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- š§š¼āš Blueprint 052
š§š¼āš Blueprint 052
Year 1 Review, Year 1 Biggest Learnings, Year 2 Strategy Outlook
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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 52 weeks (1 year) since I went full-time.
TODAYāS TOPICS:
š | Year 1 Metrics & Recap
š§ | Year 1 Review (Wins & Losses)
šÆ | Year 2 Strategy Focus
š | Year 1 Biggest Learnings
A reminder that the 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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YEAR 1 METRICS & RECAP
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Year 1 Recap
Iāve been looking forward to writing this one for a while.
But before I get into any of the details, I want to say thank you.
If youāre reading this, chances are youāre a true Kallaway fan. Without you, thereās no way Iād be where Iām at today.
All the shares, likes, DMs, words of encouragement, and everything in betweenā¦it really does make a difference. So thank you!
Itās been a wild run so far.
For those new to the seriesā¦
Quick background on how we got here: I started making videos in October 2022. I began with zero video skills and zero audience.
For the first ~9 months, I was posting part-time (while working my full-time job). During that period, I grew from 0 to ~312K followers before quitting to go full-time.
To be transparent, it was much easier to grow during that phase. One of my biggest learnings is that when you see a platform shift, you want to go all-in on gobbling up attention share as fast as you can.
In late July 2023, I went full-time.
For a sense of scale in July 2023, I had driven 100Ms of views & taken a couple brand deals, but didnāt have a clear path of where I was headedā¦I just knew if I could learn to generate attention at will, opportunity would follow.
How did I know when to quit? It got to the point where I would miss posting because of a late meeting at work and it would crush my momentum. That, and I threw away all my button-downs. So I said yolo.
What is Blueprint? Iāve written Blueprint as a weekly letter on my progress since going full-time in July 2023. Iāve also created monthly video versions of Blueprint for Month 10, 11, and 12.
Why spend 4 hours every Sunday writing this? Two reasons. For one, most people on the internet are lying about their traction and income. This misleads beginners and makes them feel bad about their own progress. I know this because I was (and still am) a beginner. Most true success goes unreportedā¦because the rich people are on yachts. Any wisdom they do share is often high level in books. When I started out, all I wanted was a legit tactical playbook to learn from. I couldnāt find it. So with Blueprint, my goal was to show my path with 100% transparency from the beginning. Itās designed to be a treasure map for someone thatās 2-3 years behind me. Second reason, the best way to unlock clarity of thought it to present your ideas to others. Writing this weekly has helped me immensely as a storyteller
We are now fully in the trenches. Here are a few of the highlight metrics from year 1:
š | Total Views: 171M views on ~150 videos (for a sense of scale, the largest football stadium in the US is Michigan Stadium. It holds ~107,000 people. The viewers from my videos this year would have filled that stadium 1,600 times)
š§® | Avg. Views: The average views on a Kallaway short were 1.1M (cross-platform)
šš¼ | Posts: I pressed post 1,911 times this yearā¦thatās 5.2x per day.
š° | Revenue: I was expecting to make $0 this first year. I ended up making $105,780 inbound only (22% CPMs, 57% brand deals, 19% consulting, 2% other). I didnāt ramp up a team until halfway through the year so costs were lower and income was $77,205
š | Audience Growth: I added 233,956 net followers in year 1ā¦a 75% increase
š§š»āš¦± | Zuck: A few weeks ago, I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg about the future of creators, AI, and Metaās roadmap
š | Celebs: Iāve had a number of notable celebrities follow me or interact with my videos (Snoop, Shaq, Patrick Dempsey, Reese Witherspoon, Gary Vee, etc.)
YEAR 1 THOUGHTS, WINS & LOSSES
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Thoughts
Iām stoked with how this freshman season turned out.
My only goals were to a) stay alive in the game and b) begin mastering a skill that would help me compound value forever.
I worked 10x harder this year than the previous 5 combined.
I learned 10x more this year than the previous 5 combined.
Iāll be honestā¦before starting on my own, I had massive ambitions but an undisciplined mind that wasnāt taking action against them.
I felt very āwantrapreneurialā and had to live with that daily as I remained stagnant. That lack of action poisoned my mind.
This year put me in the fight or flight position that forced a mental rebuildā¦and now Iām a completely different person.
The most important takeaway from this year was a complete mental reconstruction.
This process will end up being the foundation for everything I do moving forward and itās the greatest gift I could have given myself.
One last thought before getting into the tacticsā¦the hardest part about going on your own is that you end up doing everything for the first time, at the same time.
This can be super frustrating and draining, but the good news is, it will never get harder.
Losses/Struggles:
Finding Partners: In order to build big things, you need to find world-class partners that are complementary to you. For me, that means operators that love the nuts and bolts of business, managing people, building systems, and donāt want to deal with product, sales, or lead gen. I have struggled to find these types of people. Most of my creator/entrepreneur friends are like me...the distribution potential energy. This is amazing as a peer group, but suboptimal for a partnership (on its own). Until I find these operator types, I will be growth limited
Automation: I waited too long to attempt automating/delegating my content creation process. The artist likes to do things themselves, by hand. They will hold onto the process forever because they love the craft of the process. The entrepreneur likes to learn things first, and then automate them away as soon as possible. I leaned into the artist narrative as a procrastination technique because I didnāt know how to automate. This meant I had to work harder for longer and grew slower because everything fell on me
Positioning: My interests are super broad, so when I started making content, I didnāt put guardrails around my topic selection. This led me to make stuff about Apple one day and Taylor Swift the next. I went viral consistently, but my audience was super broad. Itās tough to sell products/services to a broad audience, especially one built through gen pop topics. This was a mistake. I was chasing vanity metrics (views/followers). I should have traded speed for direction earlier and sacrificed the big numbers for the right ones. Because of the choice to go broad, I spent 2 months churning off tens of thousands of followers and stalled growth
Leaky Bucket: When I started making content, I didnāt have an offer to sell. This is okay at the beginning. But as I ramped up audience and saw the view count going higher, I should have forced myself to figure this out. Again, more procrastination. By not doing this, my content funnel was a leaky bucket. Tons of views in, temporary interest in me, nothing to buy, interest lost, etc. I should have spent more time figuring out the offer earlier
YouTube: Still havenāt figured out YouTube long-form. Iām not sure why it still isnāt workingā¦maybe I come off too unlikeable in my delivery or my content + bio positioning is disconnected (views are converting to followers). Unclear why, but I have yet to crack it in a meaningful way. I think I will solve it this year, but damn, it is frustrating
Wins:
Commitment to Quality: I have an obsession with quality. I canāt always execute my vision with my own hands, but my standard for what is acceptable is incredibly high. I think this has worked to my advantage, especially with my short-form content vs the rest of the market. Because of this quality standard, my stuff looks different than most others
Intensity: I come off super laid back, but I attack things in a super intense, all-in way. I hadnāt found many people like me until I started playing the business game. Consistent intensity for long periods is a superpower, but often comes at the expense of everything else in life. Turns out most people donāt like when I pepper them with questions for an hour straight lol. I think my intensity toward the craft of video storytelling has helped me accelerate faster than baseline
Entrepreneur Friends: I mentioned it above, but Iāve found a handful of other entrepreneur/creator friends that are similar to me. This has been one the best byproducts of the overall journey thus far. Entrepreneurship is one of the lonelier things you can do in life. Itās common to quickly become unrelatable. Having other friends playing the same game has been invaluable for me
Shorts: I am now a savage at short-form storytelling
YEAR 2 STRATEGY
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Year 2 Strategy
Before I started down this path, I hobbled together a YouTube video outlining my overall strategy to build a $100M holdco.
Here is a pulse check on where Iām at in the grand vision and my focus for year 2.
The strategy:
Develop content knowledge (master the skill of generating, funneling, converting attention at will)
Use that content knowledge to build a personal audience via one content format
Repeat steps 1+2 across other content formats
Automate the content creation process (for each format) without sacrificing audience quality or trust
Deploy that content knowledge and/or automated process against a business opportunity
Those business opportunities could be:
š¦øš»āāļø | Growing my own personal brand (e.g., becoming an MKBHD-type media brand)
š | Growing my own product company (e.g., starting a supplement company and owning the distribution (using knowledge and/or personal channels)
āļø | Growing my own services company (e.g., start agency helping other companies figure out organic content)
š¤« | Applying the knowledge to silently grow other brands (e.g., making content via Tiktok Shop or on faceless channels)
In year 1, I developed expert knowledge in short-form video and used it to grow fairly large channels.
Iām currently in the ārepeatā stage for YouTube long-form and email newsletters.
My strategic focus for Year 2 will be:
Figure out how to learn and scale YouTube + email
Figure out how to automate short-form and apply that knowledge/automation to one of the four business opportunities above
I have a good sense for which one of the four opportunities makes the most sense, but youāll have to keep reading to see how it goes š
YEAR 1 LESSONS
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Year 1 Lessons
Here are a few general lessons Iāve learned along the way. I wish someone told me these when I was younger.
Some games are rigged against youā¦donāt play those: Corporate jobs are rigged against you. Your salary is capped within a band regardless of performance. This means, if youāre special, you will never be rewarded accordingly. This typically causes exceptional people to revert back to the mean, because the incentive isnāt worth the increased effort. When you play non-rigged games, that max effort will map to higher rewards. Be careful which games you sign up for
Delusional self-belief: When you have vacuum sealed conviction, itās impossible for long-term doubt to sneak in. To win, you must have an absolute certainty about yourself as the jockey. Iāll ride 1,000 horses if thatās what it takes, because I have a delusional belief in my own ability. This belief is a prerequisite for doing amazing things. If you donāt have this delusion, but want it, spend hours inward (via meditation) to convince yourself. Some people are born with a higher predisposition to be this way, but anyone can jailbreak their mind. You need to positively brainwash your programming. Your thoughts are simply programs. You can change the programming if you change your inputs. Easiest way to change the inputs in with your eyes closed. Fortunately, I had some of this ability embedded in me, but I forced the last mile this year via meditation and it has changed everything. I am now bulletproof mentally. This is starting to sound woo-woo, but I believe all successful people have gone through this process, they just donāt talk about it. I will. If this resonates, but you still donāt know what to do, reply to this and Iāll give you the step by step. Takes about 30-60 days and youāll be a new person
Do interesting things to attract interesting people: When I was younger, I always wanted to be noticed by the interesting people doing cool shit. I thought I had unique perspectives and rare abilities. But they never noticed meā¦Why not? Because I wasnāt doing interesting things. Interesting people want to be surrounded by other interesting people. If you want them to come to you, learn a skill or build a project that youāre passionate about. If you do this for long enough, eventually, they will notice. These types of projects get you invited into the rooms you want to be in
Incentives are all that matters: Everything in life boils down to incentives. If someone isnāt paying you the way you want to be paid, itās because they donāt have the incentive to do so. They either donāt value you or donāt believe you will leave. If your team member isnāt doing what you want them to do, itās because you arenāt incentivizing them in the right way. Figure out what people want and structure the incentives so that they can get it. When a process is broken, start with the incentives
You canāt hit your ceiling with ankle weights on: If youāre ambitious, make sure your life and daily expectations are designed to help you win. If they arenāt, youāre adding unnecessary headwinds
Skills are the currency youāre looking for: As soon as you have high value skills, youāll realize that you can eat forever. Most people that fear instability do so because they know they donāt have a defendable hard skill. It takes 6 months to become world-class at most things. 6 months to set yourself up for forever. If you do not have a hard skill (like me when I was younger), this is the first place you should start
Itās nearly impossible to win alone: I talked about this a bit above. Having a complementary running mate pays compounding dividends, many that are invisible at first. A simple way to understand this is rent in NYC. If you live alone, itās extremely expensive and almost impossible to afford something nice. Why? Because everything falls on you. Most people have roommates in NYC which lets them afford something nicer that they could get alone. Itās a crude and overly simplistic example, but building companies is the same way. 1+1=10 with the right partner
Stay alive, forever games: All you have to do is not burn out. Do whatever you need to do to stay in the game long enough to let serendipity happen. If you do that, you win. I never wanna retire. If I handed you $20M tomorrow and said good luck, youād last about 6 months before stress began to creep in. Why? The brain was designed to solve problems. If you donāt give it one, it will create one for you. Because of this, I know that Iāll need to play some game forever. This realization should alleviate the time pressure. Your only goal is to stay in the game. The reward is that you get to keep playing.
Boredom mistake: A common mistake for high achievers is to work on something for a while, get good at it, start to gain traction, get bored, and abandon it as if it stopped working. Most high achievers are puzzle solversā¦so when the puzzle is solved, they bounce. But this is how you loseā¦because you stop just before the compounding gets going. Donāt do this. Pick the thing and stick with it until you can automate yourself out while preserving the compounding. Or fall in love with the boredom. Invent a new game within the game to keep yourself playing. Donāt jump lilypads or youāll stay on the surface forever
Greatness: If you have the capacity for greatness, I believe you owe the world an attempt
Keep going.
WEEK 52 BEST CONTENT
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My best content from last week:
š | Will you buy the Apple Ring? Watch
š«” | JT Barnett on creators, brands, pro-hockey and more: Watch
š° | Brand Deals 101 (strategy, rates, how to get them, negotiation): Watch
š§š¼āš | Blueprint 051 - The realness epidemic, creative priming, Blueprint Month 12, no soliciting, Kallawisms: Read