Actionable lessons from the world's greatest creators

The Creator Archive

In the clip below, Tim explains that he really viewed himself as a writer and initially got into blogging and podcasting to sell more books, as well as improve his craft of writing and interviewing.

While writing The 4-Hour Workweek In 2006, he interviewed best-selling authors to learn about launching a book and media vehicles that were undervalued. They told him:

“These things called blogs seem to move a lot of books, but most authors pay no attention to them.”

Without a large budget for his launch, Tim decided to focus on two things: blogs and in-person events to reach bloggers.

“And to do that credibly, I thought I should really have a blog that has some good articles on it and began that in 2006. That was followed by the book in April 2007.”

He also started gathering emails in 2007:

“I knew that email could be important, but I didn’t send the first email until something like 2014.”

He continued to work on the blog, and that became the way he communicated directly with his audience:

“It was based on WordPress, which meant that I was not captive to any platform and I knew that I could take this open source platform and if I wanted to migrate my blog and my content I could do that. And that flexibility of migration has been a core tenet of my professional life ever since.”

At this time, Tim thought of himself as a professional writer:

“I’ve never thought of myself as a content creator. It’s always been as a writer or interviewer—something that makes it more finely categorized because it helps me work on a craft. If you say ‘I’m a creator’, that doesn’t give you a great search function for trying to improve your craft.”

In 2012 while writing The 4-Hour Chef, Tim asked another cohort of best-selling authors which platforms were neglected:

“They said podcasts.”

Tim then went on a whole bunch of podcasts—Joe Rogan, Nerdist, Marc Meron, Adam Carolla:

“Those really moved the needle. They were also such a sharp contrast to the morning TV shows and so on that I had done previously. I could actually get into nuance. I could curse. I could be myself. I had a blast and decided I am too burned out to do another book. I want to try something else. Let me try podcasting. I’ll do 6-10 episodes to give myself a graceful exit. I’ll set that expectation upfront. And even if it fails—meaning the audience doesn’t like it or I don’t continue doing it—I will get better at interviewing and I will deepen relationships or make new relationships, all of which will persist after the hypothetical failure. And then I just kept doing it because I was having fun.”

In the clip below, Tim explains that he really viewed himself as a writer and initially got into blogging and podcasting to sell more books, as well as improve his craft of writing and interviewing.

While writing The 4-Hour Workweek In 2006, he interviewed best-selling authors to learn about launching a book and media vehicles that were undervalued. They told him:

“These things called blogs seem to move a lot of books, but most authors pay no attention to them.”

Without a large budget for his launch, Tim decided to focus on two things: blogs and in-person events to reach bloggers.

“And to do that credibly, I thought I should really have a blog that has some good articles on it and began that in 2006. That was followed by the book in April 2007.”

He also started gathering emails in 2007:

“I knew that email could be important, but I didn’t send the first email until something like 2014.”

He continued to work on the blog, and that became the way he communicated directly with his audience:

“It was based on WordPress, which meant that I was not captive to any platform and I knew that I could take this open source platform and if I wanted to migrate my blog and my content I could do that. And that flexibility of migration has been a core tenet of my professional life ever since.”

At this time, Tim thought of himself as a professional writer:

“I’ve never thought of myself as a content creator. It’s always been as a writer or interviewer—something that makes it more finely categorized because it helps me work on a craft. If you say ‘I’m a creator’, that doesn’t give you a great search function for trying to improve your craft.”

In 2012 while writing The 4-Hour Chef, Tim asked another cohort of best-selling authors which platforms were neglected:

Tim then went on a whole bunch of podcasts—Joe Rogan, Nerdist, Marc Meron, Adam Carolla:

“Those really moved the needle. They were also such a sharp contrast to the morning TV shows and so on that I had done previously. I could actually get into nuance. I could curse. I could be myself. I had a blast and decided I am too burned out to do another book. I want to try something else. Let me try podcasting. I’ll do 6-10 episodes to give myself a graceful exit. I’ll set that expectation upfront. And even if it fails—meaning the audience doesn’t like it or I don’t continue doing it—I will get better at interviewing and I will deepen relationships or make new relationships, all of which will persist after the hypothetical failure. And then I just kept doing it because I was having fun.”

The Creator Archive

How Tim Ferriss became a creator