Who is Carl Richards?

Financial advisor
Sketch guy at New York Times
Brain behind Behavior Gap - visuals & podcasts

Cue/ Questions	Notes
Why do simple drawings/ visuals?	Drawing/ simple visuals are amazing because...

they reduce Complex information into their Simplest form

Most of us learn visually, But few can communicate visually as well!

There's power in the amateur/ back-of-the-napkin nature of such simple visuals | | What are the principles that Carl Richards talks about in his creative process? | 1. Embracing constraints 2. Turn flaws to features 3. Fire yourself as the judge of your own work 4. Notice tailwinds 5. Content flywheel | | Why you should embrace constraints? | - Force you to do good work

Easier to create new things

Reminds me of Tim Ferriss' quote: 'Make one decision that would eliminate 1,000 other decisions.' | | Do you know you can convert your Flaws into Features? | - Carl tried using Adobe, but stuck to hand-drawn images, despite the shortcomings. That flaw defined his trademark feature for his visuals

Carl makes a different type of podcast - Behavior Gap Radio — There's no featured guests/ interviews. He doesn't want to. — It's only Carl speaking - as meta-cognition, inspired by Seth Godin — It's short 2-12 mins — It's not free. It's $10 pm subscription - not for everyone — He does it daily, except on Sundays In many ways, Carl's podcast doesn't follow common definition of podcasting. It's flawed. But that's exactly why he does it. He | | Why you should Fire yourself? | You are NOT a good judge of your own work
That which you think is bad, may perform well
That which you think is good, may do bad

"Your job is to just post & publish your work. It ends there!" | | Why & how to Notice tailwinds? | - Make lots of small bets

We are not good at knowing what's gonna hit
Just notice the tailwinds — Do more of that! | | How Carl uses Twitter? | Carl confesses that he doesn't use Twitter right:
Don't follow anyone
Don't engage
Quotes Seth Godin that he uses Twitter only to repost his blog

But he does say that he uses it now more intentionally as a vehicle to share ideas.

Jerry Seinfeld says your audience deserves your greatest hits
Chris Rock says your audience crave for new materials

Carl's strategy is to use...

Twitter to share his greatest hits
Podcast to share new materials

He & his team has cleaned his Twitter timeline, now hosting only best of his work & ideas | | What is Carl's content strategy? | - Communicate ideas v/s Tell stories

$50 on 20-page book v/s $5 book with 200 pages
Only does Permissionless project. If he needs to ask permission from someone else to do something, he will not do it. | | Who are Carl's audiences? | Entrepreneurs who have become Financial advisors follow him most and use his materials for their consulting.

Carl's favorite kind of an entrepreneur (or content creator) is the one... "who's compelled to entrepreneur (or create content). It's not really a choice." | | How to increase your luck surface area? | - Build in public

Play in traffic
Say 'yes'
Notice tailwinds
Build systems

PS: You play in traffic hoping to get hit. Carl says he got luck that he got tailwinds. But he also says that there are many talented people, writers, designers, etc., who simply don't make it. There's a piece of this, that CAN'T BE EXPLAINED! | | How does Carl never runs out of content by using his Content Flywheel? | Carl & his team are in knowledge business. Carl's team said to him that they got enough material to create info-products for next 5 years. He can literally stop creating content, without spoiling the business.

How was this possible? Here Carl shared his content flywheel that helps him generate new materials and come out with new products every other time.

First, he generates IDEAS for his podcasts that he saves in his iPhone
Then, he picks whichever he feels like for the day and talks about it and RECORDS it. He drops the recording in a Dropbox that his team can access and vet it.
Publish it on daily PODCAST, Behavior Gap Radio, with 2-12 mins long content
Every month, he & his team writes a SYNOPSIS of his podcasts and sends it to his podcast subscribers
At the end of the year, he got 12 such synopsis with 30 ideas each = 360 idea synopsis
His team then pick 50-100 ideas out of this — cleans it up — refines it — make it better. And call it a BOOK

Oh yeah! For Twitter, his team pulls out 1-2 ideas from the daily podcast, writes about it and tweets it out. | | My summary | I personally liked the following concepts most from Carl's interview: | | What's the thing that impressed me the most? | Flaws into defining Features

How we don't have to be ashamed of our flaws. In fact, you can convert those flaws into features. Now, I'm actually thinking of listing what I traditionally assumed to be as my flaws... And hopefully thinking of converting them into my strengths 😇
He gives his one-person short podcasting as a recent example to extensively explain this concept. I remember ideating of creating short a podcast long time ago, inspired by Cal Newport's Deep Questions podcast. Yes it is also one-person podcast, though longer. When I told this to a friend, he immediately said how would it be a podcast if only you talk... Haha!
Usually in career advice processes, you are often suggested to list your strengths and pursue a field/ industry that fits your orientation. I find that Carl's take on converting your flaws into features is both revealing and at the same time, liberating!
With internet being an amazing equalizer, we can pursue and even monetize almost any weird niche (paraphrasing Naval). If that's so...

CTA:

Take a piece of paper
Divide it into two columns by drawing a line in between
On the right hand side, write a list of things about your personality - your quirkiness, introverted nature, inability to sit in one place, your dry wit, etc...
Now once you listed those with your heart's content, think of ways how you can convert this into you feature for your product or service, etc...

Or... You can also use the https://aurasky.notion.site/Flaws-to-Features-template-5ca2f2c5497646e88f543ee756fe3dfd I created to help you in this exercise | | What's the thing that I think I will use the most? | Content Flywheel

Writing is rewriting (Ernest Hemingway)
Writing is assembly (Ryan Holiday).
Podcasts into Books (Carl Richards)
Conversation with friends into Essays (David Perell)

I often consult with businesses/ non-profits/ startups on their social media/ digital content marketing strategy. Often times, the issue is not the lack of content. The problem is in structured distribution.

My immediate recommendation: Don't create more content. Create a content machine to leverage existing content - to repurpose, to schedule it, to systematize it - so the process is easier and the result is effective.

My first official ebook, 'The Yellow Visuals' didn't start out as an ebook project. I simply designed and posted one visual a day, as part of the Daily Visual challenge. I created so much visuals that there came a point when I decided to select the best performing visuals and curate them and package them into a downloadable PDF. Thus birthing the 'Yellow Visuals' ebook.

I did the same thing with 'Sathya's Sketchnotes' - my second ebook. I was learning sketchnoting and posting my work on Twitter. It was received so well that I compiled the 30+ sketchnotes into an ebook.

That's content flywheel.

CTA: Now ask yourself what are the content - could be blogs, medium articles, Twitter/ LinkedIn posts, your school/ college assignments, reports, etc.

Find them
Put them here on Notion
Organize it as nicely as you want it to be

Now think of extracting noteworthy content that seems to resonate with you.

Bold them,
Highlight them,
Rewrite them

There you got some new materials.

Less than 200 words post it on Twitter
A personal experience of 1000+ words post it on LinkedIn
2500+ words worth - an article maybe
10,000+ words - you got your first ebook

Publish it. And give yourself pat on your back!

Rinse and repeat.

That's your content flywheel. | | What are the two things that Carl mentions that I'm already doing and a big fan of? | Lots of small bets

Any creator would loathe about the numerous experiments, trial and errors that they've to go through before they arrived at their current stage.
Jeff Bezos famously said 10,000 experiments, not 10,000 hours. In fact, Amazon's history is littered with many failures than successes. But their successes were so huge that they compensated for the losses. Should I even mention Elon Musk as another example of this idea?
Daniel Vassallo, a (different-kind-of) Twitter guru, also talks about making lots of small bets. You never know which one would work, so just keep trying.
Jim Collins, author of famous, 'Great by Choice', concludes that one trait that distinguishes a great company from a good one is their ability to 'Fire bullets, then cannonballs'
If you are following me on Twitter, you already know the numerous creative experiments I do. In fact, this Notion Notes is an experiment of mine trying to synthesis great content for my own learning and of course, share it with others to that they can appreciate it too.

Permission-less projects

I simply love this idea. Yeah! I'm terrible at managing clients - one part because of my shy nature, and another part because of the ego that doesn't allow me to make creative compromises.
I wasn't able to name it, until Carl said that he will simply not take on a project if it involves asking someone's permission
Jack Butcher also recommends his legendary move from offering consulting and client services to selling products/ productized services. In fact, his course is called 'Build Once, Sell Twice'. That should get you! | | | |

Who is Carl Richards?

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