Walk with Me

I started this newsletter in mid-2021 and I’ve sent out 124 email issues since then, below I’ll share what I’ve learned from this: What Worked and Lessons Learned: What Didn’t Work Plans for the Future Based Upon This Year’s Lessons

Ok, maybe apocalypse is over-dramatic (or is it? ?). So, Elon Musk has completed his deal to acquire Twitter and over the past week he’s already fired senior executives and half of their 7,500 staff. It’s complete chaos in Twitter-land. But, I want to take a step back and share some thoughts & comments on what’s happening

André Chaperon is someone I’ve followed for a number of years. One of the few who don’t regurgitate the same rehashed advice you see all over the Interweb. In a recent email issue, he observed and called out some cringey advice found on Twitter. He blurred out the original author, but I ?recognized it immediately. It was

A lead magnet is still an effective tool to build an audience that is interested in what you have to say. But the market is saturated with lead magnets, what worked in the early days aren’t as effective anymore. There’s a few frameworks I use to develop useful lead magnets, here’s one way to create a

I’ve been in the industry of working with knowledge experts for 23 years now. It’s not always about credentials or acronyms after your name. If you make a living as an expert, then here is a map to becoming an expert in a chosen niche.

If your business model includes a paid membership or gated content, offering a free trial to show how valuable your content is useful. But how long should you offer your free trial? 7 days? 14 days? 30 days? This is the optimal free trial length to get higher conversions.

As Creators, we might be plagued with wanting everything to be perfect. One of the biggest hurdles is thinking you need to be the best. You don’t need to be the best in your niche. McDonald’s is one of the biggest fast food chains in the world. But they certainly don’t have the best burgers.

In 1983, Paul McCartney suggested to Michael Jackson to consider investing part of his wealth in music publishing. Then, in 1985, Michael Jackson did just that. He purchased the rights to the entire Beatles catalog of songs for $47M. Now, Phil Collins and his bandmates from Genesis, sold the rights to their catalog of songs for approximately $30M.

EVERYONE in the creator space tries to convince you that selling a membership, which brings recurring revenue, is the holy grail of business. While having recurring revenue is nice, it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be and it depends on what YOU want from your creator business. For my personal lifestyle, I chose not to

One worry I see with creators is worrying about wasting time on creating content that doesn’t give an ROI (return on investment) – whether it’s money returns or something else. Here’s a 3 ways to get a faster ROI on your first piece of content. This Issue is brought to you with: Who Sponsors Stuff Do

This is a very interesting and useful newsletter case study featuring how Zoe Chew turned her newsletter into a business. I believe the obstacles she shares are very common for many creators struggling to figure out how to start and worried about pivoting too much. I walked away with quite a few notes from her case study. This Issue

Whether you’re looking for new clients or growing your newsletter, crafting and designing well-oiled referral engine is a great strategy for growth. Here’s how you can design an effective referral strategy.

Alex from The Steal Club, shares four simple ways to monetize your expertise. It’s so simple and I’ve seen this done with other Creators & Experts, I’m thinking of launching a handful of these in the near future. Stay tuned.

I’ve been working on improving my video game for Youtube (testing out in a different niche) and these tips from Kevin Shen (via Josh Spector) are super helpful in helping you produce better looking videos.

One principle I teach is the accumulation of income-producing assets. Your original content is an asset that does that (if engineered correctly). Simon Ovens, asks a great question: Are you doing enough to repurpose your content?

Here’s a tip: before you start sending traffic (and/or investing in paid traffic), the BEST exercise you can do for your business is to craft an insatiable, irresistible offer that works. This is an exercise I’ve been working on all summer on various products, trying to strengthen the offer to make it a “no-brainer”. It’ll be

One of the biggest obstacles creators get stuck at is figuring out how to pick a niche to focus on. You know you need to do it, but you might be worried you pick the wrong niche and waste time and effort going after a niche that doesn’t yield results. Here’s how you can narrow

The Lean Startup is a popular book among entrepreneurs, but it’s mostly geared towards SaaS/Software startups. Although, the principles can still be applied to other niches, here’s how you can apply “Lean Creation” to your own creator business.

When it comes to a creator business, you don’t have to be the BEST at what you do. But you do need to be different and not boring. Here’s how to be less boring.

In the last issue, I shared six types of email newsletters you could start. To keep the flow about email newsletters, here’s 7 lessons this creator learned from sending 52 issues of their own newsletter.

If you’ve been following me long enough, you know I LOVE using email newsletters as a business tool and part of the overall business strategy. You don’t have to be a prolific writer or write your own long-form content to produce an email newsletter, I’m pretty sure you could pick one of these six types

While I don’t believe in relying on any one social media platform, but this is interesting to know. I’m sure it’s a question that’s on many of your minds.

As brands and agencies are starting to hire more content creators (or outsource jobs to them), this gives you a nice look into what a typical “work” day for such a creator is like. But… …this trend is something I foresee as something that could easily disappear overnight very quickly. Why? If you solely rely

Writing a book (whether self-published or published via a traditional book publisher) is one of my favourite tools for establishing authority & credibility. But most consultants & knowledge experts I encounter feel writing a book is like climbing K2. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting that book out of your head and out into the

One of the businesses I started years ago was an a marketing agency. And I absolutely hated it. I won’t get into the details of it in this post, but what I realized was: I don’t like working one-on-one with clients I MUCH rather sell products (or productized services) I preferred creating useful content vs

One of the best ways to grow your email newsletter is to run a referral program. Just look at the email heavyweights such as Morning Brew and The Daily Upside. They built their media empires with referral programs. But… …don’t make this mistake, according to Ariyh, you don’t want to offer this type of reward

If you’re a consultant, coach or some kind of knowledge expert – then it’s likely overcoming the Curse of Knowledge problem is a problem occurs regularly. (I know I’ve seen it working with dozens of experts over the years). Here’s how you can overcome the Curse of Knowledge.

Tiny Empires is built on the premise of building a sustainable business run by 1-2 (or at least a small handful) of people without the need for hiring a large team of employees. Now, more than ever, it’s definitely achievable. Look at how Laura Belgray built her $1M one-woman business. Or how Graham Cochrane runs

Meta (the social media icon formerly known as Facebook), has been tweaking both Facebook and Instagram to be more like TikTok. Two of Instagram’s biggest accounts, Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, are not happy about the shift to short-form video away from photo sharing. I don’t blame either. I’m not sure if trying to be

1,000 seems to be the magical number for people to aim for. I guess it’s mostly due to Kevin Kelly’s essay on 1,000 true fans. In any case, whether you get 100, 1,000 or 10K email subscribers, twelve writers share how they got to their first 1K email subscribers.

Media properties and businesses have had a tough time figuring out what kind of monetization business model works. (e.g. newspapers such as NY Times) Relying solely on ad revenue is risky. Smaller media businesses may not have the scale to monetize enough. So what do you do if you sell content for revenue? You might

Youtube shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok…which is the best platform for distributing your short video content and getting discovered by new users? This creator ran a test to answer this. This is what she discovered.

Content platforms are pretty crowded, so how do you get your content seen and shared? If you follow these six principles, it might just increase your chances of having your content shared.

Think you need a big team to have a 7-figure business? The whole objective of Tiny Empires is to share lessons on how to build your own tiny empire WITHOUT the need for a large team (and the. headaches that come with hiring and managing people). So, who better to learn from than the OG

I’m a big fan of the email newsletter (as a business model and communication medium). A lot of email newsletter creators use Substack as their email service, so if you want to learn from one of the better Substack newsletters out there, he’s sharing his tips on how to succeed with your own Substack email

An ingredient for success on Youtube is to have eyeball-grabbing video titles. Here’s four types of Youtube video titles that can help you get attention for your videos (with examples).

Twitter has been one of my favourite social media channels in the last couple of years. There’s advantages & disadvantages to Twitter’s character limit and then you have the popularity of Twitter threads (although, I’ve noticed a less engagement/effectiveness these days since so many people are trying to write long Twitter threads). So, enter a

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know TikTok is channel you can’t ignore for getting your content discovered. But… …before you dive into TikTok (if you haven’t already or not seeing the results you want), you should check this out to get better results from TikTok.

If you’re stuck on ad creatives to use for your Youtube campaigns, here’s three proven types of ads that work.

The online course market is super-saturated these days. If you’re a course creator, what can you do to stand out from all this noise? Here’s three strategies to build credibility for your course in an ocean of courses.

I’m a firm believer in organic traffic being a nice to have versus being solely reliant on organic traffic. So, if you’re heavily reliant on organic social media traffic, you should read this.

I’m still quite high on Youtube as a content distribution/discovery channel. While I’m still working on my Youtube game, if you’re thinking about adding Youtube to your mix (or already doing so), Youtube is relying on creators like you for their growth strategy.

If your business is B2B, you’d naturally think of LinkedIn as a platform to spend time on. But is it worth it? If you’re torn about whether LinkedIn is right for you (or any other social media platform), have a look at this.

Creating content consistently and at scale is possible with tools we have at our disposable these days. Even as solo or small team businesses, having a content creation system is key. Here’s how.

If you feel like you’ve got a book inside you waiting to be shared with the world but afraid to, watch this.

If you’re a newsletter creator or email newsletters are a part of your business model, these six niches are ones that make money.

Everyone is writing online these days. While not everyone is built to be a writer, here’s some tips from Amazon to improve your writing.

The Internet and platforms like Youtube, TikTok, Twitch, etc has evened the playing field in many ways for Creators of any size to succeed. You don’t have to be a Kardashian to sign brand deals or you don’t need a massive following to sell products. In fact, many brands may be looking for a Creator

Inflation has arrived and there’s worries of the “R” word (recession). If your business model includes some kind of subscription/membership/recurring revenue model to access content, you might see customers churning as they look to cut expenses (Netflix knows…). Here’s some actions to take to keep your subscription revenue going in a tough economy.