Category: Creator Confidential
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Two hairstylists
You have a hairstylist. In order for you to get a haircut, you need to book ahead a week or two, and there are very few available times outside of work hours. They have a long waitlist and a 24 hour cancellation policy, which is very irritating to you. However, they make haircuts you are…
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Hype vs. reality
One story is that you and I live in an age of hype, where in order to get the resources we need to make something we need to inflate it full of unrealistic expectations. In this frame, if you don’t hype your work, then people won’t pay attention and someone else—who is hyping their work—will…
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A new story for hobbyist websites
At Twitter, Noah Smith points out that hobbyists aren’t making more websites. The incentives just aren’t there. A website needs a new story for hobbyists: it’s great for organizing and finding your work (try searching a post you wrote at a social media site!), you own the domain name, and you can control other parts…
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Announce yourself quietly
Being noisy is the easiest way to draw attention. That doesn’t mean it’s the best way, and it’s certainly not the only way.
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Mature confidence
Confidence is a character trait that you earn and develop in yourself. It’s pretty similar to going to the gym. Youthful confidence is boisterous and grandiose. It’s only a matter of time before it’s tested, and often this confidence is brittle. It’s not real yet. A mature confidence isn’t easily shaken. Bad things can happen—an…
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Consistency and breaks
There’s a best practice that equates consistency with success. For some people—the Type A personalities—the problem with taking this advice is when you inevitably break a schedule—a day, or a week, or a month—then you feel guilty, disappointed, and maybe even like you shouldn’t even have started in the first place. It becomes more difficult…
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More art, less stock
If you want to elevate your work, one simple way is to find a piece of art to accompany it. Not another free stock image. There is plenty of great art in the public domain. Here are three good places to find them: Public Work Openverse Artvee
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Is time on your side?
Is your business position getting stronger by the day? Is your advantage growing? Do you feel more comfortable and relaxed? Are you spending more time doing the things you want to do? Are you getting tangibly closer and closer to your goal? Or are you paranoid about when the current sales contracts end? Are you…
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Avoid sitting with rejection
In 2007, Katy Milkman was in the middle of her doctoral degree at Harvard when she got bad news. Her manuscript, which she’d worked on for two years, was rejected by the journal she had submitted it to. She wasn’t sure what to do next and consulted her academic advisor, Max Bazerman. Bazerman assured her…
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Staying in practice
I’ve written about how confidence emerges from competence, and how it’s helpful to build confidence on a foundation of practice. These two posts come to mind when I watched Ryan Leslie’s recent Tiny Desk concert: Almost a decade after he pivoted away from a conventional recording artist career and into a more business-oriented one (including…