Ricky Waters

Here's what they don't tell you about growth.

The hate gets louder as you level up.

I lost sleep over hate comments.
I questioned if I should keep going.
I let strangers rent space in my head.

I remember the first time someone tore me apart publicly.
My hands were shaking as I read it.
I re-read it 10 times.

I showed my friends asking "is this true?"

I almost deleted everything that night.

Because no one prepared me for this part of building.

They told me about the wins.
The followers.
The revenue.
The freedom.

But they never mentioned the cost.

The people who will hate you for existing.
The strangers who will project their failures onto you.
The comments that make you question everything.

Here's the truth they should've told me:

Hate is a tax on success.
You can't grow without paying it.

The bigger you get, the louder it becomes.

And the only people who don't deal with hate?
The ones who stayed small enough to stay invisible.

So now when I see hate,

I don't spiral.
I see it as confirmation.

P.S. How do you deal with haters?

I made 101 ChatGPT art prompts.

Then I turned 101 LinkedIn creators into these styles.

Every creator became a different piece of art.
Renaissance portraits. Abstract expressionism. Cyberpunk and more.

Why did I do this?

Honestly → I wanted to see what's possible.
I wanted to push ChatGPT beyond "write me a caption".
I wanted to create something... different.

The result?

Hours of experimentation.
101 unique artworks.
And a deeper understanding of AI creativity.

Some looked like museum pieces.
Others looked like album covers.

All of them proved one thing:
The tools exist. The creativity is up to you.

I'm sharing this because...

Most of us use AI the same way everyone else does.
Same prompts. Same results. Same limits.

But when you experiment?
When you push the boundaries?

That's when the magic happens.

P.S. Which creator's art style did you like the most?

Google Chrome just met its match.

ChatGPT released a browser that works FOR you

Not with you
FOR you

It browses websites
It fills out forms
It completes tasks

All while you relax with your feet on the table.

This isn't just a better browser
This is about eliminating the 3 hours a day you waste clicking and scrolling

Check out ChatGPT Atlas. 
You'll thank me for it later.

P.S. What are your thoughts on AI taking over your web browser?

If you're burnt out from content creation, read this:


Most creators throw away their content scraps.

But I built a system around them.

Old quotes? Content.
Unused clips? Content.
Random ideas? Content.

Nothing goes to waste anymore.

And honestly? These "scraps" sometimes outperform my planned posts.

I'm even growing on other platforms now.

Your content library is literally sitting there.

Stop creating from zero.
Start recycling your gold.

PS: How many hours do you spend creating content each day?

Positive people don’t ignore problems.

They just refuse to be defeated by them.

I used to think positivity meant pretending everything was fine.
Smiling through chaos.
Acting “above” the storm.

But that’s not real positivity.
That’s denial.

Real positive people feel the storm too.
They just choose a different story inside it.

Here are 3 storms that will test you (and what they’re trying to teach you):

1. When your best employee quits
Your first thought: “Everything’s going to fall apart.”
The truth: You’re being asked to build systems that don’t depend on one person.

2. When you lose your biggest client
Your first thought: “My business is over.”
The truth: You’re being guided to diversify and build something that no one can take away overnight.

3. When your project fails publicly
Your first thought: “Everyone thinks I’m a failure.”
The truth: You just collected priceless data. The kind that builds your next breakthrough.

Here’s what I’ve learned:
It’s never the size of the storm.
It’s the story you tell yourself inside it.

Same problem.
Different perspective.
Completely different outcome.

So maybe the storm you’re in right now
isn’t punishment, it’s preparation.

You can acknowledge the storm.
and still believe you’ll navigate your way through it.

Stop seeing obstacles as setbacks.
Start seeing them as setups.

P.S. What's a recent challenge that you overcame?

They lied to you about content.

You don't need unique ideas.

When I first started, I spent hours trying to be original. 
Crafting the perfect post. 
Chasing unique ideas.

My chest tightened every time I hit publish. 
"Is this original enough?"

Nope, most my original posts flopped.

And my volume was low because I was chasing perfection instead of performance.

Here's what broke me free:
I realized your audience doesn't care about your creativity. 
They care about their pain getting solved.

Viral content isn't original, it's familiar packaged perfectly.
It's the message they need, in words they already use.

I stopped chasing unique.
Started listening harder.
Mining their objections.
Speaking their language.

Output tripled overnight.

Results followed.

Pattern → System → Experiment.

That's the order.

P.S. What are your best tips for creating content ideas?

I used to think saying no made me a bad person.

Turns out, never saying no was what made me one.

I used to be terrible at letting go.

Someone would drop the ball once, twice, three times, and I'd still be there, asking "what's wrong?" and "how can I help?"

I told myself I was being loyal.
That I was being a good friend, a good teammate, a good person.

But really?
I was just scared to set a boundary.

Here's what I've learned:
When someone drops the ball once, you ask about context. Life is messy. People struggle. Maybe they need help.

But when it happens three times?
That's not a mistake anymore. That's a pattern.
And patterns aren't accidents. They're choices.

Early in your career, you need yes to everything.
You show up to every coffee chat, every networking event, every opportunity.
You can't grow if you just sit in your room.

But then the tables turn.
You realize that some rooms are holding you back.
Some people aren't on the same mission.
Some relationships are keeping you small.

And the hardest thing you'll ever do is say no to people.

I know because I used to convince myself:
→ They'll change
→ Maybe they'll accept the new version of me
→ I can make this work

But deep down, I knew.

Setting boundaries isn't mean. It's not cold. It's not selfish.
It's survival.

If you want to grow, you have to protect your energy. You have to surround yourself with people who are running in the same direction.

Sometimes that means saying goodbye.
Not always with anger. Not always with drama.
But always with clarity.

Because if you stay in rooms with people who are on a lower level, eventually you fall down to meet them.

Your growth isn't just about opportunities.

It's also about turning down distractions.

Most creators perform instead of serve their audience.

(10 shifts to start serving instead)

My first month creating content, I wanted to grow an audience.

But my ego had me playing hero in every post.

I refreshed my phone after posting and the view count barely moved.
My frustration piled as no one resonated with my obvious brags.

Then a friend said something that made my heart sink: 
"Bro, every post you make is about you looking good."

I knew he was right.
I was only serving myself.

There are two types of creators.

1. Those who see an audience as resources to extract from.
2. And those who see an audience as people to serve.

The first type chases numbers.
The second builds loyalty.

People know when you care.
They also know when you don't.

Swipe through for 10 principles that changed how I show up.

P.S. What's your best tips for truly helping serve your audience?

Everyone's chasing the wrong thing.

The perfect content strategy.
The viral growth hack.
The secret framework.

But here's what I learned after building to 16K followers:

Excellence isn't about complexity.
It's about consistency.
Most people:

Plan for months
Perfect for weeks
Post for days
Quit when it doesn't work after just a few tries

Winners do this instead:

Start before they're ready
Show up when it's boring
Repeat when no one's watching
Win when everyone's sleeping

You don't outrun the pack.
You out-repeat them.

A simple task, done daily, beats complex tasks abandoned weekly.

Pay the effort account balance now.
And let time widen the gap.

The smartest creators I know aren't the most talented.
They're just the most consistent.

P.S. Do you you agree? Is it better to be perfect or better to be consistent. Let me know in the comments.

I used to think getting 1% better daily was motivational BS.

Until I actually did the math on it.

Day 1: You're you.
Day 30: You're 35% better.
Day 90: You're 2.5x better.
Day 365: You're 37x better.

That's not motivation. That's compound interest on yourself.

Most people try to improve at everything.
Then burn out in 15 days.

The smartest people I know?
They compound on 1-3 things max.
I did this to grow my followers and community.

-Wrote 1 post daily (no exceptions)
-Replied to 50 comments on other posts
-DM'd 50 people who engaged with my content

That's it. Just repetition on what moved the needle.

The compound effect isn't about doing more.
It's about doing less, but doing it relentlessly.

Pick 1-3 actions. Do them daily for 90 days without switching.
You'll lap everyone chasing the next shiny tactic.

PS: What's the 1 thing you're going to do daily for the next 90 days?

You're not busy.

You're just terrible at saying no.

Last month I did something uncomfortable.

I tracked every single hour for 7 days.

All 168 of them.

Here's what I found:
18 hours per week. Gone.

3 hours mindlessly scrolling Reddit
4 hours of tasks I didn't need to do
5 hours in meetings that could have been an email
6 hours commuting while I could've been learning during it

That's 936 hours per year I'll never get back.

39 entire days. Wasted.

The brutal truth?
Most of us aren't time-starved.

We're just not aware of the actual hours we are wasting.

So I made a change:

I tracked everything for one week. Sleep, work, scrolling, family time with brutal honesty only.

Then I asked myself one question:
"If this activity disappeared tomorrow, would my life actually be worse?"

For most things? The answer was no.
So I cut them.

Reddit went from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
Tasks that weren't serving me got ditched.
Meetings without agendas got declined.

The result?
25 hours per week I didn't know I had.

Now I'm spending that time building my business, with my family, and on work that actually compounds.

Your time is the only resource you can't buy back.
Stop giving it away for free.

♻️ Repost if you're done wasting hours.
P.S. Be honest, how many hours did you waste scrolling last week? 👇

Most people try to sell customers on the work it takes.

And it's the opposite of how they should be selling.

Nobody wakes up excited to:

"Do 90 days of outreach"
"Fill out 15 forms"
"Attend weekly calls"

They wake up desperate to solve a problem.

Here's what I learned after 1,000s of conversations:

The shift:
❌ Stop listing what's included
✅ Start showing who they become

Your offer isn't the bridge.
It's what's on the other side.

Here's the 3-step framework that changed everything:

1/ Paint their current state
→ Show you understand their pain
→ Make them feel seen

2/ Show the future self
→ Be specific about the transformation
→ Use their exact words and desires

3/ Position your offer as the bridge
→ Don't sell the bridge itself
→ Sell the destination

The harsh reality?

People don't buy products.
They buy better versions of themselves.

Start selling the dream, not the work.

P.S. What's the best tip you have for selling to customers? 👇

♻️ Repost to help your network close more deals

I used to think knowledge was about consuming everything.

Read 100 books. Take 50 courses. Be the smartest in the room.

I'd fly through content like I was racing against time.
But sprinting your brain into expertise? It doesn't work like that.

Real mastery isn't about how much you learn.
It's about how deep you go.

Think about driving a car.

You don't think "turn key, move gear to reverse, foot on pedal."
You just drive.

That's the difference between learning and mastery.

Repetition isn't boring. It's revelation.
Each time you practice, you peel back another layer.

New insights surface. Deeper understanding clicks.

The 4 levels of mastery:

1. Learning - you're taking it in.
2. Practicing - you're working through it.
3. Evaluating - you're refining it.
4. Doing - it becomes automatic.

Most people stop at level 2.

But mastery waits at the core.

Keep peeling. Keep practicing. Keep going deeper.

Stop trying to know everything.
Start mastering something.

PS: What's one skill you're committed to mastering this year?

Audio editing used to steal 10 hours from my family every week.

Now 1 prompt and we spent yesterday at the pool instead.

Here's what changed:

My wife creates ASMR content.
And perfect audio isn't optional, it's mandatory.

For months, every weekend looked the same:

Her hunched over a laptop for 10+ hours
Cutting background noise frame by frame
Removing every tiny audio mistake

Me staring at the clock counting the hours.

One glitch ruins the entire video.
One background noise? Start over.

It was brutal.

Then Meta released an AI audio editor.

Yesterday we tested it.
She uploaded a 45-minute video with background noise throughout.
Typed one prompt: "Remove background noise."

30 seconds later?
Professional quality audio.

The exact same result that used to take 10 hours of manual work.
We looked at each other and just laughed.

This week we got 10 hours back.
And spent some extra time at the pool.
That's what this tool actually gives you.

Not just better audio.
Your life back.

Here's the exact process:
1/ Go to Sam Audio Tool by Meta
2/ Upload your audio or video
3/ Type what you want fixed
4/ Click "Isolate Sound"
5/ Download your result

Zero cost.
Zero technical skills.
Zero wasted weekends.

The content creation game just changed.

While everyone else is grinding through manual edits, you can ship faster and actually live your life.

P.S. What's been your experience with AI audio tools? I'd love to hear about it below.

📌 Want to create content without the burnout?
Join the free AI Creator Community (Link in bio)
♻️ Repost for creators who need their weekends back.
➕ Follow me Ricky Waters for more like this.

The more reps you take, the more feedback you get.
The more feedback you get, the easier creating feels.
The easier creating feels, the sharper you create.

Momentum isn’t magic.
It’s a system.

The investment nobody talks about

How people feel after every interaction with you.

In my first sales job, I cold-approached over 10,000 people.

That meant:
-Thousands of rejections.
-Thousands of no’s that turned into lessons.
-Hundreds of yeses every single week.

But here’s what surprised me most:

Even some of the people who didn’t buy still sent me referrals.

Why?
Because they left the conversation feeling good.

They didn’t remember my pitch.
They didn’t remember my credentials.
They remembered how I made them feel.

And that feeling determines whether someone:
-Picks up when you call.
-Mentions your name when opportunities come up.
-Or disappears when you need help.

Your network expands every time you leave someone feeling lighter, seen, or inspired.

So before you chase followers, clients, or sales,

ask yourself:
How do people feel after they talk to me?

Swipe for 9 ways to leave people better than you found them.

P.S. What are your best tips for leaving a positive impact in conversations?

We talk a lot about “competition.”
But most of us aren’t losing to other people.

We’re losing to the noise in our own heads.

The overthinking.
The unrealistic goals.
The guilt.
The doubt.
The pressure to do everything alone.

It looks like hard work from the outside…
but inside, it’s just fear wearing productivity’s clothes.

And the truth is:
you can’t grow if you don’t see the patterns holding you back.

This carousel walks through the quiet ways we self-sabotage and the gentle shifts that help you step out of the mental battle and back into real progress.

Not by forcing more effort.
But by removing the thoughts that keep you stuck.

Your biggest competitor isn’t others.
It’s the voice you finally decide to stop listening to.

P.S. What's your best tip for helping overcome self-doubt?

If you feel stuck even though you’re trying to learn, this is for you.

For years, I thought volume was the answer.

More books.
More highlights.
More “finished” on Goodreads.

But there was a problem:
- My life didn’t look any different.
- I could quote the ideas.
- I couldn’t live them.

My biggest mistake?
I treated books like a race instead of a lab.

Now I do it differently:
One topic at a time

Deep research with NotebookLM before I move on
Then immediate action in the real world

Instead of asking, “What’s the next book?”
I ask, “What am I going to do with what I just learned?”

Because:
Depth creates mastery.
Action creates results.

If your learning isn’t changing your behavior, it’s just entertainment.

So here’s my new rule:
-Go deeper than everyone else.
-Act faster than everyone else.

That’s how you stop being an information collector
and start becoming an expert.

👉 Scroll through this carousel and I’ll show you exactly how to use NotebookLM’s deep research mode to do it.

P.S. What's your best tips for turning knowledge into action?

Most people are using AI backwards.

And this pattern is starting to scare me.

I watched someone yesterday completely hand off their thinking to AI.
"Just tell me what to do."

No direction. No vision. No judgment.

AI is a ship.
A powerful one.

But it still needs a captain.

Here's the truth:

You set direction.
AI expands options.
You decide what matters.

The human owns the result.
Not the machine.

P.S. Where do you draw the line? What do you delegate to AI vs. what do you keep for yourself?

I thought switching AI models meant starting over.

Until found out how to copy my brain from ChatGPT to Claude.

You know that feeling where you can’t switch tools because everything is completely set up?

That was me.

ChatGPT knew my writing style, my workflows, even my weird humor.
 It felt like switching would mean losing all of it.

But turns out, you don’t have to start fresh.

There’s a simple way to export your memory and give Claude the full download.

No lengthy retraining. No blank slate. Just a quick context transfer.

Curious to try other LLMs but feel stuck?
 This is your bridge.
Swipe through the carousel to learn how.

P.S. Do you stick to one main AI model or use many?

 ♻️ Repost if your ChatGPT knows you better than your family.

If you’re waiting to feel ready, read this:

I gave a speech the other day.

Afterwards someone told me:
“You should pause more. The information was complex.”

What they didn’t know was…
I felt like I still didn’t have enough information.
I was thinking, “Wait… I’m still not ready.”

But then it hit me:

We wait for “perfect information.”
We wait until we feel 100% ready.
We wait until everything makes sense in our head.

The truth? That moment never comes.

You don’t need to be miles ahead to teach or lead.
Being one or two steps ahead is already enough.

You rarely need more information.
You need more action.

Start the project.
Launch the offer.
Give the talk before you feel ready.

Because waiting until you’re “ready” isn’t preparation.
It’s procrastination disguised as productivity.

PS: What’s something that you started this year?

I fought back tears watching Stranger Things.

But real tragedies?

We scroll past. Here's why:

It's called the Identifiable Victim Effect.

Our brains connect with individual stories way more than statistics.

One person with a name and a face (even if fake) hits different than "millions at risk."

Psychologists have proven this over and over.

We can't help it.

Your content works the same way.

Look at these two posts:
Post A: "I help businesses increase revenue by 40%."
Post B: "My client was 3 months from bankruptcy. Here's what we did..."
Same result.

Totally different reaction.

The first is a number.
The second is a story.

One makes people scroll.
The other makes them stop.

People don't remember data.

They remember moments that make them feel something.

So before you post your next stat, ask yourself:
Where's the person?
Where's the struggle?
Where's the transformation?

That's what makes content unforgettable.

P.S. have you ever cried over a fake character in a show? Be honest

📌 Want to write posts people actually stop scrolling for?
Join my free AI Creator Community: (link in bio)

+ Follow Ricky Waters For more great content tips

♻️ Repost to help your network tell better stories.