Thread by @jmikolay

A distillation of what @shl said about creativity and entrepreneurship in the 10x Creator Course:

Some of the most successful musicians don’t make transcendent music; they make good music and talk about their process.

Some of the most successful authors don’t write prize-winning books; they write good books and talk about their process.

Breakout creators are like startups. They reinvest what they make into themselves.

Think about everything related to running a business, then apply that to being a solopreneur.

To build equity and asset value, build a catalog of products.

If you have a catalog of products, your long-term value goes up with every new buyer and every new reader.

By the time you have a big hit, every new reader is more valuable.

In effect, full-time employment is a cohort-based course of one.

A company has an urgent problem it needs to solve, and an employee earns a living with a small audience.

The first step to going independent is to ask, “How do I do what I’m doing for five instead of one?”

Don’t think in binary terms: you're either on the corporate track or you're a creator.

Most creators work at a company. Then they freelance or have a side project or start consulting. Then they bundle up their consulting conversations and make themselves into a creator.

It takes ten years to get good at writing.

That’s great because by the time you're good, you have cadence and consistency.

Otherwise, you end up with a big hit and you have no idea how to follow it up.

The worst way to spend time is to scroll without intent.

The opposite of scrolling without intent:
1.Create a Notion doc
2.Write into it
3.Design something
4.Share it
5.Repeats steps 1-4

The easiest way to know if you’re solving a problem for a human being is to solve a problem for yourself.

What you really care about is hard to predict going forward.

Eventually, your strategy will come to you; until then, you just have to try a bunch of stuff.

Once you have ten experiments, look back and ask, “Where are the dots, how are they connected, where are the lines pointing, and where am I headed?”

Move in that direction and build an understanding of yourself that way.

Everyone has one thing they care about enough to tweet about it.

You just have to pay attention to what you’re already doing.

The most important thing is to get started.

The smaller you can make v0 or v1, the easier it is mentally. Calling your first course or product an alpha version will give you the confidence that you're not over promising.

It takes years, not months, to understand why you wanted to build something and who you’re building it for.

How to start a feedback loop:

Don’t judge yourself until your 10th version of anything that you do, or you’re a certain number of years into it.

In the beginning, if you’re judging yourself honestly, you're not going to be good.

Simply assume that and get better over time.

The internet makes it easy to see where you want to be in five years. But that doesn't mean you can walk straight to it.

It still takes v1, v2, v3 to get there.

Start small and get the building blocks in place.

No one knows how bad I am at everything. You only see the good stuff.

Nine out of 10 ideas I put out there are crazy. But every once in a while an idea I have is great.

Selecting, improving, and sharing that one idea is a cheat code.

The number one important skill in creating is observation, and most people can’t observe.

A lot of painters spend time on brushes and colors and muscle memory, but they don’t know what they’re looking at.

If you can observe, you can paint whatever you want.

You’re not missing anything. The answer’s in front of you and in your head.

You just have to pay attention better.

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