What to do AFTER you start creating, Write more by writing less, The Part-time Creator Manifesto

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Welcome to Growth Currency⚡ #45 — your weekly Creator Lightning Rod 🌩

A huge "Hello!" to the 8 newest members of the Growth Currency⚡ newsletter community, including: Tiffanee, Chris, Gregor, Earl, Matt, Ram and Khalid!

I appreciate you being here with us and hope you get what you're after. Send me a DM if not! 🙏

GROWTH INSIGHTS | "Just start!" Okay, I did. Now what?

Twitter is full of those platitude tweets urging the wannabe creator or wantrepreneur to "Just start!"

So you finally take their advice and you start creating. Now what?

This is a short post about getting beyond the inspirational platitudes and into the actual action of creating. There are 4 key steps to consider once you've started creating online.

But first...

Confused about what to start? Here's a list of things you could start right now:

→ a blog
→ a video
→ a podcast
→ a drawing
→ a newsletter
→ a social post
→ a tool or app
→ a community
→ an online course
→ a live audio space

So start something. Then...

#1 Make it SUSTAINABLE

1) Don't overcomplicate it—keep it simple. ​
→ A 1,500-word blog post is long, so write an Atomic Essay.
→ A 30 minute podcast is a lot of work. Try a 9-minute Racket.
→ A weekly newsletter can be grueling. Make it monthly.

2) Don't overthink it—avoid paralysis by analysis​
​→ Pick a topic and write/record.
→ Use the tools you have, avoid unnecessary complexity: your laptop mic is fine; your iPhone camera is great; Google Docs is effective; and Canva is amazing.
→ Pick a medium and publish: Racket, Twitter, Medium, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Substack, Revue—all are great to start.

3) Don't worry about critique—nobody's watching you right now anyway
​The "publishing into the void" problem is more like a blessing: your first drafts, tweets, edits are going to be rough. You have to put in the reps. Nobody's really paying attention, so you have room for error and improvement.

Want feedback? Email/DM me. Or find an online companion to bounce ideas or drafts off of. Join a community of like-minded peers or start a private Telegram/Discord/Twitter DM group.

#2 Make it CONSISTENT

Aim to show up consistently.

Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Your call.
→ Don't create & publish daily if it's going to burn you out
→ Start with a rhythm that feels comfortable—scale up from there
→ It feels a lot better to ramp things up w/ positive momentum

A note on FREQUENCY:
​The more frequent you publish—the tighter your feedback loops.

Example: Tweeting once per week is great… but you'll improve 7x FASTER posting one tweet per day and iterating.

Find your balance with CONSISTENCY + FREQUENCY + SUSTAINABILITY

#3 CHOOSE one channel

Trying to post on your blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Medium with every piece of content is going to burn you out. You need to pick ONE channel/platform to SHARE, DISTRIBUTE, and PROMOTE.

Who is your ideal audience and where do they hang out (Twitter? Reddit? LinkedIn?)
→ Commit to posting & sharing your work in that ONE space. It's easier to focus on building a strong presence in ONE place to start!
→ Engaging with the audience your building is a lot easier when focused on ONE platform

#4 COLLECT email addresses

Once you begin getting traction in the form of engagement and eventually followers (ie. an audience), it's time to get them into an email list.

"Don't build your house on rented land," says Joe Pulizzi, writer of Content Inc. and The Tilt founder.

Meaning: get your audience off-platform by collecting email addresses.

Why?

Well... what happens when your Twitter account gets suspended like Jack Butcher's did? Or when your contrarian Substack gets shut down like Codie Sanchez's did? Or when Facebook and Instagram go down for hours like they did last month?

Collect email addresses and take your audience off-platform:

→ start a newsletter
→ create a template you can give away
→ create a free guide/PDF
→ create a mini online course or email course

NOTE: You don't need an email newsletter to collect email addresses. Don't let that stop you. Collect, collect, collect.

What next?

You started—and that's a huge step. These "next steps" we just covered are going to set you up for future success. If you're need more help with your content strategy, let's chat—just reply to this email.

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT 🔦

🔦 DAN BOYD || Dan is a storyteller. He's been teaching the narrative arts for 11 years and started a 501c3 organization (ie. a non-profit) called Storyluck. I love Dan's authenticity and his no-bullshit, contrarian perspectives on "popular" topics. His atomic essays are legit good, too.

😲 CREATORS: WANT MORE BRAND PARTNERSHIPS? 💸

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YOUR GROWTH CURRENCY ⚡ THIS WEEK

​How to build an email list: A proven system for getting 1,000+ Subscribers by Bryan Harris

Check out this in-depth system by Bryan and his team at VideoFruit.com — tuck it away for safe keeping.

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​Write 5x more but write 5x less by Mike Crittenden (via RadReads)

You should be writing more. And what you write should be shorter. Like this article.

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​The Part-time Creator Manifesto by Sean Wang

We can't all be full-time creators. It's not ideal for everyone. And I'm realizing that more and more myself. That's why I love this manifesto by Sean. I just might print it out and hang it up.

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​Out of Content Ideas? 10+ Tools to Help You Change That by Ann Gynn at The Tilt

Help with idea generation is always welcome, amirite? I love tools and found some new ones here. These were the most interesting:

→ Answer The Public​
→ Portent Idea Generator​

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​3 Word-of-Mouth tactics that work [with founder examples] by Darko via IndieHackers

Word-of-mouth is one of the most effective marketing tactics. In this Indiehackers post by Darko, you'll learn about (with examples)…

→ Find a Segment of Users With an Audience That is Also Your Audience
→ Expand Within the Company's Network
→ Influence the Influencers

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​Poet.so — Create images of your tweets to share on other platforms. For free. In 5 seconds. Like this 👇

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​How I Write [LIVE] by Julian Shapiro

Amanda Natividad hosts Julian Shapiro on a YouTube stream. Julian goes in depth on how he writes as he shares how he constructs tweets, enticing article intro hooks, and a lot more.

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​What it takes to build to a successful creator business by Josh Spector

Josh was just interviewed and shared a ton of advice about how to produce, promote, and profit from your creations. He snipped 13 clips of his best points. Check out this article to see each one.

Here are a few…

→ A Simple Trick For Increasing Conversions
→ Getting More Value Out Of Your Content
→ Staying Motivated As A New Creator
→ How To Find Out What Your Audience Wants

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If you're reading this, you scrolled to the end and hopefully found some value out of this email! How did you like this edition?

If this edition was an Amazon product, how many stars would you give it?

Sidenote: in January I'll be celebrating the 1-year anniversary of this newsletter. I want to do something special for you! Any ideas?

And in case you missed it, here are last week's most popular links:

#1: The Growth Currency Ultimate Creator Database of Awesomeness
​#2: ​​​​Reaching the milestone of 1000 newsletter subscribers - Here is what I have learned by Philipp Temmel

Peace and platonic love,

Dylan

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