My Master Plan to Become a Full Time Creator

My mission is to escape the corporate world and become a full time digital creator. To do this, I need to replace my day job salary with income generated on the internet. This is my plan.

Phase 1) Find a Niche and Build a Small Audience

I completed this phase towards the end of 2021; however, it took me years to get there.

YouTube is the primary platform I’m using to grow my presence on the internet. I created my channel in 2013, but didn’t take it seriously until 2020. The hardest part (for me) in starting a YouTube channel was identifying a niche and sticking with it.

I’m multipassionate and had a very difficult time picking a single topic to create content about on YouTube. I started by creating Sikh videos, followed by generic tech videos. Eventually, I discovered my niche of digital reading and Kindles. This is a topic I love, and it was being under served on YouTube. I started posted weekly videos about digital reading and attracted a small community of about 12,000 subscribers.

Phase 2) A Portfolio of Small Bets

With a little credibility established within my niche, I can begin building small bets.

Small bets (a philosophy by Daniel Vassallo) are products you sell on the internet. What makes them unique is the idea of keeping them small. They are low-hanging fruit. Small bets can go from being an idea in your head to a product for sale in a matter of weeks. Some bets will do well, while others won’t. By building a portfolio, we don’t become too attached to any one idea, and we aren’t putting all our eggs in one basket. This increases the odds of something popping off.

The path I’ve chosen to follow is writing books. I intend to write multiple short books (<100 pages each) on topics within the digital reading niche. Eventually, this will also expand to other topics I’m passionate about. I also intend to turn some of these books into online courses, that will dive deeper into topics and be sold separately. Each book and course will be considered a small bet.

My hope is some small bets will find success, and result in earning a more substantial income. With enough time, this will be the key to escaping my corporate day job.

Phase 3) Growth

With a niche established and small bets published, I can begin going up the creator pyramid. There are three layers to this pyramid: leverage, credibility, and audience.

Leverage is obtained through creating assets that can potentially serve me for years after I publish them. It is the foundation of everything I do. For me, my content and small bets are considered leverage. Content includes YouTube videos, tweets, newsletters, and anything else. Small bets include books and online courses.

By building leverage through content and small bets, I’ll increase my credibility. Credibility is gold on the internet. It is trust. It is the ability to talk about something and having people listen. It is the door between building leverage and building an audience. Leverage is needed to gain credibility, and credibility is needed to build an audience.

Once I have leverage and credibility, building an audience will be a natural outcome. On YouTube, the potential for scale is virtually unlimited. Growth in audience will allow my small bets to flourish and give me the flexibility to work on larger bets, too.

This plan is a public reminder to myself to keep me focused. It was created on March 1, 2022, and last updated on March 1, 2022.

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