The Steal Club - The not-so-secret formula

Hey everyone!

First of all, let me apologize for not sending an issue last week. I’m trying my best to keep The Steal Club weekly, but sometimes life gets in the way 🤷‍♂️.

For today's issue, I'm trying a new format.

I'll begin with a mini-essay, followed by sharing a content format that's ready for stealing and finish up with 1 growth idea for you

Vote at the bottom of the email to tell me what you think!

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes and 11 seconds

One of my favorite writers, Austin Kleon, breaks down his formula for success into two simple steps:

1. Do good work
2. Share it with people

If you have ever tried to create something, anything, you know that #1 is hard.

My first blog post was not as good as the last one I wrote.

2 years ago, my tweets were trash (some may say they still are 😅).

The first visual I created was just combining two icons I found online. I now draw them myself.

The only way to do good work is to do a lot of bad work first.

Whatever you set your mind to, just put in the reps and you will get better by repetition.

As simple as that.

But #2... How many incredible creators is the world missing because we are too afraid of sharing our work?

It wasn't so easy 15 years ago. But now you have THE INTERNET.

One tweet, one blog post, one TikTok video or one YouTube video can reach millions of people.

We have this perception that the Internet is only a place where you can publish your finished ideas, and nothing else.

But it's much more than that.

The internet is the place where your rawest, shittiest ideas should be.

Worst case scenario, no one will pay attention.

Best case scenario, you receive useful feedback and you get to iterate on that idea.

So here's my proposal for a new "success formula": forget about following Austin's steps.

Do #1 WHILE you do #2.

Make your reps public.

Share everything.

Your wins, your losses, what you learn, and how you are changing because of that

Do that for a month and then see what happens.

Spoiler alert: you will become a better creator.

Do you like getting actionable marketing tips?

I've been getting Marketing Max's weekly growth hacks and they are absolutely helping me grow The Steal Club faster!

Basically, every Sunday, Max (who has almost 100k followers across all his channels and who has driven more than $40m+ in revenue for clients & his own companies) will send you his best growth hack of the week, for free.

If you like my content, I think you will really enjoy Marketing Max's free Growth Hacks Weekly newsletter. 

And if you sign up now, you get his top 5 all-time growth hacks for free:

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Simple format with high readability, just how i like it.

You just need:

• One topic
• X number of steps
• One closing line

When your closing line attacks a pain point or is a bit more aggressive ("99% of people never get to step 1"), it works better. It has more punch.

Why don’t you give it a try? Copy paste below 👇

(X) steps to (Do something):

• Step 1
• Step 2

(Closing line, preferably a hot take)

I had no credibility when I started on Twitter.

I wouldn't have sold 5$ worth of digital products even if I tried back then.

What did I do instead? I created something useful for free first

Initially, my plan was to generate leads (emails) by sharing this free product, then use that channel to upsell once I gained some credibility.

That's how "Creator's Trove" was born, a database of over 70 tools for creators.

It's a simple database built on Notion and distributed on Gumroad

I launched in July 2020. Today, these are the stats👇

At the time, I had less than 1000 followers, so basically no audience. But the results for the first months helped kickstart some of my other projects

Why am I telling you this?

If you have no credibility, you have to build it first. This is especially true if you have no audience.

Offering a free product might be an easy and quick way to do so. People love FREE stuff.

Here are some ideas for your first free product:

• Ebooks
• Databases
• Templates

Someone who has mastered this approach is Easlo.

He’s continuously sharing free stuff on Twitter 👇

While this is a recent post, he has been doing it for years.

This tactic helped him build a large email list, which he's now using for email marketing. He emails his list every time a new product is released.

And that’s it.

The thing here is that his products have a “no-brainer” price. The prices range from 10-20$, making it easy to buy.

It's a simple strategy, but it seems to be working for him 👇

Goddamn 80k$, what am I doing wrong? 😆

Plus, these tweets usually have huge engagement, which also helps with building your audience

All jokes aside, I hope you are inspired by his example. It doesn't take much to get started. 

You should find something with a high perceived value that doesn't take too much time to put together.

Upload it to Gumroad and tweet about it.

Then ask people to do something in particular to receive the link (reply, like or RT). You can do that automatically with tools like Tweet Hunter and their auto-DM feature.

Please email or DM me if you do! I’ll be the first one to download your product 🙂

And that’s it for this week!

I hope you enjoyed this new format! Let me know by voting below! It really helps a lot

See you next week!

Alex Llull

Thief Master

The Steal Club

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