🧑🏼‍🚀 Blueprint 040

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

It’s been 40 weeks (10 months) since I went full-time.

For the first time, you can listen to Blueprint audio episodes here and watch them here. Video eps will come out the Friday after they’re posted. Both audio & video will have a little more context than what’s included in the text version.

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 40 METRICS & STRATEGY UPDATE

Every 4 weeks, I do a monthly metrics recap and full strategy update.

Notable Strategy Moves:

1. On Content Focus:

A super helpful frame from my homie Oren…ask yourself, “When someone watches your videos…what makes them need to hear your opinion?”

For me, my differentiator is that I can consistently generate unique business ideas across product, marketing, strategy, and content…”fresh takes on cult brands.”

When I lean into this, my videos rip. When I don’t, they’re just like everybody else reporting the news.

Moving forward, I’m going to only make two types of videos:

1. My fresh take on a tech/brand story that just happened (time relevant, designed for reach)

2. My fresh take on a new product/marketing/content idea for a cult brand (not time relevant, designed for depth)

This exercise also helped me gain clarity around my ideal audience…I’m calling it “the modern brand builder.”

These are entrepreneurs, creators, or marketers that are deeply invested in building a cult brand.

2. Launching my private community

A big goal for last month was launching my private community for “modern brand builders” looking to level up their content.

I didn’t get it done.

My goal is to launch it next week. I have the full plan for what it will be and how I’d like to roll it out. Will revisit how this goes in Blueprint 044 once it’s live.

One helpful learning that came from this…

I’m really good at figuring out how to play and win games when I have the right incentive.

When I first started making content, my incentive was to grow a huge following. But that was because my real incentive was to unlock financial freedom and I thought growing a following was the most direct path.

Once I realized that followers ≠ income, my incentive waned.

As I continued creating without an income driver at the bottom of the funnel, I began to lose the incentive/interest in creating.

Now that I’ve decided a private community is the right path forward for me at the bottom of the funnel, I suspect making content will become a fun game again, because I’ve now regained incentive alignment.

The lesson is…if you don’t feel like the reward is strong enough, you effort will slowly drift to zero. Make sure you build in a reward mechanism that you care about.

3. On the state of my podcast

I’ve rebranded my podcast from wknds to Blueprint.

wknds was a cool name, but had too many holes and created misalignment from a brand ecosystem perspective.

Now this newsletter is Blueprint (an inside look at my systems/thinking) and the Blueprint podcast will be an inside look at the systems/thinking of other creators.

This feels super aligned.

I’ll also begin posting the audio versions of these posts on that feed.

4. On YouTube

I’ve finally locked down a YouTube editor that matches my vibe and style. I’ve also begun working with an agency for YouTube packaging to help me dial in the best video ideas, titles, and thumbnails.

My goal is 3 episodes per week (one Blueprint pod, the video version of this newsletter, and then one hero video).

Will begin experimenting what these videos look like, but excited to hammer it for the next 30 days.

5. On Meditation

I’ve meditation off and on for the past few years. Never really stuck with me.

I’ve started journaling + meditating (with visualization) for the past week and felt a huge impact.

I feel way less attached to things, calmer, more energized, etc.

I know this can be a bit woo-woo for people, but it seems to be working. Happy to share more about this if people are interested.

Goals for next month:

• 🏰 | Launch private community and begin talking to early users

• 📹 | Ship 12 YouTube videos in the next 30 days

• 🔥 | Ship 20 shorts in the next 30 days

SATELLITE ACCOUNTS

Brands are building ecosystems within each social channel

I’ve debated starting multiple accounts per channel for a few months (e.g., separate IG profiles).

Brands are starting to do it and I’ll explain why it’s a smart move.

Social media has existed in two major eras:

• 🐢 | Pre-Tiktokification: Followers were the most important thing, content reached a percent of followers, limited new discovery, new followers mostly came via shares from existing followers/partner cross-promotions

• 🐇 | Post-Tiktokification: Followers don’t matter, new content is mostly shown to non-followers, major new discovery daily, new followers come via algo pushes to non-followers

Once Tiktok proved the “interest-based” algo was better than the “follower-based” one, every other platform (IG, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) changed immediately.

This had many implications to creators/brands and completely upended social strategy.

Please, go on sir.

The new wave of social algorithms like to pattern match.

If a creator makes a certain type of video, and non-followers seem to like it, it will reward consistent similar videos in the future.

Said another way…find a format that people like and hammer it over and over. 

Any deviation from this format, that doesn’t work, will only confuse the algorithm and reduce compounding momentum.

This is how creators with a single unique style, made consistently with high quality, can grow massive followings in short time periods (a good example of this is my homie Maxim (@bymaximise). In 4 months, with 121 posts, he grew to 589K followers).

Now as humans, we know that the creators & brands we love the most, show up consistently in many different ways…more like an portfolio of styles vs a single format.

And we love them more deeply because we get to know multiple sides of their personality and identity.

Take George Heaton for example, my favorite brand founder right now.

He makes daily vlogs, static product shots, podcast clips, workout compilations, and all types of other formats.

He’s beloved because of the consistency in his identity across many formats.

Back to the algorithms.

If George, or any brand, really wanted to get the most juice out of the current algorithms, he would create within a limited set of formats (that were proven to work) over and over and over.

This would result in fewer misses and faster compounding.

But then, he’d lose the depth benefit of the portfolio approach.

So the question is…how do you take advantage of both…building an ecosystem of formats to enhance depth while also using fewer formats to supercharge reach.

It’s a conundrum because they are literally polar opposites.

The answer is multiple accounts.

In the pre-Tiktok era, multiple accounts would have just fractured the compounding because there was no god-mode algo showing your stuff to non-followers.

But now, you could make the argument that brands should have their hub account and many satellites, each designed to optimize for a specific new format.

And that’s exactly the observation that my friend JT Barnett made in this video.

He uses the brand Immi (a modern healthy packaged ramen alternative) as the example.

Immi has their main brand account (@immieats) and then also their @ramenionthestreet account where they interview people on the street wearing a Ramen costume.

Why does this make sense?

Once they found success with the “on the street” style of content, making a second account featuring just that over and over enabled faster growth.

In my opinion, every brand should have a main flagship account (that is the hub for formal brand content and reposts) and then also an experimental “labs” account where they are trying anything and everything.

As soon as they find a format that sticks and work consistently, they should start a new account dedicated specifically to that format and run it until it stops working.

As long as all satellites have the ability to drive sales, it doesn’t really matter where the sales come from.

This is the same thinking that many brands like people like Andrew Tate and Iman Gadzhi used to grow their personal brands, although the “satellite accounts” were just run by 18 year olds recutting old podcast clips.

It’s the internet echo strategy.

Now how would I deploy this for myself as a creator vs a brand?

One way would be to have a separate account that is only green screen content of me reacting to news in real time.

Another way could be category based (Kallaway on tech), where I have a couple different formats but the topics are super narrow.

Either way, there’s two things you need before you do this as a creator:

• A place to drive the traffic

• The bandwidth or team resources to operationalize each new account consistently for a long-time

What doesn’t make sense is to go from posting 6x per week on one channel to posting 3x per week on 2 channels.

But as soon as you have the capacity and team to deploy against this…I would.

I think this is a massive untapped strategy, especially for brands.

QUICK POLL

I know these Blueprint posts can be a bit long to read in one sitting…

STAYING RELEVANT

How to stay relevant as new platforms evolve?

We’re seeing a lot of new social platforms emerge.

• Threads came out 10 months ago

• Airchat (Naval’s audio only Twitter style app)

• Tiktok teased a photos app, etc.

• Youtube Community text-based features

• Farcaster is crypto based Twitter-style protocol

The list goes on. Two questions pop into my mind…

1. When does it make sense to jump into new platforms?

2. What is the framework for staying relevant on the ones that survive?

The answer to both ties together.

The early stages of a new network provide the best chance for “easy growth.”

Simply put, there’s a supply and demand mismatch. Lots of new eyes and not a lot of new things for those eyes to consume.

So if you’re a creator, the very early days of a platform provide the best ROI on your time (if the platform survives and becomes a part of mainstream culture).

But like most things, new entrants often fade and after the shiny object syndrome wears off, most fade away slowly into obscurity.

The exception though, is when a new platform is tied to an existing one, and the incentives are aligned for the parent company to push it.

For example, I think using Threads helps your reach on Instagram. I think using Community helps your reach on YouTube. I think using Tiktok’s Notes app (if it survives) will help your reach on Tiktok.

Why?

Because the parent companies want diversified data (to train their AI models) and increased ecosystem time (total user time spent across all properties combined).

So in that sense, “new platforms” can really be divided into two groups:

1. New extensions to existing ecosystems

2. New platforms

My hunch is that there’s a lot of invisible tailwinds that come from posting on the fledgling extensions to existing ecosystems.

Onto the other question…

What is the framework for staying relevant on the big existing platforms?

The progression looks something like this (all based on supply of and demand for content):

• Stage 1: Any quantity

• Stage 2: Any consistent quantity (of any quality)

• Stage 3: Any consistent quantity (with occasional quality)

• Stage 4: Any consistent quantity (with consistent quality) or something super unique

• Stage 5: Consistently unique

For Instagram and Tiktok, we’re now in stage 4.

If you don’t actively show up consistently with consistent quality (or something crazy unique) it will be very hard to break out.

It’s interesting that even though IG was around since 2008, the platform shot back to stage 1 as soon as Reels launched.

This would have been the best window to “grow fast” and it rewarded those that jumped on it.

The question I’d be asking is…are there any arbitrage opportunities on other platforms that are not at stage 4 or 5?

• LinkedIn video is about to be at stage 1 as it rolls out

• Youtube Community text posts is at a stage 2

• I think Threads is also at a stage 2/3

The key is finding platform opportunities where you aren’t creating net additional work for yourself and can semi or fully repurpose your existing effort.

Stay tuned for more on new platforms as they emerge.

MINDSET HACKS

Two quick creator mindset hacks

Everybody loves a good mindset hack.

Here are two that have helped me recently (and apologies if you think these are corny…most of the self-talk stuff sounds corny from the outside until it starts working for you)

The first mindset hack…If you have the goods, 95% of winning is just getting out of your own way.

When I say the goods, I’m talking about the sauce, the juice, the rizz, some raw ability…you’ve got it and you know it, you just haven’t put the pieces together yet on how to use it to win.

And the reason you haven’t put the pieces together yet is because you’re getting in your own way…in one of two ways:

1. You’re undisciplined - you know what needs to be done but are procrastinating and being lazy for some reason

2. You’re overcommitted - you have too many things on your plate and lack the focus necessary to win at any of them

I’ve experienced both of these tracks over the last few months.

Most of the game is just avoiding these two traps and getting out of your own way to let the winning happen.

The second mindset hack…Ask yourself, “What would greatness do?” throughout the day when you’re doing hard things.

I’ve found this especially helpful in the gym.

I’ll be benching or squatting and struggle on the 8th rep and then as I’m about to rack the bar I’ll ask myself, “What would greatness do?” and I do another.

Your mind and body are capable of much more than we perceive…I’d guess another 30% of what we think max tolerance is.

Asking “What would greatness do?” is a helpful way to push past the safeguards.

CONTENT FROM THIS WEEK

My best content from last week:

1. 🤖 | Making $125K/month as an AI creator with Riley Brown: Watch

2. 🤯 | This is a cheat code to making content as a brand: Watch

3. 🚀 | Vine might be making a comeback: Watch

4. 💦 | A crazy marketing idea for Cadence hydration: Watch

5. 🧑🏼‍🚀 | Blueprint 039 - Reinvention, wavelengths, ramps: Read

QUICK QUESTIONS!