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.
Make it exist. Perfect it later.
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Hey Reader, How many side projects are you sitting on right now? I'm guessing at least one. Maybe it's a course outline you keep refining, or a newsletter you've rewritten five times. Or is it a product you want to launch but you feel like isn't good enough? Perfectionism is fear disguised as overthinking. You probably pride yourself on doing a good job and caring about quality. But there’s a point at which it’s just procrastination. You’re likely overvaluing perfection when it’s actually more valuable to put something out into the world and get feedback. People don't need you to be perfect. They just want you to ship something they can use. There's this idea of moving fast to learn. When you're figuring out if something works, move fast and get it in front of people. Once you know it works, then slow down to refine and scale. A lot of creators I know get stuck because they’re starting with refinement. They’re trying to work out every detail before they start. But it might be time to ship something first and then focus on improvement. Something that's helped me is asking if what I'm working on is 80% there. If it provides value at 80%, it's probably ready. Because of the Pareto Principle, that last 20% is going to take 80% of the time. And most of your audience isn’t going to notice the difference. What they will notice is if you never ship at all. As we head into the new year, you probably have things you want to launch or create. If you're using some of your time off over the holidays to work on a project, consider picking one thing you've been sitting on. If it's 80% there and it solves a problem, maybe this is the week to ship it. You'll learn more from one imperfect thing out in the world than from ten perfect things on your hard drive. Make it exist. Perfect it later. PODCASTThe Only Short-Form Strategy You Need In 2026Colin Landforce runs Cut30, where he teaches entrepreneurs to build audiences and businesses through short-form video. Short-form content is still one of the best opportunities available to creators right now. Colin walks through real examples of his students who generated more business than they could handle without a single viral video. We break down his framework for making short-form work and get into:
Watch or listen to episode » ARTICLE60+ ways Kit helped you work less and earn more in 2025We spent this year building features that let you focus on creating instead of managing systems. Some of the updates are things you'll notice right away. Others are small fixes that solve annoying weekly problems. But all of these came from listening to what you actually needed. PODCASTThe Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026James Clear doesn't do many podcast interviews, so it's always a treat when he does. He joins Steven Bartlett on Diary Of A CEO for a 2-hour deep dive on the science behind building lasting habits. Whether you've read Atomic Habits or not, this is a good one. Hope you enjoy some rest and time with people you love this 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, Every person I know who's built something remarkable is obsessed with speed. They don't get there by taking the safe, methodical approach. That's how middle managers think, not the people actually building things. Learning at a steady cadence and iterating thoughtfully sounds defensible. But the world is no longer moving slowly enough to justify that approach. Innovation is changing faster than methodical execution can keep up with. The gap between those who move fast and those...
Hey Reader, If you want to understand how someone thinks about money, ask them these three questions. I've used these in presentations, in one-on-one conversations, and on myself. The questions are simple but the answers usually aren’t. Here they are: Question 1: What's your earliest memory related to money? A while back I asked this of my in-laws. We were all hanging out, and my mother-in-law and her older brother started sharing memories from childhood of selling produce door to door. It...
Hey Reader, People who say money doesn't buy happiness… …have never seen the giant smile on the face of someone riding a jet ski. Of course, what they mean is that more money doesn't automatically mean more happiness—which is true. But the lack of money does real damage to people. Not just materially but emotionally. I know this firsthand. I spent a lot of my childhood experiencing what financial stress does to a family. My favorite place in our house growing up was the 4th step from the top...