This blog is a free resource. It’s a free portal into my mind, for those who wish to have such a thing.
I teach and share many of my very best ideas on here, and I do so largely for free.
But why exactly do I do that? Why write thousands of words and teach thousands of people for free?
Is that just the kind of guy I am?
Sort of.
There are very specific reasons why I teach everything I know (and give away 90% of it for free), and why I think you should consider doing it too. Here are just a few of them:
The Unstoppable Idea Machine
Teaching everything you know unleashes the creative maelstrom, the unstoppable idea machine.
When I decided to teach everything I knew, I became 100x more creative. Because now, every time I have an idea, I share it. For free. No matter how good the idea is, or how crudely formed or premature it may be.
If you are stingy with your ideas and your creativity, you live in constant scarcity and paranoia:
- What if that was my last good idea?
- What if someone steals my work?
- What if people think my idea is dumb?
I know, because I used to have this same mindset. I would simultaneously worry that my ideas were worthless and that other people would steal them (talk about cognitive dissonance).
Now, I probably have half a dozen ideas a day. And it’s because I write all of them down, and then share them. It’s a learned skill, a practice.
And you know what? I no longer care if anyone takes them. I hope they do! Because tomorrow, or a month from now, or a year from now, I’ll come up with something even better.
Iterate, Distill, Perfect
In hindsight, one of my biggest regrets is how much time I’ve wasted not writing things because I wanted everything I produced to be perfect.
If perfection is your goal, you will often never even begin your work.
The reality is, nobody’s writing is perfect. And even if it were perfect, someone would find a way to hate it or poke holes in it. Just look at the “unequivocal” masterpieces of literature. Even at that level, you’ll still find some critic who will poopoo any given work.
The only way to even work towards a good idea (let alone a perfect one) is to iterate. Pull it from the ether and put it down on paper. Make sense of it. Share it with people and learn from their response. Move forward from there. Cut out what doesn’t work, and improve what does.
This is how we slouch toward perfection.
What Marketing Actually Is
When I started my freelance writing career, I used to cold email or cold call to drum up business.
Other people swear by paid advertising.
Nothing inherently wrong with these things. But now, teaching everything I know for free is how I prefer to “do” marketing.
At its highest level, marketing is simply solving a problem, telling a story, or teaching. For free.
That’s how trust is built, and how an audience is built.
That’s what marketing actually is.
This gets at the new revolution in the marketing world: the transition away from “direct response advertising” (like paid ads) and towards permission-based marketing.
When you market with paid ads, you interrupt the experience your audience actually desires. You interrupt the movie, the article, the email, the YouTube video.
With permission-based marketing, you are the experience your audience actually desires. People opt into hearing from you because you have a story they want to hear, a perspective they want to know. You have lessons or ideas you can teach them.
The Democritization of Ideas
My freelance writing business was built largely from research I did on the internet while I was in college. 90% of what I learned about freelancing, I learned for free – from blogs, forums, and YouTube videos. That’s also how I learned about blogging, building an audience, publishing, and writing in general.
I feel compelled to pay some of that forward. Teaching everything I know is the best way I’ve found to do that.
The Real Me
If you don’t share your skills and ideas with people, why should they follow you? Why should they like you? How have you helped them?
Basically, I want people to find me and say “hey, I’d like to go further down the Corbin Buff rabbit hole.” That’s about as complicated as my business/writing strategy/personal brand is.
But the only way that works is if I show “the real me.” And the best way to do that is by sharing my ideas for free.
More On Teaching Everything You Know
By the way, I got the idea for this post from Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit, who also teaches everything he knows. You can read his take on the subject here.