1.) Doing Content Right - Tools for Creation

• 2:30 - Self-Intro


• 3:30 - Motivation for Doing Content Right - fill gap of good information on online content creation & marketing


• 6:00 - Her First Book - "Let me just disseminate this information, and it just happened to be in book form."


• 7:00 - "Just following my curiosity and doing things that excite me."


• 8:00 - "I'm always looking for new tools that give me some extra layer of data." How she finds tools. Product Hunt, Twitter, and Indie Maker communities. Thriving as a data geek. 


• 9:00 - "Having the right access to the right tools is almost a superpower... Knowing what tools you have access to and using them effectively is a total game-changer."


• 11:00 - Making experimentation part of your habit. "Keep track of what tools you want to try. If it doesn't fit your workflow at that particular instant, you should take stock of what you want to try. Make a habit of trying those new things, so you can stay ahead of the curve."


• 12:30 - Steph's list of "Interesting Things." Teasing out the noise of what is interesting. Taking stock, creating a backlog, thinking about why something was interesting in the first place. Train your brain to recognize what makes people curious.

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2.) Creating a Visual Online Identity - Images are worth a thousand words!

Tool stack: Craftwork, Undraw, DrawKit, Noun Project, Unsplash, among others. Where does each one fit into her flow?

• 16:00 - Creating her own illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. There's a way that I want to convey a very specific concept.


• 16:30 - "It's very hard to find something out there that does [the message] justice."


• "If you find the right image to convey the right thought, it's worth so much more than a stock image."


• 17:00 - Comparison to corporate brands. Being thoughtful about stock imagery. "Does it match all the other things I'm creating?"


• 18:00 - Fast-tracking. Unsplash for stock images, the Noun Project for certain illustrations.


• "When you see illustrations, you see the final product. You don't see the mathematical backend of it."


• Infographics: "They're surprisingly easy to create it if you know how to use Illustrator."


• Like coding: "If you don't know how to do it, it looks like this big task that is like a black box. But once you know Illustrator, it's like a superpower enabling you to communicate in that same form."


• 20:00 - Color palettes! Pastel colors with fun colors match the type of person she is.


• 21:30 - Choosing the right image for each article -- why she likes non-prescriptive, abstract imagery!


• 23:00 - "If I can't meet in-person every person that happens to engage with me online, they can get some sort of taste of who I am as a person, my own personality, and what I find interesting. The visual part of that is something not enough creators do."


• 
  How to stand out as a creator, visually.

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3.) Travel: Remote Work Environments -- 4+ years of remote work!

What places do you find yourself revisiting, to capture some spark of inspiration?

• 25:00 - Exploring and Exploiting. Explore more at the beginning, then exploit more later. 


• 26:00 - "Where do I work the best? Where do I live my best life? For me, it was a couple of places."


• Canggu in Bali: Community, scooters, share offices, nature, gym


• Kyoto in Japan: Food, culture, accessibility, biking along the river


• 28:00 - "Where do I have the best community?"


• 30:00 - Reaching a new place → "A complete learning process. You just have to put yourself out there."


• "No matter where you go, it's going to be a process. The easiest way to do so is through common shared interests."


• 32:30 - "If we're bonding over soccer, they don't need to know I just wrote a book!" 😆


• 33:00 - Hackaggu: 10 to 25 people working & talking about their projects!


• "It depends a lot on who you're surrounded by."


• 36:00 - Finding human connection when everyone is remote. Forming strong friendships outside work.


• 39:00 - How interactions are changing: "We engage when we need to engage."

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4.) Writing for Kids -- How to reach kids

Marketing advice: Meet people where they are. But what if the communities are gatekept, and mostly offline?

• 43:00 - Creating content through TikTok, YouTube, and playful media


• 43:30 - Offline media. Writing a children's book? Engaging kids with games.


• 44:30 - If parents are the gateway, write/create for the parent, leveraging parents' motivations.


• 47:00 - Fostering enjoyment of creation: Start earlier!


• 48:00 - "As a kid, you have the stability to do what you want, and it's totally fine if you don't succeed!"


• 
  Nudging kids, creating together, just for fun. How to create positive feedback loops for kids, to instill the sentiment: "If you work hard and try things, then there are exciting things behind these doors." 


• As kids we're graded on yes or no, A or B or C, but it's important to nudge kids towards these curious projects.


• 50:00 - Etsy for Kids. Instead of making money, it's about recognition: creating something useful for the world. Parents pay for kids to be on the platform, kids sell their own products or trade with other kids. Adding value to the world!


• 51:00 - Embracing failure in real life. Fall in love with learning, testing, experimenting with creation! They'll do better next time.


• 52:00 - Internal motivation drivers for kids to create! Marketplaces as reward structures.


• "Kids are just tiny humans!" 👶🏽 

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Related Links:

Steph's Online Home: https://stephsmith.io

Doing Content Right: https://gumroad.com/l/doing-content-right

Kids Can Create: https://www.noko.news/post/kids