Category: Creator Confidential

• You vs. the parasite

  I did bookkeeping for my first year of business. One year was enough for me. It was boring and very spreadsheet–heavy, and I knew I never wanted to do it again. So I did what I thought savvy entrepreneurs called “delegating.” I hired a bookkeeping and accounting firm to do it for me, and I…

  Herbert Lui

  February 5, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Life, Turning Stories

• To know vs. to do

  The team at Basecamp recently did a six-week sprint to improve the product’s onboarding flow. They did a bunch of stuff and shipped it. The result was a 30% increase in conversion rate.  “What happened?!” you might ask them. “How? What’s the best practice?”  They don’t know. They don’t care. “The point wasn’t to know,…

  Herbert Lui

  February 4, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential

• One chance

  Dan Sullivan is a coach for entrepreneurs. He asks every prospective client a question, “If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to have happened in your life, both personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress?” It’s a…

  Herbert Lui

  February 2, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Expectations, Life, Turning Stories

• Blogging for smaller audiences and deeper connections

  Making good work requires making mistakes. It’s never a straight path to the final work. If a lot of people see your creative work all the time, then it’ll be more difficult for you to make imperfect work.  You won’t have space to tinker and experiment so much. You won’t even just be able to…

  Herbert Lui

  January 31, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Promotion, Revision, Turning Stories

• Chipping away

  I used to drop everything to focus on a single project at a time. I would try to do all the tasks as soon as possible, in the hopes of getting it done and out of the way so I could relax.  For example, if I had an administrative project, I told myself I’d just…

  Herbert Lui

  January 29, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creator Confidential, Life, Turning Stories

• Discouragement is a test

  When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a sports commentator. I enjoyed watching sports, and I liked talking, so that sounded like a sweet job. My family gave me a hard reality check:  How many people were there on TV that looked like me? How often did such job opportunities open up? What…

  Herbert Lui

  January 27, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Living the contradictions

  Uncertainty is very difficult to live with—borderline painful. I used to think it was best to make a decision and move on, as soon as possible. Don’t look back, either. Flip–flopping was not acceptable. In her book Working Identity, professor Herminia Ibarra explores career transitions. She explains that rushing into a premature decision—to either stay,…

  Herbert Lui

  January 24, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• Sometimes, you just gotta wait

  In 2019, Jay-Z and his company Roc Nation partnered up with the NFL to advise on the social justice initiative Inspire Change and advise on the Super Bowl halftime show. That year, the Super Bowl drew in 98.2 million viewers. It’s a coveted event for recording artists to play. Before working with Jay-Z, the NFL…

  Herbert Lui

  January 23, 2025

  Creator Confidential

• The natural game

  When Charles Duhigg attended his Harvard Business School class’s 15-year reunion, he was surprised to discover how many of his former classmates were miserable. One of them was earning over a million dollars a year, and said to him, “If you spend 12 hours a day doing work you hate, at some point it doesn’t…

  Herbert Lui

  January 21, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creativity, Creator Confidential, Life, Turning Stories

• Meeting people with cold emails

  An extraordinary professional moment happened to me in a very ordinary finance class. Instead of paying attention to what the teacher was saying, I read an article in HBR and emailed the author asking for advice about how I could find my passion.  They graciously responded with valuable advice—essentially, to try a lot of things!—and…

  Herbert Lui

  January 19, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Promotion