(PART 1) Luck Surface Area
Get clients, attract opportunities and make creator friends online
From the day I got in touch with the concept of Luck Surface Area I couldn’t let it go.
Because when you think there are a lot of creators who seem quite lucky, aren’t they? They got the fame, followers and of course, the money.
So the other day I was talking with my friend Laura about serendipity and how some creators seem to have a bigger chance for success than others.
That’s because they increase their luck surface area by doing a mix of tactics and good timing
We teamed up to bring some of the things that have worked for us (and others) so you can as well have more success in your creator journey.
This is a 2 parts article where you’re going to find some of Laura’s and my experience increasing our Luck Surface Area.
Read the part 2 clicking here
Reverse Engineer
Difficulty: Easy
There is no excuse not to create in public.
Are you an expert in your field? Great, you can jump to the medium and pro difficulty level advice in this article.
But what if you don’t see yourself as an expert yet?
Here is the good news: You don’t need to be an expert to write on the internet. You can research and synthesise other people’s ideas (connect the dots), select or curate other people’s content that is highly relevant to your audience and even document your own learning journey as you discover a new piece of information that helped you get better at a specific skill, improve your business or like in our case, increase your luck surface area (= learning in public).
Reverse-engineering other people’s success or knowledge can even be an entire business strategy.
Newsletter researcher Chenell Basilio, founder of Growth in Reverse, build a popular weekly newsletter, a podcast and an online community on the back of spending a ridiculous amount of time studying the strategies top creators used to grow their newsletter and breaking down these tactics into actionable steps for her audience.
Best-selling author Robert Greene didn’t have the traditional expert authority to write and publish his book The 48 Laws of Power. And yet he ended up selling millions of books. How? Based on the frustrations in his own work life, he started to research the common patterns of success in historical figures and turned his observations into a structured book. This is not an endorsement of the book, but an example that connecting the dots through observation and curation can bring you expert status, too.
Follow the Signals
Difficulty: Easy
Once you start posting online you get feedback from the people who follow you and you can use that to guide the direction of your creator business.
For example, I started over 2 years ago with a brand new account. I had the goal to help people with their content creation struggles because that’s what I was doing previously.
But I didn’t expect that the visuals of my posts would get so much attention.
I started receiving comments, DMs and even people asking if I did those visuals for other people
So that led me to offer a service of creating visuals to other people posting online.
I didn’t anticipate it but I noticed that there were signals that people kept showing me so I followed them and it allowed me to bring new revenue to my biz.
Run a content Challenge
Difficulty: Medium
If you find yourself in need for external accountability to create and post in public, content challenges work great for this purpose.
There is little more terrifying than committing to a public goal (for example posting for 30 days) just to fail and admit defeat.
The concept of content challenges are not new in the creator world. You favourite creators probably participated in one on their journey to become professional creators.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff committed to publishing 100 newsletter editions in 100 days, Jay Clouse created the #Tweet100 to hold himself accountable and take Twitter more seriously and Nicolas Cole together with Dickie Bush brought Ship 30 for 30 to life, a popular 30-day cohort-based writing program. Did we mention that Jessi Jean is currently inspiring thousands of people to yap on camera right now on Instagram in her 40 day Yap Challenge?
You can start simple: find an accountability partner or group and commit to a public goal. When others are showing up, you’ll feel the pull to show up too. It’s a mix of peer pressure and encouragement (plus, it’s just more fun to create together).
Laura joined two content challenges last year. Her first posting challenge right after leaving her 9-5 job led to her first freelance clients. In her second sprint, one of her posts got the attention of Josh Spector, and her newsletter Audacious Introverts got featured to his audience of 30k+ readers.
Share a client case study
Difficulty: Medium
This is one of the most powerful moves you can make.
I know it’s sometimes hard to promote our own work, like: who is gonna read this?
I also thought like that before.
But believe me, posting a client case study does work. Because it helps future clients see themselves in there. They can see what you can do, what problems you solve and what results you can achieve.
And what’s most interesting is that sometimes your clients don’t engage with the content. But they do read it and it makes them more likely to hire you in the future.
Here’s an example of a case study I built that brought me 2 leads on the same day
Pitch in Public
Difficulty: Pro
I know you probably think that this is nuts but it does work.
Recently, Jay Clouse hired Anna Reich as a business integrator because she wrote a public letter on how she would help his business so he could go on paternity leave in peace.
I landed my first big client also using the same approach.
I’m not here to say this always works, because I’ve done public letters that didn’t get the attention of the person I was aiming to work with.
However it does get the attention of people in similar situations that would love to have our help.
This is 1/2 Part of the article, go check the Part 2 in Laura's newsletter Audacious Introverts
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