We are <50 days away from our family of three becoming a family of four! 😅
Are we ready, you might ask? Well, if having our first child taught us anything, it's that the answer is, "No, and that's OK." We've never raised an infant and a toddler at the same time. Reality is going to smack us in the face—and we'll figure it out! We're ready for that. That's the beauty of marriage and doing life with your best friend.
On the business front, the Creator Science team is starting our last 6-week sprint before family leave to audit and improve our entire funnel. In October, we'll be facilitating a sprint inside The Lab to help our members prepare for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
It's full steam ahead! I hope you're in a groove and feeling clarity as we close out the year.
Inside this edition:
THE conference for search and marketing professionals
Essay: Attention Maximizers vs. Trust Maximizers
New Series: How Trust Happens
On The Podcast: How Pat Flynn sold Smart Passive Income
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Ahrefs Evolve: The conference for search and marketing pros
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20+ speakers, including Wall Street Journal bestselling author, speaker, and partner at MarketingProfs Ann Handley, CEO, Co-Founder of SparkToro, Alertmouse, & Snackbar Studio Rand Fishkin, Chief Marketing Officer at Ahrefs Tim Soulo, Founder & CEO of Foundation Marketing + Distribution.ai, Ross Simmonds, International SEO Consultant & Founder of Orainti, Aleyda Solis.
Attend Ahrefs Evolve October 12-13 in San Diego, California.
I know that a lot of my readers look up to me as someone who has "made it." You may look at some of my audience metrics and think I've got the attention game figured out. But others (myself included) have a different vantage point.
I've been in the content game for nearly ten years now. I was writing (a version of) this newsletter in January 2017—two years before Codie Sanchez started her newsletter on Substack, 9 months before Steven Bartlett recorded the first episode of Diary of a CEO, and almost a full decade before anyone was talking about "yapping."
I can name the handful of times I've (accidentally) had something go anywhere close to viral. I made this Reel in five minutes while playing with my toddler (and the comments are a cesspool). And despite having what I believe to be a clear grasp on how to play the attention game at a higher level, I just can't get myself to do it.
I'm trying to make peace with that.
I've come to believe there are two types of creators:
Attention maximizers
Trust maximizers
Attention maximizers optimize for views and follower growth.
You are likely an attention maximizer if:
You play a game of speed and volume—jumping on trends quickly and posting frequently
You obsess over data around "what's working" on a platform right now
You are heavier on social media or YouTube than email or podcasting
You think a lot about hooks
You're a master at stopping the scroll
You predominantly monetize through sponsorship
The products you sell are low-priced and low-(or no)-touch
Your audience feels fickle or highly variable
Trust maximizers optimize for audience relationships and personal curiosity.
You are likely a trust maximizer if:
You play a game of depth and consistency—going deeper into areas of personal curiosity rather than surfing the wave of what's hot
You not only recognize a majority of the names and faces of your audience in your comments, but you know something about them too
The idea of finding videos and hooks that "worked" feels creatively oppressive
You feel like posting a high volume of content doesn't afford you the space to go as deep into subjects as you'd like
You predominantly monetize with your own products
The products you sell are higher-priced and higher-touch
Your audience feels highly defined and specific
If you haven't guessed, I'm a trust maximizer (and a little biased in that direction). But neither is better or worse; they're just different games.
Attention maximizers reap the rewards of fame and notoriety—magazine covers, listicles, private rooms, and big-time sponsorships. Trust maximizers tend to have more casual, private lives—predictable cash flow, deeper relationships with a smaller audience, and a life just outside the spotlight.
The problems come when one creator judges their performance by the other creator's game (this is the trap I often fall into).
Why is that person's account growing so quickly?
This content isn't even useful!
Trust maximizers rarely get the same number of views as attention maximizers. They'd love to grow their audience, but they focus on how their content serves their existing audience more than on adding more viewers to the pile. Trust maximizers have an easier time selling, quickly say "no" to things that don't interest them, but wonder why attention maximizers can grow their audiences so quickly (or why they're never invited to the fancy private rooms).
Attention maximizers don't have the same depth of relationship with their viewers as trust maximizers. Their audience feels much more scattered, and they'll have a harder time monetizing directly. They'll grow quickly and have a large audience, but may envy trust maximizers for not having to answer to third-party sponsors. They have a harder time slowing down, saying no to brand deals, or taking time off.
Attention maximizers often attract a crowd while trust maximizers build an audience.
Scrolling Instagram and pausing to watch a video isn't so different from stopping your walk in Vegas to watch a street performer. Did you catch the performer's name? Did you ever see them again?
And then there's your favorite band—you may make entire travel plans to a remote destination just to see them.
A crowd is reactive, stopping to see a spectacle. An audience is proactive and makes plans to see their favorite artist.
You may be thinking this is a false dichotomy. Surely there are trust maximizers getting tons of views or attention maximizers who are highly trusted? Yes, there are always exceptions to the rule. And while it seems like each side could benefit by being more like the other, it's not as practical as you'd think.
Attention maximizers, by definition, must cater to a broad audience. Attention is one of the most competitive games on the planet, and they've mastered it. They're more likely to make content consumed as entertainment, and because their audience is scattered, it's harder to find a product or service that fits their audience as a whole. Attention maximizers are encouraged to make the biggest promises possible because it attracts more attention. They speak in absolutes because brevity is both easier to consume and creates an emotional response. For more thoughtful, discerning viewers, this type of content often rings as incomplete, ignorant, or misleading.
Trust maximizers are playing a longer, slower game with a smaller target audience. Trust is earned when a promise is kept, and trust maximizers are masters at keeping promises. They're more likely to make content that's educational or transformational. They make fewer and more realistic promises. They're more likely to hedge their language or dive into the nuance, because they don't want to lie, omit, or mislead. This doesn't make for sexy titles and thumbnails or snappy soundbites, so casual viewers pass right by.
Both attention maximizers and trust maximizers can succeed. But it's best to identify the side you fall on and commit to your strengths rather than try to elevate your weaknesses. A trust maximizer leaning into alarming video packaging will feel like they're having an identity crisis. An attention-maximizer using more measured language will feel boring.
In the first version of this essay, I spoke in more absolutes. I removed myself from the story, because I wanted it to be more readable for people who don't know me. I was trying to add on some attention-winning best practices, but also couldn't fully commit. The essay was both thin and harder to buy into because I was contradicting my own point!
Trouble comes when you try to straddle the middle. That middle area feels muddy. Not quite sharp enough to maximize attention, not quite deep enough to maximize trust. That muddiness creates indifference in the consumer, and in content, indifference is death.
For the past couple of years, I've been researching and learning about trust. It started as a simple question: "Wait, how do you actually earn trust?" and then became a rabbit hole I tumbled deeper and deeper into.
In my opinion, there's nothing more valuable than a person's trust. We hear so much about the value of attention and being in an attention economy, but attention is cheap. Attention can be bought.
Trust is the currency that precedes the transaction. Trust has to be earned. Trust is the force underneath every social interaction we have. Influence itself isn't the result of attention, but trust.
I haven't published much about it publicly. But that's changing now.
In partnership with my friends at Senja, I've produced a free, 7-day email course called How Trust Happens. It introduces my framework for building trust consistently and intentionally.
As you read, please reply and let me know what you think! This is just the beginning, and there's a lot more to dig into.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE 🎧
#317: Selling Smart Passive Income (And What We Can Learn From It) — Pt. 1 featuring Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland
This week I’m joined by two longtime friends—Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland.
Pat is the founder of Smart Passive Income, the creator education brand he started in 2008 and ran for 18 years. Matt came on around 2018—first as an advisor, then as CEO—and spent years making SPI operationally strong enough to stand without Pat at the center. They spun SPI out into a separate entity called SPI Media, pivoted from courses to community with recurring revenue, and quietly prepared the business for a sale they weren’t sure would ever happen. In September 2026, they announced that SPI had sold. The deal had closed five months earlier.
The buyer is Liz Wilcox, an email marketing expert who spent those five months operating publicly as SPI’s “director of community” before anyone knew the deal had closed. The community doubled in size during that window.
In this episode, we talk about:
How Pat and Matt deliberately structured SPI over 8 years so it could be sold—including spinning out a new company, removing Pat’s face from the website, and making the community the hero
Why Pat turned down multiple VC and PE offers worth more than the final sale price
The deal mechanics: seller financing, no broker, 160 documents of due diligence, and how it closed in 6 months when deals like this typically fall apart
What creators who operate entirely under their own name are missing when they eventually want to exit
By the end of this episode, you will understand what it actually takes to build a creator business that could outlive you—and what the groundwork for an exit looks like years before anyone is thinking about it.
We honor your time and take your trust seriously. This email reflects our current beliefs, but you should do your own research. Read our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Affiliate Disclosure before you make any financial or investment decisions.
Apple pushed him out. His partners left. His investors lost faith. Then everything changed. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ FS | BRAIN FOOD Sept 6th, 2026 - #697 - read online - Free Version Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise. Tiny Thoughts * Whatever pattern is repeating in your life has one common variable: you. ** One of the worst qualities a person can have is the need to show how smart they are by catching others' mistakes. In some areas, this may be useful, but in general life, it's a disaster. *** We tend to think the people who get ahead have more talent, better connections, greater opportunities, or better ...
