Society has traditionally rewarded people who fit in, but the Internet rewards people who stand out.

“The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.” – Abraham Flexner The best opportunities are the ones you never expected. They’re serendipitous. Serendipity is a state of mind. Serendipity births unexpected opportunities which fuel progress and push us in fruitful

To make a living as a creator, you only need 100 true fans, not 1,000. There's four necessary components necessary to make a living off a smaller base of true fans: premium content and community; results and transformation; accountability; and recognition, access, and status.

The difference between brands that stand out and those that blend in.

On sharing what you have learned and learning in return.

The Business Model of Good Taste

Because perfect is impossible and perfectionism is about hiding.

Refine your intuition, and trust your judgment.

The case for consistent writing is less about self-improvement, and more about economics. Here's why.

How to think about writing, promotion, and community

The secret tips, tricks, and habits of those who make a great living writing.

Despite getting rewarded repeatedly with promotions, compensation, recognition, and praise, I wasn't motivated enough to do another year.

The Key to Higher Quality is Higher Quantity

Build your ideas with the experience of 100+ founders – condensed into 5 min reports.

If you want to improve your writing, match your punctuation to the mood. Punctuation is to writing as music is to movies. In The Joker, the renowned composer Hildur Guðnadóttir used the cello in the opening scenes to create empathy with the protagonist. But then, as The Joker’s dark side and inner turmoil was revealed,

(not management)

You don’t need a will of iron to make real change in your life. The secret to hitting big creative goals is taking much smaller steps, much more often.

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”

Creatives have two ways of working: beer mode and coffee mode. Beer mode is a state of unfocused play where you discover new ideas. In contrast, coffee mode is a state of focus where you work towards a specific outcome.

The top tips, strategies and channels that'll help you get more subscribers this year!

How to tune up your description, welcome email, and promotion. There’s one thing everyone who writes a newsletter has in common: They want more people to read it. To help you grow your newsletter I’ve put together a five-day plan you can follow to “tune up” the way you position and promote it in order...

Creators have a hierarchy of needs as they grow. Understanding these needs helps you build products that creators love so let's explore each need in detail.

You have five seconds to get people’s attention. Books, blogs, emails, reports, it doesn’t matter – if you don’t sell them in five seconds you’ve exhausted most of their patience. Good ideas are easy to write, bad ideas are hard. Difficulty is a quality signal, and writer’s block usually indicates more about your ideas than your writing. Impatience has increased with social media. Someone reading a book 20 years ago had few other distractions. Today a phone offers infinite, nonstop competition for your dopamine. Writers of everything from emails to books have to accept that reality. Whoever...

Creativity can seem like a mysterious process. But many of the most creative people understand that you can actually break it down into a simple formula, involving what researcher Douglas Hofstadter calls “jootsing.” Here’s how understanding systems can help us think more creatively.

A summary and excerpts of the book "Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind" by Al Ries and Jack Trout.