You can spend years earning your success without ever stopping to ask if you actually want the life that success would create for you.

That’s a tough place to be stuck in.

For most of my career as the “audio guy” with “audio issues,” I suffered from imposter syndrome.

If you’ve ever done something creative or put yourself out there, I’m sure you’ve felt that dark passenger too.

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What Are You Trying to Prove?

When you’re insecure about your work, your first instinct is usually to close that gap.

• If you’re unqualified, get certified.

• If you feel behind, put in more hours.

• If your business stalls, hustle harder.

And sometimes, that’s the right path. But eventually, another question might start to rear its head, and it’s a much harder one to stare in the face:

What if you don’t actually want this career?

That’s the question I wasn’t asking, and it might be a question you’re actively trying to avoid as you “hustle harder.”

Even with my credentials, I never really felt like the hot-shot audio engineer. Obviously, I wasn’t some random newbie either. I had an audio engineering diploma. I spent years doing live sound, recorded and mixed plenty of home recordings, interned at a commercial studio, and ran a small professional studio out of my home with a partner for a while.

One of my most fun claims to fame was working as the lead floor engineer at the Bonnaroo Haybale Studio, where we recorded artists like Sheryl Crow, Alt-J, Caroline Rose, Japanese Breakfast, Steve Earle, Old Crow Medicine Show, and WALK THE MOON.

I had plenty of evidence that I knew what I was doing, but I could always find a reason it didn’t quite count.

• I still didn’t have enough (or the right) credits

• I wasn’t mixing records every day

• I didn’t have a fancy $100,000 commercial facility

There was always something my imposter syndrome could bring up to make me feel like I wasn’t quite “there yet.”

It wasn’t until recently that I realized I didn’t really want the life you’d need to lead to get those credentials.

Sure, I liked making music. I love talking about records. I can get completely lost in conversation with fellow musicians when we’re speaking in our shared language.

But I wasn’t in a situation where I could chase credits, tour with a band, or spend twelve hours a day in the studio. I loved audio, but I just didn’t want the stereotypical success that I was “supposed” to chase as an audio engineer.

Understanding that you may love parts of your profession without wanting the typical path is powerful.

You may enjoy the craft, but hate the business.

You may love the industry, but loathe the lifestyle.

Knowing you can enjoy being good at something without wanting to make it 100% of your identity forever was eye-opening for me.

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Pay Attention to Your Imposter Syndrome

He’s a dick, but he’s not always wrong.

Looking back across the years of my career, the evidence of what actually interested me was there all along.

In 2008, I was studying audio engineering in Madrid and writing a little blog about what I was learning. In case the foreshadowing isn’t clear enough, that blog became my six-figure business.

This was when Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek was taking the online community by storm, and I was hooked on the idea of building something that could make money on autopilot.

I got even more hooked after I met Tim at an event in Spain in 2008 where he was promoting the book, and I resolved to take all his lessons to heart. That’s how Audio Issues got started.

But it didn’t start off so well.

My first foray into making money online was putting Google ads on my site. Then I sat in my cockroach-infested basement apartment and refreshed the dashboard over and over again, waiting for the internet to make me rich.

Eventually somebody clicked, and I made a whopping €0.34. Not exactly mailbox money. But I was hooked. Not because somebody had complimented my music, or that I had landed a recording client. But because I created something online that made money without me.

Since then, Audio Issues went from earning pennies to more than $1 million in digital product sales. And that should’ve told me something about what I thought was important.

And you might have clues like that too.

• What part of your work gives you energy?

• What do you love learning about even when nobody’s asking?

• What questions do people bring to you all the time (that you hopefully enjoy answering)?

• What problems do you enjoy solving?

• What part of your job do you wish you could focus on 100% of the time?

Sometimes, your next direction has been trying to tap you on the shoulder for years, but you’ve been too busy chasing the version of success you think you’re supposed to want.

Or worse, you’re so wrapped up in the identity you’ve already built, you don’t realize those clothes don’t fit anymore.

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Are You Learning, or Repeating?

Audio Issues eventually became my business school, and I am grateful for all the years I spent running it.

I learned how to grow an audience, understand customer problems, build products that sold, write marketing copy, optimize funnels, and automate the business.

And eventually I grew out of it.

I kept learning about business, but I hated the topic I built the business on.

There are only so many ways you can teach music production before you start sounding like a broken record. And there are only so many things you can learn from books and courses before you just have to go out and practice your craft.

I started repeating myself. Phoning it in. Repackaging old ideas. Repositioning old products.

Trying to find a new way to say something I’d already pounded into the ground 127 times.

In the end, I realized that I was learning a lot more about business and marketing than I was about audio. I had said everything I had to say about audio, but man, had I learned a lot about business.

So if your work feels stale, don’t assume you’re just being lazy or undisciplined. Don’t always believe the simple, surface-level self-talk. The deeper reason can be much more insightful.

Boredom doesn’t always mean you should quit. Business isn’t always exciting, and a lot of the operations are downright monotonous. But if you feel stuck for months at a time (or years in my case), maybe there’s something deeper behind your imposter syndrome than what you previously thought.

Notice What People Trust You For

Hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s easy to see this now.

Online, I always felt like I had to hustle for my authority in the audio world.

Offline, people who knew what I’d built kept asking me for business advice. They’d ask for a meeting, a cup of coffee, or want to buy me lunch (and I’ll NEVER turn down a lunch!)

They’d always ask the same things:

• How did you build your audience?

• How do you make money online?

• How do you launch and sell digital products?

That led to guest lectures, workshops, startup advising, and eventually a full-time career mentoring entrepreneurs.

Those conversations felt different because I had the receipts. I had the credits. I’d spent years living through the same business problems people were now asking me about.

During my first year as a venture advisor, one of the teams I worked with had plenty of internal drama all year. But in the end, they placed second in our pitch competition and took home $3,000 in prize money.

I’m not going to take credit for their success. They earned it. But I’d like to think my mentorship helped.

After enough moments like that, I realized that the experience running Audio Issues was more useful than the audio experience I used to start the business.

Something similar might be happening to you too.

Maybe colleagues ask for advice that isn’t in your job description. You help them anyway because it fires you up (and you secretly wish you could get paid only for that).

Maybe clients value a skill you don’t actually position front and center.

Maybe people are coming to you for help about something you don’t consider “your thing,” but it obviously is if people want your input.

Don’t dismiss those signals. They’re clues to where your best work is heading.

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Maybe You Don’t Need Another Level

Feeling like an imposter doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong career.

For years, I thought my insecure neurosis just meant that I had to become a better audio engineer. But what it was actually telling me was that I didn’t want to become the kind of audio engineer I was comparing myself to.

There’s a popular guru saying:

What got you here won’t get you there.

What people mean is that when you need to grow, you need to change. And they’re usually talking about growing something you already have.

But if you’re spending all your energy growing something you don’t even want in the first place, you’re just digging yourself deeper into the hole.

If you’ve built a career or business that still technically works, but you’re increasingly bored, restless, or pulled toward something else, you may not actually want the next level.

You may have to figure out what all those years have been preparing you to do next.

So if you’ve spent ten, fifteen, or twenty years in an identity that doesn’t feel right anymore, ask yourself:

Do I actually want the life that more of “this” will bring me?

Don’t think of the money or prestige, but the actual day-to-day life.

What does your ideal day look like?

Is it the life you’re living now? If not, pay attention to that mismatch.

Reinvention doesn’t mean throwing everything away. I never “started over”; I just segued into something else.

Audio Issues gave me all the experience with writing, marketing, sales, product development, teaching, audience research, and business mistakes that I needed.

And I realized that what I loved doing was:

• Writing

• Helping experienced people figure out what to do next with all the experience they’ve already got

Not studio work, not mixing tracks, not being cool on the internet in front of the audio industry. Those are the two things I love doing and can see myself doing forever, even if it doesn’t impress anybody.

And if you’re considering a change, start with a deceptively simple question:

What does your average Tuesday look like?

Your job title is irrelevant. Income goals are for later. An impressive-sounding positioning statement won’t help you (as much fun as they are to write).

Tell me about Tuesday.

• What are you working on?

• Who are you helping?

• How do you spend your time?

• What kind of control do you have over your day?

That’s why I added the Ideal Day Designer into my Reinvention Toolkit. It helps you visualize what you actually want to be doing down to the nitty-gritty, instead of blindly manifesting some version of success you don’t want.

You can get instant access when you become a paid member by clicking the button below.

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If somebody had told 24-year-old me that I would go on to write more than 1,000 blog posts, author multiple books, send approximately 17,358,108,285 sales emails, and spend the better part of two decades publishing things online, I would’ve told them to lay off the crack.

But here we are with yet another pin in the publishing schedule.

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Funnily enough, I originally wrote a version of this article almost a decade ago after somebody asked me how I’d been able to come up with ideas for 1,000 articles.

And although that version was decent, it deserves a new perspective through my oh-so-very 41-year-old eyes.

Back then, I thought the lesson was simple:

1. Build a writing habit

2. Capture your ideas

3. Write shitty first drafts

4. Edit them

5. Publish consistently

Rinse and repeat.

And to be fair, that advice is still solid. But I’ve changed my mind about what all this writing is actually supposed to accomplish.

For over a decade, I created content and wrote emails ad nauseam because I was trying to feed the email marketing sales machine.

I ran an online business called Audio Issues, where I taught thousands of musicians and producers how to make better records. Content brought them into my business. And my emails sold them my digital products, books, courses, and plug-ins.

And I firmly believed (and to a certain extent this is true for any online business) that if I didn’t email my audience that day, I’d be leaving money on the table. Money that I needed to pay my mortgage, feed my kids, or nurse my growing alcohol habit (which I have now quit).

That mindset made me prolific as hell.

Or at least, it sometimes felt like hell.

Because I was just writing to feed the machine, like my Kajabi dashboard was some weird digital version of the Little Shop of Horrors, where I had to feed the plant every day so I wouldn’t get eaten ( is that how Little Shop of Horrors goes? I forget; I saw the play when I was like 12, and it was in Icelandic).

So I was writing to send, instead of writing when I had something to say.

To be fair, my emails weren’t terrible. I was GREAT at them. They had silly stories, dumb jokes, useful tips. Everything a good sales email should have, as shown by the fact that they made me over a million dollars in digital product sales.

And I got very good at writing short and sharp emails that made a point and got somebody to click on something. And for a while, it worked.

But most of those emails had no value beyond the moment they were sent.

Maybe somebody laughed.

Maybe somebody learned something.

And I obviously hoped that somebody bought something.

I thought I was building a body of work, but I was just feeding the machine.

(Ok, to be fair, it was incredible practice. Writing every day is an invaluable practice for anybody).

Output Does Not Equal Body of Work

It took me a while to reconcile this mismatch. Producing a lot of content and developing a body of work you’re proud of are not the same thing.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying to sell something. Any successful business needs to sell to stay in business, and that’s exactly what I did.

And frankly, most of my actual articles were genuinely useful, evergreen content. People can still find them on www.audio-issues.com today and learn how to EQ a vocal, compress a snare drum, or stop making their mixes sound muddy.

But that’s just not who I am anymore. When I look back at all that daily writing, I don’t see a complete collection of ideas about how I think.

I see very effective marketing. There’s tons of value in that, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a different type of value than what I have to bring right now.

Today, I’m not interested in the endless hamster wheel that makes me feel prolific but eventually produces disposable marketing.

I’m more interested in saying something genuinely useful. And with the endless and instant content generation anybody can conjure up via AI, I think having something to say has never been more important.

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Information is Cheap. Perspective is Earned

AI can answer any question in 0.3 seconds, and nowhere in history has information been such a cheap commodity.

To be fair, you could ask Google almost anything before AI, but you had to do more work. You had to actually read multiple people’s thoughts and then distill the information across your 27 tabs before you were confident in your answers.

AI does all the compilation for you now, like a nice little worker bee.

Want 50 digital product ideas?

Voilá! (That’s French for “here you fucking go, you impatient weirdo”).

Want a simple 3-step launch plan?

Gjörðu svo vel. (That’s Icelandic for “here you go.”)

And if you believe half the ads online, AI will apparently also create the product, sell it, run the business for you, beat the stock market, and somehow deposit $5,000 into your checking account by Friday while you sit on a beach inhaling the Capitalism.

Don’t get me wrong, it CAN do a lot of this heavy lifting for you. But you know what it CAN’T do?

• Tell you what you actually think.

• Tell you what you’ve experienced that changes how you approach a problem.

• Decide who you are able to (and want) to actually help.

• Determine what makes your solution unique.

It can give you a lot of Lego blocks, but you’re the only one who can put them together into the broader business system you’re trying to build.

Strip away all the information you get from easy AI access, and all you’re left with is your perspective and opinion.

(And I don’t mean the type of opinion that’s ruining society, where two opinionated pundits argue over some bullshit for eight minutes before we get a break to watch the next GLP-1 commercial).

I mean the kind of opinion you earn from experience dealing with a problem that puts you in a unique position to solve it for your customers, clients, or audience.

AI eliminates the value of gatekeeping information, but it doesn’t remove the value of your own judgment, lived experiences, or interpretation of what it all means. That’s why earned perspectives will become more and more important in the years to come.

I don’t want to just create more content to feed your scrolling habits. I want to develop ideas worth thinking about and discuss topics that make you think.

Fortunately, all those years sending sales emails on command earned me a particular set of skills to do that.

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How to Create on Command

Creating on command doesn’t come from having the superhuman willpower to force something onto the page.

It comes from a system. The same system I used to write sales emails every day still works, but the goals have changed.

Here’s how it looks:

1. Capture

2. Develop

3. Draft

4. Challenge

5. Publish

6. Compound

1. Collect Your Ingredients

The first step of creating has nothing to do with creating.

Blank page syndrome is very real, and it’s the easiest way to develop writer’s block. You simply can’t sit down and force your brain to be interesting.

Ideas arrive in the in-between.

• While you’re driving.

• When you’re talking to somebody.

• When you’re annoyed at something. Especially when you’re annoyed at something.

• When a student asks you a question you can answer, but in the back of your mind you know it deserves more nuance and thought.

Or you get a lightbulb moment when a memory from five years ago careens with a new challenge, and it suddenly means something new.

That’s the stuff you should capture.

And I wish I had some complex AI-powered Notion System to sell you that could act as your second brain.

But honestly, I just use my calendar.

If I have a thought I want to expand on, I’ll just make a note in my calendar. Then, when I review the calendar later, the note becomes a prompt I can start from.

I’ve been writing online for about 18 years, and throughout that time I’ve used all kinds of to-do apps, document editors, note-taking tools, and GTD systems.

They all work just fine.

In fact, the original version of this article from 10 years ago included a whole list of them, explaining my Charlie Day collection of Don’t Miss tools.

So if you’re relying on somebody else’s productivity system to make you create, you’re focusing on the wrong things.

What’s actually important is your ability to notice ideas and recall them, no matter what app you’re using.

Your ideas don’t need to be fully formed during the ideation phase. Half-baked thoughts are useful. Sentence fragments are solid starting points. A list of questions is half the article already written. A complaint is an opportunity for you to solve somebody’s problem in detail.

Even the occasional absurdity from your five-year-old that made you think about entrepreneurship differently can jumpstart your creativity.

Here are three notes from my current calendar that will eventually become articles.

They might be nonsensical to you, but to my brain it’s the exact food I need to jumpstart a draft.

In the beginning, the point isn’t to capture finished articles. It’s to collect ingredients to get you thinking.

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2. Stab the Drama

Good non-fiction has a lot in common with good fiction. We keep reading when there’s tension, friction, or drama.

Which is convenient for me because apparently I’m very dramatic, even if most of the drama happens entirely in the theater of my mind.

Think about your favorite stories.

They all have a point of tension that pushes them to the height of drama. Something doesn’t go according to plan. Somebody believes one thing and discovers the truth is something else. Success creates a problem nobody expected. Or the obvious answer stops being obvious.

Nonfiction can work exactly the same, but most of the advice out there is regurgitated statement pieces ripped from motivational posters:

• Changing careers is hard.

• Consistency is everything.

• Understand your customer.

• Personal brand is key.

These are all true statements, but they lack substance. For better structure and deeper thought when you’re creating your own content, think through your ideas in these five phases:

• Idea: What are you thinking about?

• Story: What happened that sets the scene for you to talk about it?

• Tension: What’s non-obvious about the idea that makes it more complex?

• Point: As in, what. is. the.

• Reader: Who would find this useful?

Here’s an example from a previous article:

• You’re Not Starting Over. You Just Need a Map.

Idea: Reinventing yourself doesn’t mean starting from scratch.

Story: Two university students came to me for career advice, and they both had trouble getting started.

Tension: I was torn between being a seasoned veteran in one career and a beginner in another, which gave me a different perspective on their problem.

Point: Experience doesn’t remove uncertainty. It changes how you approach it and makes you more resilient.

Reader: Somebody either starting from scratch or starting over and worried about making the wrong decision or throwing away everything they’ve built.

When you take one idea and reflect it through this prism, you’ve got a lot more food for thought.

And if you don’t have any ideas on your calendar or to-do list just yet, don’t worry.

This is where old content becomes incredibly useful. I’ve started revisiting articles I wrote years ago to find old ideas I can give new life. It lets me bring a more experienced perspective to my old thoughts so I can rewrite, expand, disagree, or solidify my approach with a fresh lens.

It’s like a reaction post, but you don’t run the risk of insulting the other creator!

Don’t neglect using your old ideas as the ingredients for something new.

Something you wrote five years ago may still be correct, but now you have five more years of evidence. That can be valuable to the right person.

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3. Write the Shitty Draft YOURSELF

Thinking about ideas and collecting interesting tidbits is all well and good. But it’s not writing.

So when you finally stop thinking about writing and actually start writing, my advice remains the same as it has for the last ten years.

Write a shitty first draft.

Like proper garbage on the page you’re embarrassed about. The worse the better because then I know you’re not stopping yourself every three sentences to censor yourself when you should be vomiting words on the page.

In technical terms, please add as many of these into your writing as possible:

• Run-on sentences.

• Non-sequiturs.

• Half-resolved thoughts and misspelled nonsense.

A paragraph that started strong, then developed a drinking habit halfway through and ended up in the dumpster.

It’s all great stuff. Who cares anyway? You’re not showing a goddamned soul any of this shit.

At the end, congratulations.

You’ve made an ugly baby.

We’ll spray it down with a hose later.

The shitty first draft is where you figure out what you think. It’s not just a way to communicate an idea to somebody once you’ve chiseled awe-inducing abs onto your article.

It’s also how you organize your thoughts.

And turns out, your thoughts aren’t so cohesive when they’re floating around aimlessly in your brain. Your brain is a squishy, wet maze of a universe inside you that you think you can navigate by thought, but when you try to put it down on paper, it looks like a Rorschach sketch.

Sometimes, I’ll start a paragraph convinced of an argument and discover halfway through that’s not what I believe AT ALL.

Sometimes two thoughts I had galaxies away in my brain suddenly connect and have an orgasm.

And sometimes I realize I’m just vomiting out bland advice everybody else repeats because I never stopped to think about whether my own experience actually supports it.

That’s why AI should stay away from this step.

It’s very tempting to open a blank page on one tab, ChatGPT on another, and ask it for a first draft about [Insert Lifechanging Article Here].

You’ll get something so squeaky clean, watered-down, and perfect that I’d rather lick the paint off the walls than read it because it has…Zero. Fucking. Personality.

Not a word of it will be your perspective, your lived experiences, or your opinions because you’ve outsourced all the good parts to Robot Ned Flanders.

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Where AI Actually Helps You Write

You may read the paragraphs above and think that I’m anti-AI, but you’d be wrong.

I use it all the time.

It’s a great editor of your actual input, and it’s great at interviewing you and acting as a sounding board to brainstorm ideas.

But as a ghostwriter? GTFO.

Here are five ways AI helps you write better:

1. Asking questions that prompt me to add stories, specifics, and personality.

2. Reviewing an argument to point out blind spots or sections that feel thin.

3. Looking at structure and showing me where an article drags or jumps too quickly from one thing to another.

4. Cleaning up grammar and syntax without changing the actual tone of voice of the post I’ve already written.

5. Brainstorming headline ideas and subheadings to make an article more scannable.

I’ve programmed my personal AI with a bunch of different limitations and directives so that it makes me a better thinker and writer instead of doing all the work for me.

I believe that if most of the substance, experience, and thinking is yours, and all Robot Ned Flanders does is help you interrogate or organize it, it’s still going to be your work at the end of the day.

It’s basically an editor, writing coach, and feedback group all rolled into one very fast machine.

4. Edit Until the Idea is Clear

Once you’ve vomited the words onto the page, please clean up your mess unless you want your writing to be read as the ravings of a lunatic.

I used to recommend a bunch of must-use apps for this part, but I’m not going to anymore. Any of them will work.

• Google Docs

• The Substack editor (where I mostly write these articles since it’s clean and simple)

• Even…shudder…Microsoft Word if you’re an Office fan

Hell, if you want to write longhand with a yellow legal pad sitting under an apple tree hoping for an epiphany like Newton, all the power to you.

My arm would hurt after half a page, but you do you.

Writing apps can be useful, but the point of editing isn’t to make every sentence pass some arbitrary readability score. You’re not writing for a piece of software; you’re writing for an audience of people who breathe air.

So when you’re editing, ask yourself:

• Is my idea clearer?

• Am I repeating myself?

• Did I make a logic jump the reader can’t follow?

• Am I making a giant claim that I don’t have evidence to support, like a conspiracy theorist on YouTube?

• Where does the story drag?

• Am I making too many jokes at the expense of the point, does this section REALLY need a GIF, and why do you insist on making so many pop culture references nobody’s gonna get?

That last one’s just for me, but I need the reminder.

And at the top of the list of questions to ask while you’re editing:

Did I just suck the personality out of all this?

You can edit until the prose is so technically perfect it would move your high-school English teacher to tears.

But sometimes imperfect is what makes you stand out. Your beautiful, flawed, and frazzled personality is what makes it yours.

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5. Publish Before You’re Comfortable

Now that your ugly baby has had a shower, it’s time to take a page from the parent playbook and get incessantly annoying about showing it to everyone.

Your first article will be trash. Your next one will be better. And your 52nd one will maybe be the one you’re really proud of.

But at no point will any of them be perfect.

That’s OK. Publish anyway.

Perfection is just Procrastination dressed up in a business suit pretending to help.

Publishing is part of the thinking process too. Your thinking doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and once people get to read your ideas, things start to happen.

Maybe somebody disagrees, and it prompts an update or a reaction article.

Maybe somebody tells you a story that gives your argument a different layer.

Maybe someone asks you a question you didn’t think of, which perfectly sets up your next article because now you know what your audience is actually thinking about.

You can’t get feedback with your words in the vacuum of your hard drive.

And leaving your words unpublished in a vacuum is what keeps you from the final step.

6. Let Your Ideas Compound

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing 1,000+ articles and a bazillion sales emails, it’s this:

Your ideas will compound when you let them out.

One article rarely stays one article because there’s ALWAYS something more to say.

This realization has helped me publish multiple books:

• See Rockstar Revenue: Earn More From Your Creative Skills

• See You Get What You Give: A Simple Story for Finding Success in the Music Business

• See Step By Step Mixing: How to Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins

• (All affiliate links).

Each of those books started with an idea that became an article and spawned even more ideas.

An article here and there may not constitute a worthy “body of work,” but if you let your ideas compound into a broader message that makes it into a book or a business, that’s something valuable right there.

I spent over a decade writing about music production.

I wrote the books, hacked the funnels, did the launches, and built the dream business people would be jealous of.

Today, I’m writing about reinvention to burnt-out people who miss waking up in the morning with purpose. People who want to do something meaningful because they’ve forgotten who they wanted to be.

On the surface, those subjects couldn’t be more different.

And to some, it might feel like I’m starting from scratch.

But I’m not.

Every article, email, and book was an extra rep in the thousands of hours of practice that made me better at the craft.

If I hadn’t devoted years to writing publicly, I wouldn’t have gotten a book deal, my first staff writing job, built an audience of tens of thousands of customers, made connections to create my software plug-ins, or, or, or, any of the things that I have accomplished in my career.

That’s why it’s so important to put your work into the world. Not because it guarantees results, but because it’s likely to open doors for you.

Writing is valuable not because it’s a good way to produce content. It’s valuable because it creates evidence of how you think, which gives other people something to resonate with.

The Goal Isn’t 1,000 Articles

When I started writing on the internet, I didn’t sit down to methodically build some impressive body of work.

I wrote about audio production because I was simultaneously trying to understand and share what I was learning in school. The best way to learn something is to understand it so well that you can teach it. So writing about it publicly made sense to me.

As I kept doing it, I attracted readers. The readers turned into an audience. That audience helped me build a business. The writing turned into books and courses, and the business handed me opportunities I couldn’t have predicted when I started.

So if you’re starting out, making a pivot, or changing careers entirely, don’t make it your goal to create some arbitrary amount of content.

There’s no content quota you have to hit to be successful, no matter how many times you hear it being hawked on the internet. My wife is an extremely successful CEO of a non-profit that caters to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and she hasn’t written a single piece of content in her life.

Some of what you write will disappear.

And honestly, maybe much of it should.

I know there are some emails out there I would feel especially embarrassed about, so I’m glad I didn’t post them all on my blog.

You won’t win because you hit your daily goal of 1,000 words.

You won’t win because you diligently publish 52 articles throughout the year.

You won’t win because you create the greatest content marketing funnel the world has ever seen.

You win because you put in the reps, solidified your thinking, and built a body of work that you believe in.

Thanks for reading,

Björgvin

P.S.

If you’re trying to figure out what you want to do next, or don’t want to run on the hamster wheel anymore, check out my Reinvention Toolkit.

It’s full of practical tools and resources to help you reinvent yourself, pivot, or start something brand new from your existing skill set.

If you’re working a job you hate and long for your own thing, quitting is the wrong move.

Your job is actually giving you one of the most important resource you need to accelerate the success of your side-hustle: Money.

Think of your current job as your angel investor as you build your new thing. If you have a little bit of money left over every month, reinvest it in yourself.

That paycheck allows you to buy back your time, test your ideas, build your audience, and figure out what works without the crushing pressure of having gone ALL-IN on yourself.

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I Started With the Only Resource I Had: Time

If you’re starting over in your 30s or 40s, you don’t have to build a business the same way I did. Back in my twenties, I had no money because I was the stereotypical broke college student.

Since I didn’t have any money, time became the only resource I had. So I used all my free time to create content. And organic content was drastically different back in those days.

Short-form video didn’t exist. Big YouTube channels were rare, and many of the biggest influencers back then were bloggers.

(RIP the RSS Feed and Google Reader).

Organic content was mostly long-form blog posts and short-form tweets. Back then, I figured that more content = better. More stuff out there = more ways for people to find me. So I aimed for roughly three pieces per week.

Luckily for me, I also had a staff writer job at Audiotuts through Envato. That gave me a platform where I could guest post, build credibility, and siphon off some of their bigger audience through links to my site. I ended up writing around 100 articles for Audiotuts in those days, so it gave me quite a bit of reach to attract an audience interested in what I had to say.

However, even with that advantage, it took time. Not only did those articles take years to write, but it probably took more than a year before people started subscribing because they wanted to hear from me.

There was no overnight audience growth. I just kept writing.

But, because I didn’t have any money (Audiotuts wasn’t a full-time job), I learned how to do everything myself:

• Writing blog posts.

• Doing email marketing.

• Crafting sales copy.

• Building digital products and the web pages needed to sell them.

At some point, I stumbled upon online advertising. At the time, I thought spending money on anything was risky. I didn’t see it as an investment in my business. I saw it as spending money with no guarantee of anything good happening.

I was too poor to believe that hiring somebody or paying for advertising might actually accelerate the business, so I kept relying on doing it all myself.

On the brightside: I taught myself a ton.

On the flipside: It eventually burned me out.

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Being Broke Taught Me Something Money Couldn’t

I don’t regret the learning curve. Knowing how to do something just makes you better at hiring it out later.

But building organically forced me to understand my audience. A lot was riding on each piece of content, so when something worked, I doubled down on it. I learned to pick up subtle signals that helped guide my marketing. Signals that I maybe would’ve missed with a giant advertising budget.

If something resonated with my audience, chances were it would resonate with colder traffic too. It helped me start advertising on firmer ground, with a better message and a stronger offer.

Advertising doesn’t magically fix a shitty offer. Injecting money to advertise something nobody cares about is the fastest way to burn your business to the ground.

Then My Business Paid for My Trip to Belize

Sometime in my late twenties, I had a mindset shift about what this business could do for me.

I had already written and published one book by then. Unfortunately for me, I wrote it as a contractor-for-hire, so I had no upside to selling it. Whether it sold ten copies or ten thousand, I wasn’t making another dollar.

So when I started working on my next book, I decided to be in control.

That winter, I gave myself a simple writing goal of 1,000 words a day.

My then-girlfriend, now-wife’s family was planning a trip to Belize that summer, and I had to pay my own way if I wanted to join. I needed to magically find $2,000 lying around somewhere and I was fresh out of treasure maps, so suddenly the book I was working on took on a larger role.

1. Finish the book.

2. Release it before summer.

3. Make enough money to go to Belize.

At launch, Recording Strategies made about $2,500 so I was set to sail the Caribbean and drink rum.

That’s when I got hooked on having a lifestyle business. Not a giant company that would consume my life, but a business that would fund the lifestyle I wanted. Yes, my business was helping my customers, and I liked making useful products, but I was ultimately using business as a way to design my life.

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Give Your Side Hustle a Smaller Job First

I tell you this Belize story because we often ask too much of a new business before it’s ready. Your brand-new side hustle doesn’t need to replace your salary right away.

That’s just too much pressure.

But what if it can give you something else?

What if it makes you an extra $500, pays for a vacation, or covers a car payment?

Maybe eventually it covers your paycheck, but until then don’t create crushing expectations for it.

I didn’t need Recording Strategies to make me “financially independent.”

I just needed it to get me to Belize.

Don’t Build Like a Brokepreneur if You’re Not Broke

Here’s where you’ll make a mistake if you’re not careful.

If you’re starting again in your 30s or 40s, you don’t have to start a business like a broke 20-year-old college kid.

You might not have as much time, but you probably have more money and resources. You have more experience and skills you’ve acquired throughout the years that will benefit or accelerate your success.

You probably have a network of connections, and most importantly:

You have a paycheck.

If you’re broke, all you have is time.

Although that is the most important resource we have, you can’t multiply your own hours. But money lets you buy someone else’s. So trade money for time whenever possible.

Don’t trade three weekends learning how to build a landing page when you can hire somebody who can do it in the afternoon.

Don’t watch 32 YouTube videos trying to fix a technical problem when you can pay somebody who already knows how to solve it.

Instead of investing all your time into your business, take some money from your job and create a little investment fund. Every month, you take a little cash from your fun-fund and invest it directly into the thing you’re building.

Your paycheck is already there, you just have to dress it into an Angel Investor costume.

If I Had to Build It Again Today

Once my business started generating money, the math changed. Beforehand, all I had was time, so I grew slowly through content. Then, once I started earning money, I knew I could accelerate the impact of my content by paying for distribution.

I’ve spent somewhere around half a million dollars on advertising for my niche business, but obviously I didn’t start there.

I started with $5/day. And my first ads basically burned money because they were so terrible. My earliest strategy was to just run ads to promote my blog posts. Anybody who knows direct-response marketing is both shaking their head and/or rolling in their grave right now because they’ll tell you it’s not really a winning strategy. So eventually I started running ads to landing pages where I gave something valuable away for free (often called a lead magnet) in exchange for an email address.

Now I wasn’t just buying a random click, I was building an email list that would help me grow my business. The basic idea was that if you made the top of your funnel bigger, even with your conversion rates staying the same, you should eventually make more money.

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Advertising is a Lot Like Gambling

Back in those days, my group of friends loved going to Las Vegas.

Mind you, we were still cheap and broke, so we’d usually gamble at the cheap tables at the Hooters Casino (RIP).

And that’s where I fell in love with craps.

If you’ve never played craps, it looks super confusing and intimidating at first. Numbers everywhere, people yelling in code, chips being thrown around, and two dice slamming up against the back of the table.

But it doesn’t take much to figure the basics out. The House isn’t interested in making it too complicated for you to part with your money, obviously.

And I loved craps. A hot table where the shooter is on fire, hitting point after point, making everybody cheer as they make money is always a rush. And back in those days, I wasn’t saying no to free drinks while I was at it. Bring on the Irish Coffee and White Russians at 3 am any time.

Running online ads felt a little like craps to me at first. I understood the basics enough to make a bet. And then I watched to see what happened. It would take a little longer than the average run at the craps table, and it always felt a little like pulling the lever on the slot machine.

However, this slot machine started paying out pretty well after a while once I figured out how to measure my results.

If you can’t measure your marketing, you’re shooting in the dark. Once I could track everything, advertising felt a lot less like gambling, and a lot more like an actual business skill.

I knew that if I could acquire subscribers for around $1-$2 each, I could eventually make an ROI on those subscribers through future promotions and product launches. I wasn’t just spending randomly on ads, I was methodically spending a budget to acquire potential customers.

And once I had a solid inbound lead generation strategy in place, I realized that I didn’t need to throw out new posts from the content marketing hamster wheel every week. The ads were doing it for me and I was saving hours I could use on something more valuable.

• Improving the business itself.

• Making better products.

• Strengthening my automation systems.

• Creating a better customer experience.

That’s when I thought:

Why would you constantly waste all your time creating more content just to attract an audience when you could spend a small amount of money on distribution to reach those people faster?

Those early days of creating something new can be a struggle, because you don’t see your efforts compound until later. And many people abandon their efforts before they get to see the fruits of their labor.

That’s why I wish I had started advertising earlier. A small budget doesn’t guarantee success, but it helps you run experiments and get feedback faster.

But…Ads Don’t Buy Profit…

They buy faster experiments. And I want to make sure you’re hearing me when I tell you:

Start small. Think big.

At $5-$15/day you’re essentially buying information on consumer behavior. You’ll get results slower than the big advertisers spending $1,000/day to market their webinar or whatever, but it’ll still be faster than praying that your content goes viral.

In the beginning you’re not buying profit. You’re running experiments to collect information.

• Does this message resonate with someone?

• Does this get engagement?

• Does talking about this problem get people to comment and say, “I have this problem!”

Will they click? Give you an email address? Book a call, or buy?

Ads help you figure that out faster.

A broke 20-year-old college kid might not have that option. They’re stuck on the hamster wheel. But if you have a job, some discretionary income, and the experience to know that what you have to offer is valuable, you can figure it out faster.

My years of creating content for a niche audience gave me something extremely valuable before I spent a cent on ads:

• I understood my audience.

• I knew their problems.

• I knew which articles were popular.

• I knew what topics got attention.

Before you start spending money, you need some version of that understanding. Otherwise, you’ll become very efficient at burning $15/day on realizing that nobody wants what you made. I’d rather you spend that money on lunch.

The hard part about building a business isn’t creating a fancy ad. It’s understanding your customer well enough to create something they actually want.

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The Unappreciated Benefit of the Paycheck

Your paycheck doesn’t just give you some capital. It also gives you patience.

Capital lets you move faster. Patience keeps you from making desperate decisions.

Patience is an allowance to make mistakes because you don’t need your business to fund your entire lifestyle right away. It takes the pressure off so you can make decisions that aren’t based on reacting emotionally to the pressure of making a living.

If you’re under pressure:

• You’re more likely to take a bad client that’s not a good fit.

• You’ll make offers you don’t really believe in, or chase whatever sounds good to make a buck.

• You’ll panic when something doesn’t work out exactly as you planned.

And you might abandon the fruit before it’s ripe.

Experiments don’t do well with pressure. You’re more likely to make knee-jerk decisions based on emotion than what the data is telling you.

At that point, you might as well just go to the roulette table with your mortgage payment and bet it all on red.

A paycheck, on the other hand, gives you a safety net that allows you to fail. It lets you put in the reps enough times to start seeing results.

The Thing You Hate Might Finance Your Freedom

It’s completely understandable to want to get the hell out if your job is sucking your will to live. But if your goal is to escape, wouldn’t it be better to have a strategic plan?

You don’t need the pressure of quitting tomorrow and recreating your life from scratch. That sounds awful. And you also don’t need to feel like a broke college student trying to live off ramen and 5-hour energies.

You’ve got skills, resources, professional experiences and connections.

Use them in parallel with your paycheck.

Because the job you’re hurting to escape might be exactly what you need to build your way out of it.

-Björgvin

P.S.

Before you spend money trying to grow something, make sure you understand who you’re trying to reach and what they actually want.

To find an audience and attract a customer, you don’t need a bunch of fancy online marketing systems. They help, but the fundamentals are more important:

1. An offer people actually want

2. A way to attract the people who want it

3. A follow up system that builds a relationship

If you’re still figuring out exactly who your customer is, what they want, and how to reach them, I built a complete toolkit and masterclass for you inside the Customer Canvas and Audience Attraction Toolkit.

It helps you get clear on the customer, the problem you’re solving, and the message you need before you start pouring time or money into trying to grow something nobody cares about.

Even if you have experience, you still might have no idea how to get started on your next thing.

You’ll still have uncertainty, risk, and the fog of war over everything you’re trying to accomplish.

When I was younger, uncertainty made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing. Now, at 41, I’m still aware of the risks. But I’ve gotten better at facing them.

It’s like a role-playing game. You’re not starting at LVL 1 with zero skill points. But you are starting a new quest.

In my role as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona, I talk to a LOT of college students.

Unsurprisingly, they’re all trying to figure it out.

Last year, two separate students came to me for the same reason: they heard I was an audio engineer, and they’re attracted to the life in the music industry. I don’t blame them. That industry is attractive!

They’re hungry and curious, but they don’t know what to do.

Talking to them, I learned that both of them were missing the same thing — and it’s the reason most creative careers stall out before they start.

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A Tale of Two Students

The first guy is producing and recording out of a small studio here in town. He’s also doing video work. He wants more clients. At one point he says, “I’d love to work for a label.”

So I asked him the most unsexy question in the world:

“Cool. Have you made a list of all the labels in town?”

Not “Do you believe in yourself?”

Not “Have you manifested it?”

Not “What’s the aesthetic of your personal brand?”

Those woo-woo guru questions aren’t helpful and don’t give you any practical steps to move forward.

What I asked for was simple.

Do you have a list?

Do you know if this is even a label-heavy town? Have you looked at who’s here? Do you understand the landscape you’re trying to enter?

He said no.

Then he tells me he wants to shoot music videos for bands. So I asked the same question, dressed in different clothes:

“Have you made a list of local bands you’d actually want to work with?”

Have you looked at their sites? Their socials? Do they already have videos? Do they need what you’re offering?

He said he didn’t know.

The second student was in California. I guess he figured that he was close enough to the entertainment capital of the world to feel like opportunities should just… happen. He wants to record music and work with musicians.

So I asked him:

“Do you go to shows?”

He said, “Yeah, sometimes, when bigger bands come through.”

He thought I meant famous bands. The established ones.

That’s not what I meant.

I meant: are you going to local shows? Are you meeting the indie bands? The DIY scene? The artists who are still building?

Big bands don’t care about you. They’re not looking to work with you. Not yet. They already have their people.

If you’re just starting out, you’re not going to land a giant client right out of the gate.

Your job is to get close to the level you can actually play at, build relationships there, and climb.

Both students had an idea of what they wanted in their mind. But they hadn’t mapped the action steps needed to make that world a reality.

You don’t have to be starting out to make that same mistake. Changing careers can put you in the same exact position. Even with 20 years of experience, you could still have no idea how the new world works.

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Rewind: Madrid, 2009

Both conversations reminded me of something I learned the hard way while living in Madrid.

Back then, I was studying music production, blogging, and trying to figure out how to make money online. I thought getting paid to write on the internet while living in Madrid… drinking cañas and eating tapas between classes would be the coolest job in the world.

So I did the only thing that made sense.

I went looking for places that would need what I had to offer.

I wanted to write about music, so I scoured every music blog I could find. I made lists. I tracked down the owners. I reached out and pitched them article ideas.

At first, it led to a few free gigs.

And even though “free” doesn’t pay rent, it did buy me something valuable: proof. I could point to being published online. I could show receipts. I could say, “Look at this article. Someone trusted me with a platform.”

Then I stumbled into a gig with Envato, writing for their Audiotuts tutorial site. I still remember my editor, Adrian, as one of the most supportive — and constructively critical — people I’ve ever worked with. (He even cut me some slack on a deadline when it fell on my wedding day, which is the kind of human detail you never forget.)

Those one-off tutorials turned into more freelance gigs. Those gigs turned into a staff writer role.

And that role turned into something I never would’ve predicted from the outside: a book deal with their publishing division, Rockable Press, which published my first book, How to Record Great Music… Using Whatever Equipment You Got.

That book opened doors. It gave my own Audio Issues blog credibility. It created opportunities that looked like “luck” to people who weren’t watching the boring part.

I couldn’t have predicted the book deal. What I could do was find the people already working in the world I wanted to be in and make myself useful to them.

And once you’re in that world and making noise, opportunities might come your way.

But the Bigger Gift Wasn’t the Book Deal

It was the skills.

Writing for Audiotuts taught me the unsexy stuff that powers every creative business: time management, organization, on-time billing, and the discipline to constantly generate new ideas worth pitching.

And most importantly, it forced me to stay tuned to an audience.

When you have to pitch ideas every week, you can’t hide behind “I’ll write when inspiration strikes.” You’re always asking: what do they want to learn next? What are they stuck on? What would actually help?

Which, by the way, is the same question any entrepreneur has to answer if they want to get paid.

That’s the part people skip.

And when you skip it, you end up in this weird limbo where you “want clients” but don’t know who to talk to… because you haven’t defined who the market is.

Which brings me to the universal lesson that’s applicable whether you’re graduating college at 22 or changing careers at 42:

There’s no real difference between getting a job, finding clients, or selling a product.

If you’re looking to reinvent yourself, make a map you can follow:

1. Map the players: Who’s already doing it that you can learn from?

2. Map the problems: Who wants what you have to offer and has a problem you can solve?

3. Map the places: Where are all these people? How can you put yourself in front of them?

4. Map your doors: What doors are already open to you? Where does your existing experience help you get ahead?

If you don’t know who the players are, you won’t know who to talk to. If you don’t know what they need, you won’t know what to offer. If you don’t put yourself in the scene, you won’t be in the flow of opportunity.

So if you’re starting out — or starting over — one of the most important questions to ask yourself is this:

Before You Update Your Resume, Start a List Instead

If you’re thinking about changing gears, don’t just look for another job. Go look for opportunities in the world you want to live in.

Find 25 companies doing work you’d love to be involved with.

Find 25 people who are 5 years ahead of you and learn from them.

And most importantly, find the people you want to help.

They might be at conferences. They might be reading publications you can write for. They might be active in communities you can join.

Learn from them. What are they hiring for? What are they selling? What problems are keeping them up at night.

And then figure out how you can use your existing experience to help with what that world needs.

Remember, you’re not starting over. You’re using your character build and skill points to take on a different quest.

P.S.

I’m figuring out this new chapter of my life in real time, and I’ve built a collection of tools to help you make your own change.

If you’re ready for a new quest but need some cheat codes to get started, upgrade to a paid subscription to get instant access to the toolkit to help you map out your next step.

I spent 15 years being the “Audio Issues guy.”

I helped thousands of musicians improve their audio engineering. I built the six-figure online business that the online gurus sell you the dream of building.

I wrote the “Amazon best-seller” with a 4.8-star average after 1,300 ratings. I’ve made and sold every type of digital product out there, before AI made the whole thing feel sloppy.

By any external definition, it worked. I was “successful.”

In the beginning, I was scrappy and passionate about audio production being the coolest thing ever.

And then, I fell out of love with it.

I couldn’t imagine spending the next ten years talking about the same stale audio topics I’d already talked about ad nauseam for the better part of my professional life.

So I quit.

It sounds crazy to walk away from something successful. But isn’t it crazier to knowingly hate your life for another decade?

Reinvention Doesn’t Always Arrive From Failure

Your friends and family can easily understand abandoning something that failed.

They have a much harder time understanding why you’d leave something that seemed to be working.

Because they’re on the outside, and they see the societal definition of success.

You’re on the inside, and you feel the cost of every decision that’s dragging you deeper into the depression of something you’ve grown to hate.

If you’re considering a reset or a reinvention of your own, you’ll inevitably find the people who will tell you it’s a bad idea.

The conservative, “just keep doing what you’re doing and be grateful” crowd don’t understand.

They’ll tell you not to throw away what you built and stick with the safe thing.

But chances are, they haven’t been in your shoes, and they don’t have all the information. So they’re flabbergasted by you wanting something different when the safe thing to do is stay the course.

But if you’ve calculated the cost of staying, it is far from safe.

My Favorite Piece of Advice

If you’d like to go your own way, start your own thing, and be the actual person driving the RV of your life, then you’ve gotta start ignoring what everybody thinks if they’re not qualified to give you advice.

Chances are the people you’re asking for advice haven’t done what you want to accomplish, so they’re the exact WRONG people to ask.

If they don’t have experience in the subject, why would their advice have any value?

It’s like asking a toddler about investment advice. If they’re smart, they might tell you to use a 529, but even then their motives are suspect.

(If you don’t get that joke, you’re not a parent.)

This is why “Reinvention” can feel lonely.

You’re walking the road less traveled, and you hope it will make all the difference.

And you may wish you could get reassurance about whether what you’re doing makes any sense, but more often than not you’ll have to travel alone for a while.

But just like in real life, solo travel builds character that helps you overcome the obstacles along the way.

Don’t worry. Sooner or later you’ll run into your people on the path.

Until then, when you’re struggling to keep going, you might find this question useful:

Who cares?

It has two sides, containing equally important questions that can guide your journey and help you focus on what’s next.

“Stop Caring What They Think”

You won’t get anywhere worrying about what other people think.

Creating by committee leads to watered-down work that excites nobody.

Letting random people judge what constitutes creative excellence will only lead to average art.

You’ll never make yourself happy if your opinion matters the least. Be an outlier. Do things your way and stop caring what they think.

This doesn’t mean ignoring reality.

If you’re building a business, customers need to care enough to pay. If you’re making something, you need to create inside the intersection of what you want to create and what other people find useful.

But positive signals from the market and getting approval from people who don’t want you to change are not the same thing.

If you want to be average, by all means, live up to the middle of the bell curve people expect of you.

If you want to excel, you can’t just stay in your lane where people find you comfortable to tolerate.

“Stop Thinking That They Care”

The flip side of the coin is similar and even more liberating.

This simple phrase is a powerful reminder that nobody’s paying that much attention to you. The truth is, they don’t care.

Even if you have a HUGE audience, they’re not watching and judging your every move. You’re not the main character in the theater of their mind. They are.

Ironically, they’re probably worried about what other people think of them.

They’re wrapped up in whatever they’re currently worried about, and it probably doesn’t include you.

So if you’re worried that people will judge the thing you’re doing, relax. They’ll probably think about it for 23 seconds and then go right back to worrying about themselves.

The truth is, the space we occupy in other people’s heads is tiny. Once you get that, you might feel more empowered to just do the thing you want to do, because nobody’s paying that much attention anyway.

Stop Caring and Create

I’m walking away from something successful, and I’m not oblivious to the risks.

But I’m committed to aligning myself with what I think is important at this stage in my life because the status quo is too painful to stay stuck in.

I know there’s risk. But I also know what another ten years of forcing myself to care looks like.

Sometimes the status quo is the most expensive decision you can make.

Unfortunately, it’s also the easiest. Inaction IS action, even if you don’t feel like you made a decision.

So if you are unhappy with what you’re doing right now and want to change it, just do it.

That phrase isn’t only for athletes.

The only way to change your future is to change the present.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about real leadership.

Not the “I posted a quote graphic so now I’m a thought leader” kind.

The kind where you make a private decision… and it quietly gives someone else permission to do the same.

I’m not here to preach sobriety

I’m not going to do the dramatic, “and then I found myself” speech.

This is not an anti-alcohol article.

You do you.

(I mean, it is one of the worst things you can do to your body, and it’s a shitty addiction that we’ve completely normalized as a society, but I’m not responsible for other people’s decisions.)

I know that I’m in control, so I’ll still take a sip of my wife’s drink if she’s having a craft brew or a fancy cocktail I haven’t tried.

But…it’s just not for me anymore.

I don’t feel like I’m losing anything from not drinking. If anything, I’m gaining so much more that the trade-off is easy to make.

I wouldn’t call myself an alcoholic, and the 12-step model never felt like it applied to me. I just got tired of feeling like garbage.

And more importantly, it’s WAY easier to be a good dad when you’re not hungover all the time…

Because waking up hungover with screaming kids in your face is a special kind of hell.

And it’s a hell of your own making, one that I had complete control over escaping.

When you’re hungover…

• Your fuse is shorter

• Your interest in “playing” is non-existent

• And you’re doing your kids a huge disservice by not really being there

So “grumpy, tired weekend dad” got replaced with Pancake Dad.

And Pancake Dad loves waking up early and making breakfast. Even if my little ungrateful gremlins don’t ever eat what I make them. I love pancakes. That just means more stacks for me!

I hit rock bottom so hard I broke my ribs

One night in Iceland four years ago, after a fun night of free beer and karaoke (a terrible combination), I was having SO much fun I ended the night by falling down a flight of concrete stairs outside the bar and breaking my ribs.

Let me tell you: a 7-hour international flight with broken ribs and a small child is another special type of hell.

Also something I had complete control over deleting from my life.

Now, I didn’t quit right then and there.

I slowed down. Started drinking more non-alcoholic beer. Tried to “be better.”

But pretty quickly, I was back to my same habits.

And then one morning — Wednesday, February 1st, 2023 — I woke up hungover from drinking a full growler of IPA and decided: enough is enough.

At first I told myself I’d try a month.

And since February is the shortest month, I was basically giving myself an easy start.

But a couple of weeks in, I thought:

What if I just stop completely?

And I never went back.

Here’s the part nobody tells you about real change

You don’t always see the ripple effect.

Because people rarely walk up to you and say, “Hey, you inspired me.”

They just quietly make a different decision because your life made it feel possible.

A close friend of mine from Iceland — Maggi (the artist Mighty Bear) — celebrated four years sober recently.

And he was a big inspiration for me.

I watched what happened when he quit. Not in a “perfect life” way. In a real way.

He got sharper. More grounded. More himself.

And I remember thinking: if he can do it, I can do it.

Which begs the question: who would you inspire if you made a huge lifestyle change?

The Birthday Present that Showed Me: You Matter More Than You Think

I turned 40 last year, and my wife surprised me with something I wasn’t emotionally prepared for.

She had a bunch of my friends fill out a Google form with memories and messages — basically: what I’ve meant to them over the years.

One response from my best friend from childhood stood out.

He wrote that I inspired him to study abroad… because he saw me do it first.

After high school, I went to Spain to study Spanish.

To me, it was just a thing I wanted to do. It was a scary thing to do. I’d be moving abroad and living by myself for the first time in my life, but it was just a thing I thought I was doing for myself.

But to him, it was proof.

His logic was basically:

“If my stupid little best friend can do it, then obviously I can too.”

So he went to grad school in France.

And if he hadn’t gone to France, he wouldn’t have met his amazing wife.

He wouldn’t have the life he has now.

Two kids. The whole deal.

And I had no idea I was part of the first domino.

I wasn’t trying to lead. I was just making choices that felt scary… and doing them anyway.

Lead By Example (Even When You’re Not Trying To)

A lot of people think leadership is something you earn after you “make it.”

Things like:

• having a big platform

• having it all figured out

• being loud about your values

• posting the highlight reel

But real leadership usually looks like:

• Shipping the thing you keep postponing

• Staying consistent when nobody claps

• Doing the boring work you said you’d do

• Fixing your habits instead of your aesthetics

It starts the moment you decide you’re going to take yourself seriously.

Because real change starts from within.

Not from a course. Not from a mentor. Not from someone “discovering” you.

Nobody is going to hand you things.

You have to build it yourself.

And it’s hard to look yourself in the mirror and make the change when you’re poisoning yourself every day — whether that poison is alcohol, distraction, doom-scrolling, procrastination, whatever your flavor is.

Clarity makes courage easier.

And as an entrepreneur, courage is basically the job description.

So Consider This Your Nudge

If there’s a thing you know would improve your life — and you’ve been avoiding it — that fear is probably pointing at the exact door you need to walk through.

• Write the book.

• Release the song

• Start the YouTube channel.

• Launch the offer.

• Apply for the job.

• Go back to the gym.

• Quit the habit you keep negotiating with.

Not in a hustle-cult way.

In a “your life is worth upgrading” way.

Because you might change your life…

…and accidentally give someone else the courage to change theirs.

Even if they never tell you, and you won’t be able to take credit because you’ll probably never find out.

That’s what leading by example actually is.

It’s choosing the better path.

And then trusting that your decisions will help other people finally find the courage to walk their new paths as well.

I kicked my alcohol habit 3.5 years ago and I haven’t looked back since. It’s been the best decision I’ve made for my professional and personal life.

But, it’s been trickier to deal with than you’d think, and not for the obvious reasons most people would think of.

You’d be surprised by all the things that come crawling out of the woodwork once you stop numbing your brain after 5 p.m. (or 10 a.m. on weekends!)

What are those things called?

Feelings. Bleurgh. I’m a bullheaded, stoic Icelandic descendant of Vikings, and I didn’t want any part of all that.

And yet… face the feelings I must, because now (unfortunately or not) I have full access to the entire spectrum.

When You Quit, You Leave a Vacuum

When you quit, one of the stranger things you realize is that removing alcohol from your life leaves a much bigger hole than you’d expect.

Alcohol wasn’t just something you drank. It was a full-time employee in my life. And this employee ran entire departments!

If I had a bad day in the business, we’d have a drink to take the edge off.

Argument with the wife? Better drink to shut myself up before I said something I’d really regret.

Something to celebrate? Obviously, THAT calls for a drink.

Stressed? Drink.

Bored? Drink.

Feeling like I wasn’t the perfect husband or parent Instagram demanded I should be? Definitely drink.

Thus, life slowly becomes a drinking game where almost anything is a reason for a drink.

I didn’t think about it that way at the time. I just thought a beer after work helped me wind down. But looking back, I was often drinking to hit pause on whatever issue I was having that I didn’t want to deal with.

I thought alcohol would loosen me up and make me care less. And for a few hours, it sometimes would. That’s what kept me coming back. A few drinks would numb the judgment. Sometimes they’d even make me angrier about whatever was bothering me. And that made it easier for me to take the spotlight off myself and find an external villain to blame.

Instagram was the problem.

My audience was the problem.

Society’s ridiculous expectations were the problem. (And let’s be honest, some of them are a real dumpster fire of bullshit).

But blaming them was easier than looking inwards.

Alcohol didn’t solve anything. It just gave me permission to stop thinking about it until tomorrow. And then tomorrow came around, and wouldn’t you know it, I could always find another reason to have a drink.

Congratulations! Your Problems are Still There

Once I quit, I realized something annoying. All those problems were still there.

(“Excuse me, sir, was it maybe because you didn’t actually deal with them?” Shut up, inner voice!)

Those bad days, arguments, insecurities, and frustrations were still hanging around in my head, but now that I had to deal with them with a clear head, I couldn’t smash a pint-sized pause button every evening.

Being clear, I found out that I had a LOT more energy. You might think that sounds great, and mostly, it is.

But energy needs somewhere to go.

And for me, if I didn’t take care of this excess energy, it would boil over, and I’d feel like one of the Looney Tunes when their ears are steaming like a tea kettle.

I get irritable. Little things start pissing me off, and my fuse gets shorter until it’s ready to explode like a poorly made pipe bomb.

I was reminded of this recently when my family and I left Arizona for Iceland for five weeks over the summer to escape the obnoxiously overbearing and suffocating Arizona heat.

The plan was perfect. I was going to run around the pond every day and end up on the mountain behind our house to look over the greater-Hafnarfjörður region. I would stand proudly on top of the mountain, inhaling that crisp and clean Icelandic air while everyone in Arizona melted into the pavement.

Instead, it was Iceland’s wettest July on record. In a word: miserable.

My perfect plans of spending the summer outdoors evaporated into a puddle.

Then, our final week there, the sun finally showed up. And the entire family got sick. So I got to watch the sunshine and the mountaintop from my bedroom window as I shivered into the blankets.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was getting more irritable and annoyed at every little thing.

But when I finally came back to Arizona and started hitting the gym again, it only took me two days of exercise to make my cloud of irritability disappear.

That’s when it clicked.

Exercise had become one of the main things I used to fill the vacuum alcohol left behind. It wasn’t just about staying in shape. It was the way I dealt with myself.

Substitute One Addiction for Another

Relax. I don’t mean running down an alley in search of crack cocaine or spending all your money on feet pics on OnlyFans.

You can get addicted to all SORTS of things! And some of them can even be good for you!

For me, I funneled my renewed energy into exercise. It took a while, but once I made it a habit, it became a non-negotiable part of my alcohol-free life and something I look forward to every day.

Except on recovery days when I’m supposed to “rest,” like I’m 41 and my muscles are demanding, “No sir, you cannot have some more,” like some Bizarro-world Oliver Twist.

Exercise gives all my restless energy somewhere to go. And it makes me less irritable and angry.

It still doesn’t make my problems disappear. I used to drink so I wouldn’t have to deal with whatever’s bothering me. Now, I exercise so I’m in a better state to deal with it.

That doesn’t mean exercise magically fixes arguments or business problems.

And it certainly doesn’t stop Instagram from making me feel like everyone else has figured out parenting, marriage, retirement savings, and teaching your two-year-old how to read Dostoevsky. I’m still just trying to get my kids to eat a goddamn vegetable.

But at least I can tackle these things with a clearer head. As I’m writing this, I’m starting to doubt whether that’s a blessing or a curse, actually…but I’m too far gone to go back.

Quitting is Only Half the Job

You can’t just remove something that occupied an outsized amount of space in your life and expect everything to remain the same.

Alcohol wasn’t just giving me calories and a buzz.

It was also taking up my time; it was a ritual habit and a reward. It was a part of everything I did, whether I was bored, celebrating, or relaxing.

And it was certainly a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings.

When you fire alcohol from your life, you still need to fill that job. Exercise did most of the work for me, but maybe that’s not for you.

Maybe it’s making music, building something, going to therapy, hiking, or writing.

Because the instructions for quitting are easy to understand: You just don’t drink.

But knowing what to do with your hands afterward is the real challenge.

So there’s this myth floating around that you need Professor X-level telepathic powers to know what your audience wants.

But unless you’ve got the X gene and a quinjet in your basement, we mere mortals need a different strategy. Preferably one that doesn’t involve guesswork, tarot cards, or crying over Google Analytics.

What most creators do is guess.

They “intuit” what their audience might want.

Which is basically the business version of closing your eyes and throwing spaghetti at a wall. You might hit something, but it’s not a great strategy for long-term income.

Instead, let me save you some tears and wasted product launches.

I’m going to share three crucial questions you should be asking your audience before you create content, build an offer, launch a new service, or spend another sleepless night tinkering with your sales page.

These are the exact questions I’ve used to figure out what people actually wanted from me, what they were willing to pay for, and what I should build next. I’ve used them in my online business (built around the music/audio niche) to help generate over $1.3 million in digital product sales, without burning out or becoming a spammy hustlebro marketer.

If You Have an Audience, You Have a Research Department

Whether you’ve got an email list, a Facebook group, a LinkedIn following, or a cozy corner of Reddit, you don’t need to guess what your people need.

You just have to ask them.

There is one catch: make sure you're asking people you actually want to serve. There’s no point doing brilliant customer research on an audience you don’t want to build your next five years around.

Here’s how.

The Three Magic Questions to Ask Your Audience

1. “What’s the biggest problem you’re having with [X]?”

X = the thing you help people with.

Could be:

• Finishing client projects on time

• Getting consistent freelance work

• Launching an offer without launching a panic attack

• Growing an audience that actually buys stuff

Whatever your niche is, just ask them: “What’s the biggest pain point in this area right now?”

Their answers = your next product, blog post, video, or workshop.

If you’re trying to figure out what to do next with the skills and experience you already have, these conversations can reveal opportunities you would never come up with sitting alone at your desk.

2. “What have you already tried to solve it?”

This is where the real gold is.

You’ll find out:

• What’s not working for them

• What competitors or tools they’ve used (and why those didn’t help)

• What annoys them about the current options

This helps you create something different. Something they haven’t seen. Something that stands out in a sea of sameness.

More importantly, it helps you understand whether the problem is actually worth solving. Sometimes the opportunity isn’t creating a better version of what already exists. It’s noticing that people are trying to solve the wrong problem entirely.

It also tells you how to position your product so it doesn’t get lumped into the “already tried that, didn’t work” pile.

3. “What do you want to achieve with X in the next 6 months?”

Not in 10 years. Not their someday dream life. Six months.

That time frame is short enough to feel urgent and long enough to get results. It helps you create offers that actually feel attainable.

Attainable = Sells better.

You don’t need to help them “build a million-dollar business.” You just need to help them land their first few clients, package their first digital product, or double their freelance rates.

Short-term wins = long-term trust.

Bonus Question (Ramit-style)

Here’s one I straight-up stole from my long-time digital mentor, Ramit Sethi (with love):

“If you could wave a magic wand and instantly get help with something, what would it be?”

That’s the question that gives you the spicy, hyper-specific gold. Sometimes the answers are so on-the-nose that they literally become your headline.

How to Use These Answers Like a Marketing Wizard

Once you’ve collected responses, here’s what to do:

• Make content that solves the exact problems they tell you about

• Build offers that match what they’re struggling with

• Use their words in your copy (because when they say “I’m overwhelmed with content creation,” and you say “Stop feeling overwhelmed with content creation,” it clicks)

Stop using vague jargon and “transformational blueprints.” Start using actual language from real people.

Pay attention to the problems that keep appearing across different responses. One person complaining is an anecdote. Ten people describing variations of the same frustration might be a market.

Pro Tip: Automate Your Audience Listening

Here’s my behind-the-scenes hack:

Whenever someone joins my list, I send them a survey with these questions.

Then I use Zapier to notify me (or my team) when they fill it out.

We get the full response, and a draft reply gets automatically created in Gmail.

We personalize it, send a real reply, and offer a free piece of content or a product that helps them with their problem.

Do you know what that does?

It blows their minds.

They don’t expect a reply. And definitely not a helpful one.

It builds trust and turns casual subscribers into fans — and eventually, customers.

Action Time

1. Put these 3–4 questions in a Google Form

2. Send it to your email list

3. Start listening like your business depends on it (because it does)

And if you’re still building your list? Ask these in communities, groups, or 1:1 conversations with dream customers. You’d be surprised how generous people are with answers when you ask the right questions.

If you’re trying to figure out what people might actually pay you for, especially if you already have years of skills, experience, and expertise, I want to help you out.

I write about turning what you already know into work you actually want to do here on Substack. Subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss another article.

And if you want help applying this to your own business, you can learn more about working with me here.

If you’re a creative entrepreneur who’s tired of saying yes to every project just to keep the lights on (and your sanity off the edge), here’s your next move:

Turn your skills into simple digital products that sell on autopilot — so you can stop trading time for money and start choosing the clients you actually want to work with.

I’m Björgvin Benediktsson, an author, online entrepreneur, and mentor who’s been running a digital product business in the music industry for 15 years.

I’ve sold everything from books and courses to software plugins, and I want to show you how to create your first digital product without burning out or overthinking it.

Let’s get you your next income stream.

Why Digital Products? Because Leverage > Labor

Here’s the truth:

• Your calendar has limits.

• Your expertise doesn’t.

Digital products let you sell once, deliver forever. Whether you’re working, working out, or working your way through a new Netflix binge.

When done right, digital products become that chill business partner who’s always making sales in the background even when you’re off the clock.

Types of Digital Products You Can Create (Without Going Full Tony Stark)

1. Ebooks & Guides: Great if you’re a fast writer or already have content lying around. My best-seller Step by Step Mixing sold 40,000+ copies and continues to generate income 7 years later.

2. Courses: If you teach best on camera, courses are for you. I’ve sold thousands. Short and sweet ones tend to perform best.

3. Template Packs & Toolkits: Think plug-and-play resources people can use right away. My Easy Mix Approach (a mix template + masterclass) earned over $25K in less than a year.

4. Memberships & Communities: Best if your topic is ever-evolving or feedback-driven. I ran Insiders, a $29/month feedback group, and it created loyal customers and real community.

5. Software or Plug-in Tools: High value, but higher lift. Worth it if you can outsource the dev work. My EQ plugin became a best-selling product for music creators — and I didn’t write a line of code.

And don’t sleep on “lightweight software.” Even a smart Notion template or an Excel calculator counts if it solves a real problem.

The Myth of the Mega-Course

Your product doesn’t need to be an encyclopedic, 100-hour info dump.
Most people aren’t looking for a PhD. They just want a shortcut from stuck to solution.

Solve one small, specific problem clearly.

Do that and you’ll make more sales than the person selling “The Ultimate Guide to Everything Ever.”

Ask These 3 Questions Before You Start

1. What’s one problem your audience is struggling with right now?

2. How do they prefer to learn or interact — reading, watching, doing?

3. What’s the simplest product you can make to get them from A to B?

Package that into one product. Just one. Not five. Not a funnel.

One product that helps your people make progress — and you’re in business.

Your Turn

What problem do you want to solve?

What digital product idea is sitting in your Google Docs or Notion graveyard just waiting to be born?

Get in touch and let me know. I’d love to jam with you on how to shape it into something profitable.

And hey, if you’re ready to stop saying “maybe someday” and actually launch something, check out my Autopilot Products Masterclass. I’ll walk you through the exact roadmap I use to create and sell digital products that earn while I sleep (or play guitar, or nap. Your choice. No judgement here.)

— Björgvin Benediktsson

They say “the money is in the list,” but they never say what kind of list actually brings in the money.

Spoiler: It's not about racking up vanity metrics or collecting subscribers like Pokémon cards. It's about building a list of buyers, not just browsers.

I’m Björgvin Benediktsson, venture advisor, author, and creator of Audio Issues, where I’ve built an audience of music producers and online entrepreneurs through digital products and email marketing.

And today, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at two powerful strategies to grow your email list—and my personal hybrid approach that gets the best of both worlds.

Option 1: The Freebie Strategy (a.k.a. Lead Magnet Mode)

You know this one: Free checklist → Opt-in → Email list grows.

Pros

• Easy yes. Free is a magic word.

• Rapid growth potential.

• Great for market research and relationship building.

Cons

• Freebie seekers might never buy.

• Big list ≠ big profits.

• If you’re paying $500/month for 50k subscribers who never open emails… congrats, you just funded your own bankrupt burnout.

That said, if you’re just getting started, this strategy is still gold. It builds trust, lets you test ideas, and gives you direct access to real people who might become customers later if you treat the relationship right.

Option 2: The Low-Ticket Offer Strategy (a.k.a. Skip the Flirt, Ask Them Out)

Here, you skip the freebie and go straight to offering something small and valuable:

• $7 eBook

• $9 template

• $27 mini-course

Pros

• Attracts buyers, not just tire kickers

• Generates revenue immediately

• Builds a customer list—far more powerful than a passive email list

Cons

• Higher friction—asking for money up front is harder

• Requires a solid offer (you can’t sell a soggy sandwich and expect loyalty)

• You’ll likely need ads to get eyes on your product

Paid traffic isn’t cheap. I spend $0.70–$1.50 per lead, but around $7–$8 per buyer. Do the math. If your product and funnel are tight, it works. If they aren’t, it just burns cash.

So… Which Should You Use?

Short answer: Both.

Long answer: Here's why...

Freebies build the relationship.

Low-ticket offers filter for action-takers.

Combine both and you’re not just collecting names—you’re building buyers over time.

The real power comes when you nurture your freebie subscribers into buyers via smart email marketing—and upsell your low-ticket buyers into higher-ticket products and services.

The Björgvin Method: Hybrid Funnel = List + Sales

It’s not magic, it’s math and momentum.

1. Create a solid freebie.

2. Build a low-ticket front-end offer.

3. Nurture your list consistently.

4. Introduce mid-to-high-tier offers once trust is built.

Your list becomes your lab. Your customers become your community. Your products fund your freedom.

And if you notice that you can scale your low-ticket ad, then just turn your freebie ad off.

Final Thoughts

If you’re trying to grow your list, ask yourself:

Do I want fast growth or fast sales?

Am I better at nurturing or closing?

Why not… both?

Whether you're leaning toward a lead magnet, a low-ticket product, or planning a hybrid strategy. I’d love to hear what you’re building.

And if you want to go deeper on how to create products that sell on autopilot, check out my Autopilot Products Masterclass at bbenediktsson.com.

Email lists aren’t dead. But the “build it and they will buy” myth definitely is.

Make your list work for you, not the other way around.

—Björgvin Benediktsson

If you’re a talented creative, maybe a designer, writer, coach, content creator, or consultant…and you’re not earning what you’re worth… chances are you’re thinking about client attraction all wrong.

Here’s a simple mindset shift that rewires how you think about marketing — and makes it way easier to get paid for doing what you love.

Your Talent Isn’t What Sells (But That’s a Good Thing)

I’m not the most gifted creator in the room.

I don’t have a Pulitzer, a TED Talk, or a million followers.

But I’ve built a successful online business by doing one thing really well:

Framing my skills as solutions to real problems.

People don’t hire you because you’re “great.” They hire you because you make their life easier.

The Game of Life (Yes, the Board Game)

My family recently dug up The Game of Life, and it hit me: every career in that game solves a specific problem.

• Doctors solve health issues.

• Plumbers fix broken stuff.

• Teachers transfer knowledge.

Your creative work should be no different.

You’re not just designing logos — you’re helping brands stand out.

You’re not just writing emails — you’re helping businesses make more sales.

You’re not just coaching — you’re guiding people past their roadblocks.

Clients don’t pay for talent.

They pay for transformation.

Do This Quick Exercise (It Changes Everything)

Here’s how to reprogram your brain for business:

Draw a line down a page.

1. On one side: List your skills.

2. On the other: List the problems your audience has.

Don’t be humble — this is a brag sheet.

List 30+ skills. Writing, branding, editing, organizing, mentoring, building, making memes — yes, memes count.

Connect the dots.

Reframe your skill as a solution.

Instead of “I write,” say:

“I help founders tell stories that sell.”

Instead of “I design,” say:

“I help small businesses look as professional as they actually are.”

Instead of “I coach,” say:

“I help overwhelmed solopreneurs get clarity and momentum.”

That shift turns “I do stuff” into “Here’s how I help.”

And that’s what gets you hired.

Where to Find the Problems to Solve

Not sure what your audience is struggling with?

Here’s where to look:

• Facebook groups in your niche

• Quora (it’s a goldmine of questions)

• Amazon reviews of books your clients would read

• Actual conversations with real humans (wild, I know)

Once you know their pain points, match them to your superpowers. Boom — business plan.

From Freelancer to Trusted Partner

There’s a scene in my book You Get What You Give where a mentor explains why bar owners book bands:

“They’re not booking you because they like your music. They’re booking you because they think you’ll fill the bar and make them money.”

The same applies to your creative work.

They’re not hiring you because you’re nice, cool, or talented.

They’re hiring you because you solve a problem they can’t (or don’t want to) solve themselves.

Your Turn

Drop a comment with one of your skills — and how you might reframe it as a solution. I’d love to see what you come up with.

You’ve got the skills. Now, make them sell themselves.

Thanks for reading.

If you need help figuring out how to turn your solutions into digital products, check out my “Auto-Pilot Products” Masterclass at www.BBenediktsson.com

Or maybe you’re like me—sick of wasting the first hour of every client call rehashing the same stuff. You think, “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just sold this info so we can hit the ground running?”

Spoiler: it is. But how do you turn that spark into something that actually sells—instead of becoming another dusty PDF on your dead-end Gumroad archive?

Here’s my no-fluff, 15-year-tested framework for turning ideas into income (without selling your soul).

1. Start With the Customer (Because You’re Not Psychic)

Before I create anything, I ask my audience one question:

👉 “What’s the biggest problem you’re currently having with [topic]?”

In my case, it’s usually audio production or mixing. In yours, it could be parenting, pottery, or poodle grooming. Doesn’t matter—what matters is their language, not yours.

Sometimes I even paste the answers into a word cloud generator or an AI tool to spot trends. (When I launched the Drum Mix Toolkit, I literally saw “mixing” and “drums” shouting at me from the cloud. Boom—validated.)

Bonus: these responses double as my copywriting cheat sheet. Use their exact words, and your sales page starts reading like you’re inside their brain.

Because you kinda are.

2. Build for Humans, Not Robots

Once I know the problem I’m solving, I ask: “What’s the simplest and fastest way to teach this?”

Long courses are impressive but rarely finished. Most people want quick wins and fast relief. That’s why I go multimedia:

• Video training

• Downloadable resource

• Tool, if it makes sense

Example: My Easy Mix Approach includes a two-hour masterclass plus a downloadable mix template. Watch or skip straight to the good stuff.

Another: The Compression Formula comes with a course and a custom plugin. People love tools. Even better when they come with instructions.

3. Think in Side Quests, Not “Bonuses”

If your product was a video game, what helpful “side quests” could you offer?

I’m not talking about fake bonuses with a “$297 value” slapped on them like a garage sale sticker. I’m talking real support for the hurdles your audience will face while using your product.

Example: My Expert Home Vocals course includes a buyer’s guide for setting up your home studio—because struggling with gear isn’t the core problem, but it is a roadblock.

Another example: A copywriting course I bought included a subject line swipe file. Perfect “bonus quest.”

Good bonuses say: “I see what else might trip you up—and I’ve got your back.”

4. Make It Look Cool (Because People Judge Books)

Yes, design matters. Even for digital stuff. Especially for digital stuff.

You don’t need a designer. I’ve used 99Designs and Canva with equal success. Sometimes, just a screenshot of the product inside a slick laptop frame does the trick.

People buy with their eyes. Even when they know they’re not getting a box in the mail.

5. Automate the Sale and Launch It Already

Once the product’s built, bonuses are added, and mockups are made, I hook it all up to my sales system (Kajabi, sometimes SendOwl).

Then I test it. All of it. Emails. Checkout pages. Delivery. Pretend to be your own customer and catch the bugs before launch.

Then I launch with one of these three urgency triggers:

1. Deadline

2. Bonus bundle

3. Discount window

Afterward, I collect feedback—especially from those who didn’t buy. Their objections help me improve the next time.

TL;DR: Digital Products That Sell Aren’t Accidents

Here’s the recap:

1. Survey your audience to find the real problem.

2. Solve it simply, in a format they’ll actually use.

3. Add bonuses that feel like thoughtful “side quests.”

4. Make it look pro—even if you DIY it.

5. Build a sales system, test it, and launch with urgency.

That’s it. Not easy, but simple. Digital products don’t have to be perfect—they just have to be helpful. They get your people from Point A (problem) to Point B (relief).

And remember: The best product you have is the one you actually launch.

And if you want the full Autopilot Products Masterclass, it’s at www.BBenediktsson.com. Go snag it while you’re still inspired.