The Steal Club - What's your Red Pill? Framework inside

Hey everyone!

This is The Steal Club, a newsletter for creative solopreneurs.

We share weekly lessons, strategies, frameworks, and templates to grow your audience and business. “Stolen” from the best creators in the industry.

Time to read: 3 min 55 seconds

This issue is brought to you by:

Entrepreneurship ruined my life

Do you ever feel jealous when reading a newsletter like this?

You read it to improve your business, but you can’t help but feel depressed, maybe even angry, watching everyone else succeed.

You’ve put in the work… yet have nothing to show for it.

I used to feel like this too. It ruined my life.

Until I learned the simple strategies used by successful entrepreneurs to grow their businesses without hustling, grinding, or losing themselves in the process.

Summer is coming to an end.

That means that, despite the social media algorithms being down these past weeks (looking especially at you, Twitter), I expect reach and engagement to pick up in the following months.

It's the perfect time to revisit your content strategy (or create a new one if you don't have it).

But you can create or improve a strategy if you don't have a solid foundation.

That means having a clear big idea, or what I like to call it now, the "Red Pill."

What's the "Red Pill" framework?

If you have seen Matrix, there's this infamous scene where Morfeo offers Neo to take the blue pill or the red pill.

Taking the Red Pill means learning a life-changing truth.

Taking the Blue Pill means staying in contented ignorance.

Neo chooses the Red Pill, and that's how the movie begins, by him learning the truth about his world.

The Red Pill, in our context, means the big idea that you are "selling" to your audience.

It's easier to understand with three examples:

• Pieter Levels's Red Pill is the idea that it is possible to live a Nomadic lifestyle while making enough money to live comfortably.
• Janis Ozolins's Red Pill is the idea that you don't need to be a designer to explain your ideas visually.
• Justin Moore's Red Pill is that sponsorships can be a very lucrative income stream for creators.

Those are their Red Pills. Their big ideas. And I'll now help you figure out yours.

Why finding your Red Pill is so important?

One of the top reasons I've seen new creators, freelancers, and entrepreneurs fail is that they don't have a clear Red Pill.

The thing is that figuring out your Red Pill gives you CLARITY.

Clarity on:

• What type of content to produce
• What kind of products to build
• What kind of services to offer
• And who to make those for

When that big idea is clear, the rest comes so easy. It's like unlocking a power-up on a videogame.

How to find your Red Pill

A Red Pill is not something you figure out BEFORE getting started. 

It's something you figure out along the way.

You start with a slight notion of it. You sense it, but you can't quite grasp it.

I'm still in the process of almost figuring out mine after two years of doing this. These are the two questions that are helping me get there:

1. Who are you trying to help out?
2. What transformation does your content/product/service help them achieve?

Coming back to one of the examples above, for Pieter Levels, the replies to these questions would be:

1. Entrepreneurs who want to keep building a business while not feeling tied to a physical office
2. Making them realize that a Nomadic lifestyle is viable

The combination of the two generates the "is possible to live a Nomadic lifestyle while making enough money to live comfortably" Red Pill.

My Red Pill

I have to admit I'm still not 100% sold that this is the definitive Red Pill for me, but here's my thought process 👇

Who am I trying to help out?

For me, it started by being "creators." But "creators" feels too broad. I needed to go deeper.

So I figured out that I want to help solopreneurs that use content to build, grow or scale their businesses.

I went from "creator" to "creative solopreneurs."

It doesn't feel like a huge difference, but there is.

What's the transformation?

I want to help people do what I did:

Generate more opportunities* online thanks to making content and building a solid brand.

*Opportunities = Freelancing, building a product, sponsors, a bigger network…

What's my Red Pill?

So, my Red Pill is:

💊It's possible to build and scale a solopreneur business by making content

But, as this is the Steal Club and I'm a "thief," here comes the twist: we'll build and scale those businesses by stealing the strategies and tactics of the best creative solopreneurs out there.

How does that feel? Any feedback around this will be super appreciated!

Sources: Red Pill idea stolen from this MFM podcast episode with Pieter Levels. Worth checking out!

Featured newsletter: The Unvalidated Ideas

Good content often comes from good ideas.

The Unvalidated Ideas newsletter sends new Startup/SaaS business ideas every week, so you can flex your ideation and market validation, and growth muscles.

Get inspiration and an idea to test your content skills on. Stealing encouraged.

🕵️‍♂️ Content format: Threads as LinkedIn Carousels

You might have witnessed the great Linkedin migration if you are on Twitter:

A bunch of people are changing Twitter for the LinkedIn algorithm's greener pastures (I have too!)

Most of these creators already have a solid background on Twitter (and content backlog), so the strategy is to copy-paste the content that performed well on Twitter into LinkedIn.

I've been trying for one week now and the results are mixed (I'll write more about it). But one thing I noticed is that one content format outperforms the rest: threads as LinkedIn carrousels.

It's as simple as taking your best Twitter thread and putting it on a PDF with a nice background.

The reach over there is bonkers at the moment, so it might be a good idea to give it a shot!

Here's a free tool that does the converting for you, so no excuses.

Side note: I'm building a database with all the formats I've been sharing on The Steal Club. 

Currently, it's over 50+ tweets, LinkedIn posts, and email headline templates.

I will be doing a very private release soon. If you want to be among the first to hear about it, simply click on the button below. No need to do anything else for now!

That's it for today!

See you next week,

Alex Llull

The Steal Club

PS: If you feel you could need some 1-on-1 help figuring out your "Red Pill," your content strategy, or generating more opportunities online, hit reply with the word "RED" and I'll send over some info about my coaching services!

PS 2: Let me know what you think of this week's issue by voting below

• 👍 Worth it
• 😐 Meh - was ok.
• 👎 Not interesting to me