🧑🏼‍🚀 Blueprint 055

Welcome back to Blueprint, a weekly series where I share an unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look into my journey as a creator entrepreneur.

It’s been 55 weeks (1 year + 3 weeks) since I went full-time.

Next week I’ll write the full Blueprint Month 13 income and strategy deep dive.

A reminder that the internet game is not zero-sum. Everyone reading this can win at an unlimited scale. I’m writing this for the internet astronauts building their own worlds. If that’s you…let’s ride 👩🏻‍🚀

WEEK 55 METRICS & UPDATES

Week 55 Metrics + Updates

Had a light week (only posted 1 new short and 1 new Youtube video) because of some travel.

This week I went to two IRL content events.

On Wed/Thu, I flew to NYC to be on a panel with Meta’s Internal Content Team…spent an hour jamming on content strategy, storytelling for AI, and tons of other topics. Really enjoyed this and look forward to working with other companies to help supercharge their content/marketing strategies.

Then this weekend, Lauren and I went to VeeCon, a tech/creator conference hosted by Gary Vee.

This was one of my favorite creator experiences. I can’t overstate how dope it is to meet other creators in person.

Got to see talks from Mike Posner, Peiman Raf (CEO of Madhappy) and several other culture movers.

But the talk that impressed me most, was from Codie Sanchez.

If you don’t know Codie, she built a large following and media platform around Contrarian Thinking and owning boring businesses. She has a Private Equity background and a large portfolio of boring businesses that she owns and manages.

I’ve never watched a live performance with such a magnetic grip on the crowd.

It felt like part religious service, part cult meet-up in the best way possible. And there was a line around the block to get into the event.

Whenever I witness these types of outlier moments, I do my best to distill the most helpful insights. Here’s what I wrote down:

• There is nothing more powerful than building a cult audience of people that are aligned with your message. It’s not about you, it’s about your message. Codie’s message is “People can become rich and free by owning businesses”

• This point builds on the first…say the things people already want to hear (as long as they are true). I always thought the game was to find novel things people haven’t heard and educate them. This can work, but it’s the harder path. People have an easier time liking you when they can quickly find common ground. If you reinforce someone’s existing beliefs, if true and from a good place, they will instantly feel more connected to you. For example, Codie said, “the government sold you a bill of lies…we don’t own our homes, we don’t own our jobs, etc.” These are things that most people believe to be true, and so immediately, you could feel them agreeing with her. To build a cult, find principles on common ground and hammer them repeatedly

• Having a magnetic stage personality is a superpower

The last thing she said hit home so strongly that I had to put it in its own section…

The Smart Kid Trap

Codie said, “Have you ever noticed how the smartest kids in your high school didn’t end up being the most successful?”

It’s true…most of the time, the genius kids aren’t the millionaires.

Why is this?

This tweet from Anu sheds light on it…

The smartest people tend to overthink things.

And if every idea has an achilles heel, then enough analysis will poke holes in all of them.

Overthinking leads to inaction. Inaction leads to failure.

The sweet spot for entrepreneurship is to have just enough intelligence + curiosity to spot the opportunity with enough ignorance to charge forward oblivious to the potential downsides.

And I write about this because falling into this trap has been my biggest struggle this past year.

I could have pursued several monetization paths, but found reasons wrong with all of them and decided not to act.

One of my goals for the next few months is to back off the analysis and learn to become more gut reactive. Ready fire aim.

If something feels like the right move, I’m going to sprint at it with the willingness to be wrong.

If this resonates with you, find ways to cut down on overthinking by taking instant action.

ANTIPATTERNS

AntiPatterns

I’ve written a lot about becoming 1 of 1.

The goal for any artist, musician, creator, or maker is to become so unique that you pioneer your own lane.

A category of one.

I wouldn’t say my stuff is Banksy level quite yet, but it does feel fairly different from the rest of the content I see on my feed.

But here’s what I’ve noticed…

The hardest part about trying to pioneer a lane is that it will feel like you’re wrong the entire way.

Our brains are designed to pattern match.

Taken all the way back to ancient times, we evolved to notice obscurities in our surroundings that could potentially attack and kill us.

Because of this, we all have a natural drift to want to fit in. It’s in our DNA.

This means, when we observe effective patterns in content, our gut reaction is to copy them and repeat.

But when you’re trying to be different, you must intentionally violate the pattern…to create an antipattern.

It will go against everything in your programming to do this.

When you go down this path, it’s common to feel lost and confused because your output won’t match anything else you see.

You won’t have a benchmark for comparison which means it will be tough to find relevant feedback.

Most people that attempt to build a category of one fail because they give up before their crazy weird turns into crazy dope.

If this sounds like you…keep going down your path.

The best moats surround categories of one.

BLUEPRINT YEAR 1 RECAP VIDEO

Blueprint Year 1 Recap Video

I included this in last week’s post, but wanted to drop it in again because of all the messages and comments you shared about it!

This is the full video breakdown of the learnings from my first year as a full-time creator entrepreneur. Full video link.

This episode covers:

• 🧮 | Year 1 Metrics ($106K rev, 170M views)

• 🧐 | Biggest wins, losses, and takeaways

• 🎯 | Year 2 Strategy Adjustments

• 🫡 | Helpful learnings and mindset shifts from Year 1

SHORT-FORM SUPERTIPS

Short-Form SuperTips

Moving forward, I’ll do my best to include at least one super tactical section to help level up your content.

This week’s is about short-form scriptwriting.

These are the 3 questions I ask myself after I’m done writing a short-form script (before recording):

1. What’s in it for the viewer? Is there a clear purpose for this video to exist? For my videos, it’s either to educate the viewer about some tech/AI news or entertain them with a business story about a cultural moment, brand or movement. If I can’t confidently say that this is worth the viewer’s time, I go back to the drawing board and make it more interesting

2. Is this opening a curiosity loop? Your job in the hook of the video is to open a curiosity loop inside the viewer’s mind. After hearing the first 1-2 sentences, will they be curious enough to keep going? My best video on YouTube shorts started with, “Christopher Nolan wanted to drop a real bomb to film Oppenheimer”…100/100 people are going to be like, “Wait is this real?” and want to see more of the video. Make sure you’re opening the loop ASAP

3. What is my unique angle? I call this your storylens. Each video has a seed of an idea and then a lens that you tell the story through. A single idea can have dozens of different storylenses. If I see a video topic from another creator, I will never make the same video with the same seed and same lens. To me, if it has been done, there is no need for me to add noise with a copy. But often times, I’ll see a video from another creator and come up with a completely different lens on it. It’s important that your lens be as unique as possible to you and angle in the direction that your audience would like. The example I like to give is my video about Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl. This was a super common seed, with many of the same lenses (what is she wearing, who is she with, will they kiss on the field if the Chiefs win, etc.). But my audience is mostly entrepreneurs & creators that know me for business and tech videos. I chose a lens breaking down Taylor’s business impact on the NFL…unique to me and directionally angled to my audience

Before you film any short-form video, ask these 3 questions and make sure you’re excited about the answer to all of them.

KALLAWISMS

Kallawisms

Back by popular demand, here are a couple of interesting mindframes…

1. Be for somebody

Over the past few years, Nike has lost a bit of their edge. During the Olympics, they rolled out a commercial series called, “Winning Isn’t For Everyone.”

If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it.

They spoke directly to the obsessed…the people that don’t want participation trophies when they lose.

This is who Nike used to stand for.

I love it because they picked a lane, took a stance, and sprinted at it. Nike is now trying to be for somebody instead of everybody.

This approach applies to all brands, movements, missions, and makers. Figure out who your somebody is and be ruthless about messaging to them specifically.

2. Lottery Numbers

 Andrew Wilkinson has a quote, “If you play the lottery with someone else’s winning numbers, you won’t win.”

Lean into your unique combination of strengths vs trying to copy someone else.

Chances are, the person you’re copying had something unique underneath the surface and/or luck + timing that you’ll never be able to replicate.

3. Minimum Viable Quality

I heard Sarah Guo reference a concept called Minimum Viable Quality.

She was referring to investing in AI products and how consumers won’t use them unless they output a result that is above the minimum viable quality they need to complete a task.

This is a binary evaluation criteria for when an AI product is “good enough.”

This may seem contrary to what most content gurus would say, but I think of content in the same way.

There is a minimum viable quality bar that a video must be above in order to have a chance at spreading. If your video is not above that level, you should keep working on it until it is.

Interestingly, short-form has brought that level down significantly from previously accepted MVQs on YouTube.

With content, this line is harder to find and shifts by person/platform/format.

4. Ghost Protocol

I’ve felt myself become overstimulated with content lately.

It’s as though I’m filling every square inch of my brain with words/information/video.

It has clogged my creative pipes. I feel slow and reactive.

When I feel this way, I go into ghost protocol for at least 1 week.

For me, this consists of:

• Full sleep sessions

• Hard workouts (long runs + lifts + sauna)

• No phones when I wake up or before bed

• Social media blocked with Brick

• No sugar, whole foods

• No podcasts

• Full daily journal + meditation

• Walks

Lately, high brain fog and low energy has become common for me. I think it’s from overstimulation…my brain is just consistently overload with too many things.

To counteract, I have to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side for a while.

If you feel the same, try out the ghost protocol and lmk how you feel.

WEEK 55 BEST CONTENT

My best content from last week:

1. 🤖 | Is Google Search in trouble?: Watch

2. 🧮 | Blueprint Year 1 Full Video Recap: Watch

3. 🧑🏼‍🚀 | Blueprint (Week 54) - Rocky, Blue Stripes Over Checks, Press, Everything Matters: Read