← The Art & Business of Writing Podcast with Nicolas Cole
The Art & Business of Writing Podcast with Nicolas Cole
Millionaire Writing Advice (10 Rules to write your way to wealth)
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It took me 10 years to make my first million dollars as a digital writer, but my second million? That only took 10 months. And the difference wasn't investments or compound interest. It was 10 rules I made for myself and followed relentlessly. So today I'm sharing those 10 rules with you so you can write your way to a million dollars faster than I did. Rule number one Content is King, but Execution is the Emperor Ideas aren't what matter. Everyone has ideas, and the value of an unfinished, unexecuted idea will always be worth less than the value of a finished idea out in the world, no matter how rough or unpolished it is. The same people who say content is king oftentimes are also just parroting the same things they hear everyone else say. So their content is like everybody else's content, which fundamentally means your content is not king. And this idea of execution being the emperor is the part everyone misses. Because the most important part of execution isn't just doing it. Just because you made a piece of content doesn't mean the content is any good, and certainly doesn't mean your content is king, AKA the best content in a specific niche. The most important part of execution is executing on the thing better and better and better each time. It goes way beyond just consistency, which is a very reductive way of thinking about improvement. In general, improvement is about iteration, and iteration is about awareness. You literally cannot improve something you aren't aware of, just like you can't stop a bad habit you don't know you're doing in the first place. So is content king. Sure, that's a nice quippy phrase that sounds memorable. But the real differentiator between all the people who create content and those who dominate a given niche comes down to execution. Not just consistency, but iteration. And the measure of iteration is the speed and depth to which you are even capable of iterating in the first place. AKA awareness. Which by the way, is why paying for education or mentorship gives such insane roi. Because you're literally paying for someone else to make you aware of all the things you aren't aware of yet. And until you become aware of them, you will never be able to change them. Rule number two if you want to be a great writer, tell a great story. But if you want to be a millionaire writer, do a great job promoting your story. It is not enough to tell a great story or create a great product. Stories don't sell themselves. Products don't sell themselves. And if you ever want to humble yourself, just ask how many multimillionaire writers are there in the world that you've never heard of? Tons. How many multimillionaire entrepreneurs are there in the world that you've never heard of? Tons. How many incredible life changing products are there in the world that you've never heard of? Tons. How many mind blowing genius level books are there in the world that you've never heard of? Tons. So if you start here, what makes you think that your really great story is just going to sell itself? Or what makes you think the entire world is going to give you attention when you yourself aren't aware of 1% of 1% of the greatest works and products ever created? Exactly. You can be genius level talented and have no one know your name. That's what I mean when I say if you want to be a great writer, okay, just tell a great story. Lots of people write great stories, but no one knows their names. But if you want to be a millionaire writer, if you want the world to recognize your talent, or more importantly, if you want to make money from your writing, then you need to hustle like you're selling mixtapes out of the trunk of your car and do a really, really, really good job promoting your work. You have to have the energy and endurance to sell your writing for decades. And be this part's really important. Be your biggest fan in public. Because if you aren't willing to evangelize your own work, what makes you think anyone else is going to take it upon themselves to do the same? This is something I notice of all the faulty beliefs that writers struggle with the most. They don't want to promote themselves or their own work because they don't want to come off as salesy. But at the same time, they live in a constant state of frustration because more people aren't giving them attention or buying their books or buying their products. And it's all rooted in this faulty belief that if you talk about yourself or your own work, even though you say you are writing to help other people or entertain other people, that you're being egotistical. And that just couldn't be farther from the truth. The truth is you're a coward. And instead of addressing why you're so afraid to evangelize your work and be your biggest fan, which is likely rooted in a fear of rejection, it's much easier to just opt out and say real writers don't have to promote themselves. Okay, fine, then just don't be surprised when your writing doesn't make you very much money. Rule number three. New writers should write what they know Proficient writers should write what they don't know how to write yet. Let's bring this back to first principles. When you're a beginner at anything, a lot of the early bottlenecks have less to do with the hard skill, the skill itself, and much more to do with the underlying motivations and drivers that allow for progress in the first place. AKA emotions. Which means in the beginning, you're really playing a game called how can I make myself feel confident about this new thing I'm doing as quickly as possible? How can I make myself feel capable, maybe even talented, as quickly as possible? And how you do that is by reducing the number of unknown variables. So, as a complete beginner, which is harder? Trying to learn the skill of writing while trying to learn about a topic you know nothing about, or trying to learn the skill of writing but starting with a topic you already know a lot about? It seems so obvious, but you would be surprised how many beginner writers try and tackle both of these obstacles at the same time. And do you want to know what happens? They immediately feel overwhelmed, which going back to first principles, instead of cultivating positive emotions that reinforce a pleasurable feedback loop, they experience negative emotions, which reinforce a very frustrating feedback loop. They don't feel confident in themselves, they don't feel capable, and they definitely don't feel talented. All of which causes them to give up very early in the learning process. But are any of those things actually true? Of course they're not. They just made the silly mistake of trying to solve the two hardest problems in all of writing at the same time. They're trying to learn how to write and trying to write about something they know nothing about. Which is why, as a new writer, as a beginner, you should always start by writing what you know. Because what happens is confidence in the topic reduces the number of Unknown variables from 2 to 1 and allows you to just focus on the mechanisms that make great writing. But of course, after you do that, right, I love this quote. What got you here won't get you there. So once you have proficiency over the mechanisms that produce clear, coherent, educational or entertaining writing, those mechanisms are universal. It doesn't matter what the topic is. Which means how you grow from here is now you focus on the other variable, you change the topic, and you start trying to write things you don't know how to write yet. Because it's through the act of trying to write things you don't know how to write yet that you learn how to write them. But this second step is a much harder task. Which is why trying to do this as a beginner is a huge mistake. First, you need to build confidence and positive feedback loops within yourself so that when you are later confronted by these more difficult feedback loops, you have so much pattern recognition to pull from and remind yourself, no, you don't suck. You've just graduated to a place where it's time to write things you don't know how to write yet. That is how you grow from here. Rule number four Inspiration comes and goes. Discipline builds a career. I started writing online in 2007 when I was 17 years old, but I started taking my digital writing career seriously in 2013, right after I graduated from college. I started writing on a platform called Quora, which is this social question answer site. And in an attempt to build myself as a writer, I set a challenge of writing one Quora answer every day for a year straight. I figured worst case scenario, I'd spend a year practicing my craft. Best case scenario, something would happen. I didn't know what that would be. Well, as the story goes, by the end of the year, I was the number one most read writer on all of Quora out of 200 million users. I'd had hundreds of answers go viral, I had my most viral answer land on the front page of Reddit, and I'd had over 50 of my Quora answers republished in major publications like Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, you name it. Since that time, I have watched a lot of different cohorts of writers and digital creators come and go. Back in 2013, 2014, 2015, there was a group of power users on Quora, and we all sort of came up together. Then in 2016, when I started writing on Medium, I found a new group of power users and we all sort of came up together there too. I also realized there had been a previous group of power users on Medium before me, and a previous group on Quora before me, and groups before them. Then in 2020, I started writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, and there I found another new group of power users and we all sort of came up together, right? Me, Dickie Bush, Jack Butcher, Thiago Forte, Cody Sanchez, Dan Ko, Wes Cow. I remember when all of these people had pretty small audiences, and I remember watching them all find and clarify their niches and then expl. Explode in popularity. But Twitter has been around for almost two decades, so there were groups of power users there before us and other groups before them and so on, right? The point is, I've been writing online for over a decade and I've Watched so many different writers and creators come and go. They start writing on a social platform, they gain some traction, they become part of a new group of power users who all sort of come up together. They clarify their niche, they build a business, they explode, they build huge audiences, right? And then do you want to know what happens? The vast majority of them get bored, burn out, or pivot. Most of the biggest writers I came up with on QUORA Back in 2013, 2014, they don't write online anymore. Same with medium. Most of the big medium writers I got to know in 2016 and 2017 who had huge audiences and were sort of like celebrities on the platform, have either stopped writing on Medium or pivoted and are doing something completely different now. Same with X slash Twitter. A lot of the big creators have taken a break or shut down their courses or businesses or decided to pivot to something different. And so the lesson here is realizing that so much of winning in your career has very little to do with talent and so much more to do with just not giving up and not stopping. Anyone can be inspired for a day or a week or. Or a month or even a year. But the real separator between the writers and creators who end up capturing all the value in a given niche is the length of their time horizon. Because the longer you play the game, the more likely you are to win it. Rule number five, the writing is free. The value gets you paid. This is a really hard lesson for beginners to wrap their brains around. And I know because I used to be that beginner, too. As a writer, you aren't really getting paid to write. Your job is not to sit down and write words. And if you want proof, how do all the lowest paid writers on earth charge? They charge per word. Usually like 2 cents a word or 5 cents a word. But for example, if I come up with two words that clarify a company's category and immediately help customers understand what makes that business different, are those two words worth 10 cents? Of course not. In some cases, those two words might be worth millions of dollars to the company. And by the way, if you think that's crazy, it is. But it's also true. And I can tell you, because, yes, I have been paid millions of dollars to help companies come up with one or two or three words that dictate the entire strategy of all of their messaging. So, no, I'm not exaggerating. Yes, this happens. And that is why the number of words is completely irrelevant. So when you think about how to monetize your talents, As a writer, you don't actually want to start from a place where you ask, how can I get paid to write? Because that's a faulty way of thinking about it. Pretend the writing is free. The words are free. Also, the word count, it's all free. You want 500 words, you want 800 words, you want 8,000 words. It doesn't matter when you start here. Now you have to ask the more important question, which is, what is the true value of these words and what is the value of that value? If I come up with two words that clarify a publicly traded company's category, the value of that value is millions of dollars. If I write a sales letter or an educational email course that educates customers to buy, the value of that value might be 20% or 50% of the upside of that funnel. If I come up with a story as timeless as Star wars, the value of that value might be billions of dollars in film rights and merchandising deals and theme parks and branded lunch boxes. So again, the writing is free. It's the value of the writing that gets you paid. Rule number six. Success comes from consistency. Mastery comes from iteration. So going back to my little story about different cohorts of power users on every social platform, a lot of success, especially in any sort of creation game, comes down to long term consistency. You are only as good as the last thing you made, and you're only as relevant as the date you made it. And yet we all know when an artist or an author or a creator has plateaued. All their music starts to sound the same, their books all read the same, their videos all look the same, until all of a sudden you just sort of decide you aren't going to keep tabs on them anymore because they aren't creating anything new. Which is why consistency is really only 50% of the game. A lot of people are consistent. I mean, most people show up to the same job and work the same position doing the same tasks for 50 years in a row, right? That is next level consistency. But what separates someone who is consistent from someone who unlocks higher and higher tiers of rewards is mastery. And mastery doesn't and cannot come from consistency alone. It comes from conscious iteration. And the way I like to define iteration is the speed at which you find new ways to do old things. And this is the difference between the cubicle worker who shows up to the same job, working the same role, performing the same tasks, and the CEO. The cubicle worker is consistent, but they aren't iterating. Translation, they aren't consciously finding new ways to do old things, because if they were, they would have found new solutions to more valuable problems which would have gotten them promoted, which would have given them new tasks, which would have presented them with new unsolved problems, to which they would have had to find new solutions which would have gotten them promoted again, which would have given them new tasks, and so on and so on. Right? So the goal isn't just to be consistent. Consistency is the baseline. You can't improve something you aren't doing consistently. But the real measure for progress is the speed at which you find new ways to do old things. And even then, going back to the cohorts of power user story, you might iterate for a few months, a year, even a couple years. But what I've learned playing this game for over a decade is that most people stop. They reach a point where they just get tired of iterating. And not that they weren't capable of growing further. It's that they got bored or they got tired or they got comfortable and the cost of iterating just was too high. They'd rather just hang out at their current level, which is fine. But if you want to win, and if you want to win for a very long time, you have to keep iterating. Otherwise the next person is going to lap you simply because they decided not to stop iterating. Rule number seven Perfection is unattainable. Progress is inevitable. Everything you do is progress. I hate when people say, I don't want to make the wrong decision, because aside from the extreme decisions in life, there are no wrong decisions. And do you want to know when? This really clicked for me? About a year ago, I had a large company reach out and ask if they could hire me as a consultant. They were launching a digital product and what they wanted to know wasn't how to do it. They had launched digital products in the past and had a whole team, and they were more than competent at doing this sort of thing already. What they wanted to pay me to tell them was everything. We had tried launching digital products that didn't work. And in that moment I realized you don't just have to monetize your knowledge, you can also monetize your mistakes. Through this lens, you realize that perfection is not only unattainable, but it's also not 100% of the value. Creating something genius is great, but so much of that person's value and what they can go on to contribute to their industry and the world is their knowledge around everything that didn't work, which means as long as you continue trying, you are by definition moving forward. You are making progress, whereas the more you chase perfection, oftentimes the result of that idolization is inaction. You're so obsessed with making something perfect that you stop making things at all. You stop making mistakes. And the moment you stop making mistakes, you've stopped learning, which is the real prohibitor of Progress. Rule number 8 Write for the Reader, Edit for Yourself if you want to unlock external outcomes from your writing, money, status, connections, whatever it is, then you have to realize your writing is in service of someone else. But that doesn't mean you don't matter. You don't have to write things that you don't stand by or don't care about yourself. So write for the reader, but edit for yourself and your own personal taste. This video today is a great example. I am making this video for you. I am taking the time to do this for you because you are who I'm trying to help. And I'm not confused about the fact that the value of this video has very little to do with whether or not I think it's awesome and everything to do with whether or not it helps you. So I am creating this for you, dear reader. However, as I worked on this and as I started to piece together what I thought would be the most helpful thing for you, I also began editing for myself. For everything that I'm sharing. Are these things that I truly believe in? Am I being honest? Am I being accurate? Am I being true to myself while I help you? Is this the way I want to say it? Is this a good representation of what I want my voice or my style to be? These are all questions I'm asking myself and you should be asking yourself as you create anything. But the key is to not be confused about the fact that you come second. Because if you want to unlock external outcomes from your writing again, it's not that you don't matter or that you should write things that you don't believe in or enjoy writing about. It's that the readers wants and needs and hopes and dreams and ambitions and questions. That's what has to come first. Because they're the one paying you either with their time and attention or their money. So write for the reader. Put them in the spotlight, but then edit for yourself. Rule Number nine It's easy to write for everyone. It's hard to write for someone specific. The goal isn't to become known. The goal is to become known for a niche that you own. Generalized attention has very Little value. Just because a million people saw your writing doesn't mean it had an impact. Which is why it's easy to write for everyone. Because writing for a big crowd called everyone has no negative feedback loop. Do you want to know what's way harder? Trying to write something for one person, literally one single person in your life. Can you write something that helps your friend? Can you write something that helps a sibling? Can you write something that helps your parents? Can you write something that helps a family friend or a coworker or your manager or your boss or your neighbor? If you sat any of these people down and had them read what you wrote them, would they be appreciative? Or would they say, I'm sorry, but this is a giant waste of time? You're telling me all the things that I already know. Which is why I say it's easy to write for everyone, but it's very, very hard to write for someone specific. And again, if you notice all the writers who write things that speak to everyone, who don't pick a niche and just who share big, vague platitudes, they go nowhere. Whereas the writers who write things that only speak to a very specific sort of person and who dominate a niche or a niche within a niche, those are the writers that make a ton of money. Trust me, you do not want to be the person who says, I write about leadership or I write about improving yourself. It's so vague. You're trying to speak to everyone. Who you want to be is the person who says, I write about coding for high schoolers, or I write about 15 minute yoga routines for stay at home moms who have one or more kids. Specificity is the secret. And finally, rule number 10, reward yourself for starting, Punish yourself for stopping. A lot of people can start habits, but very few people put guardrails in place to hold themselves accountable when they want to stop. You can create accountability with money. Maybe you owe your best friend $5 every day you don't work on your novel. You can create accountability with hobbies. You can't play video games until you do your hour of writing. And if you don't do your hour of writing, no video games for you. You can do this with fasts. So giving up things like Netflix or sweets or frivolous spending until you accomplish a specific goal, it doesn't really matter what you do. The point is, sometimes you have to deprive yourself of the things you want in order to force yourself to do what you need to do to get the things that you want. I did this in my early 20s. I didn't allow myself to have Internet in my apartment until I published my first memoir. Now, was that extreme? Yes. Do I think everyone should do that? Not necessarily. But I do think that's a whole lot more productive than making to do lists over and over and over again of all the things you want to get done. But do I think that's a whole lot more productive than making to do lists over and over and over again of all the things you want to get done? Absolutely. Right. Pick one of those things and then set a constraint for what happens when you don't get it done and you want to quit. Because if there's no downside and nothing holding you accountable, I promise. Human nature is for everyone to revert back to their average baseline, which means if you want to avoid that happening, you have to increase the stakes. For example, I'm in a very different place today than I was 10 years ago, living in a rundown studio apartment with no Internet. But this is something I still do and challenge myself with constantly. I set goals, and then I also create punishments for giving up. And I tell the people closest to me that's what I'm doing so they can all help hold me accountable. And so if you want to become a millionaire writer, too, I strongly suggest you do the same.