How to Succeed as a Creative Entrepreneur with Daren Smith, Film Producer & Author, Founder of Craftsman Creative

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]

A little more than a decade ago, Daren Smith was a struggling entrepreneur who was trying to keep his head above water.

Daren Smith [00:00:06]

I had one kid at the time. He was probably a year old. Um, so I'm a new dad. We're in the middle of it's still coming out of, like, the financial crisis. It's probably 2011, 2012. We're barely making rent. My business is struggling a little bit. And I remember I had taken some freelance gigs and had done some traveling and some gigs and was just, like, waiting for money to come in.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:33]

But that money? It didn't come in...

Daren Smith [00:00:36]

But I remember we were sitting there, my wife and I were sitting there, my little son's playing on the carpet in front of us or between us. And I was about to break down because I knew we didn't have enough money for rent. I knew we were tapped out on gas, on food, on everything. And I'm like, am I going to lose all this? Am I going to be the reason that we don't have a house to live in? And I was going through all these crazy emotions. And I took a step outside and I was just like, hey, I'll be right back.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:10]

No, he didn't go out to get 'milk', if you know what I mean. He went to the community mailbox.

Daren Smith [00:01:15]

...and checked the mail and started walking home and didn't even look at the mail. So I get home and she's like, anything? I'm like, yeah, here's yours and here's mine, and here's mine, and here's yours. And I start opening one of them. And it's one of the checks that I was waiting for.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:28]

Yeah, that money had FINALLY come in.

Daren Smith [00:01:31]

And it was beyond what I needed for rent and food and gas and car payment and phone and all this stuff. It was just a big $8,000 check. And I was just like then I really lost it. I started crying out of gratitude but it was a pivotal moment because I realized how important it was to be independent, to be resourceful enough that I could depend on myself. That I never wanted to put my family into that situation again.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:58]

Now, a decade later, Daren Smith is a successful film producer and the proud founder of The Craftsman Creative, who is here to talk about his journey of becoming a successful creative entrepreneur.

Daren Smith [00:02:08]

yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm also the founder of Craftsman Creative, like you mentioned, um, but recently have expanded the, uh, Craftsman Cinema universe to include Craftsman films and a course business called Light Bulb Courses. So I'm living the life of a film producer and creative entrepreneur and loving it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:26]

So, jet-setters, get ready for take-off!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:34]

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 today's episode of first-class founders, we're speaking to the founder of Craftsman Creative, Daren Smith. Daren is also a film producer who has worked on several films, written a book entirely - from start to finish - in public, AND developed several courses to help - as he puts it - "Five Figure Creators Build Six-figure Businesses".


Daren Smith [00:03:29]

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:30]

Over the course of our discussion, Daren shared several insights that he has gained over the years, while building his business in the creator economy. We spoke primarily about the 12 year journey to achieve one of his dreams, the secret to his success as a creative entrepreneur, why you should not think twice before writing a book, as well as four bits of actionable advice he would give to entrepreneurs today.

Daren also shared the THREE key ingredients and a catalyst that he used to supercharge a growth mindset for himself. He also shared a unique mental model that has helped him reframe his entire outlook towards entrepreneurship, which totally blew my mind!

You can listen to it in a special segment of the episode, available exclusively to the premium subscribers of First Class Founders.To become a premium member of First Class Founders, sign up at firstclassfounders.com/join - look for the link in the show notes!

Go ahead and open that link in a tab, while I get this flight ready for take-off!

Daren Smith [00:04:30]

My name is Darren Smith. Let's get down to business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:37]

Back in the early 2000s, Daren Smith started his career as a student of MUSIC, specifically, the SAXOPHONE!

Daren Smith [00:04:45]

I was at school here locally in Provost, Utah, at Brigham Young University. And I was a music major. I actually got into BYU on a saxophone performance scholarship.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:55]

But, he soon realized that he didn't want to perform or teach saxophone for the rest of his life.

Daren Smith [00:05:00]

And so I pivoted and shifted to doing sound. Like the guy behind the soundboard. I was doing live sound. I was doing studio stuff, recording.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:09]

It was an organic transition - he simply went from performing live on stage HIMSELF to helping popular bands like Neon Trees and Imagine Dragons with THEIR live music.

Then, a few years later, an opportunity arrived in the form of an internship for award-winning sound-designer Michael L. McDonough, where he would do post-production for movies and TV series - and he instantly fell in love with the craft!

Daren Smith [00:05:36]

I'd never seen it before, never been involved with it, but I was like, oh my gosh, first you work, like nine to five. You have an air conditioned office, and then you're literally putting explosions and punches and cool stuff into movies. It blew my mind. I loved it from the get go.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:5:53]

He loved it SO much that he even started a post-production sound company of his own in 2006.

Daren Smith [00:05:57]

...and it just took off from there. And it evolved from being a sound person to being on set a couple of times as a production sound mixer and boom operator. Uh, and then I partnered with a director on one of the films I worked on, and we created a production company.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:13]

Daren and his partner ran their production company for ten years. Then, in 2017, Daren wrapped up his involvement in the video production company and went freelance.

Daren Smith [00:06:23]

My first gig out of that was producing a TV show called Relative Race for BYU TV. And I ended up doing four seasons of that show. And it was great because we would do a season and I would go and produce a TV pilot for somebody or produce a documentary or produce a bunch of music videos.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:39]

Pretty soon, Daren was making six figures as a producer. He was in demand and working on cool projects. Naturally, his peers in his industry thought he ALREADY had it all figured out and began approaching him with questions.

Daren Smith [00:06:52]

And they're like, how did you figure this out? Because, like, me, for ten years, they were still making 30, 40, 50, 70 grand. But now they had families and houses and cars and kids, and it wasn't enough. It wasn't what they wanted. They needed to be making six figures. They needed a resilient, profitable business that would support their work full time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:14]

This is where Daren saw another opportunity and decided to explore it...

Daren Smith [00:07:18]

I just tried my hand at coaching, and then I tried my hand at, ah, consulting. And I was just like, man, this is kind of fun. I like doing it. I should have a name for it. And I called it Craftsman Creative and bought the domain.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:28]

Things were going well but, suddenly, *literal* disaster struck in the form of a worldwide pandemic. He had already bought the domain for Craftsman Creative but he was working on a TV show and didn't quite know what to do with it.

Daren Smith [00:07:40]

So I was like, well, what if I just created two courses around all the topics that I talk to my, uh, wife about all the time? So that's what I did. I created two online courses. And I think the first one came out, like, April 3 of 2020, like, two weeks after the shutdown. I filmed it in the two weeks between getting furloughed from my producing gig, and then two weeks later, I had a course live on the site.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:02]

But selling that course proved to be difficult. The entertainment industry had completely shut down. A lot of income had suddenly stopped. This is where Daren had one of the best light-bulb moments of his career as an entrepreneur.

Daren Smith [00:08:16]

I made the course free. I sent it to all my friends that said, you guys need this. And then I made another course which was more business related. Here are, like, four things you need to be building right now because we don't know how long COVID is going to happen. It was like, get an email list. Have a website. Have a lead magnet. Get ways to own your audience so that if Facebook changes their algorithm again, or Instagram shuts down, or TikTok. I don't even know if TikTok was that big of a thing back in 2020, but don't build on rented land like everybody says, and own your audience, because that's how I was able to grow my business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:51]

And that took off. So much so, that over the course of the pandemic, he even produced several courses for OTHER creators, put them on HIS platform, and split revenue with them! So, Daren made and sold courses for a full year.

Then in early 2021, Amy Redford called him up and she said to him..

Daren Smith [00:09:10]

Yes, it's Robert Redford's daughter.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:12]

And she said to him.

Daren Smith [00:09:13]

Hey, do you want to do a movie? Before I knew what it was or what the budget or anything, I said, yes, absolutely. Because that was twelve years in the making from the time I started deciding I want to be a producer. I don't just want to be a sound guy or a writer, I want to produce, that was like 2009.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:31]

12 years after first dreaming of being a film producer, Daren Smith’s dream of wanting to produce a film finally came true!

Daren Smith [00:09:40]

I attribute a lot of the fact that I was able to finally be a film producer to the fact I just stuck around for twelve years. I stayed alive, I stayed in it, I kept making relationships and working on projects and meeting people, and it finally worked out.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:55]

I think that’s an important lesson here for all creators.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 1: Stay alive and stay in the game long enough and opportunities will come find you.

One of the most important qualities you can have as an entrepreneur is perseverance. The ability to persist and keep at it, even when the going gets tough. And it helps to have a clear goal to aim for. There was, however, one thing about producing a movie that Daren absolutely did not anticipate.

Daren Smith [00:10:21]

I came out of that experience really tired, almost burnout, like, questioning, what do I want to do here? Because I can't do five of these a year. I'd never see my family. I wouldn't make enough money. It was hard. That first film was hard.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:36]

Daren went into a fair bit of detail about *exactly* how hard that job as a film producer was and how some of his OWN decisions ended up making his job even HARDER!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:48]

And now, let's get back to our conversation with Daren Smith of Craftsman Creative. Before the break, I mentioned that Daren shared his valuable insights about similarities and correlations between film productions and startups.

As I heard Daren explain what a film producer does, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to my own experiences as the CEO of a bootstrapped startup. And when I mentioned it to Daren, he immediately agreed with me. In fact, one  of the biggest similarities between film production and a startup that Daren shared with me was that both professions often make you work with really tight budgets.

For example, the movie with Amy Redford had a budget of under a million dollars. Even as an independent movie, that is a relatively low-budget production...

Daren Smith [00:12:40]

And the thing that I realized that I had done inadvertently was I said yes to too many opportunities on that movie. I was just so excited to be finally producing a movie. Like, I was titled Producer. I was a producer. I was line producer. And I was just so happy.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:57]

And then, he made the classic rookie-entrepreneur-mistake of taking on extra roles himself, because there wasn't enough money in the budget.

Daren Smith [00:13:04]

So instead of just being a line producer, I decided to also be the unit production manager, which is basically the person in charge of hiring all the crew, taking care of all that paperwork, making sure that everybody's happy all the time. And then I realized we didn't have budget for a production accountant, so I decided to take on that role.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:22]

Despite taking on all this extra work, do you want to guess how much he finally was able to pay himself?

Daren Smith [00:13:26]

By the time the movie was done? I think I ultimately paid myself about $16,500 for eight weeks of work, working 80, 90 hours weeks, because I'd start at 630 and finish at 1130. And it was brutal.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:41]

The math comes out to about $22 to $25 per hour, in case you are wondering. Brutal, indeed! But, that entire experience taught him something incredibly valuable.

Daren Smith [00:13:51]

And I got to the end of that experience and was like, okay, I can't do that again. So how do I pay myself $50,000 for a movie so I can do two a year? and that's 100k. So, how do I get more equity? How do I get more pay so that I can do two movies a year and not burn out and not lose my marriage and have terrible relationships with my kids?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:15]

Hold on. Doesn't that sound familiar? It does, doesn't it?

EPISODE 36 - Clint Murphy (04:49)
    "I was energized and I created a roadmap of what Mission 2028 would look like. And the idea for everything was to say, well, where do I want to be on this? Like, if I'm going to be a public speaker, how good do I want to be? Uh, how good of a coach do I want to be? If I want to be the best coach in Canada, what are the things I need to do to be that?"

Yup, that's where we have heard it before. Reverse-engineering. That was Clint Murphy back in episode 36, by the way - in case you want to line up the episode in your podcast player next!

Anyway, as it turns out, Daren too has a similar philosophy in life, which he strongly advocates for every creative individual.

Daren Smith [00:14:57]

If you have a creative business, you have to dictate and lay out. What kind of life work balance do you want? What kind of lifestyle free do you want, how much money do you want to make? Where do you want to work? Who do you want to work with? All these things you got to figure out. And then you design your business to be the perfect vehicle that delivers those outcomes every single day.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:17]

Design your business to be the perfect vehicle that delivers those outcomes every single day." What a wonderfully CREATIVE metaphor!

In fact, I'm going to note this as the second takeaway for today:

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 2: Design the life you want to have - then build your business around those goals.

Daren realized that his experience with the movie industry gave him a very unique opportunity...

Daren Smith [00:15:40]

I had this light bulb moment of, man, if I just took the systems I use in film and applied them to creative businesses, I could probably have a pretty good impact on a lot of people. And that's what I'm doing now.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:53]

..and one of the results of his lightbulb moment was the book "Craftsman Creative: How Five-Figure Creators Can Build a Six-Figure Business."

Daren has often referred to this book as " A business Card on Steroids" - a phrase I fell in love with instantly!

Daren Smith [00:16:09]

Yeah, well, I gotta give credit to Hassan Osmond. He's the one who I heard that phrase from. It's a book is a business card on steroids, so credit to him for that one.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:18]

Okay, sure. Massive props to Hassan, and even more props to whoever coined that phrase, I guess. But more importantly, listen to why Darren refers to his book as a business card on steroids.

Daren Smith [00:16:29]

So I've given away over 1000 copies of both the physical book and the digital copies of the book. And that thousand copies is what's turned into the six figures of revenue for my business. Because it's a lead magnet. Because it's a way for me to get into somebody's physical mailbox instead of their email inbox or their LinkedIn DMs. Right. It sets me apart from everyone else out there, and it carries my value, uh, like on a silver platter. And if they resonate with you and you've spent two, three, 5 hours with me reading that book, then all of a sudden you feel really connected to me. Like, I gave away 550 copies between two conferences last year. And out of those giveaway books that I printed myself and sent off to those events, tens of thousands of dollars in business between consulting calls, strategy calls, clients, um, I got a podcast out of it that paid me five figures. The opportunities so outweighed what I possibly could have made as a self published author with a very small audience, trying to sell books at $20 a pop and making eight dollars to ten dollars revenue, right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:43]

Amazing, isn't it? To think that a book could be given away for free and STILL deliver so much value! What an amazing shift of perspective this turned out to be! But, here's what I truly loved about Daren's book - he 'built' the book ENTIRELY in public!

Daren Smith [00:17:59]

Fast forward from making a movie. It's fall of 2021, August. I'd read a few books and had a few interactions with people over the summer. Everybody on Twitter was talking about building in public, building in public. And I kind of knew what it meant. But I didn't have a way to do it, like how do you build a film in public. But then I thought about the book. I was like, well, that's something I could do in public because it's a creative project. It's just me. So what if I just basically live blogged the process of writing a book?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:29]

And this is where he was incredibly fortunate because, around the same time, Jay Clouse famously initiated his #Tweet100 campaign.

Daren Smith [00:18:38]

And he started it, like, the day before. I was thinking about starting work on my book. And it was just great. I was like, man, everyone else is going to be just tweeting every day. I can be different and stand out because I'll write a book in 100 days using Tweet 100. And that'll be my motivation to stay, um, online and be present and give people updates every day.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:59]

Which is exactly what Darren did.

Daren Smith [00:19:01]

And so I started with a tweet that said, hey, I'm announcing my book and I'm going to write it in public. This thread, uh, will be daily updates on the process. And I used the Tweet 100 hashtag every time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:12]

The #Tweet100 hashtag helped him in two ways.

One, it served as the perfect vehicle for the outcome he had in mind, which was building an audience and a personal brand for himself.

Daren Smith [00:19:22]

And designing it in the way of where it was going to be written in public, instead of pursuing the traditional route of trying to find a publisher or trying to find distribution or any of those things, I was like, I'm going to build my own distribution. So I'll start a newsletter and I'll publish the book as an email, a blog, and then on Twitter, that was all I was going to do.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:41]

...and two, the community that formed around the "Tweet 100" hashtag was instrumental in helping him build a community of ride-or-die partners.

Daren Smith [00:19:50]

And what happened was people like Josh and Arvid Kahl and Kevon Chung and Justin Moore, like, people who had big audiences on Twitter. And Jay, uh, to give him credit as well, they were sharing my writing. They were like, wow, this is really cool. This guy's doing cool stuff. I'm going to share it in my newsletter. I'm going to retweet it or whatever it might be.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:12]

Quick side-note, two out of the four people Daren mentioned have previously appeared as guests on this podcast - Arvid Kahl on episode 24 and Kevon Cheung on episode 19.

But getting back to Daren's book, the community of creators who boosted his efforts to their own audiences helped him build a pretty solid audience of his own in a really short timeframe!

Daren Smith [00:20:34]

...all of a sudden, I went from getting, like, 100 people reading my writing to thousands of people reading my writing. And it grew. My Twitter following, I grew an email list from, like, zero to 1000 people in a couple of months.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:47]

Oh, and just in case you are a creator with tons of experience like Daren and you have been wondering whether or not you should write a book, here's some advice Daren has for you:

Daren Smith [00:20:55]

I think people are too precious about books, honestly. Like they're so precious about wanting it to be perfect, wanting it to be right the first time out. Wanting to do it traditionally with a publisher, with an advance, with being able to get bestseller status the first week. I'm so not precious about the book, which is why I was putting rough draft versions or first draft versions of the chapters online.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:18]

Come to think of it, I think it is an excellent takeaway for those of you who have been procrastinating writing a book!

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 3: When writing your book, don't be a perfectionist. In fact, consider building it in public.

Because a book is more than just a book. It is - as Hasan Osmond so eloquently expressed - "a business card on steroids"!

Coming up in a little while, I asked Daren what advice he'd give to young creators and entrepreneurs who are just starting their journey and he shared some really brilliant insights.

For this episode, Daren shared some incredible tips on how to develop the right mindset to become a successful creative entrepreneur. There are THREE key ingredients, according to him.

The first ingredient is simply having…

Daren Smith [00:22:22]

And so you're basically saying, I have this belief that this is a good idea. So I'm going to move forward.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:29]

The second ingredient is, which is necessary to overcome moments of unexpected crisis, both on the creative side.

Daren Smith [00:22:36]

I'm able to do that because I'm aware of the budget and the time and the constraints and the needs of everybody. So I can go, well, you can have that because they need this.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:45]

...as well as on the business side.

Daren Smith [00:22:47]

You'Re going to run into really quickly the threshold of enough.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:51]

And finally, the third and last key ingredient is also called bounce back ability.

Daren Smith [00:22:57]

You need to just stick it out. You need to be able to give things enough time to work.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:02]

Daren also mentioned a fourth element - a sort of a catalyst - that you could combine with these three ingredients and supercharge them.

Daren Smith [00:23:08]

You make progress every day. You get better every day.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:15]

But in my opinion, the best advice Darren shared was a very unique mindset… the mindset of

Daren Smith [00:23:22]

Well, that's a huge unlock. That's a growth lever beyond anything I've discovered.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:27]

All of this AND more can be heard in extensive detail in a special segment of the episode available exclusively to premium members of First Class Founders in the ad-free version of the podcast feed.

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 queue up the final segment of this episode in which Daren shares four bits of highly actionable advice for creative entrepreneurs who are looking to start their journey. I ask all my guests what advice they would give to young creators. And it was no different with Darren either. Of course, his first bit of advice was pretty much obvious.

Daren Smith [00:24:27]

The easiest answer is, we'll read my book. It's called Craftsman Creative and it has all the answers in there.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:33]

But, he expanded on that and outlined four bits of advice that I think every creative entrepreneur should not just note down but start practicing A-S-A-P.

Daren Smith [00:24:42]

It really starts with mindset, because you can't start a career in a creative industry without the proper mindset. If you're struggling with impostor syndrome, fear, doubt, all those things, if you're constantly comparing yourself to other people, if you get discouraged when you scroll Instagram or Twitter and you see the success of everybody else, that's a really hard place to create from. So it really starts with mindset.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:06]

First bit of advice - shed your impostor syndrome and develop a solid mindset.

Daren Smith [00:25:10]

And then I also really encourage people to look at what are the outcomes you want? Are you trying to build a billion dollar unicorn? Because that's really rare in this industry, and it's really rare for solo founders or solo creators to build something that big. But the reality is we don't need that much. Most people would be more than happy to make 250,000 a year with their business, pay themselves 100 or 120 grand, and live a really nice life basically anywhere but some of the major cities in the United States and the world.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:42]:

Second bit of advice - ask yourself how much you actually need to live a happy lifestyle. It might be a lot less than you think. Then, OPTIMIZE for these outcomes.

Daren Smith [00:25:52]

And I always start with the outcomes, because we have to define, what type of business are you actually in? Are you trying to make a business where you're selling albums for nine or $10 and you make $4, and then you've got some revenue from streaming and YouTube and stuff like that. If so, you need a lot of scale. So are you going to sell $10 things or $100 things or $1,000 things or $10,000 things? Because those are completely different businesses with completely different business models.

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

Third bit of advice - choose the RIGHT type of business you want to build serving the RIGHT type of audience because that will determine MOST of your day-to-day activities.

And finally...

Daren Smith [00:26:35]

You have to think at least some of the time like a business owner. So you have to think about it from the get go so that you can be profitable from the start. Because if you try to build a six or seven figure creative business off of one or $10 products, and you're not also including a strategy for how you're going to scale that business to millions or tens of millions of followers and fans and customers, it's never going to work.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:01]:

...which means...

Daren Smith [00:27:02]

...you really have to define the outcomes and be willing to think like a business owner and spend some time in things like spreadsheets and doing data analytics and optimizing systems and all the things I talk about, uh, in my consulting, because creators generally don't think that way.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:19]

So, the fourth and final bit of advice is, at least some of the time, THINK like a business owner.

To underline this, Daren offered his own life and career as an example.

Daren Smith [00:27:29]

If you look at me online, I'm not impressive numbers, uh, wise, any of the vanity metrics like my tweets don't have a million views. I have less than 3000 followers on Twitter and LinkedIn. I think my email list just crossed 4000 people. I have a small business, but it does really well and it's really profitable and it gives me the kind of lifestyle and life work balance that I want in my life because I've designed it that way. So if I could leave people with anything, it's like design the life you want, create your business to be the perfect vehicle to get you those outcomes. And so I encourage you to take the longer path to focus on your mindset, your outcomes, and build that business that's going to give you that long term success and fulfillment that you want.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:17]

And I think that is an excellent final takeaway to wrap up this wonderful conversation with Daren Smith, film producer and founder of Craftsman Creative!

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 4: Define what you want your life to look like, then reverse-engineer your day-to-day actions to make it a reality.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:33]

Before we end today's episode, let's quickly recap and summarize the key takeaways from my conversation with Daren Smith.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 1: Stay alive and stay in the game long enough and opportunities will come find you.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 2: Design the life you want to have - then build your business around those goals.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 3: When writing your book, don't be a perfectionist. In fact, consider building it in public.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 4: Define what you want your life to look like, then reverse-engineer your day-to-day actions to make it a reality.

And of course, not to forget, the four bits of incredibly actionable advice that he shared at the end...

First, shed your impostor syndrome and develop a solid mindset.
Second, figure out how much you actually need to live a happy lifestyle and then OPTIMIZE for those outcomes.

Third, choose the RIGHT type of business you want to build serving the RIGHT type of audience because that will determine MOST of your day-to-day activities.

And finally, fourth, THINK like a business owner - well, at least *some* of the time...

You can reach Daren Smith via the Craftsman Creative newsletter at…

Daren Smith [00:29:39]

craftsmancreative.co, you can find me there. But, um, I've got one thing that I can give your audience, which is a little bit of micro coaching or micro consulting. So I built this free scorecard a few months ago. And if you go to Scorecard, Craftsmancreative Co, it's basically a quiz or a survey. So it's 30 questions. It'll take you like two or three minutes. It's free. But by the end, you'll have a lot of clarity around your business, where you're at, where you're trying to get and how to get there. So, again, that's scorecard.craftsmancreative.co, it's free to take, and I hope you'll do that. And then from there, you'll be on the email list and you'll know about my podcast and all the other things. And you can kind of choose your own adventure from there.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:27]

Alright, that wraps up today's show! 

In the next episode of First Class Founders, we’re talking about flywheels for creators. I’ve identified a few crucial flywheels that every single successful creator must have and they may not be what you think. I’ll explain what they are and how you should think about implementing them.

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 the X formerly known as 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.