Dear Everybody,

I channel successful creators in my personal life and at Gumroad.

Here’s what I’ve learned from them in the past six months, in their own words.

Don’t wait until you have a big following (i.e. start now)…

• “I had fewer than 300 followers when I started”

• “I had fewer than 400 followers when I started”

• “I had fewer than 500 followers when I started”

Create without a plan (i.e. just be creative)…

• “This started as an experiment”

• “I wasn’t trying to build a business”

• “I didn’t set out to become a creator”

• “This wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing”

Put yourself out there (i.e. publish)…

• “I wrote online”

• “I started blogging”

• “I posted what I was thinking”

Get good at something specific (i.e. build skill)…

• “I did it for a long time”

• “I wrote and taught for a decade”

• “I earned credibility through experience”

• “I did the same thing over and over again”

Repeatedly help others (i.e. add value)…

• “I gave away what I was learning for free”

• “I started to get a reputation for helping people”

• “I took what I learned the hard way and relayed that to others”

• “Because I was helping people, my prior qualifications were irrelevant”

Engage with people and listen closely (i.e. pay attention)…

• “People started saying, ‘Hey, can you help me do this?’”

• “People were interested in learning from me specifically”

• “I started getting asked a lot of the same questions over and over again”

Feel the heat in the market (i.e. notice imbalances)…

• “I couldn’t encapsulate everything in one reply”

• “It was impossible to explain in a short comment”

• “I realized there was a limit to what I could answer”

• “It started to become a supply-and-demand issue”

• “That spillover became the opportunity”

Locate proof of demand (i.e. create deliberately)…

• “I posted a thread and got a big response”

• “I proved there was an opportunity to elaborate more”

• “I found out there was pent up interest about a subject I knew well.”

Pick a topic (i.e. find your niche)…

• “It's something I love.”

• “Other people respond to it”

• “I have a lot of background in it”

• “It’s a thing I know how to do well”

• “This comes naturally to me and I get excited about it”

Build for the sake of building (i.e. take a leap of faith)…

• “I took baby steps”

• “I had no idea whether it was going to make money”

• “I knew what I wanted, so I decided to write my own”

• “It wasn’t until later I realized I could sell something”

• “I did something independently in my area of expertise”

• “I didn’t know how to do it, but I thought, ‘At least this can be a start.’”

Package your expertise (i.e. build a product)…

• “I started thinking about how I do certain things”

• “There were people paying for what I was doing”

• “I bet there were other people like that”

Time box the effort (i.e. give yourself a deadline)…

• “I decided to publish on Christmas Day.”

• “I challenged myself to finish it in a month”

• “I gave myself three weeks to write the whole thing.”

Focus and commit (i.e. go all in)…

• “Every day I wrote at least half a page”

• “I worked hard to summarize everything I knew”

• “I was writing on weekends, nights, mornings, and lunch breaks”

Build in public and in private (i.e. incorporate feedback)…

• “I got extra eyes and filled in weak spots”

• “I brought on a professional editing team”

• “Comments from other people made the product a lot more valuable”

Press publish (i.e. go live)…

• “When I was done I said, ‘Here’s this thing I’ve built’”

• “The great part is people getting value out of it”

• “I was surprised by the success of the launch”

• “It was far more successful than my expectations”

Let one product inspire others (i.e. repeat the above)…

• “I would just love to keep doing what I love”

• “The true reward of this work is I get to do it”

• “There’s a saying, ‘The destination is the journey’”

Thank you for reading!  

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Sincerely,
Justin