I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Do what you say you're going to do
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Hey Reader, "People in my generation just don't work anymore." I laughed. The guy who said it was 20 years old. I met Liam Miller while I was in Dubai for the 1 Billion Followers Summit. I was recording an episode of my podcast, and Liam stopped by the studio to hang out and record some content of his own. He runs a short-form content agency called Shot Social, and the results speak for themselves: He helped scale Diary of a CEO from 150,000 to 1.5M followers in 12 months. His own videos documenting his road to pro football journey regularly pulled 30–50M views each. So when he casually dropped that line about his generation not working, it sounded like something a 40-year-old would say. But then I watched him operate. It wasn’t just talk. Liam does what he says he's going to do. And while this might seem like a small thing, it’s actually rare. We talked about ways we could work together, and he mentioned making some introductions. Most people say that and you never hear from them again. But he immediately set up a meeting with Emma Grede, co-founder of Good American and Skims with the Kardashians. Someone we'd been trying to connect with for a while. He's made four introductions to potential partnerships since we met. It's no surprise where the discipline came from. Liam was a semi-pro football player and the UK's youngest to run a 103km ultra marathon in under 11 hours at age 18. He was regularly up at 4am training. But even though his achievements are impressive for his age, I realized what’s behind it is not anything groundbreaking: He works hard, builds relationships, does what he says he'll do, and follows up consistently. You're probably not following through as much as you think you are. Most people overcomplicate what it takes to succeed. They sit around thinking and say things like, "Let's collaborate." But what are you actually doing? The gap between saying and doing is where most people fail. They know what to do, they’re just not doing it. You can work hard and build great relationships, but it all falls apart without follow-through. If you say you're going to do something, do it. If you commit to reaching out, reach out. That's how you become someone people want to work with. PODCASTHow I Actually Grew To 1M+ Subscribers On YouTubeNoah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, grew his YouTube channel to over 1M subscribers and then deliberately stepped away. We talk candidly about what it took to get there and why hitting the goal changed how he thought about success. Noah breaks down the strategies behind his viral growth and talks about the pressure that came with it. It's a rare look at how he reset his approach to content, business, and life. We cover:
Watch or listen to episode » KIT FEATURE10 new automation templates to grow more on auto-pilotWe just added a bunch of new templates to the Automation Library inside your Kit account. They're designed to handle the repetitive tasks that eat up your time. Pick a template, customize it with your content, and let Kit handle the rest. Whether you're launching a webinar, a self-paced email course, or automatically managing upsell sales pitches, these templates will give you a head start. Browse all 10 new templates » Don't have an account yet? CONFERENCECome to Craft + Commerce this JuneWhen you hang out with creators in person, you build the kind of relationships that can change your business forever. You end up having a conversation in the hallway that turns into a collaboration. Someone you meet at breakfast helps you solve a problem you've been stuck on for months. Craft + Commerce is Kit's conference we host for several days every summer in Boise where you're surrounded by people who get it. The sessions are valuable, but the real magic happens in between—the conversations that only happen when you're in the same room. Last year, we sold out. This year, we're tracking to sell out even sooner. Don't wait. Right now, you can save $150 on your ticket, but that price goes up February 20th. If you've been thinking about coming, register now. Seats are limited. Have a great week! —Nathan |
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, “You don’t own a jet, right?” That question was not directed at me. I was speaking at Main Street Summit recently, a conference for founders running $5 million to $50 million businesses, and I’d ended up in a group of people talking about airplanes. Three of us were pilots. A man walked up who everyone else seemed to know. Halfway through the conversation, one of the pilots turned and asked him about the jet. “No,” he said. “It annoys me how expensive it is, so I go back and forth...
Hey Reader, Have you noticed house parties aren’t really a thing anymore? We’re spending more time at home than we used to and a lot of us don’t have as many hobbies as we did even a few years ago. My theory is that COVID is to blame and we never fully recovered from it. People share posts about this all the time, so it’s clearly something a lot of us are feeling. And I think what a lot of people do is complain that things aren’t the same anymore and then go back to living their lives. But...
Hey Reader, Wouldn’t it be nice to have more hours in a day to grow your business? I often find myself wishing I had more hours, too. But I have to remind myself that working more only gets me so far. If I work extra hours at Kit this week, I might increase the company’s output by 0.01%. That’s not very much at all. Working extra hours is a way to be more productive, but productivity and leverage are not the same thing. A couple months ago, someone on my team asked me what the difference was...