Luck Surface Area

Two weeks ago I was thinking with my friend Emanuel about how online networking helped us both in our businesses and my scientist's brain went…

WAIT.

Why do people call it ‘circle of friends’, ‘inner circle’or ‘broaden your circle’, .. and not ‘broaden your square’? 

When you think about it from a math perspective, it kind of makes a lot of sense. 

For the same edge length (or perimeter), the circle has a higher surface area from all the geometric shapes. In other words: it will enclose more space than a square.

"Widening your circle" genuinely does maximize the opportunity you're covering for the same amount of outreach effort. 

So how do we do that in creator spaces?  

I teamed up with Emanuel Bagerakis to reflect on our most successful approaches to build our creator network and engineering our Luck Surface Area.

This is the easiest approach to ‘borrow’ someone else’s circle, and a real shortcut into getting started as an online creator. The difficulty in joining an online community often lies in evaluating the cost vs benefit of the membership fee. Online communities are usually highly curated groups of people following the same goal, and just being in the same room with that kind of people has the potential to elevate your business goals or even find potential clients or collaboration partners in them.

For example, Emanuel joined Josh Spector's community because he wanted to improve his marketing skills, but also inside the community were his ideal customers. By participating in the message board and the live events people would get to know his work and connect on LinkedIn, which led to at least 3 clients coming from the membership in the first 4 months.

Personally, the Escape Artists community is helping me work towards my book writing goal, which will hopefully add a future revenue stream to my own creator business.

When starting a new job, what I dreaded the most was group lunches with (then) strangers. As a full-time introvert, I usually observed and listened. I hardly interacted in my first weeks. I hardly felt comfortable.

As a result, my colleagues thought I didn’t like them (can’t blame them). I knew I needed to change something without forcing myself to be someone I wasn’t.

Step by step I found out how to shift this "weakness" into my strength. I invested more in 1-1 relationships instead of shining in a group. And I took this lesson with me into my solopreneurship journey too.

I found out that in the creator/freelancer/solopreneurship world (honestly who knows the difference anymore?!), coffee chats are a normal way to feel less alone in your journey, meet really cool people and exchange some nuggets of wisdom from our journeys.

As an added unintentional bonus of coffee chats, a very amazing person also referred me to a long term client I still work for, I had an in person chat evolve into a content client and friend and you are now reading this newsletter edition as a result of an escalated 2h quick intro chat (no coffee involved that time but lot’s of common trauma)

Difficulty: Medium  

I wish I could share a framework for this with you but there is none except: keep an open mind, don’t reject an idea (or introvert red flag) too quickly and be careful what you wish for because extroverts just might make it happen. 

One thing that seemed terrifying to pull off by myself for the first time: hosting a webinar in my brand new capacity as a freelance content creator. I had neither the confidence nor the audacity to even attempt this endeavor, but I really, really, wanted to know what all the fuss was about and have that experience under my belt (you know, exposure therapy and all that).

So as my luck (😉) would have it, my university friend noticed my career move from science to a communication role brought me in touch with entrepreneur and science communicator Pranoti Kshirsagar, who is still pushing my introvert boundaries to this day on a monthly basis in the best of ways. Plus I got first hand experience in presenting a webinar that she helped hosting, promoting and technical problem solve.

You could also just be the bigger person and be a big girl and just freaking do it. But actually, I really enjoy collaborations and it seems like a safer space to break your own comfort-zone-imposed boundaries. 

Thank you for the extroverts that take the introverts by their hand.

*My list of “things I would NEVER have done without an extrovert” also includes assembling a group of 12 strangers from the same hostel to rent a private boat with a local captain/chef and hang out on the most beautiful remote island in the Philippines (easily one of the best days of my LIFE).

Difficulty: Medium but AWESOME 

When we think of growing an audience we often get stuck in the content hamster wheel: trying to produce more so it attracts more people.

Buuut, like this article you are reading right now, cross-posting with someone can be a tactic that requires less grind and will bring you similar results.

Because it will expose the content for both of your audiences and it's natural that people who follow one creator will get curious about this new person (or we hope so!)

It can be done like we are doing here, but also can be a live stream, it can be a carousel post, a video, etc. You can choose the best medium for you and the person you want to collab with (like we did here).

Going into a podcast as a guest can sound a bit scary.

Ok, it's scary in the beginning. But, it can bring you a lot of benefits.

Emanuel became a guest in multiple podcasts just because he was connecting with people. And the conversations were so good in the DMs that some of his creator friends who had podcasts invited him to participate as a guest.

Of course you can also pitch yourself to podcasts but we find this a more challenging route.

After participating in those podcasts, Emanuel noticed that even after 2 years since recording, people were finding him and mentioning that episode (crazy). Because podcasts are not as perishable as short form content it's a great way to build visibility and authority in the long run.

Plus you can get the recording and repost parts (or the whole thing) in your social media channels.

Did you see the cool illustrations in this newsletter edition? 🤩 They are all handmade by Emanuel. He is an entrepreneur and content creator helping other entrepreneurs communicate their expertise visually. Follow him on Linkedin or Substack. 

Keep up the audacity,

Laura