It's Relationship-Building, Not Audience-Building

What I’ve been reading: Neat Prompts

At a recent commencement speech, Nvidia’s CEO told Singaporean graduates that the most important skill of the 21st century will be AI proficiency.

Neat Prompts has been one of my go-to’s for learning the most effective ways to leverage AI for my business and life in general.

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Now, onto today’s piece:

I’ve wanted to achieve independent internet income since I was in high school.

Proof: I was 17 when I wrote this:

And over the years, I experimented with many different business models in my quest to becoming a successful digital nomad, internet entrepreneur, or whatever you want to call it.

So why did I win with digital writing?

What was the difference between this successful online venture and the rest of my failed experiments?

These are some of the questions I’ve asked myself after achieving my financial independence goal earlier this year.

And my reflections have revealed an abundantly clear answer:

Relationships.

I never would’ve reached any level of success without the relationships I formed along the way.

And unless you put in the effort to build the right relationships, you’ll never make it, either.

Solopreneurship Ain’t Solo

I’ve always approached life with a lone-wolf mentality.

This is why I was so attracted to solopreneurship and independent internet income in the first place.

But when I look back at when I was posting:

• Landscape photos on Instagram

• Home decor products on Shopify

• Cinematic travel videos on YouTube

I realize it was exactly this lone-wolf mentality that led to my failures in each respective venture.

By trying to do everything alone, my motivation gradually waned. I became disinterested. And eventually, I reached a level of frustration and loneliness that led to me giving up the business altogether.

This is why building relationships isn’t just necessary for solopreneurial success — it’s a requirement.

Because no matter how much you love your craft, you’ll inevitably experience down periods of self-doubt.

Your motivation will wane.

You’ll become disinterested.

You’ll reach levels of frustration and loneliness.

And if you don’t have strong enough relationships to lean on for support during these low periods, you’ll give up the business altogether.

Relationships make business more fun.

Relationships help you progress 10x faster because you learn from their mistakes.

Relationships give you sticking power.

And in this Great Online Game where most winners are simply the last ones standing, creating sticking power is the most valuable trait you can develop.

That was the reason why I succeeded on Twitter and not on those other platforms.

But how do you best develop strong relationships and sticking power?

Let me break it down for you:

Mentors

Whether you like it or not, becoming successful as a creator is largely pay-to-play.

This is true for most video games, and it’s true for online business.

By paying people ahead of you for their:

• Knowledge

• Expertise

• Network

You’ll shave countless months off your learning curve.

This is not to say you can’t achieve success 100% organically. You absolutely can, but it’ll just take you much longer.

For full transparency, I’ve now invested a little more than $10k into coaching programs.

This is a huge reason why I was able to grow to over 36,000 followers and over 6-figures in income within 9 months of starting on Twitter.

I’ve learned that’s the best way to succeed in the modern business world:

1. Identify your business goal

2. Find someone 1-2 steps ahead of you who’s achieved said goal

3. Vet them with background research (testimonials, case studies, results)

4. Pay them for mentorship

5. Achieve goal and profit

In our modern society with infinite distractions, paying a mentor for accountability and guidance is the greatest forcing function for actually accomplishing your goals.

I fully plan on following the above steps for the rest of my entrepreneurial career.

Peers

While mentors are probably the most valuable type of relationship you can cultivate, peers are just as essential.

You can’t expect larger and more advanced creators to give you the time of day to share their knowledge and resources.

They have too many people vying for their attention, and the benefit of the exchange is too one-sided in your favor. If you want help from them, pay them to be your mentor.

On the flip side, you can expect free help from peers.

Peers are creators that have like-minded goals with roughly the same follower and income level as you.

Since you’re both at similar stages of the journey, it’s mutually beneficial for each of you to share your time and learnings with each other for free.

Peers are the people you want to:

• Form group chats with

• Meet up in real life with

• Hop on weekly calls with

• Create healthy competitions with

Since building a creator business is inherently lonely (you work by yourself from a laptop with no in-person interactions), peer friendships satisfy the “tribal belonging” aspect of human psychology that’s essential for sustained consistency.

However, I see way too many of these peer connections done the wrong way.

To avoid the inevitable demise of 98% of engagement groups and group chats, you need to understand this massive difference:

Build authentic friendships, not transactional relationships.

The former flourishes, the latter loses.

Here’s some tricks for building authentic friendships:

• If you see a tweet on the timeline that really resonates, DM it to the creator and tell them why. Don’t expect anything in return.

• Join communities based upon shared goals or interests.

• Tweet about your genuine interests and your most vulnerable life experiences. You’ll attract eerily like-minded people.

Over time, you’ll create genuine friendships.

They’ll introduce you to their friends.

You’ll link up in real life.

Opportunities will multiply.

And you’ll develop a massive network that you’ll soon consider your most valuable asset.

Mentees

The best mindset for approaching relationships at the start of your creator journey:

Help everybody for free. Expect nothing in return.

But eventually, you’ll reach a point where you simply can’t help everyone who asks for it.

I hit that tipping point in January this year. I’d blown past 10,000 followers, and the amount of DMs I received started to go exponential.

At 36,000 followers now, it’s almost impossible to keep up with (definitely impossible if I want to keep my sanity).

And recently, 2 events forced me to reflect:

1. After the intoxicating high of achieving financial freedom through ghostwriting, I experienced a mild hangover of discovering its a bit lonely. I want more interactive and fulfilling work.

2. Two new creators came to me asking me to mentor them. They both paid me 4-figures for several months of help with:

   • Finding their unique niche as a personal brand

   • Developing killer content systems

   • Accelerating their audience growth

   • Getting distribution on their work

   • Monetizing their work and skillset

So after:

• Experiencing these two events

• Evaluating my level of expertise

• Reflecting on where I want to take my creator business next

I realize I’ve reached a turning point in my creator journey where I have a wealth of knowledge, experience, and resources to teach creators behind me.

Derek Sivers once said “Don’t start a business unless people are asking you to.”

And it appears I’ve arrived at this pivotal moment.

I’m in the midst of launching a done-with-you, 1-on-1, 3-month+ long mentorship offer for digital writers looking to accelerate their Twitter and newsletter audience, network, and internet income.

(More on this soon. But if you’re interested, reply to this email or Twitter DM me the keyword “Escalate” for more details.)

All of this is to say that eventually, you’ll hit this inflection point, too.

You’ll have accumulated enough value, authority, and expertise that you’ll be able to genuinely help those behind you in your respective field.

Because even if you’re just 1-2 steps ahead of someone, you can sell that step behind you. Generating online revenue doesn’t need to take forever.

And that’s really the trick to succeeding in this ever-evolving Wild West landscape of online business:

Buy and learn from those ahead of you.

Network and mastermind with those around you.

Sell and teach those behind you.

Build relationships. Build sticking power. Build generational wealth.

Matt’s Discoveries

My 3 favorite finds this week:

Scott Adams gave the greatest career advice I’ve ever read in this old blog post. Hint: the same principles apply to developing your creator niche.

George Mack is gradually becoming my favorite Twitter follow and newsletter subscribe. In a world of shallow ideas, he digs up the top 0.1% for us.

I’ve been testing out this unique morning routine. I’ll report my findings soon on Twitter.

Thanks for reading.

Have yourself a creative week.

Matt Mic

P.S. For those of you who want to take this full-time creator thing seriously…

Beehiiv is my newsletter platform of choice. It’s an all-in-one newsletter suite that has by far the greatest tools, analytics, and team in the email game. Highly recommend.

If you want help with content creation, online business, social media, or anything else, book a 1:1 call with me.

I use Tweet Hunter to schedule all of my tweets and threads in advance. I love this tool. It’s the main hub of my Twitter workflow.

I’ll see you next Monday. In the meantime, catch me over on Twitter.