After speaking with 30 creators at Social Rising, here are some of the conversations I had with budding creators.

Free pizza and beer aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

^{Tracking vs Doing}

I had a great time speaking at Social Rising with 25 creators connecting and learning from each other. Among the various interesting conversations, one stood out to me.

I was talking with a fledgeling creator & marketer struggling with the ever-increasing admin tasks associated with tracking early attempts at getting her sponsorship business off the ground.

Our conversation concluded like this…

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‘It sounds like you’re doing a lot of tracking, but not much doing.’

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‘Yes! Making and maintaining spreadsheets, in order to track outreach/conversations/notes, is taking far too much time.’

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‘Hmmm… in the early stages of anything, you absolutely can do too much tracking, especially when it becomes a burden. I’m not saying that you should keep records or be unorganised, but if you had to choose ONE, between tracking and doing, which would it be?’

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‘Good point, doing is definitely more important, I’ve never looked at it that way before.’

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‘Exactly, whilst you’re at this early stage you should focus 90% of your time on doing. Yes, you should still track the basics, especially when things go drastically wrong (or right!).

But if you’re spending 30%, 40%, or 50% tracking execution at such an early stage, you’ll find yourself with an extremely organised pile of very little, as opposed to a semi-orderly, but much larger stack of success. You can always go back through that pile and neaten it up. However imperfectly.’

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‘I’ve also been looking at getting Hubspot but that seems to add a lot more admin.’

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‘CRMs are great, but expensive and potentially add a layer of digital bureaucracy for you to navigate every time you want to get something done. Every business should have a CRM, but definitely hold off until you have a few deals under your belt and a (somewhat) predictable revenue source.’

TLDR: Tracking is important obviously, but don’t let it stifle DOING. Especially in the early days.

Applying this to newsletter ad sales…

It’s more important to; send those emails, get on calls, follow up 76 times, create cool campaigns and build relationships.

Versus tracking every email sent and deal updates.

With the caveat, you should have a system in place for (at minimum) tracking your pipeline, revenue and ad delivery.

Streak, Apollo and G-suite can help you do this for free, or extremely cheap.

Some other interesting conversations I had with early entrepreneurs…

❓ Leaving one job for 3 jobs?

A sense of ‘woo I quit my job!’ Only to find months later that you feel you now just have 3 jobs. This highlighted the importance of structuring a business that you work ON and not IN.

❓ How do you manage your time?

Time blocking in the morning helps, and so does getting to the ‘office’ at 7:20. But there is an unavoidable reality that you’re going to have to work really hard if you want to start a business. Sometimes fluffy posts from social media gurus forget this fact.

❓ When you started your business, did you find yourself lonely?

YES. When starting I accepted that one element of my life had to give. I’ve naturally drifted away from my hometown mates, and this chapter further decreased the time I spend with them.

I recognise that I can make new friends and this will be temporary.

Thanks for reading. Social Rising does events for creators all over Europe. If you’re on the more socialist side of the pond, you should check them out!