Hi,
Did you miss any days of the challenge, or just want to see it all in one place?
Then this post is for you. You might want to review these articles, too, if you don’t have the context of my previous work to understand what is happening here.
Here are the challenge emails below.
[DAY 1] “Why is this so hard?”
Hi,
Welcome to Frictionless Growth Challenge. Today, we’ll talk about why it feels hard, and how to finally move forward.
Have you ever screamed into the heavens “Why is this so hard?”
Who am I kidding. You are a writer. Of course you have, and you probably translated that in your head to “Why can’t this be easy?”
It makes sense. I mean easy and hard are on the same spectrum, right?
Wrong.
What we really mean when we say “why is this so hard?” isn’t “why can’t this be easy?” Easy is a measure of difficulty, and if we wanted something easy, we wouldn’t become authors. What we actually mean is “why is there so much friction?” Easy measures difficulty, but ease measures friction.
Easeful work removes unnecessary struggle, aligns with your natural strengths, and makes your effort matter.
It’s still work, but it’s the right work, moving you forward instead of spinning your wheels in place. Most “this is hard” moments are actually “why am I stuck?” moments. The difficulty isn’t the problem, the friction is. When you’re stuck, more effort just digs the rut deeper.
When you’re working with friction, effort becomes struggle. When you remove the friction, the work still takes energy, but now it flows.
This challenge is about finding the path of least friction in your creative business that creates meaningful progress without unnecessary suffering.
What we really mean when we say “why is this so hard?” isn’t “why can’t this be easy?” Easy is a measure of difficulty, and if we wanted something easy, we wouldn’t become authors. What we actually mean is “why is there so much friction?” Easy measures difficulty, but ease measures friction.
You’re trying to grow an audience when you don’t know what you’re really offering. You’re tweaking your website when you don’t know what you want anyone to do there. You’re agonizing over your next book when you don’t even know what business model it needs to support.
Frictionless growth doesn’t mean effortless. It means aligned. It means you’re not constantly swimming upstream. It means the work still takes energy, but it finally goes somewhere.
Today’s task: Think back to one time in your author career that felt easeful. Not easy. But alive.
What were you doing?
What kind of work was it?
Who were you doing it with or for?
Got it? Now, be brave and share it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Tomorrow, we start naming your path.
More soon,
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
[DAY 2] You don’t need to “fix” yourself to succeed
Hi,
How did day 1 go? Do you have a good idea of when you had your most easeful growth? Today, we take that and label the path.
Getting unstuck means finding the path of least friction that increases meaningful progress without eliminating effort entirely. Imagine yourself as a Jenga tower. Frictionless growth is when you find that block that slides out with barely a touch.
There are five major frictionless growth paths for authors. Here they are:
Virality (writing to market/social media): You write to trend, follow data, and build predictable systems. You’re a tactician.
Thought Leadership (blogs/podcasts/speaking): You make essays, newsletters, podcasts, and ideas that ripple through your industry. You’re a lighthouse.
Big Spectacle Launches (Kickstarter/virtual summits): You love big moments, campaigns, events. You’re a firestarter.
Evangelism (ARC teams, Influncer marketing, referrals): You rally your community who would run through glass for you. You’re a connector.
Partnerships (shared worlds, anthologies, publishing deals). You build inside shared worlds, IP collabs, and with groups. You’re a builder of collectives.
At least one of those paths will very likely give you frictionless growth. You can succeed with any of these, but spending 100% of your time in the most frictionless path will lead to the most growth in the least time. At least one of those paths will very likely give you frictionless growth.
You might get growth from several strategies, but one will give you the most growth, which is where you should focus most of the time.
This is almost certainly the one that’s also the most fun for you and the one you enjoy most, because you’ll be getting a positive feedback loop, possibly for the first time in your entire career. Once you have one flowing beautifully, the other paths amplify and augment your growth.
It’s not that you can do anything, but that there’s something inside that you already love, which can lead to frictionless growth, and we just have to find it. Think of it a bit like Anton Ego’s famous line from Ratatouille “Not everything inside you can lead to frictionless growth; but frictionless growth could come from anywhere.”
Today’s task: Read that list again. Gut reaction: which one feels like a relief to focus on?
That’s your path. Now, be brave and share it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Stick with it. We scale fast by doing less, better.
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
[DAY 3] Where are you on your journey?
Hi,
Yesterday, we talked about the five major frictionless growth paths for authors. Here they are again:
Virality (writing to market/social media): You write to trend, follow data, and build predictable systems. You’re a tactician.
Thought Leadership (blogs/podcasts/speaking): You make essays, newsletters, podcasts, and ideas that ripple through your industry. You’re a lighthouse.
Big Spectacle Launches (Kickstarter/virtual summits): You love big moments, campaigns, events. You’re a firestarter.
Evangelism (ARC teams, Influncer marketing, referrals): You rally your community who would run through glass for you. You’re a connector.
Partnerships (shared worlds, anthologies, publishing deals). You build inside shared worlds, IP collabs, and with groups. You’re a builder of collectives.
Each of those paths has five stages
Stage 1 - You’re too overwhelmed/paralyzed with fear to do anything.
Stage 2 - You are doing things, but none of them work particularly well.
Stage 3 - You’ve found one thing that works really well, but you’re weighed down with a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work.
Stage 4 - You’re honed in on what works, but capped out on how much you can grow.
Stage 5 - You’re expanding and thriving.
The next step differs depending on where you are on your journey,
If you’re in Stage 1, then your goal is to do anything. If you’re in Stage 2, then your goal is testing all the thing to find something that works. If you’re in Stage 3, then your goal is to shed things that don’t work. If you’re in Stage 4, then your goal is to start expanding into new paths. If you’re in Stage 5, then your goal is to build your team. Trying to scale when you’re still in chaos is a recipe for a beautifully branded nervous breakdown.
Today’s task: Identify your current stage. Be honest. Write:
I’m in Stage ___ because __________. My next step is _____________________.
Do you have it? Now, be brave and share it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Tomorrow, we stop trying to do growth and monetization at the same time. You’re gonna like that one.
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
[DAY 4] You can grow or you can monetize. Not both.
Hi,
One of the biggest mistakes that writers make is trying to grow their audience and monetize at the same time. It’s a great goal, but it’s nearly impossible to grow your audience and monetize your work at the same time.
The growth side means investing to reach more people and lower friction.
The monetization side means maximizing revenue now through paywalls, premium pricing, and exclusive access, which inherently raises friction and limits reach.
Both are valid, but they directly contradict each other. To grow, you need to reduce friction. To monetize, you need to increase friction. Pinpoint where you are on this spectrum, choose your path, and do it completely. Are you in a growth era or a monetization era?
To grow, you need to reduce friction. To monetize, you need to increase friction. Growth is about reach. Monetization is about depth. One is a megaphone. The other is a velvet rope.
Trying to do both at once is why your audience isn’t growing AND your offers aren’t selling.
You’re torn, and torn people don’t scale.
Today’s task: Declare it:
I’m in a growth era, so I’m focused on reducing friction, showing up, building resonance.
I’m in a monetization era, so I’m focused on converting, premium offers, and deep value.
Write it down. Then, post it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Now, get a calendar and plot your next growth and monetization events on a calendar.
We stop spinning when we stop straddling.
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
[DAY 5] Where are you stuck?
Hi,
Author business challenges usually show up in four buckets, which we call the HAPI Compass.
(H)eart challenges come from the ideas, projects, and creative work that light you up and resonate deeply with who you are.
(A)udience challenges come from the people ready to champion, amplify, and ultimately buy your work.
(P)rioritization challenges form around choosing (or failing to choose) one high-leverage move at a time, letting wins compound, and buying yourself runway for the next right thing.
(I)ncome challenges revolve around the revenue that funds your life and fuels your creative work.
Your biggest challenge will almost certainly form around one of those buckets, but we’re horrible at recognizing which one is really blocking us. We constantly misdiagnose them in ourselves.
Misdiagnosis leads to solutions that make things worse. You double down on marketing when you need to clarify your message. They’re at odds with each other, as we talked about yesterday.
You can only solve challenges by using solutions designed to fix them. (A)udience solutions won’t fix (H)eart challenges, (I)ncome solutions won’t fix (P)rioritization challenges, etc.
If you want to solve your biggest challenges, you need to use the right solutions, which means you need to know what your biggest challenge is right now, and almost nobody does, especially about themselves.
Today’s task:
Pick the quadrant where your friction is the highest.
Write one sentence about why.
Brainstorm one thing you could try to ease it.
Now, post it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Tomorrow, we’ll sew it all together.
-Russell
P.S. - If you’d like a more directed and community driven transformational experience, consider joining Hapitalist. You’ll get twice-monthly breakthrough sessions, a digital brain trained exclusively on all my past work, and access to all my most powerful resources, for $300/yr. My goal is to make Hapitalist the “operating system” for your writing career. Join Hapitalist
[DAY 6] Let’s put this all together
Hi,
The Hapitalist approach helps you pinpoint the most easeful path forward, narrow your place on the growth-monetization spectrum, identify your true bottleneck, and match the right solution to the right problem.
Do this well, and you solve the vast majority of author business challenges without expending any additional effort. In fact, you’ll probably save effort by cutting back on things that don’t work for you.
You’ve been doing the heavy lifting for five days.
Do you have alignment? Now it’s time to connect the dots.
Today’s task: Write your frictionless growth statement:
My natural growth path is [X]
I’m currently in Stage [Y], so my next step is [Z]
I’m in a [growth/monetization] era
My biggest friction point is [H/A/P/I], and here’s how I’m addressing it: ________
That’s your map. Now, post it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Keep coming back to see how it changes over time, or come join us in Hapitalist.
It’s often impossible to see this in ourselves, and to keep ourselves on track, which is why you need a community, preferably one trained on the same methodology as you and run by somebody who knows what they are doing. This is the work we do inside the program, and what we keep doing to keep you aligned.
Hence the bi-monthly breakthrough sessions to make sure you’re on track and to course correct.
Hence the digital brain to give you feedback between sessions and show you what to do next in real time.
Hence the collection of world-class resources to help you make the most of the path you choose to achieve the most frictionless growth possible.
This is just the first step in a vast journey.
Hope to see you inside.
-Russell
P.S. - Did you miss any days? Then, you can catch up by clicking here.
[DAY 7] Unlocking your block is only half the battle
Hi,
The Hapitalist approach helps you pinpoint the most easeful path forward, narrow your place on the growth-monetization spectrum, identify your true bottleneck, and match the right solution to the right problem.
Do this well, and you solve the vast majority of author business challenges without expending any additional effort. In fact, you’ll probably save effort by cutting back on things that don’t work for you.
You’ve been doing the heavy lifting for five days.
Do you have alignment? Now it’s time to connect the dots.
Today’s task: Write your frictionless growth statement:
My natural growth path is [X]
I’m currently in Stage [Y], so my next step is [Z]
I’m in a [growth/monetization] era
My biggest friction point is [H/A/P/I], and here’s how I’m addressing it: ________
That’s your map. Now, post it in today’s challenge post. Then, post it on your social media #fgchallenge
Keep coming back to see how it changes over time, or come join us in Hapitalist.
It’s often impossible to see this in ourselves, and to keep ourselves on track, which is why you need a community, preferably one trained on the same methodology as you and run by somebody who knows what they are doing. This is the work we do inside the program, and what we keep doing to keep you aligned.
Hence the bi-monthly breakthrough sessions to make sure you’re on track and to course correct.
Hence the digital brain to give you feedback between sessions and show you what to do next in real time.
Hence the collection of world-class resources to help you make the most of the path you choose to achieve the most frictionless growth possible.
This is just the first step in a vast journey.
Hope to see you inside.
-Russell
P.S - Did you miss any days? Then, for a limited time, you can catch-up here.
The most powerful transformation I can give you comes from our live breakthrough sessions. However, these sessions are really hard to visualize if you haven’t been to one before.
So, on December 11th at 3:30pm PT/ 6:30pm ET I’ll be hosting a free session just for challenge participants. Not only will you be hanging out with other challenge participants, but it will also be a chance to ask me questions about anything related to the program.
Now that you have your frictionless growth path, and you’ve built momentum, it’s time to capitalize on it.
Since you’ll likely be new to these session, I’ll spend about 20 minutes going through the philosophy behind it, then I’ll set you to work in small groups of 3-5 so you can see the magic for the magic.
See you there.
