Category: Creator Confidential
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Make twice, sell twice
In November 2020, I independently published my first book at Gumroad. I had spent four months or so full-time deliberately researching, writing, editing, proofreading, and designing a PDF of ~18,000 words. That doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but you could say I spent most of the 2010s researching it (starting with this piece…
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Career Oscillations
When we make plans, we think with consistency, regularity, and uniformity as stand-ins for discipline, discernment, and judgment. “I’m going to do this everyday,” or, “My approach is this,” or “I’m going to reach this milestone.” This is helpful in that it helps us get things done. The career ladder is one representation of this;…
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Help each other
A person goes on vacation and asks their neighbor to watch their pet animals. The neighbor obliges. The neighbor writes a letter after: Good afternoon, This letter is regarding your vacation two weeks ago, and how you let me babysit Smokey, Oreo, and Jennifer. I’d just like to give you a letter of thanks. As…
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“You’re too expensive…”
There’s a saying I’ve heard and lived by, “If 30% of people aren’t telling you you’re too expensive, you’re not charging enough.” Looking back, I realized that I often ended conversations there, when there was so much more to be said. After all, “You’re too expensive,” is a claim; what people actually meant when they…
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Half a match
When psychology professor Lee Ross wanted to persuade his team at Stanford to recruit Amos Tversky, he used this story (via The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis): “I said, I’m going to tell you a classic Yiddish story. There’s a guy, an eligible bachelor. A happy bachelor. The matchmaker comes to him and says, ‘Listen,…
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You shouldn’t write a book unless…
One of the most interesting pieces of advice on writing books comes from author Ryan Holiday, who advocates not writing a book. Unless… “What matters more now than any other single thing is that what you’re saying is different–that it’s interesting, that it provokes some response from people. You’ll only accomplish this if you’ve got…
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Wiz ships
Two weeks before I wrote this, Wiz Khalifa published a new documentary, Still Rolling Papers (11 years after his debut album, Rolling Papers). A quick look: Will Smith has close to 10 million subscribers, so does Ye. Ellen DeGeneres has 38 million. Kim Jong-Kook’s Gym Jong-Kook channel has close to 3 million subs. Gary Vaynerchuk…
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Good Writing Money, Bad Writing Money
If there’s anything I’ve learned in 15 years of writing, it’s that not all writing money is earned equally. There are such things as good writing money, and bad writing money. Here’s an idea of what they mean to me, and a guide to lessons I’ve learned, and how I’ll think about making money as…
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How to present your work so it gets the results it deserves
Good work absolutely does not just speak for itself. That’s why a piece of art is always accompanied by an artist statement, and each art show is accompanied by ephemera, an audio guide, or a curator. A staff member at a restaurant not only delivers the food, but explains the story behind a dish or…
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Inbounding
Is it better for you to find a new job and apply to it, or for a recruiter to come reach out to you? Is it better for you to find a new client and sell to them, or for a client to come find you? Is it better for you to reach out to…