All right, to handle some objections from the start, let's talk about the title of this video, which is how I made over six million dollars as a writer.
Now, for a lot of people that just sets off the scam alarms in their head, right?
Six million dollars.
Holy crap. How do you do that?
The average writer makes like sixty nine thousand dollars a year.
If you look it up on Google, that's crazy.
Now, this video isn't going to go into any of the details of what I do on a daily basis or any of those things.
It's going to be a big picture overview because I've made plenty of videos in the past on my writing process.
Go look at the one person business playlist, the digital writer playlist, et cetera, et cetera.
Those go over the details.
Instead, the purpose of this video is to provide perspective of what you can do.
Because I remember a time when I was scrolling Twitter and someone that I trusted, someone that I knew was making this much money, right?
I knew that it wasn't a scam because I knew them.
They posted that they made $100 ,000 in a month doing the exact same thing that I was doing.
And for someone who was just some web designer in his past who was making $55 ,000 a year, that's a lot of money.
You made double what I made working a decently paying job, at least it was in my eyes, in a month.
And so since I trusted and knew that person, it opened my mind to what was possible.
And now the further that I've gone in business, I realized that even 6 million isn't that much.
I'm not saying for you or for the average person.
I'm saying for a business that's making $1 million, $2 million, $3 million a month, $6 million over the course of four or five years is nothing.
Now, I don't mean to downplay it.
That allows me to live very well and enjoy myself.
But that's aside from the point of this video.
I just want to provide perspective.
So let's get started with the fact that I've always wanted to do what I love for a living.
And I feel like a lot of people can resonate with that.
That's why you're here watching this.
And I followed the conventional path for a bit.
So I went to college and partied the entire time.
I learned creative skills on the side.
I started every single business imaginable.
And I'm talking dropshipping, Facebook ads agency, SEO content agency, digital art on Instagram.
You scroll all the way to the bottom of my Instagram.
You can see the digital art and Photoshop that I've made.
I tried general e -commerce stores selling rave clothes and blue light glasses and even one that I never really started, but I ordered the product for, which was leather minimalist wallets.
And my editor, Devin, still has one to this day.
If you want to like take a picture of it, Devin, and show him if you still use it.
Yeah, you do. And along with those, I also learned to code on the side because it was just a lucrative skill to learn.
I would read online and I would hear about how you don't need a degree if you learn how to code.
It just seemed like a good option, like a plan B if my business stuff didn't work out, which it didn't.
And then I ended up dropping out of college because I switched majors too much and just had too much time.
I didn't want to pull out more loans.
And so with the web design skills and web development skills that I learned, I ended up getting a 55k year job as an entry level web developer at a design agency.
And during this time when I got the job, it felt like this ticking time bomb was going off, right?
The fuse was lit and it was shortening and about to go off because this entire time throughout all of college, what, four years?
I'd been trying to make the business work.
I'm going to talk about this in the next video, how to escape beginner hell as a creator, writer, whatever it may be.
But I tried for so long and I just didn't get it.
I couldn't get it to work.
So I ended up getting a job, but that drive didn't die because I knew that there was a way.
There was a series of steps that I could take to make it work.
So while I was at the job, I had the web design skill and kind of reputation or credibility now that I had a job.
And so I was always trying to make the freelance web design business work.
And as I studied more and learned more about business in general, that did start to work.
It started with cold emails and me seeing the vehicle graphics on people's cars, right?
When you're driving around, when I was going to work, getting coffee in the morning, I would see vehicle graphics for like med spas and pest control and all of these other things.
And I would take pictures of it and write it down so I could call them later.
And God, cold calls are really annoying.
I do not like doing those.
And with the help of family and friends and getting started with some referrals and working for a construction company at one point for their website.
Eventually I started to make it work and then I started to pivot what I offered and made it more specific as I learned more about direct response marketing.
So rather than selling full -fledged websites, which aren't that valuable in and of themselves, I started to sell these simple service funnels.
So that's aside from the point, but that's the start of the journey and that's important.
So if we reflect on all the businesses that failed for me and why the web design finally worked in a sense and why it started to work even more is because of one missing piece.
I'd learned so many skills.
I'd pulled copywriting from the Facebook ads agency, I'd pulled some SEO, web design, digital art, all of these things started to accumulate in my mind as like, oh, okay, I get, I understand the big picture of business, but there was something missing the entire time.
What was it? For me, it was writing.
Now that may throw some people off.
Okay, why writing? How is that the missing piece?
Well, if you want to build your own thing, you're a creative, you have music, you have skills, you have an expertise that you want to share, you want to build an independent income source, then the first rule is that you need attention, right?
How are you going to get any eyes on your music or your writing or your products or your services if you don't have attention?
So with that, where do you go?
Social media. Why social media?
You can just do paid ads or seo or all of these other things Well, i'm assuming you don't have that much extra money to those ads are probably running on social media Social media is where the attention is right?
You need to put yourself where the attention is because your boss You're the people that you're working for that are making money in order to pay you Are getting attention on their products or services from the right people?
So why social media one all the attention is there to its accessible and it's free three it's a skill that you can learn and so why writing because one even though I understood video and editing and all these other things writing is also free writing is also accessible accessible you have Twitter you
have LinkedIn you have Instagram where you can post writing as an image go look at my Instagram profile you have medium you have YouTube which is just written scripts spoken to a camera even though this video isn't on a script You have blog posts, you have cold emails, even the ads, the paid ads, you
need to understand how to write copy.
It's not as simple as just pouring money into ads and hoping that you do well with a product that sucks and advertising that doesn't capture attention.
What about reels and TikToks and the things that are blowing up?
They would do a lot better if you actually took time to write out the script so you could be meticulous with the hook.
The list goes on. And And so writing is how I personally outperform a lot of the people that are posting like their bodies or the fit flu answers and other things like that.
A lot of my posts get more likes than them, even though they're just writing, because I understand the power of ideas and what we're going to talk about next.
Now, I call myself a writer because that's what I do on a daily basis for two hours every morning.
So adding nuance to the title of this video, I say I write for two hours a day to make as much as I did, but that's just the writing.
That's the main, that's the crux, right?
It's not the administrative tasks.
It's not building the product.
It's not keeping up with the community or other things that go into business.
The two hours is just me writing, right?
I work longer than that.
Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less.
Go watch my video on the four -hour work day for context around all of that.
But let's actually go into what you can start doing so that you can one, get attention on your work, and two, just understand my system, the thing that I do every single morning.
So if you want to try to replicate or experiment with it, you can.
So step one is to choose a topic that you can't shut up about.
So write down your favorite books, your YouTube watch history, your favorite social media accounts, and what you would write about if money wasn't an issue.
Why? Because good writing is about energy transfer, not being professional.
So once you have that step number two is to brainstorm a unique perspective.
This is extremely important because most people on social media are just search engines with a profile picture.
Nobody actually cares about them or their ideas because they're a clone.
They're just talking about what everyone else is talking about.
They don't have any personality.
They don't have any uniqueness.
So the solution is a unique or novel perspective.
Why? Because novelty catches attention and attention is necessary for people to read what you write.
Novel perspectives are how you get people's attention while talking about whatever you want.
So how do you come up with a novel perspective?
You have your topic, now we're going to brain dump.
You're going to brain dump problems associated with the topic or pain points, benefits to overcoming those, goals people have relating to the topic, roadblocks to achieving those goals, and personal experiences you've had.
So now with that written out, you have your topic and then you write out each of those things.
Now you have five plus sentences where you're going to pull from all of that and that's your unique perspective.
You have a problem, you have a solution, you have the benefits and you have step -by -step action plan in between.
That's how you have your own unique perspective on a topic.
There's of course more things you can do, but as I said, this isn't a full guide.
It's ironic that I'm promoting to our writer my writing course in a video that's all about this.
That's not what this was supposed to be about, but that's available.
Other things, go watch the one person business playlist.
You can get all of the information from my YouTube channel.
Just, it may be split up.
It may take you a lot longer to get that information, but it's there.
Another resource for this, for how you cultivate unique perspectives around specific topics is go take the second brain course for Cortex.
Cortex is my writing software.
Go, it'll be in the description, but go take the second brain course, the first section on writing core notes, what we call core notes is really just about taking a big idea and making it your own original idea and building a database of those ideas so that you can weave them together in your writing
and make it unique.
Now, step number three is to write 1000 plus words on the topic.
And you already have a lot of firepower here, right?
You wrote out the problem, the benefits, the goals, et cetera.
You already have that outline pretty much, and you can refine that with time.
But you have what you can write about for 1000 words.
Now understand this, that every piece of content should and or is based around a personal or professional problem or pain point.
Problem or pain point.
So how do you structure what you're writing?
First, you paint a picture of the problem and how it affects someone's life.
Second, you talk about your personal experiences with it so readers can relate.
Third is an optional step so you can give context and definition to things that may not make sense.
And then step four is give step -by -step advice on how to solve the problem.
So you start with the pain point, just state the pain point.
Then you amplify that problem a bit.
You talk about how it impacts their life and what it can lead to if they don't solve the pain point.
And then after that or during that, you can bake in a personal experience.
So when did you face the problem?
What was your mindset?
What didn't work when you were trying to solve it?
Ask a few questions to yourself about that moment in your life.
And then if there are any concepts or ideas that people may not understand, you need to make it accessible to someone who doesn't know what you're talking about, right?
If you're talking about this high level concept, like starting a creator business, you need to tell people why they should care.
Why does it apply to someone who has no idea what those things are?
So that's like the first and second section.
And then the third section, you've seen this and anything that you read is just a list of steps or a list of insights or a list of tips or whatever it may be.
So you start with the pain point, personal experience, and then just step by step separated by headlines.
Step one, do this. Step two, do this.
Write it out. And we're going to talk about how all of this ties together at the end.
I'll give a summary.
But step number four is to sign up for a blog and or newsletter software.
I use Beehive for this because this is an important part of my process is having a newsletter that is both available online that you can send people to and promote and the newsletter function.
So you can get subscribers and send it to those people.
Why a newsletter? Because the TikTok ban that just happened, it got reinstated, I think.
But the point is your social media can be taken away from you at any time.
The only reasonable and actual true follower count is the number in your email list because you can take that and transfer it anywhere.
That's your audience.
You need that. And to double down, long -form content is very important.
Short -form content, you're not building much reputation or authority.
That's more so for attracting people to get them into your more expanded long -form ideas like a YouTube video so people trust you more.
You need both short -form and long -form, both posts and newsletter, blog, YouTube video, etc.
Those are all the same thing.
We'll talk about that.
So my content ecosystem, I don't really use sales funnels.
Like, yeah, I have landing pages and other things, but I don't really use sales funnels or those kinds of things.
I use content ecosystems.
So I send one newsletter a week.
I upload that newsletter as a blog.
Beehive does this for you.
If you use them, then I condense that when I'm actually writing threads in the past, I did this quite often, but you condense the newsletter into a thread, and then you use the newsletter to write three tweets or three posts a day.
You just use it for idea generation.
Now, why does that matter?
It matters because the newsletter is your long form.
You take the newsletter, you have it on your blog.
You can promote that at any time.
If you know what a lead magnet is to get people to your email list, every single one of your newsletters, if they're good enough, is a lead magnet in and of itself.
So why not just promote the newsletter?
And at the top, when they go to that newsletter, it asks them if they want to join the newsletter.
And so they subscribe.
I can go into the advanced details of that, but that's a very important step is every single day in on your social media, in one of your content pieces, you want to promote your newsletter, an old backlog newsletter under it so people can read it because I'm assuming that that has links to your products
or services as well.
So not only are you gaining newsletter subscribers by doing that, but you're also getting people to your products or services, and that's how you make sales without actually promoting on social media.
If you're new to this, then come back to this video once you actually start, and it'll start to make more sense.
But the other important point is that a newsletter isn't just a newsletter.
If you have zero email list subscribers, it doesn't matter because the more newsletters you write, the more YouTube videos you have because you just take the newsletter and record it as a YouTube video script.
You can also cross post that to places like Medium if you want to and then the threads that you condense from those things.
So you write a thread on Twitter that's just a thread of tweets.
You can post that on Threads, the platform by Instagram.
You can take those and format each post of the thread into a carousel and then you can post that carousel on Instagram.
You can post that on LinkedIn and then your three posts a day, you do the exact same thing, right?
you post that to Twitter, you post that to Threads, you post that to LinkedIn in the form of an image, and then you post it to Instagram in the form of an image.
You can even post it to YouTube community in the form of an image.
Go look at my YouTube community tab and how well that does.
And even further, the good ones, the good posts can be a script for shorts or reels, and you just need to expand on it a bit more.
So that's kind of step five is just repurposing the newsletter that you write, those 1000 words that you wrote and sent to your email list, even if you don't have subscribers and have backlogged on your blog so people can find it later and you can turn it into YouTube and everything else, you break
that down into a thread and posts and then you take those and you cross post those as well.
So you have the content side of things down.
Every week you kind of have a theme for your content and I don't base all of my posts or tweets off of my newsletter.
I write those as they come to mind, but I maybe get five to 10 posts out of my newsletter and then the rest is just like from what I read.
I think of social media as like my public note -taking system where I just post the ideas that I'm learning about and I like in my own words and I position it as if I'm giving my past self advice.
So you have the content side of things down, but that's not the end -all be -all.
A lot of people stop there.
They're like, I'm posting content, but why am I not growing on social media, right?
Isn't the algorithm supposed to take me everywhere?
No, not in the slightest.
Posting content is like the bare minimum.
That's like, you just have to do that.
The next thing is you need to learn how to network and actually grow on the platform, right?
Content itself is a skill and social media is a separate skill.
You need to understand how to inject yourself into a tribe and make yourself known to get more eyes on your content.
You need readers sharing your writing.
You need to network with similar follower accounts and grow together.
You need to comment on larger accounts so people can see your comment and click to your profile.
Again, I'll talk about this more in the next video on how to escape beginner hell.
I'll go more in depth, but of course there's more videos on my channel for this.
The point is that you're not treating social media like a game that has specific rules and mechanics.
You don't understand those things.
You don't understand how one piece of content, if you have zero followers, can be shared by someone with 100 ,000 followers and 100 ,000 people can see that post.
You can go from zero to 100 ,000 impressions at the click of a button.
And so your entire goal is to get someone to click that button.
But the people with a lot of followers or a large audience that you want to get a hold of, you need to understand how to reply to them, add value, make yourself known, DM them in a way that is social.
Most people don't know how to be social these days.
So that's a skill. Another skill that you need to learn is being social in the digital world, social media.
If you want somewhere to start with that, well one, go watch my video on the non -needy networking process.
But if you need somewhere to start, just start sending people compliments.
When you read their posts, send them that post, like link their own posts to them in the DMs and be like, hey man, here's how this impacted me.
Here's what I've, here's how I related to this.
Yeah, I faced this earlier.
Start a conversation with a compliment.
That's like the best thing you can do.
Even if you're talking to someone in real life.
That's just how you be social and see where it goes from there.
And I guarantee that they may start liking or reposting your content.
Your job is to just create a tribe.
Make sure people know who you are.
Most people are posting content, not getting anywhere, and nobody knows who they are.
Now, something that will help a lot with this, the next step is just creating and refining your own writing system.
So mine is two hours a day.
I structure the first 30 minutes of the morning with either outlining or writing my newsletter, then I go into writing posts and cross -posting those everywhere.
And a lot of the time I've been writing my book during that time.
And once you get better at this, it takes a lot less time.
It may take you two hours at the start.
But if I'm super busy for the day, I could probably knock out what I need to knock out within an hour.
And usually the newsletter is the only thing that I really need to do.
So that could be 30 minutes of just writing the hook or one section of it and split that up over seven days.
If I do 30 minutes, that's a lot of time.
So here's here's what you do.
This applies to more than just a newsletter or anything.
You take out a notebook, you study writing and social media frameworks.
What I mean by that is go look up videos on how to write a hook.
Go look up videos on how to write a landing page, how to write a newsletter, how to write a tweet, how to write a thread.
Write down the structure of those and practice alongside it.
That's all you need to do.
Do that for a month when you're writing content.
And I promise you will, you will create good content.
Now, what you do with any kind of system is you test it daily and refine it.
If something isn't working, then you add to it for the next day.
And then you try to go through it again.
And if something isn't working, you change it, you experiment, and then eventually you have your own system that you are very good at.
Now, the last step or just a tip is to start on one platform.
Well, start on one platform and have the short form platform and a long form newsletter, YouTube video, whatever it may be.
I recommend Twitter or LinkedIn or threads.
Those are like the writing platforms paired with a newsletter, because if you're a beginner, you're probably not going to create the best YouTube videos.
You're not going to have the editing stuff down.
You're not going to have a good camera a newsletter is just accessible right it's a the writer's lifestyle you wake up in the morning you write for 30 minutes you're good to go i mean longer than 30 minutes but you get the point because you don't want to split your attention too much and there's a whole other
strategy with this is you grow on one platform you focus all of your attention there because growth is not just content growth is building a tribe and getting people to share because you need eyeballs on your content in order to grow.
As you're growing, you notice things.
You notice content that has done well.
You notice anomalies.
Every week, review your content and see, okay, this post did better, this post did better, this post did better.
You have like five posts that did better than the other ones.
When you are knowledgeable on how to grow on social media and it's second nature to you, you understand it, that's the best time to go to a new platform.
say, Instagram, now you're taking your best content that brought in the most likes and followers and only posting those ones on Instagram and repeating the growth process there, but faster.
And then when you go to the next platform, it's even faster.
And you go to the next platform, it's even faster.
That's what I'm talking about.
And the cool thing about all of that is that you're just writing.
When you decide to go onto YouTube, if you want to, you have this backlog of newsletters and you've refined your ideas so much that your first video is a banger.
It's good. And you just sit down and you have your newsletter open here and then you like, OK, read over a section, look at the camera, recite it and add your own flair.
And it's OK if it's choppy because you just edit those things out.
And then, boom, you have at least a first iteration of a video that you can add on to.
So to recap everything, your newsletters equal your YouTube scripts and starting points for threads.
Your tweets equal real scripts, LinkedIn posts, Instagram carousels, etc.
You use your validated ideas, your best ideas to break into and grow on new platforms fast.
With one to two hours a day of writing and considering if you have a freelance product or music or a digital product or a service or a business, that's all traffic.
That's all free traffic for the thing.
So you make more money.
In terms of what to actually do, here's a recap.
You choose a topic.
You have a unique perspective.
You write 1000 plus words.
You post it to your newsletter and blog.
You turn the actionable part into a thread.
That's one thing I didn't touch on too much is that you're not going to condense the entire thing because threads and carousels, they're much more punchy straight to the point.
So if the newsletter structure is pain point and then step by step process, just take the step by step process, condense that a bit more, create a new hook for it, and then let that run.
Next thing is learning how to grow on socials, because that's a separate skill that you need to study.
Then turn ideas into tweets, develop your own system, and then, of course, branch out to new platforms.
So that's it for this video.
Just quick, punchy.
It probably wasn't that quick.
I probably went into a bit too much detail and may have confused things a bit more.
But hopefully it's a starting point to get you curious about this stuff and get you acting on something that's beneficial for your life.
So go check out other videos that I've made on the one -person business.
writing usually comes up in those videos and digital writing in general.
Now, if you want a place for your writing, check out Cortex, which is the second brain software and writing app that I've built.
If you want my system with examples and frameworks on how to write the newsletter, how to write the content, et cetera, check out to our writer.
Of course, you don't need those things, but they're convenient if for the people that want them.
So until the next video, which I think you'll really like on how to escape beginner hell, because anyone who is starting is going to go straight into beginner hell.
So you have three to six months of not knowing what you're doing until you actually start to see results.
Just remember that it's not going to come fast.
Thank you for watching.
Like, subscribe. Let me know what you think about the new background, if I should keep that.
Bye.
