David Southern 🚢 👻

I ghostwrite educational email courses for the Maker Industry.
Maker obsessed with making themed projects to solve problems.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Have you always wanted to start Making things, but didn't want to fail on your first project?

Join my FREE 5-Day email educational course: The New Maker's First Project Roadmap!
https://t.co/hN6snTFo9Y

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Home ownership provides a seemingly endless list of things that need repair.

By building things and seeing I can solve physical problems with tools, my confidence in my ability to fix things increased.

Although I won't touch HVAC or gas lines, I've fixed leaky faucets, drywall, ceiling fans, and overhead lighting all without prior experience because I believed in my ability to take things apart, diagnose the issue, find what I needed online, and apply it in reality.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

The last one is the most critical for me.

[Ryan Holiday @RyanHoliday]

Never be overheard complaining…even to yourself

[Jay Yang @Jayyanginspires]

I'm begging you:

- write at a 3rd grade reading level
- use one comma per sentence
- cut "very" and "actually"
- define every vague word
- stop splitting your last line in two
- stop using em dashes
- say your best idea 5 different ways

Great writing is just great sentences, stacked.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

3 unexpected benefits of starting to Make things (beyond building custom projects)

1. Increased problem solving skills
2. Boosted confidence
3. Enhanced modification of other ideas

Making things has acted as a multiplier for skills that has improved almost every aspect of my life.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

3 reasons Star Wars builds are perfect for beginner makers.

1. Turn trash into projects
2. Hide mistakes with weathering
3. Finished pieces shouldn't be uniform

Dystopian projects lend themselves well to beginners because they leverage common mistakes as features, not failures.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

@DanielPriestley The inner voice saying it’s too big is the hardest one for me to drown out.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Adam Savage said the difference between a beginner and a master craftsman is knowing how to hide your crimes.

When a mistake happens on a build, your first instinct is often to scrap and restart.

Don't throw it out. Lean into it.

Accentuate the flaw until it becomes part of the piece's story (especially with weathering).

Master makers don't make zero mistakes. They know how to integrate them.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

The hardest lesson I learned from demolishing 18 months of custom home office built-ins:

Projects have a life span.

When our needs changed and that office had to become a bedroom, ripping it all out felt wrong at first.

If a project serves your need until that need changes, tearing it down isn't a failure. It's just another iteration toward the next solution.

The superpower of building things yourself isn't that they last forever.

It's knowing you can always build it again.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Better isn't the answer until you have maxed out consistency.

It's far better to post consistently at a steady cadence than flood the feed for one week, disappear for two, and try to restart.

Algorithms and your human audience like predictability.

Lock in consistency first. Then optimize.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

When I was the most productive and satisfied I've ever been, I tracked 3 critical tasks every day in a pocket notebook.

Not an over-engineered app. Not a 40-item to-do list.

Just 3 non-negotiable tasks written down each morning before the chaos starts.

Simplicity creates focus.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Adam Savage said the difference between a beginner and a master craftsman is knowing how to hide your crimes.

When an error happens on a build, your first instinct is often to scrap the whole thing and restart.

Don't throw it out. Lean into it.

Accentuate the flaw until it becomes part of the piece's story (especially with weathering).

Master makers don't make zero mistakes. They know how to integrate them.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Workshops should be constantly evolving.

A clean, modular shop isn't a luxury. It's how you remove friction so you actually build.

From tool rests on the workbench to custom wall holders and sized parts bins, organizing your space transforms how much you get done this weekend.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Perfect is boring (and we don't want to be boring makers).

Star Wars taught me that there is real beauty in flaws (there's a reason the Millennium Falcon is known as a hunk of junk).

Instead of shooting for unattainable perfection, look for incremental improvement on every build.

And when mistakes inevitably happen? Channel your inner Bob Ross and turn happy accidents into weathered details.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

One of my earliest maker unlocks was finding out how much better my results were with jigs and templates than freehanding.

Templates remove guesswork and make quality repeatable.

If you want cleaner builds, stop trying to freehand every cut and start using jigs.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

When you're overwhelmed with tasks, run them through a simple filter:

1. Is it Important or not?
2. Is it Urgent or not?

Busy work is Urgent, but not Important.

Real leverage comes from what is Urgent & Important.

Get rid of anything that is non-urgent and non-important.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Writing online isn't just about sharing what you make.

It's about learning to communicate clearly without hiding behind fancy video edits or polished staging.

When you force yourself to convey ideas in text:
1. Your thinking gets razor sharp
2. You uncover gaps in your own knowledge
3. You clarify what you actually believe

Writing daily is the ultimate test of clarity.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

@ivanainai Totally agree!

When I tried to leverage AI before fully understanding how to do it myself, I’d get frustrated and think it was a problem.

When I understood how to do something the long way, training AI was more effective because I could spot what was wrong.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

Looking back at years of inconsistency showed me exactly why momentum matters so much online.

Inconsistency kills progress faster than bad ideas ever will.

The creators and entrepreneurs who build real leverage are dangerously consistent.

That consistency doesn't come from motivation. It comes from the discipline to show up every single day, especially when you don't feel like it.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

@Nicolascole77 I spent years believing I wasn't creative.

https://t.co/29NuB0SIMe

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

I spent years believing I wasn't creative.

Then I realized something:

Creativity isn't always inventing something out of thin air. Most of the time, it's taking ideas from different places and combining them into something new.

My entire outlook changed once I leaned into combining ideas.

[David Southern 🚢 👻 @TheMakerEdge]

I spent years believing I wasn't creative.

Then I realized something:

Creativity isn't always inventing something out of thin air. Most of the time, it's taking ideas from different places and combining them into something new.

My entire outlook changed once I leaned into combining ideas.