Hey there,

Lately I've been pushing my boundaries of creating. It goes against my natural perfectionist instinct. I've been recording more podcasts, writing more (though not for my blog), and in general executing more and faster for the business.

The biggest thing that has helped me is focusing on the creating, not "being creative or perfect."

Before we get to that, I'm hosting The Road to Mastery this week. It's a series of 30-minute workshops about how to use content to generate conversions. Register here.

Now onto the newsletter...

1. On my mind: creating vs being creative

One thing I’ve learned about myself is I often get in my own head and that often causes paralysis.

It makes me hesitant to make decisions, publish a blog post, send a newsletter…

To get out of my head, I focus on the process.

I ignore the thoughts of "What if it's the wrong decision?" or "What if I sound stupid?"

That particularly applies to writing and business.

Instead of overthinking an idea or trying to sound intelligent, just focus on getting your idea out.

Instead of trying to tweet out one mind-blowing idea, just tweet more.

Instead of trying to come up with the most thought provoking idea for my newsletter, focus on sharing what’s been on my mind.

Instead of getting stuck making an idea "perfect," do the minimum thing needed to get it started and iterate from there.

Overall, instead of trying to perfect one thing and making it the most creative, most intelligent, most thought-provoking idea… just write.

Write and publish.

Ideate and execute.

Over and over again.

Oftentimes, the thing that we let stop us from creating is artificial. We create that barrier ourselves.

Get over that barrier and focus on creating.

It doesn’t matter if it isn’t original.

It doesn’t matter if it isn’t your absolute best work.

It doesn’t matter if it isn’t the most eloquent.

Just focus on creating.

Creativity (and breakthroughs) comes through the process of creation.

2. Business update

We’re running into growing pains as the team and our book of clients grow. It’s an exciting time and what I love is that the team faces challenges head-on.

Whereas some folks might shy away or ignore the big problems, we point them out, discuss why it might be happening, brainstorm solutions to address it, and start improving the situation.

I love this.

We’ve hit our revenue goal for the year and we’re aiming higher next year.

We’re continuing to build out our team. If you’re interested in joining or know really smart content strategists, editors, and writers, check out the open roles.

I've had folks ask how I found my business partners. I'm writing a blog post about that.

What other questions do you have about building a business?

3. Created

Things I’ve produced:

• Event: I’m hosting The Road to Mastery this week, a 3-day series of 30-minute workshops about how to use content to generate conversions (leads!). Register here.
• Workshop: On Thursday, I’m teaching a workshop with Clearscope on how content marketers and strategists can become more data-driven in communicating business impact by building content growth models. Join me here.
• Podcast: Blake Burch joined me on The Long Game and shared how he automated a bunch of his reporting and analytics work during his time as a performance marketer. He has a great story about how he problem-solved his way into a new career in data.

4. Consumed

Things I’m enjoying:

📚 Reading: Multipliers separates managers into two buckets: intelligence amplifiers and intelligence diminishers. Just started, already a helpful framework.

🎧 Listening: I don’t know how this happened but I recently heard this acoustic version of Say My Name by Destiny’s Child and this remix of the same song shortly after and they’ve been on repeat.

👀 Watching: I finally started watching Mad Men.

💸 Purchased: A portable air pump for my car. Game changer. Don't need to go to a gas station just to top off my tire pressure before a long drive.

Cheers,
David

P.S. Find out what I'm up to on my blog and reading list and connect with me on Twitter.

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​​About me: David Ly Khim is a founder of Omniscient Digital, a content marketing and SEO agency helping B2B software companies grow.