The Success Equation / My First Digital Product

We’ve been dealing with a bunch of house stuff and I’m making a big pivot in my business (which I’ll talk about in a different newsletter), so I haven’t been able to be as consistent with this as I’d like to be.

Hopefully after this week that will be better ❤️ 

The Success Equation

Since I’ve been trying to figure out what success looks like for me and my family, I’ve been trying to search in so many other fields of interest to see what OTHER successful people think about reaching the places they’ve gotten to.  Whether if it’s in their work like, family life, or personal life, I love to see what people with varying topics and industry’s think about their success.

This led me to a episode from Ali Abdaal on his podcast “Deep Dive” where he interviewed Sheehan Quirke who is the writer of The Cultural Tutor, a huge (and until now faceless) Twitter (X) page all about art, culture, and history.  Sheehan has brought that account from a brand new account with zero followers while he was working as a McDonalds delivery driver, to over 1.5 Million twitter followers in around 400+ days by committing himself to writing at least one thread a day.

The more I listened to their conversation about how Sheehan got to where he is and how he continues to write multiple threads a day, the more I realized how VERY different the host and guest really were. Ali is hyper organized and a lot of his content and lifestyle revolves around productivity, maximizing your schedule, and making the work enjoyable, however Sheehan is much more of an a-typical “artsy” person.  The writer let’s his body tell him when he needs to sleep and wake up, he doesn’t keep a schedule, and works when he feels like he has that spark of inspiration strike him.

Me personally, Sheehan’s schedule (or lack of anything resembling one) stresses me out just thinking about it, however at the same time I can understand how freeing it might be to exist in that “go where inspiration strikes” mentality.  That being said I tend to lean more in the middle between both of these two people.  I like to think of myself as pretty organized individual that enjoys maximizing my daily productivity, but I also do find it hard to work without some level of inspiration striking me and I will have hours or days where I have to let myself go off schedule for the sake of following an inspiration that has hit!

The very exiting thing that I realized was that, yes Ali and Sheehan are drastically different, yet they have some VERY important things in common.

First off, they both have been VERY consistent and CONTINUE to be consistent now even after they have had a large amount of success in their individuals spaces (Ali with 5 Million Subs on Youtube and Sheehan with 1.5 Million Followers on Twitter).  We already talked about Sheehan being consistent with at least 1 thread per day on Twitter, but Ali has been posted two videos per week to his main Youtube Channel for years now on top of writing a book and hosting a podcast.  So it’s not JUST consistency but, consistency over LONG extended periods of time.

The second thing they have in common is that they talk about things they find interesting.  Sheehan talks about art, culture, and history because as he says “asking why or how something came to be always peaked my interest” and Ali loves talking about productivity through the lens of self-development books, tech, and tactics/approach.

Lastly, they are approaching it with a skill they naturally have and using what is referred to as their “unfair advantage” to maximize their ability to push through the hard times.  Sheehan talks in the podcast episode about how he has always loved writing and has been writing since he was in his teens.  Now none of it was ever published or recognized in any way, but he still wrote every day because he just LOVED writing stories and learning about things.  Ali on the other hand uses his ability to teach and explain things to his advantage, which he says he’s been doing since high school helping tutor others, and in college/post grad making Youtube content about how to get into medical school at Cambridge (where he graduated) using study habits or just helping teach online as an online tutor.

So what we find from looking at them both and what they have in common is what I’m dubbing “The Success Equation”:

Consistency over an Extended Period of Time (Consistent Hard Work) +
Topic of Deep/Lasting Interest +
Area of Innate Skill/Talent (Unfair Advantage)
= Success!

Now this is just an observation from a couple instances of listening to different interviews and podcast episodes, but I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of this idea and help me see if it applies to other people you see as successful!

But what is success? I think that’s another topic for another day… mainly cause I have a lot to say about that question (ha, when do I not have a lot to say)

Anyway I’ve grateful to all of you for continuing to read and I hope you get something out of these thoughts that will help you on your road to success!

Andrew

CHECK OUT THE PODCAST EPISODE I MENTIONED HERE:

Ableton Users: Free STUFF!

I’m very excited to announce my first online storefront!

For awhile now I’ve been wanting to make some simple but easy to use products for those that are just getting started with Ableton Live, have Standard or Suite, but just don’t quite know how to make good chains yet!

The goal for this is to have great sounding presets for you to start creating your own music and getting your songwriting honed in!

These Racks all use Native Ableton Live Audio Plugins so there’s no need to have to go download some third party option, everything is build right into the software that you need.

(Note: You will need either Ableton Live Standard or Suite Edition to access all plugins)

My new gumroad store now offers:

• Ableton Live Vocal Chain

• Ableton Live Mastering Chain

• Guitar Rack for Pop/Rock Music

Grab Free Ableton Racks HERE

Community Showcase

If you want to showcase what you’ve been doing or something you might have dropping soon reply to this email or send it over to [email protected] with the email subject:
“Community Showcase”

We would love to show off what members of our community are doing!

What You May Have Missed

• Building A Production Career You LOVE with Carl Bahner

• How I Made a Beat Using ONLY SAMPLES

Hope you have another great week!

❤️