Secret Recipe for a Successful Content Creator: 7 Key Lessons with Clint Murphy

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]:

When Clint Murphy told me about his insane running streak, I was totally blown away.

Clint Murphy [00:00:07]:

In 2016, I started a running streak and I ran everyday for one and half years. And I ended that streak by doing an ultra marathon that was 50 miles long. That's the key to life - there's no motivation, there's only doing it. So the same way we get good on twitter is the same way we get good at running. You just do it. EVERY SINGLE. DAY

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:37]:

Running consistently for one and a half years requires immense dedication and is, without doubt, an insane achievement. But that isn't the only thing Clint has done "EVERY. SINGLE. DAY." by the way. Wanna know what that other thing was? Well, get ready to find out! Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same! On this episode of First Class Founders, I spoke to Clint Murphy, the host and creator of the Growth Guide podcast and newsletter. Clint is the Chief Financial Officer at Mosaic Homes, a Real Estate Development company. Prior to that, he had been employed at various financial institutions for more than twenty years. But, what I’m most impressed by is Clint’s audience growth, which has skyrocketed over the past 2-3 years. I invited Clint for an interview because I’ve been following his creator journey for quite a while now. Heck, I was even part of his very first Twitter Growth Community cohort earlier this year. Clint is a master at audience growth and lucky for you, I invited him on to this podcast to tell us all about it. During our conversation, Clint and I spoke at length abouthis decision to focus on being a creator full-timehis explosive growth on twittergrowing other channels such as his LinkedIn and newsletterand, alsohis future plans and ultimate goal.Clint also shared a brilliant step-by-step guide of sorts on how to craft the perfect twitter thread. He explained some of the techniques he uses to stop the scroll and outlined a mini-framework with an example, which will be included as an extra segment in the special ad-free version of this episode, available only to our premium members. Become a premium member of First Class Founders by signing up to firstclassfounders.com/join today - I'll leave a link in the show notes! Now, buckle up your seatbelts, because this is gonna be one flight you're never going to forget!

Clint Murphy [00:03:15]:

Hi, I'm Clint Murphy. Let's get down to business!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:19]:

For over twenty years, Clint Murphy enjoyed a stellar career in the world of finance, with his most recent stint being employed as the CFO of Mosaic Homes, a real estate development company.

Clint Murphy [00:03:35]:

I had sort of hit the top in terms of career for me and the option was, do you become a shareholder or what are the next steps? And that didn't look like a possibility.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:42]:

But he had his life plan all chalked out. He knew he wanted to retire early before 50.

Clint Murphy [00:03:48]:

And I always knew what I wanted to do was to write podcast, public speak, coach and consultant, private equity real estate investor.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:56]:

He didn't really plan on starting these things before he had retired, but then the pandemic happened.

Clint Murphy [00:04:03]:

And all of a sudden, the amount of time that was available to me, went through the roof. Kids activities were canceled, working from home, can't visit family and friends. So everything that you used to do to occupy time was gone.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:14]:

In other words, he set only had a lot of time to do the things that they plan to do post retirement.

Clint Murphy [00:04:27]:

So instead of waiting until I get to the end and then pivoting to zero. Why don't I build a runway? And then I'll pivot onto an already moving plane ready for takeoff.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:41]:

It also helped that he had been on a silent retreat just before the pandemic hit. And after he came back?

Clint Murphy [00:04:49]:

I was energized and I created a road map of what mission 2028 would look like. And the idea for everything was to say, well, where do I wanna be on this? Like, if I'm gonna be a public speaker, how good do I wanna be? How good of a coach do I wanna be? If I wanna be the best coach in Canada, What are the things I need to do?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:14]:

Then, he worked backwards and tried to figure out the different things he would need to do to achieve his goals. A look at the larger picture gave him the answer.

Clint Murphy [00:05:21]:

And so somewhere in there, I said, well, if I'm gonna build the brand, why did I launch a podcast? And so that's when it started.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:27]:

A lot of people set goals for themselves. A lot of people make roadmaps for themselves to achieve their goals. In most cases, the goals are aligned with their current trajectory and they don't need to do anything different. They just need to keep walking the path. But, with Clint, his trajectory at the time was quite different from where he was planning to eventually be with his Mission 2028 roadmap. So, he WORKED BACKWARDS to figure out a new trajectory for himself, which I think was not only the right thing to do but also the smart thing to do. This is often referred to as reverse engineering. You start with your end goal in mind then figure out the steps you need to take to get there. Even though this seems fairly standard, there is an important lesson in here, I feel. If your goals aren't aligned with your trajectory, you need to work backwards to figure out the trajectory that you SHOULD be on. Let's note that down as... LESSON NUMBER ONE: Work backwards from your ultimate goal to make sure you are on the correct trajectory. In Clint's case, this meant starting a podcast - which he did at the peak of COVID.

Clint Murphy [00:06:37]:

October ish 2020. Maybe November. I ordered four books on how to interview people, and I started to send out requests for bookings, and I started to record by February.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:45]:

But merely starting a podcast wasn't going to be enough to build his brand. It was, after all, a time when podcasts were popping up every second of the day. He needed to differentiate his podcast and he needed to grow it quickly.This is where Clint borrowed an idea from a completely different area, something he had heard from Jim Collins - the concept of flywheels. Personally, I’m a big fan of Jim Collins and his flywheel concept, something that I spoke about in previous episodes. I’m very deliberate about creating positive flywheels for my own businesses. So, what exactly is a flywheel?

Clint Murphy [00:07:25]:

The idea of the flywheel is if you think of that old factory where they have the big industrial gears and it takes a lot of effort to get them moving, but once they're spinning, the momentum starts to get them to move faster and faster. So you want to look in the business world at what are the flywheels that we're creating to grow our business as creators?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:47]:

And the flywheel that Clint was looking at was growing the audience for his podcast.

Clint Murphy [00:07:54]:

When I would reach out to guests when I started, imagine who I'm reaching out to because I'm trying to talk to authors, and I have an audience of my mom, my dad, and my couple of my friends. And so when you reach out to them and you say, here's who we're going to publish your episode to, your ability to get large authors is diminished. Not to diminish the authors I talked about because I learned great lessons and I had great conversations early on. But your ability to reach out to someone who's a, ah, New York Times bestseller is a lot lower.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:22]:

So, he borrowed another concept from the same domain - interlocked gears - and decided to look at growing his social media audience.

Clint Murphy [00:08:32]:

And as you grow on social media now, you can reach out and say, we're going to write a thread that will reach half a million people. We're going to put it in our newsletter that goes out to 10,000 people. And so all of a sudden, that person who's writing New York Times bestsellers says, well, wait a second, maybe I will talk to you. I'm only going to talk to 50 podcasts. Maybe yours is one of the 50. And so the flywheel is, as we grow the social media, the access to guests increases. As we have Larger and larger guests, the threads that we write on social media to promote the episode Get more eyeballs because people wanna learn lessons from those people that you had on the show. And so it becomes a flywheel of grow better guests. Those guests grow the podcast. and it just keeps beating off itself. And that's the flywheel as a creator and a podcaster or a creator and a YouTuber. That's how we wanna get that moving so that one feeds the other and they feed back and forth until they're both growing bigger and bigger.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:00]:

It's refreshingly simple, isn't it? Grow your audience so you get bigger guests, so you get bigger audiences, so you can get even bigger guests and so on. And that yields us the second lesson. LESSON NUMBER TWO: Build yourself a flywheel that will grow your audience. Clint's flywheel fed into itself with a positive feedback loop and resulted in his audiences and his guests both growing bigger and bigger with each rotation. To think that it all started because Clint was absolutely unafraid of starting from nothing...

Clint Murphy [00:10:28]:

Here's the key for a lot of people. They don't want to start until they look good. They don't want to start when they're going to look bad. In other words, they're worried about what people will think. One of the benefits I have is I'm willing to suck at things long enough to be good at them. And I'm willing to be good long enough to be great.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:52]:

This 'willingness to suck' seems like such a cliche but I cannot endorse it enough. Like, at this very moment, I am probably sucking at what I am doing. There is gonna be at least ONE listener of this podcast, who might be going, "Uh, this podcast sucks!" But, like Clint, I too am willing to suck at making podcast episodes, until I become good at them. And then, I will continue being good at them until I become great at them.I genuinely believe this is a mindset that all founders and all creators need to cultivate - the mindset of consistency. The mindset of being okay with failure. The mindset of knowing that you WILL suck at stuff when you start doing it for the first time. And you will keep sucking at it for a while… that’s just the nature of the game.And that’s OK. The moment you make peace with sucking at things, it paves the way for the most important part of the process - NOT sucking at things. Or, in other words, becoming GOOD at things. And for that, you need to first correctly identify WHAT you suck at. In Clint's case, that meant getting good at leveraging Twitter to grow his audience.

Clint Murphy [00:12:00]:

And so you look at it and say, well, I'm not good on this platform yet, but who's ahead of me? And I'm going to see what they're doing. And I saw a lot of accounts who were taking certain courses and or joining certain communities. So I joined those communities, I took those courses and said, how do I improve my writing? How do I improve my engagement circles? Because we can write great content that never gets seen, because we don't get it out into the platform. And so what you do is you create a network of friends. I'm going to share your stuff, you're going to share my stuff. We share each other's stuff. We lift each other up. We get it in front of more eyeballs.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:43]:

And this gives us the THIRD lesson for today. LESSON NUMBER THREE: Prepare yourself mentally to be okay with sucking at things. Then, start learning how to NOT suck at things. For Clint, that meant learning how to leverage the Twitter platform to grow his brand. It meant finding other people who were better at it than him and emulating their actions, joining the course and communities that they were a part of.

Clint Murphy [00:13:07]:

The communities and the basic courses got me from roughly 1000 in August to 10,000 in January. By April of 2021, we were at 20,000.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:20]:

This twenty-thousand mark was an important milestone because it was at this point that Clint started doing something that contributed to an explosion of growth.

Clint Murphy [00:13:21]:

If you want to be a good writer, you write every single day. If you want to be a good runner, you run every single day. So what I said I was going to do was I was going to write a thread every day for a period of time. It ended up being about 75 days in a row. And so when you write a thread every day, you become a good thread writer. You improve your hooks, you improve your presentation, you get more eyeballs.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:59]:

Clint wrote Twitter threads. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. for seventy-five days in a row. And, as we saw at the top of this episode, Clint is no stranger to building and maintaining streaks. Being a huge fan of writing Twitter threads myself, I immediately jumped on the opportunity and asked him if he had any tips on how to construct great twitter threads. And Clint graciously and enthusiastically explained, step-by-step, the things he does to construct HIS twitter threads. And - you guessed it - this is available exclusively to the premium subscribers of First Class Founders in the ad-free version of this episode in the private feed. One of the several perks that members of First Class Founders enjoy is the extra segments that I specially craft for them.For instance, at this point of the podcast, the episode in the private feed has Clint carefully explaining the concept of 'stopping-the scroll'...

Clint Murphy [00:15:01]:

When you're flipping through, there's something that catches your eye and you stop your scroll.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:18]:

...and how to MAKE it happen rather than rely on the algorithm to do it for you.

Clint Murphy [00:15:24]:

And TikTok's good at sending you ones that'll stop you. That's what you have to do with your (BEEP). Your (BEEP) has to be scroll stop worthy. People might call it clickbait, but it's not clickbait if you deliver the value in the thread that you talk about in the (BEEP).

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:35]:

And then Clint launches into a detailed example in which he deconstructs one of his Twitter threads about eleven lessons from letters written by Jeff Bezos.

Clint Murphy [00:15:41]:

You're using that (BEEP) technique and framework to get them into the body of the thread and then deliver value in the thread.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:55]:

And that's not all! Clint also discussed a technique called "borrowing credibility" - something you can use until you build enough credibility of your own.

Clint Murphy [00:15:59]:

Almost anytime you use the word (BLEEP), it tends to go well.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:02]:

Plus, Clint also discussed something which I believe was the secret sauce to his success at writing great twitter threads.

Clint Murphy [00:16:11]:

If I focused on the results, I would have stopped at the end of April because I would have said I'm going backwards.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:17]:

These are just small teasers of the wonderful insights that the First Class Founders members are currently enjoying. Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more! Head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes!And while you do that, I'll get the next segment of this episode ready - in which I spoke to Clint about the similarities, differences, and challenges of growing on Twitter versus growing on LinkedIn. Before that short break, Clint was telling us about how he wrote a twitter thread every single day for seventy-five days. And, as everyone knows, when you are consistently producing output, there is bound to be at least one moment when your output is perfect. For Clint, that happened in May 2021, when one of his threads about Excel blew up.

Clint Murphy [00:17:27]:

And that thing ended up having close to 30 million views, and we added 25,000 followers in a three day period or a four day period. So that was stratospheric. It was, you know, at the time, I think we're around 50 to 60, and we went 75 to 80 overnight.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:50]:

I think we can mark that down as the fourth lesson for this episode. LESSON NUMBER FOUR: Practice your craft consistently and deliberately.From that point onwards, they kept adding about twenty thousand followers every month and now, as of recording this episode, Clint's Twitter account stands at about 320 thousand followers. But the real challenge for Clint lies ahead because he wants to replicate his twitter success on LinkedIn and Instagram. And to help him grow his brand, he figured he could do with some extra help from a familiar source.

Clint Murphy [00:18:29]:

So what we've done is my wife retired in October or November to start helping me full time on what we refer to as The Growth Guide, our newsletter, our podcast, and eventually our business. And I manage Twitter. She manages Instagram and LinkedIn.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:47]:

Clint and his wife both understand very well that LinkedIn and Instagram are very different platforms, when compared to Twitter. They both understand that the audiences are different and the way content is consumed on those platforms is also very different.Even though they are currently in the process of figuring out EXACTLY what works on those platforms, they have had quite a bit of success already.

Clint Murphy [00:19:11]:

I would say at this stage of the game, we're ahead on both of those platforms. On where we were on Twitter, we're just under 20,000 on Instagram, and we're 35,000 on LinkedIn, and we're five months in. And so if we look back to Twitter, we were about nine months in. We were 20,000. So she's well ahead on LinkedIn, and she's twice as fast on Instagram.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:44]:

And Clint has a clear idea of what numbers he wants to eventually hit.

Clint Murphy [00:19:51]:

1 million on Social, 100,000 YouTube subscribers, 100,000 newsletter readers, and 100,000 podcast downloads a month. When I have those four numbers. This is a full on business that becomes our future. And so those are what we have to drive for. The flywheel has to be built to hit those four numbers.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:11]:

After listening to Clint discuss his different growth strategies for Twitter and LinkedIn - especially when he mentioned the part about building credibility - I wondered whether the availability of a professional bio on LinkedIn would help him build his credibility quicker. Because, on LinkedIn, he was already clearly established as someone well-versed in finance, whereas on Twitter, he had to start literally from scratch.

Clint Murphy [00:20:37]:

This is one of the reasons, I think that you can grow faster on LinkedIn than you can on, um, Twitter when you're a beginner. What I'm piecing together, and I'm really interested in your thoughts on this one, is on Twitter there's no inherent descriptor of credibility other than follower account. You have a bio, you have a banner, but they're not enough to really tell your story.

Clint Murphy [00:21:06]:

On LinkedIn. If you go to my profile, you can see where I went to school. You can see people who have recommended me or referred me. You can see my resume, you know where I've worked, you know how long I've worked there, you know my titles at those companies. So when I talk about finance on Twitter, people are like, well, who's this bozo? When I'm starting, when I talk about finance on LinkedIn, even if I'm a small account, people flip to the profile and they say, oh, he worked at KPMG for a decade. Big Four Accounting Firm. He's been a CFO for eight years. He's been in finance for 23 years. Maybe this guy knows what he's talking about. He has a degree in accounting. He has a master's degree in accounting. He's a CPA. Huh. He probably knows what he's talking about. So you - have that built in credibility that you don't get on Twitter.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:55]:

I think you're right on there. Um, and I think LinkedIn is a little more... you have a very impressive career, um, with these major companies. But I feel like someone who's just a career, like maybe high school or college student building an indie app, like a small, um, bootstrapped app, - maybe that is better for Twitter because they don't have that level of, I guess, career or credibility to put on a LinkedIn profile, for example.

Clint Murphy [00:22:34]:

So -- So if you're already established, LinkedIn if you're not established yet. Twitter. Twitter is your better bet. Yeah. That that makes that makes a lot of sense right there.

Jeremy Enns [00:22:50]:

It's just like going where your ideal audience members are already congregating, and just like showing up regularly and being an asset to that community.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:58]:

And with Clint endorsing the same idea, I think we should mark this as the fifth lesson for this episode. LESSON NUMBER FIVE: When looking to grow your social media audience, choose the platform that gives you the greatest credibility with your audience. And since we were on the topic of growing audiences, I also got a chance to ask Clint about where he thought his newsletter fit into his flywheel.

Clint Murphy [00:23:21]:

I slept on it for a long time. Started collecting emails a few months ago and launched about two months ago. So I think we've done, uh, eight weeks or seven I'll say seven weeks.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:28]:

Quick side-note, the newsletter was seven weeks at the time of recording. It has been, well, a few weeks since then. And, since then, he's also landed on a conundrum that plagues almost every creator at some point - whether to promote the newsletter through the podcast or the podcast through the newsletters. Clint found his answer in an episode of Tim Ferriss' podcast, where Tim spoke with the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear.

Clint Murphy [00:23:55]:

In that episode, Tim asked James Clear to give him some advice on how he could improve his website as an example. And what James said was, right now, you're optimizing the website for your podcast, and you should probably be optimizing it for your newsletter. And even Tim agreed with that by saying, I can drive people from my newsletter to my podcast, but I can't really drive people from my podcast to my newsletter. so when you think of that dynamic, the newsletter ought to go first.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:26]:

But to be honest, he could have easily listened to episode 28 of this podcast in which Jeremy Enns said almost literally the same thing.

Jeremy Enns [00:24:36]:

I think that's a way easier ask just because of how we treat newsletters. Like, we don't expect an immediate thing. It's almost like I'm gonna subscribe now, and I know that I'm gonna get the next newsletter. Who knows when? I almost don't care. And so I think when what you're asking of people, if your main call to action on social media is subscribed to a newsletter, that's there's way less friction there. And then once they're on your email list, then you can, like, keep promoting the podcast on, you know, however rocking you wanna do that.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:00]:

And that's why, Clint is now focusing on collecting emails at the end of his viral Twitter threads, instead of directing people to listen to his podcast. But that, obviously, has come at a cost.

Clint Murphy [00:25:14]:

And so if the guidance is to the newsletter, you're not guiding them to the podcast. And so what was growing at 20% per month, every single month has now plateaued for a period of time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:21]:

But, fortunately for him, his philosophy of process-not-results has helped massively to ease his concerns.

Clint Murphy [00:25:33]:

And if I'm focused on the results, I'm going to stop and I'm going to shift back to promoting the podcast because I want it to grow. But if I'm really focused on the long game, which is a year from now, three. Years from now, 510 years, I have to keep going in this direction, because when the podcast, when the newsletter is at 100,000 people, the guests that I can reach, uh, out to to get on the podcast are going to be spectacular because they know they're going to be profiled with a picture of their book to 100,000 readers. And that's the guarantee. And eventually when the newsletter gets big enough, enough people will be clicking through to go listen to the podcast and it will accelerate again.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:15]:

I agree with Clint completely about focusing on the process rather than the results. In fact, let’s make this our sixth lesson for today. LESSON NUMBER SIX: Focus on the process and not the results. There’s this concept of inner scorecard versus outer scorecard that I want to highlight. Clint chooses to focus on his inner scorecard. You know, the stuff that he has control over whether he’s going on a run or posting a Twitter thread every single day, it’s something that he can control. Whether or not his threads perform well is outside of his control. That’s his outer scorecard. The number of views, replies, shares, etc. Clint and I are NOT alone when it comes to focusing on your inner scorecard. In fact, billionaire Warren Buffett swears by it. When you live by your inner scorecard, no one can define success for you but you. Coming up in a bit, I'll share with you why Clint wants to be the next Tony Robbins and why the first piece of advice he would give to founders who are just beginning their journey as content creators is simply "Just Start". But first I want to say thanks to my sponsors Riverside. It is thanks to them that my interview with Clint went smoothly without any hiccups! Alright, now, let's get back to what I promised you before that break. One of the things that I found very interesting was how Clint was finding ways to extract even more value out of the flywheel he was building. For instance, during our conversation, Clint revealed to me that he was planning to write a couple of books. He then told me about how he was basically using the newsletter as a way to collect content for the book.

Clint Murphy [00:29:13]:

I'm sourcing the chapters by writing newsletter articles. So it's, oh, hey, the book is going to be about money, and hey, we're going to talk about money mindsets. And so each week in the newsletter, I talk about money mindsets.

Clint Murphy [00:29:27]:

And so for the newsletter reader, they're getting a piece of what will eventually be a chapter in the book.

Clint Murphy [00:29:50]:

Nothing I do in this journey is a short term plan. It's always looking out ten years and saying, who, um, do I want to be when I step on that stage? And I'm going to work my way backwards so that I take the steps today in what I'm building to be able to be that guy.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:09]:

One of the things that Clint mentioned during our conversation is that he to be the next Tony Robbins and that everything he has been doing so far has been working towards making that happen.

Clint Murphy [00:30:24]:

When it becomes coaching and consulting, that's what I wanna be known for. Oh, like, if you wanna get done in your life, there's one guy you should talk to. Like, he'll teach you how to get -- done at a high level because it's in every single spot.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:36]:

I couldn't let go of this opportunity to ask Clint for some valuable life advice for founders and entrepreneurs who are just beginning their journey. Wait, don't skip this portion. I know a lot of people give this advice and you must have heard it a million times by now but, believe me, you need to listen to the whole thing. There are some truly valuable quotes in what Clint is about to say.

Clint Murphy [00:31:02]:

Number one is just start. So before you do anything, take that first step. Make it as simple as possible. Tons of different social media platforms. Pick the one that's right for you. Don't pick the one that I'm biggest on. Don't pick the one that pick the one that matches your style. Instagram is more visual. LinkedIn tends to be more educational. Twitter tends to be good for people who write short, tight, punchy content. So know your style. Pick the one that matches you. Mhm. And then the first thing you do is post. You write a tweet, write a story on LinkedIn. Put a photo on Instagram with some great words, or record a video on YouTube. Just start right? If it's a podcast, get in your walk in closet because it's actually super good for sound because you have all the clothes that are blocking the sound waves. And just record your first episode. Don't wait for perfection because perfection will never come. Don't wait for the right time. Don't wait for the best time. Start. Start for the first couple of months. Just get content out. Just get used to writing. You might get annoyed because no one's seeing it, no one's touching it. That's okay. You're getting used to developing your get shit done muscle like you're getting consistent. And consistency is the number one game for a creator.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:32:04]:

If you thought that was the entirety of his advice, you are sorely mistaken because that was just step one - just start.Clint followed this up with some real actionable advice which I am about to play for you. So, strap on your seatbelts, because Clint is about to give you a clear roadmap for becoming successful as a content creator.Ready? Here we go...

Clint Murphy [00:32:23]:

What you're going to want to do then is let's say you're on Twitter. You're going to want to start finding large accounts that you respect in the area that you want to be known for and you're going to comment on their stuff. You're going to like it. You're going to quote tweet it. You're going to comment on it because people will see your comments, set them on notifications so that you're the first to comment, because then you get traffic, then you get eyeballs on you.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:33:27]:

The second step is to get eyeballs on your content by interacting with others in your domain. The third step is to engage with other content creators in your niche and - pardon my language here - slide into their DMs.

Clint Murphy [00:33:32]:

Then you're going to use a certain number of those conversations to create your own circles, your own groups, your ride or die partners. Find those ride or die partners, build relationships, create your core group, and then you're going to have different cohorts over time, but have your core group. Figure out what the right courses to take are. The ones that are going to add the most value to you. You're going to put money in, but what you get out of it is greater than what you put in. Find those ones....and then part of that is find the right communities because those are two separate things the course will teach you. The community will help lift you up. What we've tried to do is create that all in one, where it is the course. But then you get into a community of like minded people who will help each other grow.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:34:16]:

And that's basically it. That is the step-by-step guide on how to become a successful creator starting from absolute scratch. Here's Clint summarizing the whole process in his own words:

Clint Murphy [00:34:33]:

Just start, look into the right accounts, comment, start to build relationships, bigger accounts. Do it with similar sized accounts, take the right courses, join the right communities. And then you're going to build your circle through that. And that's going to allow you to have the full package that will allow you to go from zero to 10,000. When you know how to go from zero to 10,000, you know how to go to 100,000 beyond. So that's the recipe that I would use for people.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:34:56]:

I think that qualifies as our last and final lesson for this episode. LESSON NUMBER SEVEN: To become a successful content creator, just start posting stuff. Then follow it up with building engagement and relationships with other people on the platform. Before we conclude, let's quickly recap the seven lessons from this episode: LESSON NUMBER ONE: Work backwards from your ultimate goal to make sure you are on the correct trajectory. LESSON NUMBER TWO: Build yourself a flywheel that will grow your audience. LESSON NUMBER THREE: Build yourself mentally to be okay with sucking at things. Then, start learning how to NOT suck at things. LESSON NUMBER FOUR: Practice your craft consistently and deliberately. LESSON NUMBER FIVE: When looking to grow your social media audience, choose the platform that gives you the greatest credibility with your audience. LESSON NUMBER SIX: Focus on the process and not the results. LESSON NUMBER SEVEN: To become a successful content creator, just start posting stuff. Then follow it up with building engagement and relationships with other people on the platform.You can reach Clint Murphy on…

Clint Murphy [00:36:09]:

Twitter at @IAmClin Murphy, and then we are on the World Wide Web the internet at thegrowth.guide. You can find everything through there, but it's gonna be the growth guide podcast and the growth guide newsletter. So everything is around the growth guide at thegrowth.guide

Yong-Soo Chung [00:36:37]:

Alright, that wraps up today's show! In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m talking to Khe Hy, the founder and CEO of RadReads. Khe is a creator I truly admire and I’ll be talking to him about how he went from working in finance on Wall Street to creating an entirely new business on his own terms building RadReads into a newsletter that is currently read by more than thirty thousand readers all over the world. We also spoke about how he handled one of the most challenging times of his entrepreneurial career when he had to let go half of his staff! Khe opened up about this decision and the key lessons he learned as a first-time founder. Don’t miss this one!And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode specifically?And, when you get a chance, could you also head over to FirstClassFounders.com/review and leave the podcast a five-star review? It really helps boost credibility for the show which means more incredible guests for you! And why wouldn’t you want that? I’ll leave a link in the show notes to leave us a 5-star review. Thank you so much!If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes.I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.

Clint Murphy [00:38:19]:

So my wife suggested to me at one point because because part of the problem was every once in a while, you you know, you'd have dinners with your friends. and and you'd have a a late night. Imagine, you know, you don't get home till 11 o'clock. And so she throws out at me once. Well, hey. If you waited until 11:45 and you did your minimum 3k and then you stretched for, like, 10 minutes, you could run back 3k and now you've hit your streak. You you ran at 11:45 PM, and you ran at 12:05 AM. So you've got 2 days done, and you and you can get, you know, 12 hours. So over the course of that year and a half, I probably used the hack maybe half a dozen times, ten times. So if you were out for drinks with friends, I'd be like, alright. I'll go home and kinda sober up for a couple hours, and then I'll get out for an 11:45 run and I'll run home at at get home at 12:15. They go to bed.