📕 Weekly Gem - The Creator Stack

🛠best creator resources, limiting beliefs, confidence workshop

Happy Friday!

After two months of Revue, I switched to Substack 😹. More on why in the PS below.

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What stories are you telling yourself? 🤯

I used to be paralyzed by my limiting beliefs such as:

I’m not good enough.

Hard work is essential for success.

All the good ideas are taken.

It took me a while to rewrite these stories told by society. Once I recognized that these stories are just thoughts, I am able to turn them into empowering beliefs such as:

I’m good enough.

I can achieve anything with smart work.

There are new startups every day.

This shift of belief systems has been the most liberating experience ever.

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Creator Toolbox 🛠

After playing with tons of resources, I would love to share my favorite gem with you:

• Design Tools: Canva (pretty templates), Pexels (inclusive free stock photo), DrawKit (beautiful illustrations), The Noun Project (free icons), Slides Carnival (pretty slide decks), and Creative Market (high-quality ready-to-use resources)

• Video Tools: Loom (screen recording), Krisp (background noises remover), Grain (video note-taking and highlights extraction)

• Market Research Tools: Viral keyword search (BuzzSumo), Google Search results analysis (Exploding Topics, Answer The Public), Youtube Search results analysis (TubeBuddy), and Superhuman’s feedback engine Viable Fit.

• Hiring Platforms: I’m so grateful for the people I hired. If you aren’t sure about hiring people full-time, you can start with Fiverr (one-time projects), Acadium (3-month apprenticeship), or creator Facebook Groups.

  Here are three signals that you might need to hire someone.
  
  1. You are burnt out (I thought I have overworked myself because my left hand started to hurt. However, the root cause is actually because the ring has become too tight for the summer.)
  
  2. You don’t have time to do the work
  
  3. You have a clear SOP that others could follow (This will ensure that your brand has a consistent voice.)

If I were to start a startup today, I would create a one-stop-shop that syncs with all the best creative tools. The creative industry is booming, the willingness to pay is there, and the need is super high. Plus, this has a reach of millions, if not billions, of lives. If you want to solve this problem, I’m happy to give you some product feedback 🥰

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Weekly Updates ✏️

• New launch: Chris made an awesome website for LivingOS over the weekend

• New books: I finished three new releases from my favorite authors: Leading Without Authority (book notes) by Keith Ferrazzi, EDGE by Laura Huang, and The Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lakhiani.

• New workshop: I am hosting a confidence workshop for my FB Group tomorrow.

• New gifts: If you are interested in wellness, make sure to check out my friend Patricia’s wellness wisdom stack (it’s one of the few letters that bypass my aggressive email filters).

• Weekly Q&A: This week, I shared some advice to my younger self.

See you next week,

Charlene

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Thank you for reading today’s gem! If you enjoy it and want to express your appreciation, please feel free to share this with your friends 💚

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P.S. Here are my thoughts on each of the newsletter clients:

• Mailchimp: This is where most people start. However, the interface is pretty hard to use, so people started to move to other platforms.

• Revue: Nice design, but the pricing plan is unfavorable to free newsletters. Since I plan to keep this letter free forever, it makes more sense to switch to Substack 😊

• Substack: Love the minimalist design. While Substack takes a higher commission (10%) for paid newsletters, it’s free otherwise.

• ConvertKit: While I also pay for CK, I like Substack’s design better. That said, ConvertKit is best for evergreen funnels and email courses. I also use it as my audience CRM. One major critic is that CK emails are often flagged as spam.