Episode #

006

The #1 way creators fail

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The HeyCreator Show is presented by Riverside —⁠ ⁠get 15% off a new subscription by using code HEYCREATOR at checkout.⁠⁠

In today’s episode of The HeyCreator Show, Matt Ragland (⁠⁠@mattragland⁠⁠) and Nat Eliason (⁠@nateliason⁠) jam about what it actually takes to be a creator. Topics include Nat’s take on niching down, the main ways creators become replaceable, choosing between money and passion, why consistency alone isn’t enough, and much more.

(3:18) — Nat’s article ⁠Be Yourself, Not a Niche⁠

(7:23) — The #1 way creators fail

(16:10) — Nat’s article ⁠When the Money’s Just Too Damn Good⁠

(25:28) — Do you care enough to make your content great?

(32:25) — The illusion that success comes quickly as a creator

(40:17) — Balancing ambition, productivity, and parenting

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Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt Ragland: HeyCreators. I want to tell you about the sponsor of today’s show and it is Riverside FM. Now I love using Riverside for the HeyCreator podcast, but we use it at HeyCreator for many other things, including client interviews and community calls. At times it is. It is the best tool that I have found for recording podcast episodes, either by myself here with Tim or with our guests.

[00:00:27] There are several reasons that we chose Riverside to be the tool of choice for the HeyCreator podcast, but let me give you a few of my favorites. The very first one is the ease of use and the quality of the audio. All I have to do is send a link to the guest and they can join. There’s no additional software for them to download or anything special for them to do.

[00:00:47] It is so easy. The other big thing that I love about Riverside is how it records all of the audio and video locally and individually per guest. What that means is if someone drops a connection, it doesn’t affect anyone else’s feed. It also means that if someone has some background noise going on or something that could affect other people on other recording platforms.

[00:01:10] Riverside isolates all of those tracks, which makes it really easy to clean up in post production. Another great feature that Riverside has come out with recently is their AI clip generator. This makes it so much faster and easier to get those short form vertical videos from the best moments of the Haker series.

[00:01:26] I highly recommend using Riverside FM for your podcast. And to get a special rate, all you have to do is go to riverside. fm and use the coupon code. Hey, creator. That’s one word, HeyCreator for 15 percent off any Riverside plan.

[00:01:41] HeyCreator, Matt here, and I’m excited to introduce you to one of my oldest friends on the internet. His name is Nat Eliason, and he is a writer, a podcaster, an internet creator. He is someone that I really look up to and have followed for a really long time. We actually used to work together at Sumo, uh, many moons ago, but I wanted to bring Nat on because he has written some of my favorite internet pieces.

[00:02:09] And one of them is called, Be yourself, not a niche, because we talk a lot on the show about why it’s so important to niche down. But I think Nat offers a really unique alternative, especially when it comes to being comfortable playing the long game and being yourself as a creator. He says that the only thing that you can do to fail as a creator on the internet is to quit.

[00:02:30] And so we dive into what that means and how it can play out in your own creative business. The other way that we talk about this is being intentional about the choices that you make for content, courses, the type of products that you have for your business, because oftentimes you can find yourself going down a path that you didn’t really intend to just because you got some early viral videos, or you had some interest from a creator that.

[00:02:55] Was like bigger than you. And you’re like, well, I have to keep doing what this person said I was really good at instead of being intentional, thinking about what do I want to do? What are the decisions that I want to make? What is the type of business that’s going to work the best for me?

[00:03:18] Yeah. Something that I’ve always admired about you, I think, I think I’ve told you this, but if not, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you publicly, but one of the things that I’ve always really admired about you and related to this, like, Story and sharing experiences is that you’ve always been someone who is like.

[00:03:35] willing to follow the thing that you’re interested in, the thing that resonates and feels most true to you at, at the time, and still doing it in a way that can resonate with a wider audience. Cause I can see the article that I’m thinking about that I’ve read several times is be yourself, not a niche.

[00:03:56] It’s one of my all time favorite internet articles. I don’t know how long ago you wrote it, but, I keep, I keep coming back to it, especially when like I’m having some of those moments. Like, should I talk a little bit more about this thing that like I have more interest in and maybe there’s some interest in, but like a lot of times in creator content, creator businesses specifically, we like tell people like, Hey, you should, you should be a niche.

[00:04:23] You got to plant your flag somewhere. So people know how to like define you, how to like recommend you. And I think. In a lot of ways, there is truth to that, but then I also think about, uh, Rob Hardy also talked about this, I think he called it, I think he wrote an article a couple years ago called The Perils of Nitching Down, um, that I thought was really interesting, so I’d love to hear, like, how you think about, like, Or have honestly, like the courage to say like, I’m going to be myself, not a niche.

[00:04:53] And I’m going to follow like these different pathways. Um, because I think it’s, it’s really interesting and inspired us, inspiring to like, see how you’ve done that. And we’ve known each other for eight, eight, nine years now. You’re one of my, you’re one of my oldest internet friends, which is another reason I wanted to have you on.

[00:05:09] So I think it’s nine

[00:05:10] Nat Eliason: years. Yeah. Well, for saying that. Um, you know, that, that, that means a lot. That’s like one of my. I don’t know, this sounds weird, but like favorite types of compliments, I guess. Right? Like, I, the one where people tell you did an awesome thing. I, well, that, that, that an article that I wrote resonated in a useful way.

[00:05:30] Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Cause I’m, I’m sure, I’m sure you know this too. Sometimes you just fire stuff off and have no idea if it’s going to matter to anyone.

[00:05:39] Matt Ragland: When you wrote that, cause you, you just kind of mentioned like sometimes you just fire stuff off. And I think that’s kind of the, one of the pros and cons of the, of the others, like you can put so much time into something and it doesn’t hit the way that you want.

[00:05:49] And then you just like fire something off in an hour and it goes, it goes viral. Yeah. Um, Did you feel like when you were writing Be Yourself not a Niche, that it was going to be something that people would refer back to? Or am I more of an outlier in that being one, being one of the faves?

[00:06:07] Nat Eliason: I have no idea, honestly.

[00:06:09] ’cause I wrote it three years ago at this point, so it, I don’t remember what my Headspace was at the time, but my assumption was probably like I’ve, I’ve broadly found that articles tend to fall into one of two categories where they either. Have this mass appeal that’s kind of short lived where it can go viral and draw a ton of people into your sphere and resonate with people, but then ultimately be like somewhat forgettable.

[00:06:36] And so I’ve certainly had those posts and there are other posts that do much less well in the short term, but strike some kind of nerve where people do come back to them and, you know, Review them in the future. And this is definitely an article. And I think a lot of people will resonate with this at more than half of the things that I’m writing are just reminders to myself.

[00:06:59] And this is something that I’ve perpetually struggled with, which is the extent to which you’re obligated to narrow your focus so that, recommendable versus. Stay broad enough to remain interested in the topic, um, or to remain interested in what you’re doing, right? Because like the, the number one way you fail at.

[00:07:27] This game of being an internet person, whatever is by getting bored and quitting, right? Like that, that’s the main way that you fail more than picking the wrong niche or choosing the wrong platform or whatever, right? Like if you stop, then you fail. So in some ways you have to do whatever is going to let you keep going and.

[00:07:50] You know, I had, I had at that point and still largely to this point, not found any one niche that was interesting enough to stay in forever. Right. I, you know, I spent a lot of time in SEO. I spent a decent amount of time in like men’s sexual health. I spent a decent amount of time in crypto. Uh, and now a lot of my articles are like, if anything, like philosophical essays and.

[00:08:18] It, it’s just sort of always been what I feel like writing. And I, I, the first couple of times it was scary in the sense of, you know, Oh, if I stopped talking about this thing, will anybody still be interested? And you certainly do lose some of your audience, but I think the people who stay on, you actually develop a deeper relationship with as a counterexample to that, think about all of the like Twitter thread boys who were building.

[00:08:43] 150, 000 follower audiences over six months by just juicing the Twitter algorithm with these threads.

[00:08:49] Matt Ragland: Yeah. Cause you kind of wrote this in at the height of the Twitter guy craze, like mid, mid, yeah, it was starting

[00:08:55] Nat Eliason: to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Like if, if that’s what you’re doing, then you’re completely replaceable.

[00:09:02] Like you’re a totally forgettable creator because as soon as you get slightly off your game, the next thread person who can regurgitate Wikipedia articles will replace you. And cause you’re, you’re, you are like the, the more niched down you are, the more kind of like boring and replaceable you are too, so I think there’s this trade off between speed of audience building and longevity.

[00:09:26] And like, I’m, I’m fortunate that I’ve been doing this for 10 years now. And I, I don’t have the biggest email list by far. You know, I have 45, 000 people or something, but those people will be interested in these like pretty personal, thoughtful reflection type essays. They’re not expecting a thousand word article on, you know, how to make money online or something.

[00:09:54] And in that sense, I’m sort of like irreplaceable because nobody else can write those kinds of pieces. Um, and so the audience is like extremely focused in that sense. So yeah, I, I guess it is part of it comes down to goals too. Like if you want to make a lot of money really quickly, then. Definitely don’t be yourself, like,

[00:10:20] unless yourself is like a really hot person who can, you know, doing all these things when

[00:10:26] Matt Ragland: I’ve, when I’ve given people some of this. Advice in the past and I was like is your goal to build a business as quickly as possible or to establish something that people Can give you money for well They have to be able to like put a label on you and say like well matt will help me With this and i’ve done that for newsletters.

[00:10:45] I’ve done that for i’m still doing it for newsletters in a lot of ways and They have to be able to do that so they can quickly identify and people can quickly refer you um And that is, that is the way to make more money quickly. But the thing that you brought up both in both here and in the post is like this thought of like, are we here for the long run or are we here for a immediate, immediate content or immediate like moneymaking?

[00:11:14] And obviously there’s, there’s nothing wrong with some immediate money, moneymaking. But if we’re thinking about this from the big, the big picture perspective and you saying like, Hey, the only way you really fail in this is to stop and just like quit. If that’s the case, then I really, I really liked the way that you set it.

[00:11:33] What you lose in speed, you gain in durability and that the audience over time becomes someone becomes, becomes a group that you can do these things together. I have a, visual that I think of that’s kind of like an hourglass that early on you’ll be talking about a lot of the things that like just seeing what hits and eventually for most people you do fall into and maybe you go through it a couple of times but you get into that narrow middle that becomes the niche that you’re going to like establish the business or the brand on.

[00:12:02] Uh, but if it’s more of a, uh, Personal brand or something that you want to, like, be more durable on, and that is ultimately just being yourself. Those people who liked you because they, like, say they found me for productivity stuff, or bullet journaling, or, like, for you, like, the book notes that you did, uh, a while ago, or men’s sexual health, or crypto.

[00:12:24] If you stick with it and you’re talking about things that interest you, the hourglass starts to widen again. You’re like, I can talk about whatever I want. I bet everyone can think of a creator that at this point, uh, they are just interested in whatever they have to do. You can also think about it from a perspective, maybe like a more mainstream perspective of think of a musician that you really like.

[00:12:47] One of my favorite bands of the last 10 years probably is Mumford and Sons. And I’ve been listening to them for. 10 10 plus years I guess at this point and at this point I just want them to keep making music like would I prefer that they were making like 2010 era folk americana like Kind of, kind of rock.

[00:13:05] Yes. That’s my, that’s my favorite type of Mumford and Sons music. But if they want to make more of a rock heavy album, great. If they want to make more of a poppy album, great. I just want them to keep making music. Like they’re at the bottom of the hourglass where it’s just like, Hey, you, I just want you guys to keep doing something.

[00:13:20] Just don’t, just don’t quit. Make whatever music you want. I just want to keep hearing from you for the rest of my life.

[00:13:25] Nat Eliason: Well, and sometimes by broadening out of the, And if you start in, you discover what your true niche is in the sense of, you know, in the beginning I thought it was SEO. And then I started getting into all these other topics and I eventually realized that really part of what I’m good at is taking these.

[00:13:46] arcane, kind of opaque, often technical fields and providing the explanations both of like how to engage with them and what makes them exciting that can help get like quote unquote normies more excited about them or get through like the first step of the journey of figuring out like what’s going on there.

[00:14:09] Matt Ragland: Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Were you able to, so this is interesting because of what you’re doing with the It was growth machine, right? Is that the name of your kind of, so with what you were doing on SEO and you’re identifying some of the things, was it because you were like diving into these topics and were you seeing like other keyword searches or things that were like, Hey, like, People seeking to try to understand a thing that you knew you could explain.

[00:14:32] Is that kind of like how, or was it just through your kind of natural research and things that you were doing? I did that for

[00:14:38] Nat Eliason: a little bit early on with my blog, but I eventually hit the point where I realized that SEO is great for selling things, but it’s not great for building an audience because usually people who are searching.

[00:14:50] For a question on Google or not looking for a person to follow. They’re just looking for a resolution to their problem. And so it’s a great skill in that sense, but I didn’t, I never found it great for building an audience per se.

[00:15:08] Matt Ragland: When I think about the times in my life, when I’ve felt the most inspired, productive, and motivated, there are all times in my life when I’ve been around a group of people on the same path as me. These communities gave me the support, encouragement, and motivation that I needed to stay on the path and be accountable for the goals that I set.

[00:15:25] Especially when I hit a rough patch, like if a launch didn’t go very well, or if there was a piece of content that I worked really hard on and it just didn’t really pan out the way that I wanted it to. This is why we started the HeyCreator community. A place for you to connect with like minded creators, follow a proven roadmap for success, and get the support you need to build your creator business.

[00:15:42] And look, the people are the most important part of any community, but it’s more than just the people. It’s more than just the connection that you make, even though that is critical. You also get step by step training and direction from our team of creative experts. Plan start at just 39 per month with no long term commitments.

[00:16:02] Go to heycreator. com slash community to learn more and sign up for your first month.

[00:16:11] Another thing that I think is really like this all kind of coalesces and integrates together around creators is like another one of your articles that I really liked was when the money’s too damn good and. I actually want to think about or talk about like several steps before that. And it kind of is related to the niche.

[00:16:31] The niche question as well is when you’re at the point and of even just building the audience and say like you are establishing a niche and you have momentum around the topic and you’re building a business, you have some products, if there’s a thing that like, say you’re trying out three or four different topics just to see what’s going to work and then one really starts to go making.

[00:16:53] Intentional decisions and establishing processes around deciding is this really what I want to dedicate three, five, ten years to? Like, I kind of had that with the bullet journal stuff where it was like, oh, well, my, my YouTube channel is growing because of bullet journaling. Like, you could have made the same decision around like, well, I’m just going to be Rome research guy or I’m going to be, you know, um, you know, Men’s sexual health guy being really clear about what you want to get out of a topic because even before Even before the money’s too damn good like the audience is just too damn big Yeah that for you to say no to it.

[00:17:32] I had I have a couple other examples, but like even coming back from The moment where you realize, well, I can’t, I don’t really want to do this anymore, but I have to keep doing it because the money’s just too damn good. Like, what is, what is that whole process like of even like pulling back to the early stages and trying to like recognize that in the moment?

[00:17:50] Nat Eliason: It’s a good question. I’m not sure if it’s possible, right? Or this is something I’ve started to believe more strongly is that a lot of these stories and lessons are only helpful after you’ve gone through some sort of fall like that yourself. You, you kind of can’t fully digest the lesson until you’ve had the experience that lines up with it.

[00:18:11] But I do think that people in the beginning, you kind of just need to try to get something to work, right. To build the confidence that you are capable enough to make things happen. But then once you have, you might hit this point where you can say like, okay, I’ve built some of these skills. Now I can take them and try to apply them.

[00:18:29] In this other area that I do care more about, but maybe didn’t want to start in, or I can keep going on this and optimize for money instead of fulfillment. Um, for a certain period of time. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing to do. Yeah. Sometimes you need to,

[00:18:46] Matt Ragland: right? Right. Like, like, Hey, I can turn this thing on and go make some money.

[00:18:50] This is great.

[00:18:50] Nat Eliason: Yeah. And if you’ve got, you know, debt or you’ve kids, or, you know, if you need to make money, like go make money. Right. I it’s, it’s where it becomes a problem. I think is people. Go past that point and never wonder if they have or haven’t. And it’s hard to put in the roadblocks to like wake yourself up when you’ve gotten into like that space.

[00:19:17] Right. It’s like, uh, you know, if, if, if you’re making minimum wage and you’re working three jobs and you never see your kids, like they’ll respect you for it. Right. Because they know that you’re working as hard as possible to keep food on the table and keep the rent paid and whatnot. But if you’re making millions of dollars a year and not seeing your kids, like they know that you’re choosing not to see them, like they, on some level, they will recognize that because it’s, you’re not starving, right?

[00:19:46] If you, if you scale back on work, then what you don’t get to fly first class as much or something. Um, there’s, there’s a line there where it goes from, I need to do this to, I think I want to do this and you have to figure out how to find that line for yourself. And I’m not sure there, there is a strict way to do it, but you don’t want to end up in the situation where you’ve put another five or 10 years into this path.

[00:20:15] And then you look back and say like, well, I should have quit to go do this other thing way sooner.

[00:20:20] Matt Ragland: I’m glad you brought up examples where, and it’s really interesting to think about, like. The person who’s working two jobs to provide, and they don’t get to see their kids very much, but the kids respect them.

[00:20:32] Whereas, kid also is not seeing you very much, but you’re making millions of dollars, and they know there’s not that, there’s not as much respect there. Because they, they know, maybe not, maybe they can’t describe it in those, in those words. And it makes me think about, especially in this space that we’re in for creators, where you are developing those skills, you have ways to apply them in different businesses, or maybe just at a different pace.

[00:21:00] Like you could do it in a different way that When you can look back and be like, Oh, I could have been, I could have been doing something differently, or I could have been doing the same thing differently. If I had just made other choices. And the other, the other thing that you brought up is like, it is hard to do early on the first time or the first couple of times, just like, Hey, I have to prove to myself that I can do this.

[00:21:24] And so like, if you’re in a state, if you’re listening to this and you’re in a stage where like, I’m just proving to myself, like for me, I was like, I was just proving to myself, like I can get 10, 000 YouTube subscribers and then I can get a hundred thousand or I can get, you know, 10, 000 email subscribers.

[00:21:39] Like I can do, I can do those things. Um, I can do them for myself. I can do them for clients. But then like the other, the other like thing that it made me think about in terms of like putting those guardrails up is in the past when I was pretty early on, if I had something that hit pretty well, especially like two or three times, it’d be like, Oh, well this is, this is probably the next thing that I should do because like I’m getting momentum.

[00:22:05] Like people want to hire me. I, they’re asking me if I have a course, is there like an ebook? What can, you know, is there newsletter they can sponsor and be like, I, there will be by the end of this week. I can tell you that much. And like one example now that I’m like playing so much more slowly is like, if I post something about being a dad on, on Twitter, like my most popular posts have been about fatherhood and you know, like five years ago, even maybe more like three years ago, if I had seen like the majority of the energy or momentum that I was getting the audience that I was building around a separate topic.

[00:22:48] I’d probably go like really hard on that thing and even think about like, well, I’ll just, I’ll just change everything about what I’m doing to like follow that attention. And now I’m like, Hey, that’s great. That’s cool. I like have like a little side, side newsletter because I have those, I have those skills.

[00:23:06] And I’m like, okay, I know you. That I should try and capture as much of this as possible. But I’m not going into it for really the first time ever. I’m seeing something that I have momentum on, but I am actively like intentionally choosing not to make it even like a side thing really, but making it something where it’s like, Hey, if I can like gather some dads around, that’ll, that’ll be cool.

[00:23:29] And maybe this is something in three to five years that becomes. More of a focus, but until then, like, I’m not like killing myself or making drastic, like wholesale changes to the business or to my life based on a few tweets that did really well. And I’ve done that before.

[00:23:46] Nat Eliason: I, Hey, that that’s growth, man. I, I, I know what you mean.

[00:23:51] I like, you know, I’ve, I’ve got a couple of things like that too, where there’s this occasional pull of, Oh, I should try to. Make a content business out of this, or I should try to make a brand out of this whatnot. But I, the thing that I have realized is for me, writing is the thing. You know, it’s the only thing that I want to make money from.

[00:24:11] I don’t really want to focus on anything else as a source of income, which is, which is hard and scary because I do have these other things that I could, you know, like leaving crypto was the hardest one, right? Because I, I knew that I could stay in crypto. I could, you know, join a fund or join some teams or whatnot.

[00:24:28] And the potential money would be insane, but it was just not. It didn’t make me feel good. And over 30 years, that wasn’t the thing that I wanted to get good at. It’s like the thing that I wanted to get good at was writing. And so I had to pretty deliberately quit just to focus on the writing. And now whenever I have those little.

[00:24:49] Inklings, right? Oh, I should do this or I should talk about this thing or whatnot. It, it, to me, I always, I see it now, not as opportunities, but as distractions, right? It’s like, Oh, those, those are, those are the ways that high performing people procrastinate because you, you’re in like a. A small plateau of the main thing.

[00:25:10] You’re not getting that dopamine rush of quick wins or whatever. So you seek it out by starting something new, but then, you know, you don’t want to hit the end of a year and have 12 projects at 10 percent when you could have had one that’s at a hundred percent.

[00:25:25] Matt Ragland: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot that I wanted to ask you about.

[00:25:28] I didn’t really prep you on, but how do you think about now that we’ve been this, uh, creator game for a while and like, we know how to do. A lot of the things, uh, when it comes to audience monetization, um, you know, revenue business building. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot is making the jump from just showing that you can do the work from being consistent, from making good things to making something that is.

[00:25:59] Really great to increasing your quality level. Say from like that, Hey, this is 80 percent of what I want it to be, I guess, or this is a hundred percent of what I’m capable of right now. But I know I could go further. Like I know that I could make YouTube videos better than I’m making them right now. I know that like one of the things Tim, uh, producer co host, and I talk about it all is like, what are a couple of things of that we can do with the podcast to make it like 10 percent better than most of the like, hit record interview podcasts that are out there.

[00:26:33] And so I’m thinking about like, once you’ve established yourself as like, as a reliable kind of like expert level person feeling more freed by that, like level of accomplishment to try and go up a level rather than feel like. Complacent be like, Hey, you know, whatever, I’ll throw some stuff out and people are going to like it because I’m, I’m, I’m a person in this field.

[00:26:52] What do you think about going like to, to that next level? Cause I found it really hard in, in YouTube to make that happen.

[00:27:01] Nat Eliason: I feel like the first question is, do you care enough about the thing to make those leaps? And this is a really helpful question for me. And this is why I stopped doing much YouTube or short form videos or podcasts or any of that stuff.

[00:27:14] I’ve, you know, Made forays into it multiple times. And I kind of blew up on Instagram and TikTok over the last year doing short form videos, which was fun, but I started to ask myself, okay, you know, how do I make this better? How do I take this to the next level? And I realized I didn’t care. It didn’t, it didn’t really matter to me.

[00:27:32] It was a means to an end. And I think that once upon a time, you could play these content games as a means to an end and you could still do well. And I think those days are past. Like, I think that the competition is so fierce and people are so invested in getting that YouTube ad revenue, like building that big Spotify podcast, whatever, that, you know, If you don’t deeply care about making your craft better and better and better, you just won’t win long term like consistency isn’t really enough.

[00:28:12] And so I do think that’s like a big question. Everybody has to ask with these things. It’s like, you know, if they want, if you wanted, you know, Do better at them. You do really have to say like, okay. Well, do I actually want to become? Insanely great at this or do I just want to make a lot of money or do I just want to be famous or like These other things and for me, I mean I I get legitimate joy out of working on getting better at writing And you know, I read tons of writing books.

[00:28:39] I like study Books to try to figure out what’s different between their writing and my writing so I can incorporate that Back into mine like when I read I’m 50 percent reading for how the book has been written as for what’s in it, right? It’s like I just can’t turn that part of my brain off It’s just endlessly fascinating to me and so that’s kind of like the ultimate sign that this is the thing that I Should be doing because I don’t feel that way about anything else really.

[00:29:08] Um, and I think people just have to be honest with themselves, right? It’s like, I mean, trying to get into any of these games, really YouTube or building a podcast or being a writer or any of it, like you’ve got to really like it. Because it’s an awful way to make money. It’s an awful, like type of business to start.

[00:29:29] Like it’s hard and your odds of success are extremely low.

[00:29:33] Matt Ragland: Yeah. For all that we talk about and all that gets promoted for like, you know, easy internet money, here I am with the, with the air quotes is like, I mentioned my, my college buddies, we were just like, you know, we went on a golf trip earlier this month and like, I’m very much like just very mid.

[00:29:50] Um, All of them, when it comes to like over like overall financial success, if we want to like make that, uh, comparison, because like you got guys who are just like incredible, incredible salesmen at, uh, tech companies, they are like running, you know, running big teams. They are like developing, you know, developing and building real estate.

[00:30:13] They’re in all kinds of different businesses and like, yeah, they, Are also busy. Sure. But you know, they’re not wondering like, Hey, what, what am I going to throw to, to the Twitter feed, uh, tomorrow? Like they’re not, they’re not bringing their computer on the flight over so they can schedule the newsletter for Saturday.

[00:30:31] Nat Eliason: Yeah. I mean, if you join a company in almost any role and you work really hard in that role in 10 years, you’ll almost certainly. Be making a good amount more money than when you started just through promotions and job switches and whatnot. If you start writing or start a podcast you might still be making nothing in 10 years.

[00:30:57] Like, there’s, there’s, yeah, there’s no like ladder that you get to climb necessarily. Right. It’s, it’s very bimodal and you know, most people aren’t going to make it. So it’s, you’ve really got to enjoy it. It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s really got to be rewarding, because if it’s not rewarding, you’ll never put in the work that it will require to become great.

[00:31:19] Matt Ragland: HeyCreator, I have a secret weapon that I want to tell you about. But first, I want to tell you how I use it. You know those awesome HeyCreator newsletters that go out once or twice per week that sign off from me, Matt Ragland? Well, I’m not writing those, not directly anyway, because every newsletter is researched, written, edited, and uploaded to ConvertKit by our automatic evergreen team at HeyCreator.

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[00:32:26] Yeah. I think it’s also important to like remind people or tell people like, Hey, if you’re pretty early on this, like take as much, take as much time as you need to figure it out. Like I never. I didn’t quit my job at Podia until, like, I just couldn’t stand not doing anything else. And I really enjoyed being there, and I enjoyed being at ConvertKit.

[00:32:53] It really came down to almost like an attention and time allocation question of like, okay I’m putting enough time into my into my own business and i’m seeing some success there and that was like that was clear I had made enough money to like set aside a runway for myself and it was like, okay It’s coming to a point where I either have to spend less time at work, which isn’t really an option when they’re paying you a salary to be there, uh, less time on this, on the side hustle, which is what it was at the time, uh, less time with my family, which I was already, you know, working some time over each weekend.

[00:33:29] So I was already like lowering that amount of time with them or like spend less time On myself, like with workouts, like don’t, don’t work out anymore. It just work instead. And that, that was never really an option for me either. So that is what it came down to. But I worked very intentionally on like those projects and that business for about two, almost three years before, before I quit.

[00:33:53] And even then it was just a question of, it was a realization. It’s like, I need to turn down the dial on one of these things. And I don’t want it to be anything else except the work, the job that I was at at the time, and that was the final, the final decision for me.

[00:34:09] Nat Eliason: Yeah, and I think the really important piece in there is that it was two to three years of working on it before you were able to make that decision.

[00:34:17] There’s definitely this illusion of things happening quickly. Because you hear, you hear the one case study or you, you see the Twitter thread about somebody blowing up overnight. And yeah,

[00:34:28] Matt Ragland: I woke up with 50, 000 in my PayPal and then that’s how I knew. I was like, Oh, really? That’s how you knew. It

[00:34:38] Nat Eliason: almost never happens that way.

[00:34:40] And when it does, it’s usually a little bit of a bait and switch, right? Like, you know, I, I posted an article about how I grew my tick talk from zero to 55, 000 followers in six weeks. And, you know, somebody might see that and go, Oh my God, like I can go do that too, and, you know, not, not to sound too like full of myself or whatever, but like, you probably can’t, Right.

[00:35:02] It’s like I’ve been doing the growth, hacky, whatever stuff for 10 years on all these platforms. Like, I haven’t really worked before

[00:35:10] Matt Ragland: the work. Exactly.

[00:35:11] Nat Eliason: Exactly. Like, you know, if you’re coming into it blind, just following one person’s case study, it’s almost certainly not going to work for you. And that’s sort of why I don’t talk about that stuff much anymore.

[00:35:23] Why I don’t talk about the, like, here’s how I grew X or how I did X, Y, Z, because it’s, it’s always, there’s always some other very important ephemeral elements that don’t fit into listicles. And, you know, it’s like, there’s, there’s this, the like, Intuitive sixth sense you develop when you spend long enough in an industry that’s really essential to Perform well in it and you just can’t learn that by reading articles about it You’ve got to just do it for a long time

[00:35:51] Matt Ragland: yeah, it’s like uh so one of the one of the books that It makes me think of I heard about from you and tiago is uh how to take smart notes and one of the Parts of that book that’s always stood out to me and I bring it up several times even though it’s not like about note taking which is about what the book is about is he talks about the development of expertise through experience and that where he talks about like uses the visual of the bike and says Like riding a bicycle, one can only be, one can only learn how to do it by doing it.

[00:36:23] You can’t just say like, all right, I’ve read, I’ve read enough stuff and now I’m an expert. You have to like go out and do the thing and practice it. And it is that like 10 years of work before you spend 10 weeks on TikTok and blow up that allows you to build the level of expertise to make that happen.

[00:36:39] Or even, it still may not happen, but just like, The capability for it to happen a little bit more reliably.

[00:36:46] Nat Eliason: Yeah. And that’s a big trap people fall into in general is just doing too much research and too much reading. You kind of just got to go try the thing for a while. And the, the reading is helpful as you go, not before you start.

[00:36:56] Matt Ragland: Yeah, I know. Ali Abdaal talks about this a lot of like, make, make a hundred shitty videos. Like just go ahead and just go ahead and get that out of the way. I call it the, the hundred, the hundred rep rule. And I’ve brought this up on the show before, but I always think about how, um, MKBHD when he posted his 100th video on YouTube, you know, he’s sitting at like his parents, his parents kitchen table, like talking about some new Microsoft software release.

[00:37:21] And he’s like, Hey guys, 100th video. This is a really cool milestone for me. Let me see how many subscribers I have. 76. That’s so cool. Now he has, I think, 18 million and has done like 2000 videos. And, you know, obviously I, he’s a good example of someone who has like made that leap from I’m going to be consistent to, I’m going to be insanely great at the quality and the thing, the things that I do.

[00:37:46] Um, yeah.

[00:37:47] Nat Eliason: Most people don’t have that patience to do something in the dark for years and hope that it turns into something eventually. I, I actually feel as though you and I, and, you know, MKBHD and some of these other people who have been in this world, I mean, obviously we’re on a completely different level from him, but, uh, those of us who grew up with the earlier versions of these networks are kind of blessed with a little bit more patience for these things because when I got started in the internet marketing world, it was really just like SEO and maybe Facebook pages.

[00:38:21] And you knew it was going to be a year or two before your site was fully indexed and showing up in search results. And the, there was a 0 percent chance of you taking off immediately. Maybe if you got a viral Reddit post, but that was super unlikely, like it just didn’t happen. All right. So if you wanted to start building an audience, you were looking at minimum two to three years to start to get traction.

[00:38:48] And that’s just not the case anymore. You know, you could blow up in a week if you hit the algos. Right. And that possibility, I think really screws with people’s heads. Because as long as it’s possible, there’s a question of, well, why hasn’t it happened yet?

[00:39:03] Matt Ragland: Yeah. Why hasn’t it happened? It also like, what if in those early, going back to something else we talked about, what about in those early days, if you do hit the algo within your first month and you’ve just like thrown out this video, you’re like, yeah, I’m just going to try this thing and that’s what goes and people are calling you and people are like asking for more.

[00:39:19] It’s like, well, I guess the next two to three years of my life are talking about this thing that I just like thought of in the shower, whether or not that is what I actually want to do. This is what I’m supposed to do, right? Audience

[00:39:31] Nat Eliason: capture is a real problem. It’s so easy to get seduced by it where you just, what your audience resonates most with, you start leaning more and more towards, I think, uh, you know, Michael Easter talked about this in scarcity brain about how they did some big study of politicians on Twitter.

[00:39:50] And they found that once they started posting some negative tweets, those negative tweets got more engagement. And then their percentage of negative tweets increased over time. And so there was kind of this reward loop for being negative on Twitter that was making people more and more negative. And, you know, you see versions of that happen all over social media.

[00:40:12] Matt Ragland: One more, uh, question that. Is the one that like, how do you balance ambition, productivity, parenting? Like,

[00:40:19] Nat Eliason: yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s something that I always get to think about a lot. I mean, when, when my first daughter was born, it was in the middle of the crypto mania, as well as the real estate mania.

[00:40:32] So my wife goes, that’s a realtor and in Austin, in Austin. Yeah. And everybody was moving here and she was doing, she still is doing, she was doing luxury real estate. And so all of these people who were just flush with tech cash were coming in and buying houses and just, she was working constantly. I was working constantly on all the crypto stuff.

[00:40:53] And, you know, we just, we were not nearly as present as I think we would have really, really liked to be. And we didn’t realize it until a few months later. And it really kind of like, um, ate us up. Afterwards. And it, you know, it prompted a lot of reflection and we were fortunate that both of our jobs basically like stopped last year.

[00:41:15] Um, because you know, I, I had stopped doing crypto stuff. The real estate market was really, really slow and it gave us an opportunity to kind of like, Step back and think about these things. And for me, a big part of deciding to go all in on the author work was deciding that I wasn’t going to put a significant amount of time towards anything else.

[00:41:40] Um, and so for me, that means, you know, just. Getting my words done for the day, getting my editing done for the day or getting, you know, for these next couple of months, getting my promo done for the day, which is usually a very low bar. It’s something that I can hit in three or four hours. And then, you know, and so I sort of feel like if I can get those three or four hours done, then I’ve really like won the day.

[00:42:05] And I know that if I work a huge number of hours, I can make something really significant happen in the short term, but I’ll get burned out and eventually quit and it won’t last. But if I can do even really two to three hours of good book work, five days a week for 30 years, then I’m going to have a pretty substantial library of work out there.

[00:42:34] Is that. Framing has helped me a lot with thinking about productivity is that this isn’t a one or two year game. This is a 30 year game. And if I just focus on this one thing for 30 years, it’s going to get to a really interesting place. Um, now, you know, I, I think the caveat here that’s important is that I’m fortunate enough from the work I did before and the work I did in crypto that I have five years or so for the author work to hit.

[00:43:04] escape velocity and to, you know, replace my prior income. Um, and that’s kind of like my, my safe buffer. If I had no savings and, and all of these costs, I’d be in a very different head space, but it kind of goes back to that. You know, that, that topic of like, well, if you have the capacity to work less and spend more time with your kids at the, you know, and be less rich longterm as a result, I’ve never heard of anybody regretting that, but I’ve definitely heard people regret the opposite.

[00:43:39] Matt Ragland: Thank you for listening to the HeyCreator podcast. This show was produced by Tim Forkin and would not be possible without the support of our incredible team at HeyCreator and the HeyCreator community. Make sure you connect with us on all of the socials at HeyCreator Hey. And for more information on our company go to heycreator.

[00:43:57] com and also sign up for the newsletter while you’re there. See you next time.

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