← The Art & Business of Writing Podcast with Nicolas Cole
The Art & Business of Writing Podcast with Nicolas Cole
Why Keeping Your Offer Simple Leads to Better Results
00:20:41
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- [00:00]
A
So I skimmed this question, but any other, any other context you want to give me?
- [00:07]
B
No, it's just kind of a champagne problem, I think, where it's just like the system works. It's just, you know what I mean? The hypothesis has improved and I'm sitting here just like, dude, the thing I'm most worried about is that if I actually open the floodgates, I'm not going to be able to handle, you know what I mean? And I guess I don't have enough confidence to like, just see what happens and then I'll take it as it comes because I've got a nine to five and you know what I mean, like, time is precious. I have a four year old and a nine month old and so there's just a lot going on. And so I'm writing a lot of step CECs because a lot of these coaches and thought leaders I've been working with have these huge complex, like, systems that they're essentially asking me to break down into five steps and to give a taste so that when someone wants to jump on a discovery call with them, they can then pitch them on their, you know, 10 grand, whatever it might be. So I just find myself, and I know this stems from like a perfectionist streak, but just going back and forth and, you know, like rewriting this and trying to like, wait, is this better? And then listening to another piece of material and going, oh my God, I need to scrap this and go back and do this. And this has happened a few times now to where I recognize this is kind of like a pattern. And this is probably a me issue. And I'm like, I don't know how Cole and these other dudes, Daniel Bustamante and Matthew Brent. I want to be Matthew Brown when I grow up, by the way. And, you know, like, just how do these guys, are they so prolific with their writing? You know, like, how do you crank out four EECs a month? It's like I can barely do, you know, one and I'm just like, kind of. So I'm in this place where it's like, I think this is kind of a mindset issue. And you know, the, the joke that I put at the top of my thing where it's just like, oh my God, came in for the writing, you know, the frameworks and all this, like, you know, technical stuff. And I ended up staying because it's the sales and the mindset stuff that has been the most revealing. And that's really open, like, you know, a new orbit in my brain. So that was my. Expressing my gratitude and thanks for that. But I realized, I think this is more of a, A me issue. And I wanted to just ask you if you could, like, coach me through. I, I'm sure you've been through and, and had other, you know, students and, you know, people that had my issue, but any advice that you'd give in terms of just being able to crank these out faster would be greatly helpful. That's just kind of the general context. But if you have any other specifics, questions.
- [02:33]
A
So, yeah, totally get it. I'm, I, I'm hearing two different questions and, and we can speak to both. Both. One question is more on the, the hard skill side, the tactical side. How in a very literal sense can I produce these faster? On the other side is more of. And I, I'm use, I'm going to use this word, but I don't mean it with the connotation that is normally associated with it. On the more emotional side, which is more of a. And these are all the things that I'm navigating as I try and figure out and build that hard skill. So also we'll start with the emotional side. Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how much. And I believe this is true for everything, but I think it is extremely true and very revealing. Whenever you are trying to do something entrepreneurial, for everyone here, you are doing something entrepreneurial. Whenever you are working with other people in any capacity, it is entrepreneurial. There are degrees of entrepreneurial, but you are doing something that is entrepreneurial. When you are doing something that is entrepreneurial, more and more, I feel like one of the top three, maybe even the number one skill to build is managing your own psychology. And I think people don't think of their own psychology or don't think of their own emotional state as a skill. They think of it as something that is immovable. It's static. It just is. They're like, today I feel this way and tomorrow I feel this way and there's nothing I can do about it. That's just how I feel, right? Or like, I feel anxious, I don't feel anxious, or I'm confident, or I'm not confident. You know, I'm a perfectionist or I'm not a perfectionist. And they assume it is an unchangeable state. And one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the past decade is that managing your own psychology is not a static state. It is a skill. And so what I mean by it being a Skill is that when something comes up, when you're confronted with some sort of obstacle or challenge, if you're not aware of the fact that it is a skill, it is very easy to be confronted by something and go, this is hard. This is difficult. I don't know what this means. I don't know what this means for my identity. Am I good? How do other people do it? Now I'm comparing myself to other people. When that starts to happen, that means in a very objective way, that you don't have the skill built yet to talk yourself off the ledge and be like, none of those things are true. None of those things have to be true. Right. What if we just take a more objective lens to it? So I want to just share that. And you should take that. Everyone here should take that as very empowering. You actually do have control over these things. You might not have perfect control over it in the beginning, but this is something that you can build. Right? Dickie and I talk about this all the time. We have months where it's like, that was our best month ever. And then the next month it's like, that's our worst month ever. If you don't have the skill to manage your psychology through that, the first month you're going to think you're a genius, and the second month you're going to be like, well, I guess I got to sell all my possessions and it's all over and my life was a disaster. Right. But neither one of those extremes are true. So that's. That's sort of on the. The emotional side. And what I would recommend is just becoming more aware of how often that happens, because the more that you are aware of it, then the more that you can start to build the skill there. Does that. Does that make sense?
- [06:24]
B
It does, because I never thought about it that way before. I'm just sitting here kind of, like, chewing on it, because, yeah, if it's something. I mean, obviously, then if it's something that I can control, it's then a skill I can work on and improve and all that kind of stuff. So it does feel encouraging, at least as a. As a starting point, and that there's a kind of a bigger meta issue in the background here, so.
- [06:53]
A
Awesome. Okay, so with that in mind, I'm going to give everyone here a little. This is one of my favorite new just frames of how to think about writing. So let's pretend that we're just. We're going to speed write and outline an ec. So let's pretend our EEC is. Well, we've been talking about this a lot internally. LinkedIn ghostwriting mastery, how to find clients, spark conversations in DMS and build content strategy to attract high ticket clients. Just cut that for now. Everyone gets the idea. All right, let's pretend that we were building this. Okay, here are some of the things that I do to work through this very, very quickly. So what's the first big decision? The biggest decision is what are the things that we're going to share that go into LinkedIn ghost training mastery. So here's our outline. We're going to share. Oh, okay, I like that. We're going to share how to spark conversations in dms. We're going to share how to optimize your profile. We're going to share how to build a content strategy to attract high ticket clients. We're going to share how to use comments as consulting. And we're gonna share how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build target client lists. Okay, cool. So that's our outline for our whole EEC five days. That's pretty easy because we just know each day. I need to explain something else that ladders up to this big thing. Right. Step one, step two is in what order should these be? Well, it would probably make sense maybe if this is our goal to attract high ticket clients, maybe we start with optimizing your profile. That should be day one and then maybe day two should be either one of these could work content strategy or LinkedIn sales navigator. Maybe we'll do this one because it really doesn't matter. Day three, maybe we'll do content strategy. Day four, we'll do comments as consulting. And day five, we'll do how to spark that in dms. Does this order make more sense than this order? Yes. Does everyone see that? Like it's not, it's not rocket science. It's like let's just start with the simple thing and then we're going to work our way through. Right. So then we take a single day. So we're going to say we're going to start with day one now inside each one of these days. And you know what, we could do this here in our bulleted list too. Inside each of these days, let's open source this drop in the chat. What are some of the things that we need to share to optimize your LinkedIn profile? Yeah, you want a good cover picture, you want a banner picture. You want to make sure your bio headline is good. You want your long form bio, you want to update your work history, you want to Add links to the featured section. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, so we didn't even have to start writing yet. Do you see, James, like, how we're. We're not even getting into the writing. All we're doing is we're just thinking through, like, what, what would we need to say? And we're just expanding a bulleted list. This, these are all the decisions. The reason that writing takes so long is when you don't have these decisions, right? You start with a blank page and you're like, okay, so now what do I do? Well, no wonder it takes so long, right? So here we're like, okay, let's just do this. So this is day one. So we know in day one, these are the things that we need to cover, right? It's our little bulleted list. So what do we do? Day one. I know I'm going to have my subject line. I know I'm going to have my subtext line. I know I'm going to have hey there. And I know I'm going to end with, like, see you tomorrow. Cool. Okay, so there's my. These are my bookends. This is where I'm starting. This is where I'm ending. What are the sections that we're going to cover? Well, here we're going to have step one, we're going to have update your cover picture. This is our first header. And then we're going to have step two, update your banner image. And then we're going to have step three, which is update or write your short form bio headline. And then step four, we're going to have write your long form bio. And then we're going to have step five, update your work history. And then we're going to have step six, which is add links to featured section. Day one, EEC is like 60% written. Does every. Everyone see that? Like, now the. The amount of thinking we have to do just went from a lot to actually not that much because we have our bookends. We know what we're saying, we know the different sections that we're saying. And then you go, okay, Cole, well, that's all great and everything, but now what do I write in each of the sections? And this is where it all goes back to my, literally my favorite writing framework, 10 Magical Ways. There's 10 magical ways to expand anything. You have tips, you have stat stats, you have steps, you have reasons. You have mistakes, you have lessons, you have questions, you have examples. You have personal stories. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 9. Keep trying to memorize all 10. There's one more lessons. It'll come to me later. So then you just take any of these and you go, okay, inside. Step one, update your cover picture. What could we put here? Like if I had to explain to someone, go update your cover picture. Well, I might want to give them some reasons why they should update their cover picture. And then I might want to give them. And here's like three quick tips in order to update your cover picture. So like watch how, watch how quickly this happens. It's like update. Step one, update your cover picture. The reason, the reason why you should do this is because, yes, people judge books by their covers. And your profile Picture is your LinkedIn pages cover. Now, three quick tips to help you do this. Tip number one, you should pick a photo that is somewhat recent. Tip number two, you should write tip number three where we, we can go even more mistakes. Now the big mistake people make here is they insert mistake. So don't do that. Great. We just wrote the section of this step, of this EEC in about 48 seconds. The re. The reason it's so easy this way is because at every single stage, this is what I've spent the past 10 years thinking about the entire goal. The entire goal is to never be in a situation where you're sitting there and you go, I don't know what to say. That is, that is all of writing. So how do you remove the question? I don't know what to say. You isolate each variable. So what did we do here? We isolated the variables of I don't know what to say. Okay, well, what are, what are the five big things I need to explain to someone? Just list them out. Okay. I don't know what to say. No, you do. Just go day by day inside each one of those. What are the things that you need to explain? You list them out. Okay, I prepped the whole page. Now I'm writing each step. What do I need to say? You go Back to the 10 Magical Ways. Pick something. Could you give them a couple tips? Could you walk them through three more steps? Could you give them a reason? Could you give them a mistake? Does that make sense, James?
- [16:04]
B
It does. It does. I think it's just because I'm realizing that I need to spend a lot more time front loading and outlining in a lot more detail as opposed to. Because what you said in terms of what should I write, I was like, oh, I spend like 80% of my time in that dark place. You know what I mean? Just sitting there trying to be like this, this creative, like, oh, it's gotta come to me, you know what I mean? And you know, I have the outline in the back of my mind because, like, you know, we went over the client, I went over, you know, on the kickoff call what should be written, but it's just like, it's just this amorphous kind of, you know, scary mess. You know what I mean? Okay, outline hard and detail and front load all of this so that it's just paint by numbers as opposed to sit there and wait for inspiration.
- [17:04]
A
Yes, this is the whole secret. Nothing has had a bigger impact on my quality of writing and efficiency of writing as doing this. This process of making as many of the decisions as possible is what accelerates everything. When I outline books, like, I'm doing this for two other books I'm writing right now. The outline of my book literally looks like this for like eight pages. It's just like, here are the 10 big things I want to say. Those are the chapters inside each chapter. These are the eight big main points I want to make. Here they are listed out. It's inside of each of those main points. Here are the sub points I want to make. And then you just do that for the whole thing. And then by the time you sit down to write, you're like, I. I already thought through 80% of it. I know what I need to say, and this is where. And we could go down the rabbit hole on this. But for everyone here, my entire philosophy with AI is that everyone wants to automate things they've never done before. So if you're sitting there and you're like, I don't understand, Cole. I asked for AI's help and AI wasn't very helpful. The output that it gave me was really mediocre. The output that AI gives me is not mediocre. Because I sit there and I literally explain to the technology, here's what I want to do, here's the high level outline. I've made these decisions. Here are the sub decisions. Here I give AI so much context and direction that then it's like, oh, I know exactly what to give you. But the reason that I can do that is because I've done it manually. So for everyone here, this is why it's so valuable for you to sit there and, yeah, like, it might hurt your brain for 10 minutes, but then you made all the decisions and then it's all done and then you know how to do it, and then you have the framework and then in the future you can use technology to accelerate it. Cool.
- [19:02]
B
Just out of curiosity, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is just something that everyone else is thinking as well, but like, so let's say that you took like the 30 minutes to actually flesh out this entire outline and you popped it into ChatGPT and asked it to write you an EEC on this. Like, how close do you think you could get to actually creating something that you could then sell for five grand?
- [19:22]
A
I mean, if you, if you give it an in depth of an outline as this and like you really, you flush it out and you give AI instructions, it'll get you like 80% of the way there for sure. You'll have to clean, you'll have to clean some things up, but, but also like full transparency. Like, I, I don't use AI in that way. You can. I, I use it more for editing or stress testing or brainstorming. But I also, like, that's also, I've been doing this for 10 years and like I, I can write ne as fast as ChatGPT could write nec, you know, so like it's, I use it in a different way. But even still, like AI is there and it can be your friend, but you shouldn't. The more that you lean on it as a crutch, typically the worse the output is. Whereas if you understand what you're asking for and you sort of go through and you do this work yourself, then you can use the technology to pour gas on the fire.
- [20:25]
B
Thank you so much, Paul. No, I appreciate it. I'm going to, you know, outline harder in the beginning and, and I'll give everyone an update on the next one.
- [20:35]
A
So please do. Yeah. Awesome. I'm glad this helps. Thanks, James.