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š§š¼āš Blueprint 048
Month 12 Strategy Update; The Samurai, The Smith & The Swordsman; The Psychology of Traction
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Welcome back to Blueprint, a weekly series where I share an unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look into my journey as a creator entrepreneur.
Itās been 48 weeks (12 months) since I went full-time.
TODAYāS TOPICS:
š | Month 12 Strategy Update
āļø | The Samurai, The Smith, and The Swordsman
š§ | The Psychology of Traction
A reminder that the local internet game is not zero-sum. Everyone reading this can win at an unlimited scale. Iām writing this for the internet astronauts building their own worlds. If thatās youā¦letās ride š©š»āš
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MONTH 12 STRATEGY RECAP
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Itās time for another monthly strategy review!
I structured the Blueprint series weekly, so Month 12 is not actually the end of year 1 (bc weāre only at week 48). I will do something fun for the 1st Year Review next month.
Two quick notes before we dive in:
Month 12 Learnings & Progress:
These are my biggest takeaways from last month (updates on channel-specific learnings first and then general mindset tweaks).
š | Shorts: Short-form is still my most dominant platform (3.5M views last month). Mid-month, I shifted to a ābangers-onlyā strategy. Iāve tested both broad and narrow aimed shorts across various editing styles. Iāve concluded that āmax appeal bangersā is the right strategy for my goals. Leads to LOTS of empty calories, but generates the strongest digital gravity. I now need to figure out how to double my volume without losing the sauce. I have been making 2-3 videos/week at a 10/10 quality. This is suboptimalā¦the long tail of editing is wasted time in shorts. The ideal mix for short-form is probably 5-6/week at an 8/10 quality. There is a point where youāre posting too much that varies per medium. I think beyond 1x per day for shorts is that point. The good news is, I know exactly what works to go viral with shorts every single time (and am beginning to work with brands to execute against this). The harder part is having the discipline to execute consistently against it day after day. Goal here is to make more than 10 shorts next month.
š„ | YouTube: Iām starting to see long-form work (I think?), but it has been a humbling process. Spending $4-$5K/month on professional YouTube team (this is my only major expense rn). I donāt know how one could win on YouTube without a team unless they loved editing or had 99th percentile rizz. The biggest benefit of my YouTube experience is that it has shattered my egoā¦I no longer fret poor performing content because Iāve had so much of it. YouTube is a completely different game than shorts. The reason my shorts worked so quickly is because they donāt require packaging. YouTube is all packaging. If you arenāt good at packaging, donāt do YouTube without a teamā¦it will just frustrate you to no end. My team is amazing at this, and we still havenāt seen outsized traction. Iām 100% sure my channel will blow up in the next 6 months, just need a spark. One weird hypothesis on why Iām not growing is subscriber mix. My channel grew mostly from shorts (33K of my 35K subs came from 5 viral short-form videos). This means most of my subscribers donāt want my long-form. When it gets shown to them, they donāt watch and it drives poor retention metrics. Iām starting a second YouTube channel and reposting my biggest hitters, long-form only. Real ones will subscribe here too. Will report on how this evolves.
šØāāļø | LinkedIn: LinkedIn right now is the biggest content opportunity Iāve seen since I started. Complete blue oceanā¦most existing short-form content isnāt business relevant and canāt be ported over. Their video feed has only rolled out to ~10% of users. When it goes full scale, I will go nuclear. This is where all the business buyers spend time. If youāre not selling business services, LinkedIn can still be effective, but doesnāt need to be your top priority. If you are selling B2B services, which I will begin doing shortlyā¦LinkedIn is gold. I have several playbooks in progress here and will share more as they start working. Best place to learn how to make good content for LinkedIn is WavyWorld (free).
š | WavyWorld: WavyWorld is up to 817 members. There are 13 tutorial videos in the classroom so far and I continue to make new videos mapping to what the community is looking for. A month ago, this community didnāt exist, so Iām super excited for how itās progressingā¦lots of day 1s in there. Also hosted my first livestream for the community to share content feedback/ideas which was really fun - will do more of these moving forward. Again, there is no better free resource for going 0 to 1 on short-form content than WavyWorld.
š° | Monetization: As you can tell from the monthly summary stats, I still havenāt figured out how to Rumplestiltskin my views into dollars. Iām testing lots of things here and will eventually figure it out. For reference, most creators are barely making ends meet. I saw a stat that more than 50% of creators make less than $13K per year. I share my numbers transparently (good and bad) to help illustrate how hard this game is. Most people you see flaunting internet money are not telling the whole truth. The ones making real money are not giving away their playbooks. Be weary of who you compare yourself to and how you let that comparison make you feel, because most of the peacocking is nonsense. When I started, I expected it to take ~3 years before I was able to replace my full-time salary with creator earnings. Unless youāre extremely capable, Iād recommend not quitting to become a full-time creator until youāve made 75% of your replacement income for at least 3 months in a row. If youāre looking to get rich, being a creator is not the way. The way to get rich is to sell B2B services or software. I didnāt appreciate this at first. The way to make selling B2B services/software 100x easier is to have an owned audience that creates a zero or negative CAC (customer acquisition cost) environment. Iāll get there on the monetization frontā¦I have several interesting things cooking that Iāll share soon. But for now, itās ramen noodles again. Or you could become a Blueprint Patron and help me graduate to rice & beans.
š§ | Approach: This will be the month that I took a big step forward mentally. You can probably already sense it in my writing. My rate of learning and intensity has gone way up. To increase your rate of learning, you need to spend more time with people that have had more reps doing what you want to do (for me, building businesses online). This month, I started doing that intentionally. When you spend time with relative experts, youāre able to distill ~50% of their career learnings in a 60 minute conversation. But hereās the important partā¦if youāre a beginner, most of these people do not want to spend time with you willy nilly. The cold reaches āto jamā are not what they want. If you want to get time with people like this, you can either buy their time (via consulting or live courses) or acquire a skill they want but donāt have. If you have that skill, they will sense it and flock to you. This is what I failed to realize when I was youngerā¦if you just do interesting stuff and acquire valuable skills, the doors will start opening for you. Most people want the doors to open before building the skills.
š | Likeability: Likeability is the most important intangible ingredient to winning. I severely underappreciated this. Because when youāre likeable, people want to help you. And nobody in history has ever won without help. Ego and likeability are opposites. Ego is to want something selfishly. People donāt root for people with ego. And if you want to win, at anything, you need people to root for you. Iāve found people root for people that are net-givers. This means serving when it doesnāt necessarily serve you. Iāve begun a super intentional effort to become a net-giver in every interaction I have. The most likeable person I know is JT Barnett. Watch his content for 5 minutes and youāll start rooting for him.
š§® | Automation: My first season of being a creator was all about mastering āthe work.ā But the amount of things I make on a weekly basis is at an unsustainable clip. So my options are either to do fewer things or figure out how to automate. Do less = lose. My goal for the next month is to automate my entire workflowā¦to get more juice out of the lemons I already have. Iām working with a team to do this. Will report back on what ends up working. The goal is automation without dehumanization.
THE ART OF STORYTELLING
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Iām aware I look questionable in this photo lolā¦need to do another YouTube thummy reshoot
The Art of Storytelling
This was my favorite video made in the last monthā¦The Art of Storytelling
I took my 6 favorite content storytelling formats for scripting better short-form videos, and explained them using a famous storytellers (South Park creators, Steve Jobs, Christopher Nolan, Casey Neistat, etc.)
You can check out the video here.
THE SAMURAI, THE SMITH & THE SWORDSMAN
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The Samurai, The Smith & The Swordsman
Iāve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to best monetize the craft of content creation.
My initial thought, as a beginner, was to just ābe the creatorāā¦and by that I mean, grow my personal channels, make content for those channels, and sell ads/partnerships against my personal content.
If I make 10 videos per month, then I can sell up to 10 ad slots.
If I want to make more money, I either need to increase the value of those ad slots (bigger reach per video) or create more (add other channels).
But this is level 1 content monetizationā¦and if you do the math, this tops out at ~$300-$500K/year for 99.9% of creators.
Thatās a great living, but youāre on a treadmill.
So to me, this path is suboptimal.
As Iāve played the game longer, Iāve gone deeper on other ways to monetize the content creation craftā¦that are much more lucrative.
Logically, I should go all in on figuring this out ASAP, even if it means taking my foot off the gas with daily content.
But something weird is happeningā¦
Emotionally, Iām having a hard time letting myself ease up on the content.
Part of it is that I actually do enjoy making it. I feel like Iām getting better at it and itās a fun daily puzzle for me.
The other part is that I know how hard it was to get to this point and I donāt want to let my channels atrophy by taking a few weeks off.
Hereās a metaphor Iāve been using to help me think through what to do.
Letās take another craftā¦sword fighting.
Consider these three approaches:
The Samurai - this is the fighterā¦the one that wields the sword in battle
The Smith - this is the master craftsmanā¦the one that makes the swords for all the samurais
The Swordsman - this is the master teacherā¦the one that trains the samurais to prepare for battle
If I asked you which role you want to playā¦most people would say the samurai.
Why?
Because the samurai sounds the coolest. They are the ones on the front linesā¦the main character. They get to battle and secure all the glory!
In a vacuum, letās assume:
The samurai is paid $100 per battle he/she fights
The smith is paid $5 per sword he/she makes
The swordsman is paid $20 per samurai he/she trains
Now which would you rather be?
It dependsā¦how many battles can a samurai fight per month? How many swords can the smith make? How many samurai can the swordsman teach?
And also, what is your goal?
You can go on and on with this example, adding more and more factors.
And this exercise may seem silly, until you realize itās the same set of tradeoffs for making content.
The creator (the samurai) can only sell ads on as many pieces of content as they can create. For me, letās say this is 10 short-form videos per month. Even if I freed up capacity (had someone make for me), thereās a max limit of inventory I can sell on my own channels
The agent (the smith) can sell done for you content packages to as many clients as they can serve in a month. The difference here is that this operation can be scaled beyond the individual smith
The strategist (the swordsman) can sell hour blocks of content strategy consulting across as many hours as they have in a month (160). Again, this can be scaled
Iām not embarrassed or shy to say that my goal is to build massive online businesses. The north star is to get to $1M/month by week 520.
To do that, I need a more effective vehicle to monetize the top of funnel attention Iām generating.
To continue the metaphor above, the best strategy seems to be what I callā¦purple swords.
You take a skilled samurai but have him battle with a purple sword (something that is memorable and no one has ever seen).
During the battle, the crowd may not remember the samurai, but they will for sure remember the purple sword.
The next dayā¦a portion of the crowd will go see the smith and ask for a purple sword.
The samurai only wins if they own a piece of the smithās manufacturing business.
Without being an owner in the smith business, the samurai will have to fight battles forever to stay fedā¦sound familiar?
Iāve been focused on the wrong thingā¦I need to find my smith.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRACTION
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The Psychology of Traction
This will be a quick, but an important one.
Humans have an unusual ability to adjust to new normals.
If a meteor hit the Pacific Ocean tomorrow, and dropped global temperatures by 40 degreesā¦we would find a way to adapt.
Weād figure out how to exist in the new climate. Our food sources, travel patterns, job markets, etc.
Traction works the same way.
When I started making content, 10,000 views seemed impossible.
Then, I hit it once. Then, it became my average. Now, I look at 10,000 views as a colossal failure.
Itās the same 10,000 views, but I let my self-worth, self-esteem, and confidence change based on how I looked at it.
This same psychology applies to every numerical category in lifeā¦money, age, food prices.
Hereās the hackā¦
Just focus on the inputs.
For me, all I really care about is hitting certain input thresholds. If I can make 5 quality videos per week, then thatās my goal.
I let everything else after that take care of itself.
The emotional whiplash that comes from numerical comparison is eating up your creative spark.
Donāt let it.
WEEK 48 BEST CONTENT
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My best content from last week:
š„ | AI video just took another huge leap forward: Watch
š | Why is Airbnb rebuilding these famous houses: Watch
š¬ | If you're serious about Instagram, you should be using THIS tool (Full Tutorial): Watch
š§š¼āš | Blueprint 047 - Spinning plates, invisible AI, mystery box, marketing 101, green chutes: Read