Thread by @brandonthezhang

I've interviewed 20 of the best founders, builders, and creators on Twitter.

Here's what I learned 👇

1. "The only way to escape and achieve financial freedom is to create something where you control the conversation.

I think what more people need to understand is that you don’t need permission to do work." — @jackbutcher

Create your dream job, without permission from anyone.

2. "All creativity is combinational in nature. I build a creativity inbox to collect ideas, then combine through idea sex, which creates new insights." — @anthilemoon

Create a system that brings disconnected ideas together, their interactions will drive new frameworks.

3. "The real reason that habits matter is they reshape your sense of self, they kind of give you evidence of a new identity or story, they help forge your self-esteem and your identity." — @JamesClear

Habits are the foundational building blocks of who you are.

4. "People hate when I say it but I literally just outwork people. Sometimes you have to outsmart people, but most of the time you can just outwork them." — @APompliano

Find something you are passionate about → Be prolific as a competitive advantage

5. "My goal for the newsletter is that someone who has worked in tech for 20 years can get a lot out of it and someone who is maybe in college or in a different industry can understand the concepts." — @packym

Pick a core mission and audience and serve them consistently.

6. "In the sea of content out there: ~80% of it is not that good, ~19% is pretty good and ~1% is actually very good. If you can create that content. People will listen because they cannot find it elsewhere." — @stephsmithio

Quality can still be your sole differentiating factor.

7. "One of the biggest mistakes I've made: Believing that I missed the time to jump in on a trend or company taking off." — @schlaf

At times, better late than never.

8. "One thing we've forgotten is the power of forgetting. Letting our brain forget things and prune information can help us find our grounding values and topics." — @gaby_goldberg

Learn to trust the process.

9. "Don't confuse motion with progress. A lot of people are just like spinning in circles really, really fast. They're not going anywhere." — @polina_marinova

Direction > Speed

10. "College is really about community and not necessarily about education." — @rubenharris

Understand the competition.

11. "Reduce the overlap in idea sources. Go through your Twitter, Feedly, Podcast, or YouTube feed and see the accounts saying the same thing. Identify favorites, eliminate the rest." — @nateliason

Improve idea flow by being ruthless protecting your attention.

12. "The most effective content does not reinvent the wheel. Combine best insights from old pieces. Update best performing content." — @kaleighf

Functional > Flashy

13. "Find ideas that serve as alarm clocks. They are the first thing you think of when you wake up and the last thing you think of when you go to bed." — @robbiecrab

Win by making your work fun.

14. "Video games are proof that kids are willing to work hard. Gamification is the lens that we can use to implement it into education." — @anafabrega11

Build systems tailored towards who the system is serving.

15. "Mental models and frameworks are useless without action. Focus on the mental models you create while doing, not studying mental models like you are preparing for an exam at school." — @hnshah

Observe and reflect > consume

16. "I can't be inauthentic in what I do. Everything I do must come from the heart and the soul of Dan, or else I am not going to be proud of it." — @FitFounder

Never lose direction of yourself.

17. "Side hustles need to 1) solve a problem people are already aware of 2) give someone a solution they're looking for 3) no need for maintenance or hand-holding 4) no-brainer path to profitability." — @jwmares

Build within constraints to improve the odds of success.

18. "Leverage: Doing the work that does more work. Build specific knowledge, take on accountability, apply the above through capital, labor or product." — @EricJorgenson

Leverage income is the real passive income.

19. "The earlier you think of yourself as an investor, the better. Investing in startups is a cheat code to participating in the future with asymmetric upside. Worst case, you lose 1x your money; best case you 1000x it." — @RomeenSheth

Ownership reality > ownership mindset

20. "An important view for marketing is that your product needs to be the power-up mushroom in Mario. You are not selling powered-up Mario, you are focused on selling the transformation." @coreyhainesco

If you want to help more creators learn these principles, retweet the first tweet below.

https://twitter.com/brandonthezhang/status/1417864341303357441

If this thread was interesting to you, shoot me a follow @brandonthezhang

I share content around marketing, mindset, and growth while decoding my own personal monopoly.

If you want to learn:

→ How to build an engaged audience/community
→ How launch your next transformative side project
→ How to get in contact with amazing individuals and unlock opportunity

Join the waitlist here 👇

https://twitter.com/aaditsh/status/1418228548578549761