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It's been 4 years since I made my first piece of content.
It was a YouTube video and it got 15 views (half of which were mine).
Since then, I created:
Last year, I finally hit 6-figures & became a full-time creator. But I'm by no means the fastest and I made a ton of mistakes.
So in this newsletter, I want to give you the best lessons I learned so that you can become a full-time creator much faster than me.
Here are the 24 best lessons I learned after 4 years of creating content:
You control your actions. You don't control the results.
If you focus on what you can control, you'll get a good outcome.
If you focus on what you can't control, you'll only end up stressed.
So focus on good inputs to get good outcomes.
Get clear on your end goal — then work backwards like a chess grandmaster.
This ensures that every move leads to the outcome you want. Invest in mentors and courses to speed up the journey.
Set long-term goals for direction. Set short-term goals for action.
Find people who’ve already done what you want to do.
Study the actions, habits, and skills that got them there.
Inputs drive outcomes — so emulate their inputs.
Don't blindly copy, but steal like an artist. Combine your best ideas with the best ideas of others.
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.
- Bruce Lee
Comparison is the thief of joy. You’re comparing your journey with someone else’s highlight.
That's unfair. The only fair comparison is you vs. you.
Outcompete your past self. Compete with your potential self.
Don't let people tell you that you need to niche down at the start. Your niche evolves over time.
Start with your Ikigai:
Build the business you enjoy building and your niche will become clear over time.
On most platforms, content isn't enough to grow.
You need to escape beginner hell first. And you do this by forcing eyes on your content with comments.
Comments → profile clicks → optimized profile → followers.
If your profile is good, you'll convert +10% of people into followers.
Your social media audience is rented. Your email list is completely yours.
So promote your email list every day.
Create a high-quality lead magnet to grow your email list. Then make your newsletter extremely valuable so it's a win-win.
Attention is the currency of the creator economy.
People pay attention with time and energy. So you need to give them a high return on attention (ROA).
You grab attention with high-quality hooks and intros. You keep attention with value, aesthetic writing, and storytelling.
The best content gives people the highest ROA.
Most tasks don’t move the needle. 20% of your actions drive 80% of your results.
But most people focus a lot of time on low leverage activities.
Low-leverage work feels productive, but it’s procrastination in disguise.
Get clear on what moves the needle and actually do it.
It takes mental energy to figure out what to do. That’s why you create a training plan if you go the gym consistently.
Work is the same. If you do something often (like creating content), create a system.
Systems reduce decision fatigue and put you straight into execution mode, which saves valuable mental energy.
If you want my content system for X that helped me gain 18K followers and 70M impressions in 90 days, check out the X Growth System.
Deep work is where you focus on 1 task for 90+ minutes.
Undistracted focus helps you to get into a flow state. You get into flow when the difficulty level matches your skill level.
This is the state in which hard work feels effortless.
In a one-person business, you are the business. So if you optimize yourself, you optimize your business.
That's why it's crucial to focus on getting the basics right.
Garbage in, garbage out.
External motivation isn't sustainable.
If you don't get what you want, you're frustrated. If you get what you want, you'll be afraid to lose it.
When I hit my $10k/mo goal, I didn’t feel joy — just fear of losing it.
Things changed when I focused on work I truly enjoyed.
Don’t let money, followers, or fame distract you from why you do it. Focus on a meaningful mission, not on external metrics.
Purpose matters most, but income is important too.
If you don't have a plan to earn, you'll become a starving artist. So pursue what you love, but also learn to write, market, sell, and build products.
That’s how you turn your passion into a full-time income.
If you want to learn how you can turn your knowledge into digital products that sell on autopilot, check out Productize Knowledge.
If you want to learn how to build a massive audience and how to monetize it to get time freedom, check out the X Business System.
Make your content simple, concise, and to-the-point.
People are busy and have bad attention spans. So you need to keep that in mind.
You don’t want complexity. You want simplicity with depth.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo Da Vinci
If you start on multiple platforms, your growth will suffer.
So master 1 platform first, then post your winners on all platforms.
I recommend starting with Twitter. It's faster to write tweets than to create videos.
So use Twitter to test your ideas, then repurpose your best posts to all other platforms.
You have a limited amount of mental energy. Don’t waste it on people who are trying to bring you down.
They're trying to bring you down to their level because they can't get to yours.
Whoever is trying to bring you down is already below you.
So just ignore them and let your results do the talking.
Map your energy levels for a day. This shows you when you're at your best.
The best way to get a lot done is to do the most important work when you're at your best.
So get clear on the highest leverage tasks and do them at the time of the day when you're at your best.
You don't need to be perfect, you need to be consistent.
If you consistently do the right stuff, you will get what you want.
So don’t think in months, think in years.
Play the long game. It's the only game worth playing.
You can only collect the dots by taking action. You can only connect the dots by reflecting.
If the path is already there, it’s not yours. It’s someone else’s.
Act to collect the dots, reflect to connect the dots.
Client work is fine - if you enjoy it.
But if you want complete time freedom, you need to stop trading time for money.
Digital products let you do that.
They allow you to turn your knowledge into passive income. This helps you to earn with your mind instead of your time.
Again, to learn how you can turn your knowledge into digital products that sell on autopilot, check out Productize Knowledge.
It’s like climbing a mountain.
If your current path doesn’t lead to the top, don’t give up. Change your path.
The goal stays the same, only the route changes. Pivoting isn’t failure — it’s being strategic.
A lot of big creators grew when it was much easier to grow. And a lot of rich people grew fast by leveraging their finances.
This is fair game, but this means that they usually can’t give you the strategies that will work best for you.
So listen to people who are 5 steps ahead of you instead of 50.
I created the EDO system to manage my time.
It's simple but effective.
I hope this article was helpful my friend.
You can sign up to my free newsletter below to get articles like this in your inbox.
And if you want my exact systems and strategies for becoming a full-time creator with freedom, check out the resources below.
Talk soon my friend,
(Ein)Stijn
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My exact system that I used to grow from 0 to 44K 𝕏 followers and built a 6-fig business in 18 months working just 2 hours per day.
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