This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Can you run a sub-stack, a TikTok channel, a podcast and a paid membership all at once? That's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna help a creator who's building a solo travel platform. And she's trying to figure out, can I do all of these things? Can I do all these different platforms channels to reach different people or reach them in different ways?
Or do I need to focus? Should it just be one? Can it be two perhaps? And there's lots of different ways to look at this question or answer this dilemma. In fact, so many people out there have a version of this dilemma as they develop a product or service as they're building their profile, especially as a creator in which they're trying to get people to follow them, perhaps get people to eventually sign up for courses or some other revenue model, whatever it is.
How do you manage it? Should you focus on a single platform? Should you diversify across several? Or is there a way to split the difference? I'm gonna do my best to give you some practical tips to manage it all.
Welcome to the podcast, by the way. My name's Chris Guillebeau. We're gonna hear a listener question from Emily and my answer in this episode. Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi team, this is Emily from Asheville.
I'm a creator and have been growing a platform for women interested in solo travel. I wanna offer content through sub-stack, TikTok, a podcast and maybe even a paid membership, but I'm wondering if that's too much. Should I stick to just one of these platforms to avoid spreading myself too thin or is it possible to manage all of them at once? I love your advice or even just a gut check. [Music]
Emily, this is the Common Classic Creators Dilemma.
We've talked about it a couple of times, but I always wanna make sure I'm giving a unique answer because of course, every situation is different and there's always different ways to look at it as well. I tend to think, I think I mentioned split the difference in my introduction. I try to do that because there is synergy between these things. Like you can have a sub-stack and a podcast. I've been doing that all this year.
You know, I've been doing the podcast every day in 2024 and I started a sub-stack newsletter, a year of mental health. I've been writing three times a week and they kind of compliment each other. So I tend to think doing two platforms is doable. Doing more than that, it's difficult. Unless you are a full-time creator, you start building a team out, thinking about outsourcing, delegation and so on.
And this doesn't mean you can't share on social media. It just means you're not considering that a primary strategy. I think you can only have like one primary strategy, one secondary strategy or platform we could say. And then anything else after that, you're not going to do a great job at just because you are one person. So if I think of different people who've gone one way or another, Melissa, a friend of mine runs a blog for Sustainable Living.
She is focused solely on TikTok and that's what has gone really well for her. She's doing some other small things, but really it's all about TikTok. Then I think of Jules, who's a fitness coach. We featured Jules here before. Jules runs a podcast.
Jules does TikTok. They send out a weekly newsletter and basically they create one core piece of content like a blog post or podcast and they break it down into smaller bite-sized pieces for TikTok and probably elsewhere and it works. So as always, you need to figure out the right approach for you. It's possible to be on multiple platforms without spreading yourself too thin. But we also see people kind of get into trouble when they're just doing too much and not seeing the results that they want.
So I tend to think when you find something that works, do more of it and don't worry so much about the things that are not working. That's another approach to the whole question of that creator's dilemma. Should you be everywhere? Probably not, but how do you choose how many places that you focus on? Let me know how that sits for you.
Of course, listeners always resources on sidehustleschool.com notes page for every episode. This was 2,894. We are now in the month of December. I'm excited to bring you an episode every day. Thank you so much for listening.
It's always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
