1000 subscribers later: 11 lessons on creativity, content & momentum

Creation is a human struggle. I hear and read daily how many people struggle to create content. I used to struggle with it, too. 

So as a celebration of THIS NEWSLETTER CROSSING 1,000 SUBSCRIBERS (!!), here are my unfiltered takes on creativity after three years of being a creator.

Let’s begin: 

1/ Creativity is a faucet.

You can’t just wake up, have 100 ideas, and write good content. Instead, I like Julian Shapiro’s metaphor of the “creativity faucet”. 

When I get home to my Berlin apartment after a few days, the water that initially comes from the faucet tastes stale. A hint of metal, even. The beauty of buildings built in the 1910s. So I let it run for ~30 seconds until fresh water comes out. 

Creativity is similar: the output of the first 5-10 minutes of writing isn’t the best you could write. But it’s necessary to get out of your system in order to find your flow and produce thoroughly good outputs. 

2/ Schedule inspiration.

“I only write when inspiration strikes. Luckily, it strikes every day precisely at 9am.” – W. Somerset Maugham 

You can’t rely on inspiration to write. Because if it strikes, it usually strikes in the most inconvenient moments (like you’re about to fall asleep, or in a negotiation, or in the gym, or …). Instead, good creation requires a routine. 

I have two writing blocks: one on Monday morning, one on Thursday afternoon. There, I disable all notifications, close all tabs, and just focus on writing. This is usually enough to get all the writing done, because …

3/ Creativity requires infrastructure. 

Nobody just comes up with ideas on the spot. Instead, build an idea database. For me, this is a combination of saved posts on LinkedIn, an Apple Note where I jot down ideas, and a Notion database with good content pieces from others to use as inspiration.

Whenever I run out of ideas to write about, I go back to what Sam Browne calls “Content Garden”: you plant your idea seeds, and when they’re ripe, you pick the fruit. 

The best ideas often come from your audience. In my newsletter welcome sequence, I ask new subscribers: “If I were to dedicate the next issue of my newsletter to you and the challenge you're currently facing ... what would that issue be?”

Now, I have a beautifully filled backlog with future newsletter content ideas. 

(The same is true for LinkedIn comments, questions in customer conversations, and testimonials. It pays to use the language others use.) 

4/ Write wherever you focus best.

Like, on moving vehicles (or whatever floats your boat, pun not intended but welcome).

Some of my best writing develops when I’m on a train, airplane, or bus. Particularly when the seat in front of me isn’t reclined. Not sure why, maybe it’s the passing landscape couple with no or terrible internet connection. 

This turns (business) travel paradoxically into one of the most productive things I do. 

Identify what that is to you. 

Put yourself into that situation more often. 

5/ Nobody remembers your content as well as you do. 

It’s totally okay to repurpose your content. Just because you’re tired of the message doesn’t mean your audience is. 

My repurposing framework: 

→ Take the best performing posts on social, repost them 3-4 months later (only 1 repost per week). Rinse and repeat if the post performs well again. 

→ Feed every newsletter into an AI tool and ask it to break it down into social posts. Edit for clarity. 

→ If a LinkedIn post performs particularly well, turn it into a newsletter. 

→ Take ideas that are proven, and re-write them in ten different ways. 

Adding video content has been on my radar for a while, and you can rest assured that a lot of the content will be repurposed.

This doesn’t mean it’s not novel – it’s the same idea, different packaging. 

Don’t try to come up with 100 ideas.

Come up with 1 idea and say it 100 ways. 

This post is sponsored by EWOR x Generalyst. 

On Friday, EWOR & Generalyst are hosting an “Operators’ Day”. 15 potential future unicorns will be pitching themselves and their open positions online. All for early hires (1-10) with significant equity stake. These companies are high caliber – check them out. 

Here’s your exclusive application link (not everybody gets in to keep the room legit): https://luma.com/uwpo3ceh

6/ Find a reason why people should listen to you. 

There are 2 reasons why people follow you initially: 

1. They believe you’re credible and can learn something from you. 
2. They’re interested in you and your journey. 

I’ve grappled with this a lot. I unfortunately don’t have any multi-million exits to my name, am not a professional athlete, and also not hot blonde woman that can turn any post into an engagement machine by simply adding a cleavage-heavy selfie. 

So I leaned into the only other option: documenting how I’m figuring out my personal career as a generalist, what frameworks I use for it, what things I struggle with. I create content for the people who are a few steps behind me on that very journey.

(My “Ideal Reader Profile” is the me of 5+ years ago.) 

Pro tip: don’t start posting by saying “I’m gonna document my journey”. Those posts are dime a dozen and rarely ever backed up by action (a wonderful example of the Gollwitzer effect). 

Just start. 

7/ If your content sucks, nobody’s gonna see it anyway. 

Social media algorithms are built in a way that good content gets more views and bad content doesn’t.

So if you’re afraid that your content might be bad, it’s likely only gonna get a few hundred impressions; and most people simply won’t remember. 

Exception: when it’s generationally terrible, like this post: 

Try to avoid leveraging your engagement (or, for that matter, your first child being born, or any other deeply intimate event in your life) for LinkedIn content. But don’t be afraid to post. 

The only way to have a 0% chance at success as a creator is to never publish in the first place. 

8/ Be in it for the long run.

Just as in fitness training, results don’t come overnight. They come from weeks, months, and years of repetition. Writing daily. Posting daily. Getting feedback. Iterating on your writing. Reframing messages. 

Fuck, it took me almost 3 years to get to 1k subscribers.

I thought this was gonna be a matter of months. 

Feliks Eyser, one of the podcast hosts of “Founder Mode”, said: “I don’t even look at the podcast metrics. I just wanna get to 100 episodes first, and then analyze.” That’s the type of commitment needed in order to become a good creator. 

If you’re gonna start creating, commit to at least 100 days of consecutive writing and posting. Only then you’ll see results. 

9/ Why I became a creator (part 1).

“There are only four types of leverage: capital, labor, code, and media.” – Naval Ravikant

I think about this quote a lot. I don’t have any capital (yet); I don’t employ slaves (ever) and don’t have much capital to get a ton of people to work for me; and I don’t enjoy writing code that much. 

So if I wanna build leverage, I better start building a media empire. 

That was my line of thinking back then.

Today, 35% of applicants to Generalyst as well as ~40% of my inbound leads of startups who want to hire, I can directly attribute to my content. As well as many not-so-tangible benefits. 

This is leverage. And it’s just starting to build momentum. 

I’m glad I started. Not only has writing given me plenty of business opportunity – it’s given me joy. 

10/ Why I became a creator (part 2). 

The best feeling humans can experience is a flow state. I realized that writing is one of the few ways for me to completely lose track of time, immerse myself in one thing and one thing only. 

But I wasn’t doing it enough. I was posting occasionally on Medium, but not often enough. 

Launching the newsletter was initially just an accountability mechanism to ensure that I write every week. 

Now I write every day. And I wouldn’t wanna miss it. 

11/ A personal anecdote. 

When I got close to graduating from high school, I considered becoming a journalist and going to journalism school. My mom (who’s a journalist herself) told me: “don’t become a journalist. Instead, learn a tangible skill, do that for a while, and then you can still write about it.” 

Back then, I took that advice to heart (also, because I wanted to make money and studying business and computer science seemed like a good way to do that). 

Today, I’m doing exactly that – doing something tangible and using writing as a lever to further grow the business. 

Kinda cool. Thanks, mom. 

If you're reading this in late 2025, thanks for being one of the first 1000 subscribers. I have a feeling y’all might still be early. 

There’s more to come. 

(But I’m not gonna tell you. Thanks, Prof. Gollwitzer.) 

Go out there and absolutely kill it this week. 

LFG. 

PS: If this inspired you to start a newsletter, here’s how to in 146 characters.