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As creators, we often spend a lot of time thinking about why we create. Making money, serving people, gaining notoriety, etc, are all reasons why we might create for our businesses. But what do we do with the ideas that aren’t driven by making money or serving others?

Sometimes, creating is about doing what gives you joy. The metric for success doesn’t always equate to making money; it can be solely to bring joy to yourself and others. 

In today’s episode, we explore several creators whose products seem to be driven by this desire. 

Main Takeaways

• Art is what you feel called and inspired to make regardless of whether or not someone else is paying attention to it. 
• Selling out is an emotionally rigged term. Often, when people are called a ‘sellout’ it’s because they’ve focused only on making things for money and not necessarily joy, pride, or quality. 
• The ideal outcome for a creator is when creating can exist at the overlap of joy and making money. 
• As a creator, there’s a downstream effect that happens when you put your work into the world; you can’t put business metrics around that. 
• Brand is the story that people tell themselves about your business.

Creators of the Day 

• Trent Palmer
• Brad Dowdy

Resources of the Day

• Monopoly Deal Card Game
• The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 40 Years by Yvon Chouinard

Thought of the Day

Links

• Twenty Bits I Learned About Design, Business, and Community by Dan Cederholm 
• Craft + Commerce Conference
• Obi - A Smart Laser Toy for Cats
• Studio Neat
• The Clear Habit Journal
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
• I Am a Blogger: 17 Stories About Earning a Living Online
• Sean McCabe
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• Chase Reeves
• What Fizzlers Did in 2015

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In today’s Q&A Friday, we talk about dealing with haters, creating content where your audience is, managing remote employees, and more!

• I’d like to know how being transparent has affected ConvertKit? How transparent should people be with their businesses?
• What’s the difference between Twitter and LinkedIn and which one do you prefer to channel people to your email list?
• How do you monitor your remote employees to ensure that they’re doing their best work and actually getting things done?
• How do you get out of a research rut when starting a new project?
• As an expert on a particular topic, how do you go about creating an email or content strategy that organizes all of your different ideas?
• How many emails is too many emails to send to your list?

Thought of the day

Links

• James Clear
• Bob Glazer
• Jason Lemkin of Saastr

Start building your audience for free

With ConvertKit landing pages, you can build a beautiful page for your project in just a few minutes. Choose colors, add photos, build a custom opt-in form, and add your copy. All without writing any code! Check out landingpages.new to get started.

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Starting a podcast or blog can be overwhelming. And while it’s important to develop your own voice and point-of-view, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with your format. 

There are many tried and true content formats that provide a solid place to start, and can be helpful for beginners and seasoned creators alike. 

In this episode, we explore five different templates that you can use to create a high-quality podcast, article, or blog post. 

Main takeaways

• Roundups may seem overdone but they can still be effective if you put your own spin on them. Having people share their input allows you to drive organic traffic to your site and builds your community simultaneously. Doing a roundup via podcast adds a barrier because it takes more effort and know-how to execute well. 
• Story or documentary-driven posts use a story or real-life event, supported by deep research, to draw people in. This is a great way to illustrate a problem, solution, or moral. 
• Biography or storytelling can be well done when you let the reader or viewer draw the conclusions rather than doing it for them.
• Teach, inspire, or entertain are three solid goals for creating content. You don’t have to hit all three; just one can be enough. 
• List posts are overdone but they are still effective at drawing attention and getting people to engage. 
• Epic guides should exist to beat any other post or resource about that specific topic. 
• Interviews are a great way to gain deep insights into individuals or topics. However, the interview is only as good as the guest. 

Creators of the day 

• Charli Prangley
• Jala Smith-Huys

Resources of the day

• Seek and Swoon
• Anker PowerCore+ Portable Charger
• 20 Bits I Learned About Design, Business, and Community by Dan Cederholm

Thought of the day

Links

• James Clear
• Malcom Gladwell
• Startup Podcast
• The Great Discontent
• I Am a Creator 
• I Am a Blogger
• Side Hustle School Podcast
• Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
• Free Solo Movie
• Justin Jackson’s Words
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari 
• Chase Jarvis Live

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Uncertainty, loss, and shifts in our daily life can create new forms of anxiety that we haven’t experienced before. Understanding that life is different now and will be different for the foreseeable future comes with its own set of challenges.

Acknowledging your emotions and feelings is an important first step. It allows you to trace it back to the reasons why you feel that way. All of these steps can help you better deal with anxiety while also allowing you to be kind to yourself. It’s important to realize that it’s ok to not be at the top of your game right now. 

In this episode, we dig into ways you can better cope with anxiety in challenging times and steps you can take to move forward. 

Main Takeaways

• It’s important to fully understand the situation so you can embrace the reality. It can be painful but approach it one day at a time.
• Emotional awareness is critical. Something as simple as ‘Red, Yellow, Green’ can put a name to how you’re feeling, which makes it easier to deal with. 
• Try not to attach your self worth to productivity or output. Good days will be great, and bad days will be bad. 
• Lower the bar for what it means to show up every day. Make it something manageable and achievable. 
• Spend time doing things that bring you joy and focus on the habits you can control. 

Creators of the Day 

• Ryan Holiday
• Dana and John Schultz (Minimalist Baker)

Resources of the Day

• Gifox.io
• Dominion Game

Thought of the Day

Links

• worldOmeter
• The Obstacle is the Way: The Timelines Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday

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Though we’ve mentioned the creative flywheel in past episodes, we want to go a step further and help you figure out your own flywheel. 

While every creator has a different flywheel, the process of discovery tends to follow a pattern. As we discuss this pattern, think about your own flywheel and in what ways your journey might be similar or unique. 

Main Takeaways

• The creator flywheel cycle follows a straightforward and logical path that encourages education, creation, and promotion. 
  •  Learn and practice continuously.
  • Hone your voice, point of view, and unique story.
  • Create and publish continuously.
  • Actively promote your content.
  • Sell products to earn a living.
• Any successful creator has likely followed a similar path. It can be useful to examine their business strategies and see how they align with these patterns.

Creators of the Day 

• Courtney Slazinik

Resources of the Day

• Mac Media Key Forwarder
• GoodNotes

Thought of the Day

Links

• Define Your Flywheel to Fuel Faster Business Growth by Barrett Brooks

Start Building Your Audience for Free

With ConvertKit landing pages, you can build a beautiful page for your project in just a few minutes. Choose colors, add photos, build a custom opt-in form, and add your copy. All without writing any code! Check out landingpages.new to get started.

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As a creator, you will naturally have ideas for things that you want to create. The problem most people run into is turning those ideas into realities. 

When we talk about taste, we mean those things you want to create. Those ideas are influenced by the things you love, filtered through your brain, and given a unique spin or angle. The challenge is to match your ability to your creative imagination.

It’s OK if your ability isn’t there yet. Everybody starts somewhere.

Main takeaways

• Creative people want to be able to create what’s in their mind and make it a reality. But, early on, they have trouble making that vision come to life. This is normal and you have to push through it and put in the time.
• Patience is what’s going to close the gap between what you want to make and your ability to make it.
• To develop taste, you need to document what you love, be exposed to new people, places, and experiences, and reflect on what and why you like those things. It’s important to then share your ideas.
• Start copying. If you can figure out how to recreate what you love, you can deconstruct the process and start learning what makes that thing special. 

Creators of the day 

• Noa Kageyama: The Bulletproof Musician
• Mary of Leather Beast

Resources of the day

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
• Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine Arnold

Thought of the day

Links

• The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast! by Josh Kaufman
• The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Enjoying the Good Life  by Tim Ferriss
• Mastery by Robert Greene
• Expertise: Why You Need it & How to Get it by Barrett Brooks

Start building your audience for free

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