🧑🏼‍🚀 Blueprint 053

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 53 weeks (1 year + 1 week) since I went full-time.

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 53 METRICS & UPDATES

Week 53 Metrics + Updates

Dropping a few quick updates about Blueprint and the past few weeks:

• 💰 | Income Metrics (Shifting Weekly → Monthly): You’ll notice the weekly dashboard doesn’t include income metrics this week. Moving forward, I’m only going to post financial metrics on a monthly basis (next one will be week 56). Two reasons for this…first, Blueprint has gotten so big that many of my brand partners read it weekly. By sharing my revenue on a weekly basis, I am negotiating against myself when I call out my per video brand deal rates. Second (and the bigger reason), I’ve observed myself making impulsive strategic & emotional decisions based on a single week of negative income. This is suboptimal. Most businesses track financials monthly and report out quarterly/annually for a reason. Weekly financial reporting tends to overemphasize small blips of poor performance. I know the income part of Blueprint is a very popular component…so expect robust monthly financials to continue

• 🎙️ | Blueprint Podcast: My wife suggested it’d be valuable for me to record these weekly Blueprint episodes in a long-form podcast format, so I can expand my raw thoughts in an audio/video format. I tried this before, but stopped because the editing was too much. I’m going to try it again with less graphics and more of a raw flow. Expect the polished monthly videos to continue here and the weekly recaps to live here on Spotify/Apple/Youtube

• 🎤 | Pod Guest Appearances: I recorded episodes on the 505 Podcast and Guyset last week (both episodes are dropping this week). I love being a guest on pods…if you know any podcasts with large audiences that you’d love to see me on, feel free to connect me

• 💬 | Kallaway Yap Account: One of the content formats that drives the biggest cult response for me are my walking IG stories. It’s a super raw riff on content strategy and personal growth…whatever is most pressing for me that day. These live as expiring IG stories, but I’ve gotten a lot of messages asking me to post them on Feed so people can rewatch them. I made a second IG account (@kallawayraw) where I’m posting just these. If you like this format, be sure to follow there too

• 📲 | Blueprint App: Beehiiv (my email platform) just launched a feature that lets you add a Blueprint app on your phone. This makes it so you don’t have to read episodes in email, and can get a push notification when one drops. It looks super clean. If you want to download the Blueprint app, just open “https://blueprint.game” on any internet browser (on your phone), make sure you are logged in (just input your email address), and it will prompt you on screen how to easily download it. Beehiiv is sick for making this

• 💰 | Investment Newsletter: My friend (software dev) started writing a free newsletter at the intersection of product and markets. He picks a tech company, does a super deep dive, explains why the tech is valuable in simple terms + layers on an investment memo explaining his analysis. If you like markets, check out his first post on Nvidia here

Defining Success

Lately, I’ve noticed my attention has been super fractured.

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve “worked” 12 days and only posted 2 short-form videos & 3 YouTube videos. My content output across all formats is down across the board.

Why is this?

While I’ve done lots of cool things, many of them were distractions to the most important thing….posting.

And this lack of posting is a problem for two reasons:

• More posting leads to more growth, more leads, bigger audience, more revenue, etc.

• I’ve engineered my brain to be happy with high posting output and upset with low posting output

This made me reflect on how best to define success moving forward.

After studying many entrepreneurs in the early phases, one of the most common reasons for stunted growth is inaction via overaction.

They’re doing lots of things, but not enough of the right things.

This is dangerous because it gives the appearance of progress…but really is just walking in circles.

Motion is not progress unless it’s pointed in the same direction.

So what should my definition of success be?

In a vacuum (optimized for winning and agnostic of emotions), success should be solely measured by the output volume of your single most important action.

• For a software developer, maybe that’s features shipped or bug-free lines of code written

• For a designer, maybe that’s designs created

• For me, a content maker, it’s pieces of content posted above a given quality threshold

Everything else I’m spending my time doing, that isn’t making more content, is likely a distraction.

Most of you reading are probably doing things you know aren’t optimal because you’re procrastinating doing the thing that is.

I am too.

A simple way around this is to just say “no” to anything that doesn’t directly help your spend more time on your top focus, no matter how fun or interesting it is.

A militant way to approach this would be 100% focus on your top action with 0% bleed to any distractions.

But this isn’t a fun life unless you really enjoy doing that top action.

Moving forward, I’m going to optimize for a 90/10 split.

If I work 45 hours in a week, that means 4.5 hours per week could be spent on things that aren’t directly influencing making Kallaway content. The other 40.5 should be spend on things that are.

Things that do influence Kallaway content:

• Ideating/researching video topics

• Making videos

• Editing videos

• Working with brands on brand deals where I’m posting the branded video to my own accounts

• Having recorded conversations that become content

• Being a guest on podcasts (not technically Kallaway content but will help drive content awareness for Kallaway brand)

• Training editors/writers/packagers of Kallaway content to help eventually increase volumes

• Working on building automation systems to make it easier to create more Kallaway content in the future

Things that don’t influence Kallaway content:

• Working with brands on their content (with zero tie-back to my own channels)

• Side projects that aren’t content related

• Networking calls

• Shits and gigs misc.

It’s not to say anything in the latter category isn’t valuable or income generating, they just don’t compound to help my top focus.

I typically don’t like to be this rigid about anything because it doesn’t leave room for spontaneity or serendipity, but when procrastination leaks in, this type of rigidity is the best way to reverse course.

If you’ve also struggled with this, here’s the tactical solve:

1. If you don’t know what your “top focus” should be, stop everything until you figure it out

2. Once you know what it is, say no to 90%+ of tasks/requests that aren’t supporting it

THE DURATION OF STARDOM

The Duration of Stardom

Star power, when aimed correctly, is the most valuable distribution weapon on planet earth.

And over the last few years, we’ve seen firsthand just how lucrative it can be…

• Taylor Swift running a $1B+ tour

• Logan Paul building a billion dollar beverage brand in two years

• Leo Messi $1B+ MLS deal with Inter Miami + Apple + Adidas

• Kai Cenat causing riots in Manhattan for a casual fan meetup (not lucrative in this case, but shows the potential if angled correctly)

Because of the revenue potential that comes with superstardom, most creators and influencers make it their sole goal to accumulate this type of power.

But I believe the playbook is rapidly changing…and the window to evolve into an enduring megastar might have closed forever.

The emergence of AI content tools coupled with “For You” driven social feeds, means that anyone can become a star overnight.

Exhibit A…Hawk Tuah girl
Exhibit B…Ander Dingus

10 years ago, there was no path for a rando to become an overnight sensation.

This meant that starpower aggregated and compounded with existing stars.

Becoming a star was much harder, but once you became one, you could eat off it forever.

If you look across content and culture today, things have changed dramatically.

Take TV shows for example…

The old wave of media had shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, The Office, etc. The list of cult favorites goes on forever…

Can you name a single show of this caliber that has come out in the last 5 years and endured the entire time?

You can’t…and the reason isn’t because the writers have gotten worse.

It’s because the social dynamics of stardom (both for individuals and media IP) have changed.

Things peak harder, faster…but crash just as fast. It’s the The Lindy Effect played out in culture.

This same hypecycle pattern rhymes across all of culture…from music artists to actors and creators.

It’s possible we will never see another crop of megastars like Taylor Swift or Drake because of:

1. The ease/speed to become a star

2. The difficulty to maintain relevance given the speed of new stars

3. The quick payouts distracting people from committing to the work required to master a craft

This combination of factors means the average duration of stardom will decrease.

Why does all this matter?

My job is to figure out how to angle myself (as a creator) so that I can best harness attention against business opportunities.

The above suggests that building and holding breadth as a star is no longer the wisest approach.

Instead, intentionally going deep and abandoning the path to stardom (focusing on a niche of a niche of a niche), is a better way to endure.

Enduring is important because the best businesses compound over decades.

In order to compound, you must survive. If your main distribution channel relies on an existing star staying a star, chances of survival aren’t great.

FAME VS INFLUENCE

Fame vs Influence

This builds on the section before, so I’ll make it quick…

Would you rather have fame or influence?

Most people think trying to be an influencer is a stupid goal.

And while I think the term itself is terrible, the utility is actually extremely valuable.

Every salesperson on earth is an influencer…they’re trying to influencer a rando they connected with on LinkedIn to give them $5K for a product they hadn’t heard about the week before.

The more influence that salesperson has, the easier it will be to sell.

Influencers on social media are just examples of this at scale.

Having influence = good for selling things

Fame, on the other hand…I’m not so convinced is worth it.

My most popular rap song was called Cool Cool…the main line in the hook is “I don’t wanna be famous, I just wanna be cool cool.”

It gets at this point…

Being famous is like being a puppet. It’s possible to be famous without the meaningful influence that comes with it and you’re likely not the one in control.

Having influence is like being the puppet master. It’s possible to pull the strings without anyone knowing who you are.

I’d rather be Gepetto.

Strive for influence, not fame.

2 CONTENT FRAMEWORKS

Wanted to quickly share two simple frameworks/perspectives on a couple content related topics.

Content’s Biggest Contradiction

When answering ”How should I approach making content?”

Most people will tell you that you need to make content about what you find interesting.

Don’t look at what others do, don’t listen to what others say, just make what you think is interesting and it will eventually work. This is the only way to create your own style.

Other people will tell you…just look at what’s already working, change it 3-5% to make it your own. No need to reinvent the wheel. These ideas are already validated so you don’t have to hope they work…you know they will.

It’s original vs inspired by.

So which path should you take?

Here’s the exact framework I’d follow if I were starting out today…

1. For the first 30 videos, pick a topic you’re interested in, find 5 creators in that niche that have between 100-300K followers, find their top 20 best performing videos, take one that inspires you, pick the same topic, but change the take/POV, try to recreate it exactly. This is like tracing before you can draw freehand, it will give you the building blocks and help you get reps. You’re likely to be too small for people to see. This is kind of like copywork or drawing inspiration from your favorite artist…it’s meant for training, not to steal

2. After this first 1-2 months, you will have a good sense for the type of content you can create. There are 3 ways to differentiate yourself…ideas, storytelling style, editing/packaging format. I’d pick one of these three to come up with something unique and keep the other two the same as what’s already working

For example, let’s say you want to make tech review videos about hardware products.

• Differentiated ideas would be reviewing unique brands/products that aren’t typically reviewed

• Differentiated storytelling would be explaining the product value or demonstrating how they work in a unique way (maybe you’re top down only, maybe you’re only using it in the dark, etc.)

• Differentiated editing/packaging would be shooting or editing the video in a unique way (maybe you only shoot videos outside in the park)

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Pick one of these three to customize and keep the others the same.

Make the next 100 videos this way.

For personal transparency, I don’t really look at anyone else for content inspiration, but that’s because I like coming up with my own ideas and have already developed a storytelling style and editing format that I like.

If I would have followed this framework, I probably could have had more success sooner.

If you copy all 3 buckets, you’ll forever be a derivative of the original creator. This can work if you’re copying someone huge, but will always feel second tier. I’d advise against this in the long-term.

Inspiration Hacks

You can’t schedule inspiration.

Simple advice is that when an idea strikes, open your Apple Notes or a voice recorder and brain dump as much context as you have in that moment as possible.

Ideas are like avocados…they’re fresh for like 15 minutes and then start to go bad when you forget about them.

If your job requires coming up with good ideas…design a system to fully capture them in the moment.

I like doing everything in Apple Notes and Voice Memos because it syncs cleanly across phone/computer.

Other tools that work well are:

• These Totebooks by StudioNeat (shoutout Dowithin for this rec)

• Otter (Voice recording app with AI transcription)

Don’t waste a great idea.

WEEK 53 BEST CONTENT

My best content from last week:

1. 🎯 | Someone at NBC needs a big raise for this (Alex Cooper & Call Her Daddy at The Olympics): Watch

2. 🫡 | Making content has radically changed my life: Watch

3. 🧑🏼‍🚀 | Blueprint (1 Year Review) - Year 1 Review, Year 1 Biggest Learnings, Year 2 Strategy Outlook: Read