From Consumer To Creator

Read time: 5 minutes

Hey team, welcome back.

Last week, I wrote about 10 lessons on hitting £20M annual recurring revenue for my company, Heights.

​You can read that (and all past issues, here).

By the way, if you're finding these insights helpful, I've started collecting all these tools, resources, and one-sheets in the ever-growing 'Science of Success' vault. Check it out here.

This week, I want to share some thoughts with you whilst they're in my head - they may serve some of you, not all of you, and I'm here with a real commitment - so read on for that.

But first, part of this newsletter, as you'll see, is a commitment to make this the place I add the most personal value, which also means hanging out. So, I'm doing a private talk at Vanta about the Heights journey. Beautiful rooftop, central London, free food and drink, great people, ask me anything about scaling heights to £20M.

​Only way to join is right here.

Last week I was invited to speak at "The Creators Leaders" retreat - and it's the exact kind of thing I've been saying no to for the last 5 years.

This is my typical thought pattern:

A) I see myself as an entrepreneur, not a creator

B) I want to focus on my company, not my ego.

C) I assume I have nothing of value to say to this audience.

However, I made myself a promise to start going to more things and say yes to more things once Heights hit £20M - so I really had no excuse.

Promises To Yourself

When Heights began, I saw it as a fundamental job to get us off the ground with hard-earned publicity - and I got lucky. I already had one of the top business podcasts in Europe, so we did free advertising on there in year 1. With that came lots of contacts like Steven Bartlett, who I'd been friends with for years already - so he invited me on Diary Of A CEO to tell my story of depression, anxiety and insomnia - because he knew it wasn't just a cool backstory - I'd opened up to him privately a lot before he had a podcast. I just got lucky to be his first proper guest on video, and that podcast blew up to #2 in the world.

What did Seneca say about luck? "Where preparation meets opportunity". Maybe that's all this was. But I digress.

With that and a few other shows behind me, and Heights officially launched - I decided to step away from the limelight, and 'creator/influencer vibes' - and get more into the weeds of running my company. I'd already failed a company in a major way - I couldn't afford to do it again, so it was time for me to retreat inwards and focus on the biz.

I told myself - "When we hit £10M, I will start properly tweeting and posting on LinkedIn". In the meantime, I always posted our results - "building in public" - but it wasn't til we hit £10M that I began a new commitment to create content and build a personal audience - the permission threshold I negotiated with myself was there, and it was time to start.

That was last year - and since then I've got to over 130k on X and 200K on LinkedIn - making me one of LinkedIn's top creators globally. Not bad.

But I still didn't have permission (from myself) for public speaking, events, and doing more of the typical 'creator' activity. I kept all that for myself at £20M.

The most important thing... is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.

If you read last week's one, you'll know this was lesson number 1. The most important thing as an entrepreneur is building a great business with happy customers and an aligned team.

At £20M the job is not done, but you are no longer a startup, really. It's time for a new assessment of the most important thing - and we have some pretty interesting data now showing us a bunch of evidence of what the gurus have been saying all along.

You may know we work with a lot of celebrities (all of whom are our actual customers, btw), but according to the data, there is one person who performs in our advertising as well as all of them - me.

The last time I shot content for Heights was in December. It's not that I don't want to do it or don't like it - it's that I'm busy doing the zillion founder things that come with doubling a company of this size in one year. But it's quite possible that to scale Heights from here, the most important thing may well be.... evolving my identity.

From Consumer Brand Founder to Creator

To be clear - yes, I have the ick creating content - but it's like all reps - you just got to push through the pain and do it.

With data on my side - I feel more compelled to do this - after a serious chat with both my Co Founder and Marketing Director - both of whom came to me and suggested I spend more of my time doing this (thanks to the data not just vibes) - I feel like I not only have permission from myself, but buy in from my peers - and that is what matters most to me.

There's on other key point to make - and it was made to me by this man:

My friend Daniel Priestley was talking and said something that struck me. When selling his businesses, him having a big personal brand made the negotiations far easier for the company and far more complex for the buyer, and the leverage had moved exponentially in his favour.

I've always been very careful not to build Heights around me because I assumed the opposite was true - but he gave multiple great examples that made me reconsider this point entirely.

So I am here to make a really key point. Maybe the world really has shifted. Entrepreneurs are, of course, incredibly valuable, but in a world of A,I anyway - there are really only two edges - product/innovation - and distribution.

This reframe from Daniel reminded me of an important mantra I keep to myself: "strong opinions, loosely held".

What that means is - I am someone who has strong opinions that seem unwavering, but give me better information, and I'll change my mind.

Be that person too.

Creating Value

One way or another - whether entrepreneur, creator or something in between - in life, the way to be successful is to create value.

If you can do this, you can price accordingly, and create the ultimate success from that creation: freedom.

The Career Ladder

To wrap this up - there's an interesting point to make on all of this - for your career - so it would be wrong not to include this photo with Max from The Career Ladder - who in the last year has become the most watched non-animated social show in the world. 4 years of experimenting, landing on the ladder as the prop and pow - 1 year later - billions of views every week.

The lesson is this:​
At every stage of your career, you will need to prove you can drive value beyond just your role. One of the most meaningful and obvious ways to create that value is to create, be a creator, share your passion for the work you do with the world - and watch it attract opportunities like a magnet. I can tell you as an employer, it's absolutely an edge when comparing candidates.

My Commitment

I've built a highly magnetic, brilliant brand at Heights I'm super proud of. I've never given my own any thought (confusion on long-winded Dan Murray-Serter married name and simple and clear Dan Murray is a great example).

So this month - I'm taking the first steps to building my very own clear magnetic personal brand as a creator - and inviting you to join me on that journey.

This means a new simple personal website, updating this newsletter to represent the value it can offer and who it's for,

I'll also be offering more value, competitions, opportunities to see live talks with me, perhaps free mentoring groups, and I'll be saying yes to a few more podcasts and live events (within reason) to start to develop my spiel.

I'll share anything insightful or of value with you in that journey - but my core focus will be on delivering the maximum amount of value I possibly can right here in my newsletter.

This is going to become my absolute #1 most valued audience - so thank you for indulging me this extremely long-winded diatribe about some reflections, and I promise to deliver if you stick around.

The path to success is different for us all, it's messy, but it's a journey I am honoured to take with the few thousand of you reading every week, so let's keep at it together.

With love,

Dan

PS, should I rename this newsletter 'Reach Your Heights'. Is that better/nicer - reply and let me know what you think please!

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SOS (Science of Success) Curated:

I've only got ONE recommendation this week - Dr Tara Swart (our founding Chief Science Officer at Heights) is releasing her new book 'The Signs' and it's bloody great. You can get it here

PS: Next week - anyone who
1) is a Heights customer AND
2) bought Tara's book (will need receipts of both)
Can come join us at a private evening at London's most exclusive members club - The NED for an interview with her on October 8th.
​
I've got 10 spots up for grabs, for free... so take this as your Sign to get the book before next week....
x

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1-1 Coaching with Dan

In my goal to help more entrepreneurs/people who are looking to level up their careers, I've just started taking 1-1 consulting calls (only 1 a week)

Why book a call? Some of my expertise/success:

I've built 5 startups. 1 win, 1 fail, and 3 still going.

E-Commerce: Heights - with revenue over £20M a year.

Community: Foundrs, one of the UK's top founder communities

Podcasting: Leaders Media - bootstrapped media company that makes the UK's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders, with over 10M downloads.

Health/Mental Health: Managed to overcome burnout, insomnia, depression & anxiety in pursuit of success as I talk about in my interview with Steven Bartlett on Diary of a CEO​

Angel Investing: I've invested in over 90 startups

Coached & Mentored: Certified coach & done lots of mentoring

Personal Brand: Have grown to 200k on LinkedIn and 150k on X (Twitter) in the past 12 months

So if you're interested in booking a session with me to talk all things business or building a personal brand, book for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots).

Science of Success Vault

I'm building a vault of valuable tools, resources, and one sheets that I hope help you succeed.

These will be stored in the ever-growing 'Science of Success' vault - you can always access that here

Want to take your success (even more) seriously? 👇​
🧠 Fuel your brain and feed your gut, try Heights here (use code 'SOSDMS' for 15% off your first month of any subscription

🎧 Check out my podcast Secret Leaders here​

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