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.
Mark Manson’s 5 keys for creator business longevity
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Hi Reader, Last week, I had Mark Manson on the podcast. While he’s most known for being the bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, he’s also built a substantial YouTube channel with millions of subscribers. During our podcast together, I asked him about longevity. Specifically, what does it take to make it in the creator economy for 10 or more years? What is the difference between those who endure and those who fizzle out? Here is my summary of his answers: 1. Don’t lose yourselfMark said there’s a careful balance you have to strike; Yes, give your audience what they want. But don’t give them everything they want, because then you lose yourself. He says the loudest engagement comes from the craziest people. If all you do is reflect back to your audience what they want to hear, you’re actually reflecting the crazy minority and ignoring the silent sane majority. The “sane silent majority” is what he says will actually pay the bills and keep you around forever. 2. Don’t scale too fastAnother big mistake he sees is people scaling too fast. When they get a big windfall, they quickly hire a team only to find that as they scale, the challenges and complexity scale as well. Now, you’re managing a team, and you have all this responsibility, and you can find yourself in a place where you don’t actually want to manage people. Or worse: you find that the thing that caused you to blow up was actually just a two-year trend. When the trend that helped you blow up goes away, and your revenue drops by half, that large team now means you’re making zero profit and you often have to fire people. 3. Don’t burn outAfter publishing multiple books and a movie, Mark found himself very burned out. He says a significant part of that was overworking, but also he didn’t like not being the boss. He found himself feeling frustrated working with traditional media to launch his film and said he felt he could have produced something of equal quality on his own for a fourth of the budget and reached more people. Instead, the process took forever, was needlessly expensive, and had to go through a ton of approvals. Mark decided he wanted to be the boss, and made the choice to go all in on YouTube. He said he made an agreement with himself: “You don’t have to do anything that's not fun again.” 4. Don’t ignore future competitionIn the 2010s, it was easy for a blog to stand out. But as the market got saturated, you could no longer start a blog and expect that to automatically mean you got attention. Mark knows people on YouTube who were doing fine 3 years ago, filming talking-head videos in their room and getting a million views. But now, they only get 25k views. He sees his videos get copied all the time (same content, same thumbnail, etc.) and believes the only way to stand out is to step up production value and create what others can’t create. Marks says if what you’re doing is easily replicable, it’s not a long term business, and you’re going to get competed out. You have to find something that’s really hard for other people to do. 5. Don’t forget your newsletterLastly, if you want to endure in the creator economy, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. We’ve seen it again and again: platforms can, and will, change at any time. If you build up a following on one platform, without any diversification, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Many platforms now suppress links off the platform, making it more and more difficult to diversify your audience. But the one place where you own your connection with an audience is over email. That’s why it’s so important to turn your social media followers into email subscribers. Check out the full conversation I had with Mark below… PODCAST17 Years Of Business Advice With Mark Manson (in 47 Mins)In this episode, I sit down with Mark Manson, seasoned creator and bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Whether you’re a pro or just starting out, Mark’s insights on building a sustainable creator business are invaluable. We got into:
Watch or listen to episode » VIDEOKit is here: The inside look at how we brought it to lifeWe just released the final episode of our Rebranding in public docuseries. I’m so glad we decided to document the entire journey. See what went into bringing Kit to life in our app and website, and watch the launch moment… EVENTBuild a $1M Community in 2025What would it mean to you to build a profitable community in 2025? January is the Black Friday/Cyber Monday for paid memberships, online courses, challenges, and events. That’s why Mighty is hosting their first virtual People Magic Summit; to make sure you’re ready to stand out in the most important month for your business. This FREE event kicks off today and runs for two more days (I’m speaking on Thursday). In these 3 days of programming (October 15th–17th), you’ll get concrete, behind-the-scenes insights from top creators bringing you resources, and technology previews that will give you everything you need to have your best January ever. Get the playbook for building a profitable & sustainable community: 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.
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