The 3 lessons that have grown our revenue in Web3

GM Friends 👋

To end this week, I was away speaking at Zebu live:

Shoutout to Teddy, Chewie & Robin for the awesome panel.

So this episode is going to be a little bit different.

The past 6 months for me have been a massive period of change.

I’ve found a scalable business model, that grows our NFT collection, rewards holders, and most importantly…

Is working.

As I look back on the past 6 months (and even the past few years), it’s now so obvious to me that the difference between growing a business in Web3 and just kind of making enough to get by, all comes down to a few small changes.

For anyone who’s making a living in Web3, but feels stuck at the current level their at. This article is for YOU 🫵

These are the 3 key lessons that are making all the difference for me right now:

1️⃣ There’s more revenue in doing ONE thing really well, than there is doing many things at an average level.

You hear business youtubers say this all the time, and it’s easy to think:

“Yeah yeah, but I can do paid content, and trading, and ghostwriting, and consulting. They all pay me $1-3k a month each which adds up to a lot of extra money.”

And you’re right. You can do all those things.

But what you don’t see is that doing MANY things is what caps your growth.

I’ll explain how.

Imagine two people:

Person #1: Starts their day ghostwriting, then has to take a client calls, then has to write a thread for a brand that they have to do research for, all whilst keeping their alpha chats & trading channels open all day. This person can only take on a couple clients and is constantly being pulled in different directions by distractions.

Then you have…

Person #2: They just do ghostwriting. They start their day making writing templates so that their work is faster tomorrow. They start their writing part of the work at midday and finish by the afternoon. Initially they can take on the same amount of work as Person #1, but by spending the first half of every day creating systems & templates, when they hit their second month of work, they can take on twice as many clients. They also have more time available to sell clients, and eventually they see patterns in their work which they can outsource, enabling them to take on even more clients.

Within 3 months, who do you think generates more revenue for themselves?

Person #2 right? And it seems so obvious on paper, but in practice we subconsciously don’t believe it.

Especially given that to be Person #2, you may make less money for a month or two, but by Month #3, you start to get all the benefits.

(The simple way to think about it: Person #1 has to manage and improve 4x different sets of systems, whereas Person #2 improves 1x set of systems and very quickly compounds all the benefits)

For the first time ever, I have been Person #2. And it’s been a full red pill moment.

In Web3, what’s awesome is that there are infinite opportunities. The downside is that this means there are infinite distractions.

And these distractions are what keep you from building something really big.

If you’re not sold on being Person #2, these are the benefits that I’ve personally experienced:

1. You gain a reputation for doing your specific niche of work, which gets you more clients.

2. You end up doing sales calls more often, for this specific niche of work, which rapidly makes you better at sales, which leads to more sales.

3. You get better at delivering the service, which unlocks your ability to charge more for your service.

4. By being able to charge more, you can hire people to help you with key elements of the work, which enables you to grow it even bigger.

2️⃣ Success is made by investing 6 hours once, to buy back 3 hours every week.

I always loved this graphic by Jack Butcher, and it’s accurate:

We often feel like we need that one BIG moment, that one BIG partner, that one BIG sale to finally unlock the success we’re looking for.

But it’s not like that at all. Success is boring.

It’s in incremental improvement each day.

The formula that I’ve found has worked well for me, is asking myself:

“How can I do 6 hours of work today, to save myself 3 hours every week.”

This means:

• Making templates

• Making standard operating procedures for doing certain pieces of work (e.g. how we write a brief for a client, how we post content opportunities for creators, etc)

• Hiring & delegating core work to someone (even if that’s just on the admin side)

I start every day by going into a notion page that I have labeled “Problems”

Problems = things that are making my work take longer than it needs, or making it lower quality than it should be.

Which means

Solutions = make my work faster to complete, and make it higher quality (which means I can take on more clients & make a more premium service)

Investing energy into the items on this list has been our single biggest unlock for growth.

YOU probably have a heap of problems that are holding you back right now, you just might not have written them down like this.

The hack for identifying problems = Every time you feel frustrated from doing something repetitive (or you’ve done it so many times that it now feels boring), that’s a sign to:

1. Create templates & automations to make it easier for next time

2. Create a standard operating procedure checklist so that you can do it on autopilot

3. Outsource the parts that can be done by someone else.

3️⃣ Good sleep will give you super powers

I’m going to do a deep dive on a few sleep hacks that I’ve come across next week.

But sleep has been my #1 performance booster.

The formula is simple:

If you sleep better, you’ll be smarter, you’ll get work done faster which will grow your business faster.

There’s a lot you can do for your body (exercise, eating well, etc),

But if you’re at the beginning of prioritising your health for the purpose of performance,

Start with sleep.

It’s the lowest effort / highest impact area that you can focus on.

That’s all for today, hope you enjoyed the weekend edition.

Have a great week ahead friends ❤️

— Alex