🧑🏼‍🚀 Blueprint 057

Welcome back to Blueprint.

If you’re new to the series, it’s been 57 weeks (1 year + 1 month + 1 week) since I went full-time as an entrepreneur.

My goal is to go from $0 → $1M/month while transparently documenting the entire journey, strategy, and moves made to get there.

• Each week, I share learnings & experiments (in written form)

• Each month, I share income & strategy (in written & video form)

• You can watch the Year 1 recap video here

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 57 METRICS & UPDATES

Week 57 Metrics + Updates

Spent the weekend in NYC touring Brooklyn neighborhoods for our move back next spring (currently deciding between Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill vs Williamsburg/Greenpoint. If you live in Brooklyn and have thoughts lmk).

Captured some amazing footage for vlog #2…met up with JT Barnett, Sami Clarke, Zach Pogrob, Hunter Weiss and some other fun characters.

I gotta say…I love vlogging. I think this will be the format that takes my content and personal brand to the next level.

I have a vision to edit these long-form videos that combine my real life experiences with the entrepreneurial takes from my IG walking stories in a way that is unique, entertaining and inspiring.

Vlog #1 is currently being edited and should post by end of this week on YouTube. Goal is to go weekly from there…very pumped to start doing these.

Meeting with my new management team

During my trip, I got the chance to visit my new management team’s office and sit down for a 2 hour strategy session.

We spent a lot of time thinking through how to position my content and personal brand moving forward based on my interests, traction, and ideal business model <> lifestyle fit.

Here’s a peek into the thinking that came out of the session…

Kallaway Content Strategy: 

On the media side, I’ve been doing two things simultaneously.

The first is building Blueprint as an entrepreneurial sauce layer that sits on top of everything I do. It’s like an always-on birds eye view into my thinking.

This comes to life across my Blueprint newsletter, animated monthly Blueprint YouTube breakdowns, IG walking stories, and the aforementioned weekly vlog. Blueprint will forever be the documentation layer of whatever my “main thing” is.

So what is the main thing?

For this first year, I’ve been creating short-form content across three buckets — tech/AI, deep content strategy/marketing, business breakdowns.

Over the past few months, I’ve tried (and failed) to force myself to pick one of those buckets, niche down, and back into a products/services roadmap to pair with the chosen content niche.

Upon reflection with my team, it doesn’t make sense for me to limit my content to one industry/sector.

Because the unique throughline across my best content, is the combination of engaging storytelling + business/brand strategy insights.

This is what makes me 1/1. And that combo can exist across any of those 3 buckets.

So instead of restricting my scope by industry, the limiting factor should be that every video must have a) some business strategy take + b) insane storytelling.

This combo seems to be the reason people consistently enjoy watching my videos.

This shift will flow through to every content format:

• Short-form will become more business strategy focused (still across tech, media, and cult brand stories)

• YouTube (outside of Blueprint/vlogs) will become tactical business strategy breakdowns, which for me, covers content/distribution/brand strategy. I’d answer, “How are brands positioned and what should they do to grow faster with content, product, or both?” My best example of this is my recent video about Wander’s content positioning but can also include my personal content driven growth playbooks

• Products/Services I should build for brands will also be designed to answer this question, “How can I help brands grow faster with better content/distribution strategy?”

What we realized is that in order to have creator <> content <> product fit, it’s important to figure out the singular thing a creator is known for and then flow that downstream.

For me, it’s business strategy meets storytelling.

Having a talented team to live workshop this with was super helpful.

SHIPWRECKS

Shipwrecks

I spend a lot of time thinking about how content might change in the future.

I spend even more time coming up with silly metaphors to explain those theories.

Here’s one you might like…

I believe the future of content is going to look like a combination of synced short-form + long-form.

And the perfect metaphor…is a shipwreck.

Imagine that a shipwreck happens in the middle of the ocean.

Bang…Titanic style mayhem.

Unless you’re nearby, with eyeshot or earshot of the wreck, you won’t see it.

The shipwreck is a metaphor for a company launch or product release.

It’s a drop in the ocean of attention grabbing news, headlines, and other company launches.

Your goal, when you launch, is for as many people as possible to see the launch and understand exactly what you’re building and who it’s for.

But unless someone is already super close to your company, they won’t hear about it.

Enter…flares.

Somebody close to the shipwreck shoots up a flare gun into the sky signaling for help.

The flare can be see for 5 miles in every direction. Lots of boats see the flare and come rushing to the scene of the wreck.

Flares are like short-form videos. They’re great for getting lots of attention efficiently.

Boats begin to arrive at the scene, and they see the wreck but wonder what happened.

Since those boats weren’t close enough to watch the wreck in real-time, they have no idea what caused it.

They start to make up their own narrative and gossip amongst the other boats.

This is a decent metaphor for what happens when companies try to launch using only short-form content blasts.

Short-form is great for generating lots of initial attention, but it lacks the context needed to properly message what is going on.

Enter…the first mate.

The first mate is the captain’s right hand man.

He begins rowing up to all the newly arriving boats and explaining in detail what caused the wreck.

Some boats don’t have time to wait for him to run through his spiel so they leave…but for the boats that stay, they hear the full story.

A portion of these boats now fully understand the context of what happened.

The first mate…and this thorough explanation…is like a long-form video.

Without the first mate explaining what happened, very few of the new boats would have any clue what went on.

And if the first mate would have started explaining the situation before the boats arrived, no one would have heard.

This is why a long-form video alone is also a suboptimal strategy. A detailed explanation to no one is a waste of time.

The flare got the boats to the wreck and the first mate gave the necessary context to help them fully understand the situation.

Short + long = max efficiency in conversion

Today, there isn’t a good way to bridge people from short-form to long-form unless you brute force with something like Manychat.

Figuring this out could be a massive opportunity because it takes advantage of the benefits of both format types.

WORLDBUILDING

Build the cult, build the world

“Build the cult, build the world” is the new saying I’ve been repeating any time anyone asks what my goal is.

I view my entire entrepreneurial arc as a living art project, culminating in some form of a world for worldbuilders.

As you know if you’re a regular reader, I’m obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding.

Imo, the best brands are worlds.

The difference between a world and a regular brand is that worlds feel synchronized across every surface.

They combine content, design, community & products to create signature, 1/1 experiences.

When you’re interfacing with a component inside of a world…you immediately know it belongs.

Conversely, when you come up against something that doesn’t fit within the world, you know they would have never created it.

Cult followings are prerequisites to thriving worlds.

Not all cults turn into worlds, but all worlds are populated by cults…I call them citizens.

Every world is made up of these components:

• Citizens (these are the superfans that breathe oxygen into the world consistently)

• Tourists (these are curious outsiders that visit from time to time)

• Uniforms (these are the products, especially clothing or other physicals, that citizens and tourists wear/use to demonstrate fandom)

• Community (some community space or experience across digital, physical or both)

• Products/Services (non-uniformed ways for citizens/tourists to support the world)

• Experiences (places and installations for citizens/tourists to interface with the world)

• Design (the visual glue that connects everything together)

• Tenets (the core values that each citizen represents)

• Lore (the legends & stories told across the world)

The best examples of worlds are brands like Apple, Tesla, and Disney. Modern examples include Poolsuite, Represent, and Sunday.

When it comes to brand building, world status is the upper echelon.

OBITUARIES

Obituaries, Keynotes & Alcoholics Anonymous

When I was in college, I noticed something odd about all of the keynote presenters and featured speakers that spoke at my school.

Without fail, every one of them seemed to breeze right through decades of their backgrounds.

“For the first 15 years of my career, I was a banker. Then, at 36, I found my true passion. I spent the next decade doing X and have been doing Y for 8 years, etc.”

I always found it shocking that 15 years of work experience was given a single sentence…breezed over like it was a rounding error.

At the time, when I was 18 years old, that rounding error was essentially my entire life.

I remember stressing so hard about internships and trying to meticulously plan out my career trajectory in my 20s.

As I’ve gotten older, I realized that none of that stuff matters. None of it. In fact, almost nothing matters.

Yesterday I saw this tweet from Hormozi…

Perfectly said.

Obituaries, keynotes, and introductions at alcoholics anonymous…no matter where you share your background, none of that little stuff actually matters.

Don’t let it distract you from the few things that might.

KALLAWISMS

Kallawisms

A couple interesting mindframes…

1. Rare Air

By definition, to be rare is to be unique.

When you’re unique, it’s hard to measure how unique you really are, because there is no benchmark.

Humans like to pattern match their abilities via comparison to others. But when you’re rare, weird, and different, there are fewer apples to compare with.

Because of this, it’s easy to undersell the value of your uniqueness, abandon it, and slowly revert back to the mean.

Don’t.

2. Observed Realities

Don’t let the external observation of your truth alter your belief in it.

Let’s say you start out making stuff & posting into a vacuum. You think your stuff is dope, but nobody interacts with it.

At some point, most people in this position start doubting themselves.

But then, they keep going…same person making the same dope stuff in the same way.

Eventually, someone discovers it, shares it with the world, and then the world celebrates you for being dope.

It’s the same you, same stuff, same process, same dope, but now you believe in it more because other people validated it.

Don’t give them that power. Don’t let your reality be conditional.

If you believe your stuff is dope, keep going.

3. Money Points

An easy way to start playing more aggressively in business is to view money as points.

Most gamers that transition into entrepreneurship often build successful companies.

Why is this?

Gamers have an unusual ability to abstract emotion away from money.

Most regular people have an emotional relationship with money.

This is because, for most of us, we didn’t experience abundant resources as children.

That emotional charge drives unwise money decisions…usually via defensiveness.

As soon as you think of money as points, and business as a strategy game where the goal is to spend those points on resource acquisition, things become much simpler.

4. Systems vs Ideas

This is something I didn’t want to believe, but feel is true in my gut.

Most entrepreneurs that are successful (and not famous) are average at going from 0→1, but above average at going from 1→10.

0→1 = Ideas
1→10 = Systems

To come up with a multi-billion dollar company, you need 10/10 idea & amazing systems. Most entrepreneurs that have accomplished this are both successful and famous.

But to build a $10M company, the idea can be average/Ablohed (3% derivative copy), but you must be good at building systems.

If you think of yourself as an idea person, and haven’t built anything successful yet, it’s because you’re prioritizing ideas over systems.

This is a trap I fell into.

I considered myself good at ideas/strategy, but didn’t want to spend time learning how to build systems. I’m switching that thinking now.

Here’s a good tweet from Cody that speaks to this…

WEEK 57 BEST CONTENT

My best content from last week:

1. 🤯 | This tweet changed my life forever : Watch

2. 📲 | Did Apple finally make the iPhone “Pro”: Watch

3. 🎯 | Something for everyone vs everything for someone: Watch

4. 🧑🏼‍🚀 | Blueprint (Month 13) - Month 13 Strategy Update, Income, Info Pipes, Main Characters, Automation, Vlogs: Read