Nicolas Cole explains how ghostwriters can increase income without hiring by using technology to boost capacity while keeping costs flat. He argues against hourly billing and the "work harder" trap, instead pushing packaged pricing and workflow optimization. The key: set fixed work hours and make them more efficient, not longer.
The reason why I tend to say don't think about adding more clients, like cap clients and just maximize each slot. The reason that I say that is because that is the best advice for the vast majority of people based on where they are inside of PGA. But every— the problem with quote unquote like business and business advice is that all of it is extremely context dependent. The same piece of advice for one person is the correct answer, and for another person it's the wrong answer. The easiest example is if you are at the very beginning and you have no clue what you want to do, you should try lots of things. That advice for me today would be the worst thing I could possibly do. Like, that would disrupt all of my focus and all of my compounding. Why would I go do a bunch of random things?
Right.
So I preface with that where can you continue to increase your capacity using technology and take on more clients at your existing price point? Yes, you can. But I think, I think about this in two different ways. Okay. The first way is expanding capacity without increasing fixed costs. So if you can go from, I work with 5 clients to I work with 8 clients. To I work with 12 clients. If you can do all of that without needing to hire someone or without needing to eat into your margin, then yeah, like keeping, keeping the price the same, nothing changes. All you're doing is just adding more revenue, right? Where this becomes a mistake is people that go, you know, I'm getting people to say yes to $2,000 a month. And now I want to, you know, double the amount of clients I can work with, but I need to hire someone, and that hiring someone eats up like 80% of your margin there.
My question is within the context of I don't want to hire.
Exactly. So that's what I'm saying. So, so because of that, if that's the case, that's fine. The, the second, the second variable though is, and as long as you don't burn out in the process. So there will, there will be some sort of theoretical max. Right? And so if you're like, hey Cole, I'm working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, but I think that with AI I could take on another 2 clients, to me I'm like, you're solving for the wrong thing. You're, you're already like teetering on burnout. What, what are you doing, right? So as long, as long as fixed costs stay the same or go down, and your amount of time, like your strategy is not, oh, I have to work harder, right? But as long as you're just getting more out of the same amount of time, then by all means, like by all means, you can do that.
Okay. Something is telling me I have 7 people I'm ghostwriting for right now, and the 7th one is hedging on leaving me because I guess that could be another question if you brainstorm, if we could. But the way I guess I could go about it is dependent on how I want to optimize my time, right? Because the way I've been running my business for the last 2 months is I've been trying to not work on the weekends. So purely Mondays, Fridays are my admin calls, small edits, scheduling content. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, client content, Thursday, my content. Ideally, if I understand what you're saying is if I were to optimize for time, I would look to do everything I'm doing now in less time before adding more clients. That is sort of the way to stay within fixed costs and not going crazy, right?
Yeah, it's either do everything you're currently doing in less time and then add more clients, or just to say it in a different way, it's add more clients without expanding the amount of time. Like I think that, and again, this is why I say you should have some sort of mental cap because one of the mindsets that works in the beginning, this is for everyone here, this is a very important idea, a great one to sort of end on here. The mindset that works in the beginning is, If I work harder, I make more money. Where, where does this mindset come from? It comes from the fact that we are all anchored to charging per hour. Our earnings are tied to this idea that the more hours I work, the more money I make. That, that is actually true for a long time in the beginning. Obviously, in PGA, we talk about like packaging and trying to move out of that mindset. But like that mindset works for a while. The problem is that as you go and as you grow and now, Roman, you're, you're entering and in this phase is it becomes a mistake at a certain point to think, okay, my business is doing $10,000 a month or $12,000 a month or $15,000 a month. But you know what? If I give up my Saturdays, I can make $16,000 a month. And if I give up my Saturdays and Sundays, I can make $18,000 a month. That, that is where all of a sudden in the short term you think my business is growing, that's the right thing to do. But it's not until you make that decision and then you do that and you have no life for 3 or 4 months that you start to realize the extra $2,000 a month was not worth that decision. Right. And so, so one of the best things that you can do, whether it's from a client capacity standpoint, whether it's from a time perspective, you want to create fixed containers for yourself. You're like, I am willing to work this hard. And so when you make decisions, the decision has to be, I cannot make the box bigger. This is the amount of time that I am willing to, to block for this thing. The question is not how to make the box bigger. The question is how to make the box more efficient. Hey, by the way, if you're brand new to the world of ghostwriting, maybe you've heard the term but aren't really sure what it is or how it's different from copywriting or content writing, check out premiumghostwritingblueprint.com. It's in the description below, okay? This is a free masterclass that I've put together for writers who want to monetize their skills and love for writing with ghostwriting. This is what I did, and ghostwriting completely changed my life. It's how I quit my job. It's how I quadrupled the amount of money I was making. It's how I've gotten to work with so many smart, amazing people but also have time for my own writing, like writing this book, The Art and Business of Ghostwriting. Anyways, check it out. If you're at all interested in making money from your writing, I would really encourage you to get into ghostwriting, and this free premium ghostwriting blueprint in the description below is the best place to start.
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