Do It Yourself

When I was a freshman in college, I played this song constantly.

Russ records, mixes, and masters all of his music. Most rappers don’t do this. They just rap the track and let engineers do the rest. (Half the time, they don’t even write their own verses).

But when Russ started rapping, he couldn’t afford an engineer for every song so he learned how to do it himself. He wasn’t gonna let a lack of money or network stop him from releasing dope music every week.

At the time, I was running an e-commerce brand and was inspired by Russ. I couldn’t afford to hire someone so I did everything myself—products, Photoshop, video, Shopify, social media.

Nowadays, I’d try to partner up and hire out, but I didn’t have the network, money, or reputation to do that—so I did it all myself. And thank God I did. I use those skills above everyday! I’m so happy I didn’t let a lack of money, network, or reputation stop me from making cool shit.

I don’t know how = I don’t know how (yet)

The only way you’re gonna build skills and win online is by learning yourself.

No one is going to watch tutorials for you. No one is going to start a blog for you. No one is coming to save you. You’re going to have to learn the skills.

If you want to make cool shit online, then you have 2 options:

1. Fuck it, I’ll do it myself (and learn the skills)

2. Fuck it, I won’t do it, it’s too hard

I suggest option 1. It’s much more fun. It won’t be pretty, you’ll cringe looking back in 10 years. But who cares? You’ll have fun and you need to make a lot of uncool shit to get good enough to make cool shit.

Once you make a lot of uncool shit, you’ll start to figure out your superpowers. What are you exceptionally good at? Once you figure out your superpowers, you can start making money and building up your reputation for that skill. Then it’s time to stop doing everything yourself.

What I’ve come to learn after years of internet hustling:

Do It Yourself does NOT mean Do It Alone.

“I’m a DIY pioneer,” sings Russ in Do It Myself. But he doesn’t really do everything himself. When he was 17 dropping mixtapes, he did the music, art, and planning concerts himself.

But now he sticks to his superpowers (music) and has partners for everything else. He’s worked with the same album art designers for 5+ years. But he couldn’t get to that place without doing everything himself first and learning what his superpower was: music.

Film director Christopher Nolan did the same thing. When he was younger, Nolan made an entire movie with no budget. He learned how to do all the tasks from writing to directing to editing. When he had a real budget, he knew what his superpower was and where he should delegate.

I’m learning to do the same thing and focus on my superpowers. I stick to the writing and partnered up with a videographer. I’ve done video editing since I was a little kid, but my superpower is writing so I focus on that. Do I regret “wasting time” editing videos as a kid? No, I got to make some cool YouTube videos. Plus it taught me that it wasn’t my superpower. You need to do a lot of shit that isn’t your superpower to realize what your superpower is.

If you’re early on your internet hustler journey, my advice to you is simple:

1. Do everything yourself first, learn a bunch of skills, find your superpower, make money and build a reputation for it

2. Partner with other people so you can focus on your superpower

You can only have so many superpowers in life.

So optimize to spend as much time on your superpowers as possible.

Cool Shit Corner

This week, I’m including 1 link only because it’s that good.

Creator Logic breaks down millionaire creators’ businesses going into the % and $ splits of their revenue/acquisition. How much did X make in subscriptions v. ads? What % of customers came from TikTok v. YouTube?

It’s the most well-researched, detailed newsletter on the financial side of creators I’ve ever seen on the internet.

Memes of the Week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin

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