How To Generate 100+ Content Ideas, Write Viral Twitter Threads & Build An Audience Online

So today we have a crash course in the digital writing fundamentals. We're going to take you through three things. Our endless idea generator, Twitter threads101, and share with you four timeless laws of digital writing. We're going to zoom through things here, throw a lot at you. So don't worry, this whole thing's recorded. You can slow it down, you can watch it later. But, Cole, you want to kick us off?

Let's do it. So the first big idea, okay, this is, this whole. Our goal is by the time that you're done here over the next hour, you are never going to have the problem of I don't know what to write about ever again. If anything, you are going to have the opposite problem, which is, I have so many ideas now, I got to crank through them and figure out which ones are worth doubling down on. So we have this concept in ship 30 called the endless Idea Generator. And what we share with people is that coming up with ideas is not, you know, it's not the age old. You sit in your room, you stare out the window, you put on a chapeau, you light a cigarette, got a candle burning in the background, you're waiting for inspiration to strike. Okay, we don't believe in that. What we believe in is that ideas are a skill. Coming up with ideas is a skill. And in order to come up with ideas prolifically, you have to build the muscle, you have to build the skill. So we have this core framework called the Endless Idea Generator, which we're going to walk you through. But first, we want to give you a very introductory, light version of that. This is a super easy way of immediately coming up with ideas. And it's called the for who? So that. So what this means is you can take any topic, any, anything you want to write about, and all you have to do is twist these two knobs. You twist the for who knob and you twist the so that knob, and all of a sudden you turn one idea into 10 ideas, into 100 ideas, into a thousand ideas. It happens very exponentially. So let's show you how this works.

Okay?

Changing the for who is changing the audience that you're writing for. So pick any topic in the world. So, for example, Dickie and I write a lot about digital writing, okay? So you can take one topic and just change the for who. These are all different audiences that are relevant to this topic. Okay? So you have digital writing tips for college students, digital writing tips for marketing managers, for CEOs, for first time authors, for even marine biologists, right? You can take it as far as you want. The point is, whatever it is that you're writing about doesn't just have one audience. It usually has dozens of audiences. And so the name of the game isn't, hey, I wrote one thing one time. It's you take the topic that you're writing about and you go, now how do I custom tailor this to all the different audiences that I could possibly speak to? And the moment you start doing this, you notice that the things that you write about change.

Right.

Because if you're writing digital writing tips for marine biologists, that's gonna be very different than digital writing tips for first time authors, which is gonna be very different than digital writing tips for marketing managers.

Right.

So you don't have to. It's. Once you realize how powerful this knob is to twist and turn, it's not so difficult to come up with things to write about. All you're doing is changing the audience and that. And then you're immediately gonna know I have to talk about things differently. Okay, so real quick in the chat, what are three different things for who? Audiences that you can tailor your content to? So take whatever it is that you write about, just pick one topic for now. And what are three different types of audiences you can, you can tailor that to? So, yeah, Dickey, exactly. I mean, the easiest one is, right? You take your topic, you go, this is for beginners, this is for people that are in the middle, advanced, and this is for experts.

Boom.

Three totally different types of content.

And yeah, the easiest ones here are level of skill, age, demographic and area, geographic area, perspective, financial situation. So with a budget, without a budget, things like that. And the subtle unlock here is the easiest one to do is write to yourself two years ago. So if you're writing about a topic and you want to figure out who am I writing for, the easiest one is picture yourself two years ago and write to that person. So for me, if I was going to write about writing, I would write for myself two years ago, who was a beginner, who had never started, who was afraid to hit publish, all that.

Right.

If I was a bodybuilder and I was 10 years into my career and I was very highly skilled, I could write for someone all the way at the beginning of their journey, or I could write about someone intermediate who wants to go to the next level, something I'd done in the last two years. So the subtle unlock to think about is, where were you two years ago? And write for that person.

Yep.

And notice the thing that we want to emphasize here is notice how the content changes. If you're talking to a beginner, you have to start from ground zero, right? You have to, you have to cover things as if the person just walked in the door. They have no operating knowledge.

Right.

You're going to write in a very different way versus if you're writing for someone who goes, yeah, I'm already an expert, but I want you to help me with this last 5%. Well, you don't need to explain all the beginner stuff, right? You can go straight to the end. So it's important to understand which audience you're writing for. And when people say audience, they think that that means like totally different topics. No, I mean, as you saw here, right, it's the same topic, but geared to a dozen different audiences. And that's the point is every time you sit down to write, you go, what exactly am I saying to what specific audience?

And my framework for this is I pick one specific person in that audience and I write everything to them. So instead of. So you could write about writing tips, you could write about writing tips for college students, or you could picture a single college student who wants to learn how to write online and you write basically one to one to them. And by doing that, you create a depth of resonance that anyone in that audience, all college students, are going to feel like you're writing directly to them instead of addressing all these college students. Hey, college students, here's some writing tips. But hey, individual person, I know what you're struggling with, what you've tried before, maybe what your goals are. And I'm going to tailor everything I say directly to that one person. And the thing to realize here is that doesn't mean your audience becomes super small. Because the Internet guarantees that if there's one person with a problem and you write directly to them, there's going to be hundreds of thousands or even millions of other people with those exact same problems who are going to see it and it's going to resonate with them. So it's this, this paradox of specificity, which on the Internet, when you write directly to one person, then you use its scale and it distributes it to everyone relevant. Instead of trying to write for a large, huge group of people, write for one person and let the Internet kind of bring it to whoever it's relevant to.

Yeah, the paradox of specificity is that you are looking for something that is hyper specific and universal at the same time. That's the key. So the for who is one knob and then the next is the. So that knob. So the. So that knob is the benefit. Okay, it's. You're speaking to this audience now. What are you gonna help them do? What are they gonna get out of it? What's the goal? What's the outcome? Okay, so notice all we did here is we're just gonna take one of the dozen audiences. Digital writing tips for and we're gonna use first time authors.

Okay, so.

So digital writing tips for first time authors to attract their first thousand followers. Or digital writing tips for first time authors to launch a number one Amazon bestseller. Or digital writing tips for first time authors to earn their first thousand dollars. Digital writing tips for first time authors to build credibility and get published in major publications. These are all different outcomes. It's the same audience, it's the same topic. But when you change the outcome, the. So that. Why is this important all of a sudden? It's different.

Right?

You have a different essay, you have a different thread, you have a different book, you have a different email course. It's a different thing. If you notice, these are just a handful of examples for one audience. So now take 12 audiences multiplied by 12 different. So that's. And you have more ideas than you know what to do with.

Yeah. And the way we think about this, we call it the knock knock writing, or we call it knock knock writing, which is if I told you, cole, tell me a joke, you'd probably. Your head would go, oh, shoot, I don't know, I gotta, I gotta think of one. But if I said tell me a knock knock joke, you'd think of one right away. But there are far fewer knock knock jokes than there are jokes as a whole. But adding that level of specificity and that constraint allows you to actually come up with ideas. So if you look at these examples, share some digital writing tips, you might say, ah, like there's too much there. But for first time authors to build their first 1,000 followers, boom. I could think of 10 things immediately, right? So all you need is a little bit of constraint. And then that opens up opportunity, which I think is one of the biggest things beginners, Beginner writers struggle with is I don't want to add these constraints because then I have a small audience. Like I have fewer people, I have less, fewer things I can write about. But it's the exact opposite. And that mental shift goes. Is all you really need. And then you can, you'll have hundreds of ideas.

Yeah.

Broad is the enemy. Broad is the enemy. You do not want to be broad. You want to be hyper specific. And the more you are hyper specific, over time, you will learn which hyper specific things are working for you, which things people want to hear about from you. Okay, so this is the endless idea generator. Light. This is the light version. So when in doubt, come back to these two knobs for who? So that twist them around, you'll come up with a dozen new ideas. Okay, the core framework, or real quick, let's just keep.

No, I think we just keep going. I think we get to the full thing.

Okay, so the core framework that we Talked about in Chip 30 is, this is the full endless idea generator. And you know, it's helpful to start with the light version so that you kind of understand how we get here. The full endless idea generator goes, you've got four different pieces. You've got the thing that you're writing about, which is the topic. You've got your own credibility, right? So what are you bringing to the table? Are you the expert? Are you curating other people's expert insight and perspective? You know, how. How should the reader trust you in this scenario? You have the path, which is what direction are you going to take them? And then you have the approach, which is basically how are you going to organize what it is that you're. You're sharing with them? So we're going to walk through each one of these pieces. This is what it looks like as a whole. So you go, I clarify my topic plus my credibility, plus I choose one of these paths, plus I choose one of these approaches.

Okay?

And it takes a little bit to kind of understand how all these pieces work together. But we're going to go through a bunch of examples and then kind of show you how we play with this as well. So the first is the topic. Okay, this is. Everyone starts on the wrong foot here. What people do is they, like I said, broad is the enemy. Okay? So what they do is they start with something super broad. They go, I want to write about life. Okay? There's a gazillion topics that fall under the umbrella of life, right? Or they go, I want to write about finance. Okay, well, finance can be chopped into literally a million different slivers and niches. So whenever you sit down to write, the goal is not. I want to choose the biggest word possible. The goal is, take whatever you want to write about, chop it in half, get more specific, and then this is going to feel uncomfortable. Chop it in half again, get even more specific, and then this is going to feel really uncomfortable. Chop it in half again, get even more specific, the more specific you Start with the easier. The whole endless idea generator works. But when you start broad, it gets really muddy because you have too many options. Okay, so here's a great example. Someone goes, I want to write about money. Okay, well, look at the different versions. Look how the more specific we get, the more clarity we have, right? Version one, I want to write about money. Version two, let's get more specific. I want to write about investing money. That's very different than saving money. That's very different than stealing money. Those are different topics. So I want to write about investing money. Let's get more specific. I want to write about investing money in your 20s. That's very different than investing money in your 50s. That's very different than investing your family's money when your great grandfather, you find out, leaves you billions of dollars in inheritance.

Right.

These are all very different problems.

Right.

Get more specific. Version four, I want to write about investing money in your twenties so you can buy your first rental property in your 30s. Oh, okay. Well, now we're doing investing, but erring on the side of. In the direction of real estate.

Right.

So you notice the more specific that you get, the more clarity you have around. Oh, now I know what I'm saying. But if you just say, I want to write about money, you don't even know what you're saying, which means the reader doesn't know what you're saying.

Yeah. As you're doing this or as you're reading this, start to think about. Because we're going to ask a question a little bit. What specifically? And so that. Specifically, if you have a topic in mind. But, Cole, I know the next example is teaching, and I think this one drives the point home, too.

Yeah, same thing. And I want to be clear, we're just picking arbitrary examples, but this applies to every topic. Every topic. So you go, I want to write about teaching. Okay, well, think about all the things that go into teaching. You know, I mean, it's. You have the subject itself. You have how to interact with students. You have how to measure success.

Right.

What grade level. These are all different variables. And so if you just say, I want to write about teaching, you're not being specific, which means the reader doesn't know what they're going to get from you. And if the reader doesn't know what they're going to get from you, they go, ah, I don't know. And it's like when you walk down the street, you ever look at a bar and grill on the side of the street, and you're Like, I don't really know what kind of food they serve. You don't even take the five seconds to find out. You're just like, eh. But then when you see a sushi restaurant, you're like, I am either 100% in the mood for sushi or I am 100% not in the mood for sushi.

Right?

That's what you want. You want the binary decision. You want to make it very clear for the reader, this is what you're going to get. So version one, I want to write about teaching. Let's get more specific. Version 2, I want to write about teaching online, which is very different than teaching in person. All right, let's get more specific. Version 3, I want to write about teaching online to scale knowledge. Okay? So now it's not just about teaching. It's about scaling that knowledge. It's about reach, it's about impact.

Right.

Version four, I want to write about teaching online to scale knowledge so that you can have bigger impact, work less, and exponentially increase earnings. Hey, wow. If I am a teacher or an aspiring educator. Version one, not super interesting. Version two, not really. Version three, maybe Version four. Absolutely. I want to read this because I want to have a bigger impact and I want to work less and I want to exponentially increase my earnings. So the more specific you get, the easier it is for the reader to go. This is for me.

So, Cole, I think the audience is probably thinking, but that means fewer people are going to read, right? That means fewer people. If I'm cutting a bunch of people out, what if I don't want to be so specific? What would you say?

I would say that is not how all the algorithms work. Think about, think about this. Every algorithm's job on every major social platform is to introduce your content to the right people. And if you are writing broadly, how is the algorithm going to know who your content is for? Whereas if you literally say this is for first time marketing managers, the algorithm's gonna go, thank you for those keywords. We will do our work. We will go find exactly who that person is.

Right?

And so even though you're cutting people out, there's the. It's that paradox we talked about, is that you're removing the people that don't matter so that you can attract more of the people that do.

That's.

You don't care if your grandma reads your marketing manager tips, right? Doesn't matter. What you want is you want marketing managers reading your marketing manager tips. So let's delete everyone else and let's do everything we can just for that one audience.

Yeah. The way to think about this is writing for everyone means writing for no one. And I think Seth Godin said that. And when he says that, he means if you're not forcing your reader to make a choice, basically everyone's going to make the choice for you, and they're.

Not going to read it.

Right.

If you're not clear with who you're writing for, you're never going to actually reach the people that it should reach. Everyone's just going to ignore it. Versus, I think a lot of beginner writers kind of hedge. They say, I don't want to niche down because that means fewer people. And what they end up doing is trying to write these big, broad topics that they don't have any credibility to actually talk about. So I think the second step of the endless idea generator is that credibility. So, Cole, you want to talk about that for a second?

Yeah. So credibility. First, I want to emphasize that credibility is not a one size fits all, okay? It's not like you're either Tony Robbins or you're not. You're either Oprah or you're not, okay? Credibility is all contextual. And a lot of times, credibility is something that you give yourself. You say, hey, I did this. That's my credibility. Or, I earned this. That's my credibility. But there's different types of credibility. All that matters to the reader is that they know where this information is coming from.

Okay?

That's it. And they really don't care if it's coming from you or if it's coming from someone else that you went out and you found. They just want to know, where is it coming from?

Okay?

It's like when you're at a dinner party and someone tells you a story, right? You're like, how do you know that? Either the person's like, well, I've been running x business for 10 years. You're like, cool, okay, you're the credible person. Or they're like, yeah, my uncle has been doing that for the past 10 years. Okay, cool. You're. You're curating your uncle's credibility, right? That's all the reader cares about. So there's three types of credibility. One is, you are the expert, right? Someone goes, I have a question. You go, I know the answer. I've done this before. I've experienced this, right? I am the expert. I've achieved something. The second is, you go, I'm not the expert, but I went out and I found all the experts. I'm Curating the experts. That could be everything from, I interviewed them. It could be I Google searched for 40 hours. It could be I read a bunch of books. It doesn't really matter how you got there. It's just you're the one who went out and did the work. You did the digging. You're coming back with the answer. And then the third is someone going, look, it's not like I've achieved anything huge in this field. I'm just sharing my personal experience, okay? My credibility is that I lived it.

Okay?

And so let me show you how this works. So one is, you know Roger Ebert, the. The famous film critic, right? So, expert, I'm Roger Ebert, and I say, you know, whatever movie. I realize that this doesn't make sense in today's time, but Don't look up was the best movie of 2021, okay? I am the expert.

Okay?

Curating Experts is according to Roger Ebert and nine other famous movie critics. Don't look up was the best movie of 2021, okay? So you're saying I'm not the person, but I went out and I found all the people. And then third is, hey, I'm no Roger Ebert, but I've watched over 900 Netflix movies and shows, and I think Don't look up was the best movie of 2021.

Right?

So your credibility is, hey, nobody sits in front of the TV as much as I do. So you don't have to be a famous movie critic. You just go, I experienced it.

And here's where we tie the credibility and the specificity together. So if you're on this call and you're listening to this, you might be thinking, I'm not an expert in anything, Right? What am I an expert in that I could possibly write about? And I'm here to tell you, you are an expert. The only difference between where you think you're not an expert and being an expert is specificity. So what do I mean by that? The goal is to take the broad topics you want to write about and add layers of specificity until you are an expert. Or if you want to write about a big, broad topic, you go and borrow the credibility from a bunch of experts. So let me give you an example from my personal journey. I started writing January of 2020, and at the very beginning, I didn't have really. I had no idea what I was doing. So I started to learn, started to kind of explore a bunch of different things. And about six months in, I latched on to something. It was. I had. I was not an expert in writing. But I was an expert in building a writing habit. How because I had built one over the last six months. I added specificity where I wanted to talk about writing because it was going to help me learn it. But I didn't want to say, hey, I'm going to go write to journalists, or I'm going to go write to people who've been writing online forever. I'm going to write to people who have never written before, never published anything. And that I was an expert in because that was exactly where I was six months ago and I had solved that problem. So anytime I wrote about something from my own place of credibility, I would write directly to that audience. And so anyone here who is interested in a broad topic, all you have to do is add that specificity until you become an expert because you're writing to some, you're again writing to your former self that to. To solve that problem, or if you want to write about the general topics, you have to go and curate experts. So the other thing I did was instead of saying, hey, I'm going to go talk about my writing routine and all this stuff, I went and looked at the Tim Ferrisses and the James Clears and the Eugene Schwartz's, Gary Halberts, these famous long like hot, super high credibility and saying, look, I'm not the one sharing this. I'm taking it from them. They know what they're doing. I'm just kind of distilling their best practices down into something specific and sharing. So these are really the two paths you have as a beginner. It's I can go and curate the experts in this broad topic or I can share my personal experience with a super specific layer of specificity and then go with that barbell of curating experts and then talking about something you're an expert in because it's so specific.

Yep.

Yeah.

The whole I really think that the mental switch that needs to be flipped here is we all forget that we experience life in our own vacuum, you know, so like, you read your books and you're like, yeah, that's not that important.

Right.

But you forget that you've probably read books that other people haven't read, you know, or you have whatever job you were, you know, you worked at a coffee shop for three years and you're like, yeah, that's not that special. But you forget that other people haven't worked at a coffee shop. So what lessons did you learn that they haven't gotten to experience yet? We all live life in a vacuum. And your Job as a writer is to kind of step outside your vacuum and consider the fact that you have experienced things that other people haven't. You know, things that other people don't know.

Right.

I'm no crypto expert, but four months ago I bought my first nft. Guess what? Now I'm a quote unquote expert in buying NFTs for absolute beginners. Now I can turn around and go teach the next person. Here's how you buy your first nft, right? It doesn't mean that you have to go achieve, you know, some 30 year career in order to share something. It just means you experienced something, you learned something, and now you're going to turn around and give it back to the person that you were six months prior, two years prior to. And if you can't do that or you don't know how to do that, to Dickie's point, don't feel like you have to fake it till you make it. Just go curate. All the other experts go, hey, this expert over here has written 10,000 things on X subject on the Internet. I dug through all of them. Here are the 10 that are most valuable. That's all you have to do. So these are the two paths that you have to pick for credibility. So real quick in the chat, drop in. Which one do you find yourself gravitating to? Like, are you for the thing that you want to write about? Do you, are you the expert? You know, have you, have you experienced something or built enough where you feel like you are the credible source of truth in that domain? Are you the curator or are you just going, you know, I'm just speaking from personal opinion here.

And you don't have to pick one. Right. I think you should do all. I think you should do all of them. Exactly. And it depends on the topic you're writing about, where you want to go with your writing. But just having these three lenses of, here's kind of where I can pick. I got this grab bag, I'm going to pick one of them that's going to help you.

Yep.

Yeah, definitely recommend. And you know, it's kind of interesting. People think that the expert path is kind of the most idealized. You know, everyone wants to be seen as the expert, but the truth is you grow a lot faster on the Internet when you curate. So even if you are the expert, you should also curate other people's insights because there's no easier way of expanding your reach and expanding your audience.

Right.

Cause now it's not just about you, it's about you plus everyone else who knows what they're talking about.

All right, let's keep it rolling.

Okay? Four A paths. All right, now this. This is kind of your first big choice when you sit down to write. There are all types of writing can be distilled back down to these four paths.

Okay?

You're either writing something actionable, where you're teaching people how to do something analytical, where you're extracting some sort of number stat insight and sharing your own conclusion. Aspirational, which is the classic, I did it. You can too. I experienced this. Here's what you can learn. It's usually some sort of motivating content. And then anthropological. Here's why. Here's the reason why this happens. It's more psychology. More like here's the underlying truth. And the problem that writers almost, like, introduced to themselves is they start writing and they don't even know which one of these they're trying to do. And so what happens is they go, here's a little bit of actionable. But wait, I'm going to get into analytical for a second. And then, hey, here's a bunch of motivation. And then here's a quick. Like, here's the real reason why. Anthropological. And what this causes is this causes confusion for the reader. They don't really know why they're there. They're like, am I there to learn how? Am I there to be motivated? Like, what if I'm going to give you my time, what do I get in return? Okay, that's what the reader's asking themselves. So it's really helpful to pick which one of these you're gonna. You're gonna use as a writer. Okay, so here's the first one someone scribbled on the screen. One second. So here's, here's a good example of how this works. So I want to write about building positive relationships. Say, this is you. Okay, well, notice how different the content is, is as you pick a different path, right? Actionable. 7 mistakes people make that cause positive relationships to turn sour. Okay, if you read this, you're going to learn these mistakes. You're going to learn how to not make these mistakes, right? How to very actionable. Analytical. 93% of college friends stop being friends one to five years later. Here's why. Okay, so we're taking a number. We're extracting a conclusion. Aspirational. I've had the same two best friends for a decade. Here's how we grow together.

All right, we did it.

You can, too. Classic motivation. Anthropological. The real reason Friendships fail. The real reason, right, is because one person outgrows the other. A guide for growing together. So notice this is what's so difficult about saying, I want to write about positive relationships or I want to write about money or I want to write about life is that it doesn't actually give you the answer of, well, but what about it? What specifically? And since you don't have the answer, that means your writing is going to be muddy. And since you don't have the answer and the writing is muddy, the reader goes, I don't know what you're trying to tell me. And then the reader doesn't give you their attention. And so all of this gets traced back to. You just don't have clarity around what you're writing about. So how do you get clarity? You get more specific, right? You pick one of these paths and you go, you're here to learn or you're here to be motivated. You got to pick. And then when you make that decision, all of the writing is in effort of achieving that goal for the reader. Here's another one. How to write about cryptocurrencies. Same thing. Actionable. Five easy ways to buy your first bitcoin. That's what you're here for. I'm not here to explain why bitcoin is is so morally interesting. I'm not here to tell you what's going on in global markets with cryptocurrencies. I am here to do one thing, and that is to help you buy your first bitcoin. That is all. So that specificity is really important. Analytical.

Right?

53% of people in El Salvador are now using the country's bitcoin wallet. Here's why that's a big deal. Number Extract a conclusion. Aspirational. I've made millions of dollars investing in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Here's how you can too. Classic. Before and after transformation. I did it. You can too. Whatever. Anthropological why the case for Bitcoin has less to do with technology and more with failing governments.

Okay.

It's a little more esoteric, more heady. But notice you can't just say, I want to write about crypto. You have to say, I want to do X for the reader. I want to take them on a specific journey. So you got to pick which path do you want to take them down.

And this is just the subtle unlock that you realize once you see the four A's, you can unsee them. Everything you come across, you're going to start to run through the filter of what? What Path is this piece of content taking. And you're going to find, hey, I actually really resonate writing aspirational pieces. Or, you know, that's not for me. I like writing actionable things. I like breaking down the trends.

Right.

You get to explore all of these where. And my favorite example of this is the topic of money. There's two completely different writers talking about money who've taken two different paths. You have Morgan Housel, who wrote the Psychology of Money, and you have Ramit Sethi, who wrote I will teach you to be rich. One is actionable, one is anthropological. And then analytical and aspirational. You know, aspirational is probably the rich dad, poor dad, right? Where here's my story of learning money. And then the analytical would be someone.

Like a Ray Dalio or someone.

Exactly. Right. So one topic, money, and they spent their entire career just on one of these paths.

Right.

And so the best part about writing on the Internet is you get to explore all of these and see which one resonates with you.

Yeah, that's a great point is literally you could write for 50 years just on one of these paths, and most people become known for one of them. You can bounce in and out, but the reader's like, am I going to you to learn and what am I learning about? Or am I going you to be entertained and motivated?

Right.

That, that's, that's really what you got to decide for, for the reader. So again, real quick in the chat, just curious, which one have you gravitated to in the past? Which one makes the most sense for you? You know, are you a how to sort of actionable writer? Are you an analytical writer, aspirational? Maybe you don't know motivation.

Right.

And that you don't know.

And I think every single writer who comes into ship 30 starts with I'm not sure. And we say that's why you're here. You're here to write every day for 30 days because you want to explore all these paths where by the end you have enough data points. All this published writing and you say, you know, the 10 days I wrote analytical things, I really was excited to write that day. It was easy. It flowed from my fingertips. But, you know, when I, when I tried to write some anthropological pieces, it was like pulling hairs. It took me all day. I didn't publish till late at night. And, you know, after 30 days, what takes most writers 10 years to figure out, it's here. I really like writing about these topics. So it's treating it like a science experiment going down these forays and mixing and matching.

Yep.

All right, we got 20 minutes left. We got a lot to get through. Let's keep cranking. Okay, this is the last part of the endless idea generator. These are different approaches. So the approach is really just how you're going to organize whatever it is that you're talking about, okay? And the importance here is a mistake that writers make is they don't organize their writing in a way that is skimmable to a reader. And in order for it to be skimmable, each section kind of has to have a through line to it. So they go, say they pick a path and they go, I'm going to write a how to article, something actionable. But then what they do is they go, well, you know, the first point, here's a lesson that I learned. And then the second point, here's a mistake I made. And the third point, you know, here's a couple interesting stats. And the fourth point, you know, here's two reasons why this happened, right? And it's really hard for the reader to get their bearings, okay? And a much easier way to organize your content is to pick one, pick one approach and go, in this essay, in this blog post, in this whatever it is that you're writing Twitter thread, here are the lessons learned, or here are the mistakes, or here are the reasons, or here are the examples. You actually don't want to mix and match, because when you mix and match, it's very hard for the reader to know, where are we in the piece? What am I actually skimming? What am I actually looking for? So whatever path you pick, you want to kind of structure it in a way where you're like, okay, I'm going to walk you through how to all the steps, which means each subhead needs to be step one, step two, step three, right? Or you go, hey, anthropological. I want to explain the real reason why this happens. Example one, Example two, Example three.

Okay?

So whatever approach you pick, you want that to be your through line of the whole piece. So just notice how, again, when you change the approach, you're also changing the content. How to four easy steps to save your first thousand dollars. Lessons learned. Well, here are the hard lessons I learned trying to save my first thousand dollars. Mistakes. Nine mistakes I made trying to save my first thousand dollars.

Right?

Notice how when you change the approach, it's a completely different piece, right? The mistakes you made saving your first thousand dollars is very different than here are the steps you need to take to save your first thousand dollars. So the reason that we like. Sharing these proven approaches is same thing. If you take one topic and all you do is just keep the topic the same, keep the audience the same, keep the. So that maybe you'll have to change based on the approach a little bit. And all you're doing is changing steps to lessons, to mistakes, to quotes, to ways, tools, trends, stats, reasons, examples.

Okay.

All you're doing is changing the approach. You have now a dozen different pieces because they're all different for the reader.

Yeah.

Here, let me. Let me share my screen and take people inside the. My idea generation zone.

So behind the scenes here.

Oh, behind the scenes. This is a template we share with everyone in ship. 30 of you guys see this?

Yeah.

So this is my idea generation zone, how I put the EIG endless idea generator into practice. So what you see here is I have a bunch of topics. I modeled this after our friend Justin Walsh, who kind of broke my brain when he showed it to me the first time. So I have some topics here. Copywriting for beginners, Digital writing for beginners, Journaling for beginners, Staying consistent for people who struggle to.

Right.

And then I have all of these proven approaches across the top. Tips, advice, tools, how to curation, trends, numbers. And the way I have that is here in this sidebar. Actionable tips, frameworks, advice tools, how to curation, aspirational mistakes, mentorship, credibility. I studied a bunch of people. Here's what I learned. Analytical. I see the world going. Going this way. Numbers, reasons, contrarian observation.

Right.

These are all the different things you could possibly write about all in one spot. And then I just come around here and just kind of move my mouse around. So I come to this one. Journaling for beginners. Mistakes. I've been journaling for the past five years. Here's five mistakes I made when I that caused me to fall off. Or five mistakes that actually didn't help me. Or five mistakes of spending too much time breaking down paper journals versus digital journals.

Right.

Whatever it is. And then I can just rapidly go through these. And the way we find these is looking at some of these things that work.

Right.

You can go down all of this swipe file and say, what is actually going on here? Right. Copywriting tips. Or here's a distillation.

Right.

You can share and go through all these things. So I just want to take you guys a little bit behind the scenes of how I do it and actually put these into practice.

Yeah.

The.

The takeaway is that prolific creators have systems, period. Anyone that you see growing quickly on the Internet, Anyone that you see writing consistently. Anyone that you see that's always publishing something new, I. It is not. They wake up in the morning, they stare out the window, they light their cigarette, and wha. Bam. The magic happens. Okay, that's not what. That's not what's going on. Prolific creators have systems, and the systems are based on. Here are the different combinations that work. We're giving them all to you right now. These. After writing on the Internet for a decade, these work, okay? And so your job is to take the things that work, take the structures, but plug in your own ideas, plug in your own content, but the structures. There's a reason why, you know, CNN headlines are the same as New York Times. Headlines are the same. Are basically the same as buzzfeed. Headlines are basically the same as medium headlines are basically the same as lead in tweets on Twitter.

Okay?

They might look a little different. They all have the same, similar building blocks. So that's our goal, is to give you the building blocks, and then you can play with them and figure out what that means for you. Okay, so this is the endless idea generator again, as a whole. You have the topic plus the credibility, plus you have to pick a path plus one of these 11 proven approaches. All right, so we'll send a recap video. But if you want, take a quick screenshot of this, you know, play with it. But this leads to a different problem, which is now I have too many ideas. But you should never have the problem of, I don't know what to write about ever again.

All right, so that's the endless ID generator. We said we're going to go through a lot today. Now we're going to do a quick crash course. Twitter threads101. Anyone who's already writing on Twitter, not writing on Twitter, this is kind of the tldr. You should walk away knowing how to and why you should be writing Twitter threads. So let's dive in.

All right, let's fly. First of all, big question that we get asked. What's the difference between Twitter threads and writing atomic essays or writing blog posts? The reason in ship 30 we teach through the atomic essay format is because that is the easiest way to learn the fundamentals. You learn headlines, you learn formatting, you learn rate of revelation, you learn rhythm.

Right?

You learn structure. Those are. Those are skills that can be applied to everything. They can be applied from everything to work emails, to your own email course, to products, to landing pages. Right? Those fundamentals are really, really crucial. Twitter threads are kind of a sub language of Online writing, they are their own. I mean, it's like its own dialect. Okay, okay. And even though it's awesome to know how to write on Twitter, the reality is that those skills don't carry over as easily to other formats. So that's why we teach the atomic essays first, and then we get into Twitter threads second. Okay, so this is essentially just recapping. Same thing. Twitter threads are harder to execute, which is why we teach them second. But, um, they do have a lot of chance for virality as well. But so do atomic essays. We've seen both.

Okay.

They're just different languages. So one thing that we like explaining to people, you know, Dicky, this is a thread that you wrote, had, you know, almost 700,000 impressions. And I assume you had less than 20,000 followers at the time.

Yeah. Somewhere right around there. And so the. We. The scale of Twitter and the Internet and distribution is why you should, because only 20,000 followers, but 700,000 views, you're not going to get that anywhere else. You're not going to get that on any other platform on your own blog, that's for sure. On Medium, anywhere else. And so when you have an idea that you know it's going to resonate with a lot of people, it's best to put it on Twitter.

Yeah.

And the reason we point this out is because every person, whenever we start sharing all these things, inevitably someone goes, well, this all sounds great if You've already got 50,000 followers, but what do you do if you're starting at zero? As if I didn't start from zero. As if Dickie didn't start from zero.

Right.

Everyone starts from zero. And the point that is really important to take away here is that more and more of social platforms, the algorithms are not based on your number of followers. They're based on your ability to write things that resonate, and then the algorithm takes care of itself.

Right.

So, Dickie, you wrote this. You have less than. I don't. Probably around 10,000 followers, maybe, if that at this time. But almost 700,000 people saw it. Same thing here.

Okay.

Almost 5 million people saw this, and you had, you know, around 10,000 followers, whatever, @ the time. Okay, how is that possible? It's because the follower count really matters less and less these days. It's a total vanity metric, and it's cool. But that's not what matters. It's every time you write something the ecosystem's trying to figure out is this valuable. Okay, so what we're going to walk you through is how to Write valuable things. So, real quick, if you want to play with any of the templates here, we have a ton of temp of proven Twitter thread templates inside Typeshare. They're really fun to play with. We've had awesome feedback with them. So if you need help kind of structuring your Twitter threads, really encourage you to hop inside typeshare and play with the templates that are in there, because these are essentially how Dickie and I structure our own threads. So that can be a really helpful way to learn, is to actually just plug information inside the template when you're first getting started. So there's a handful of Twitter thread topics that work. Same thing we were talking about before. Your job is to take the things that work and plug in your own ideas, plug in your own content. So there's five that are. These are the Twitter threads that are most primed to go viral. Okay, the first is you're outlining some sort of framework.

Okay?

People love frameworks. Think about what we're doing here with you. We're sharing frameworks. We're going, hey, you want to achieve X? You want to do x? Plug in 1, 2, 3, 4, you're going to get that outcome. People love learning frameworks. So the key here is going, what specific problem does your framework solve in what new and unique way, right? You can't just tell people, hey, time management's all about having a calendar, right? Everyone's like, oh, yeah, okay, there's no way. You have to give them something new. What's the new and unique way? And then three, what proves it's guaranteed to work? This is a bit of credibility, right? So you could go, hey, I've saved myself 1000 hours a year by using this framework. Or you can go, I went out and found 10 of the best productivity experts on planet Earth. Collectively, they've saved a quarter million hours of wasted work, right? Here's what they had to say. So those are the three pieces of a framework. And frameworks work very well because everyone wants to solve a problem in their life. So get specific on the problem and then go, here's the new and unique way that we can help you solve it. And here's why you should trust me. Here's where this information is coming from. So, Dickie, here's a great example of a thread you wrote. The world's most valuable skill, writing effectively. But colleges charge you 120,000 and still do a terrible job teaching it. Instead, here are nine writing frameworks that cost you nothing and will save you hundreds of hours, boom. Everyone's gonna wanna read that.

It's on everything. I mean, it hits on the. For who, right? People who went to college but didn't learn to write so that you can save hundreds of hours after a bunch of writing frameworks and work that I did. So it's got implied credibility because I went and studied all this and at the same time, it very specifically, anyone who sees this is going to resonate with the college charge you 120k, right? It's like, damn, that's right. I did go to college and I did pay money and I still don't know how to write. Like, I'm going to read this thing because somehow, how did you know? How did you know I felt this way?

Right.

And that's why it had almost 20,000 likes. And a lot of people resonated with it.

Yep.

The easiest. Here's another framework, okay? A framework for thinking about this. Small amount of effort, big outcome, or small amount of money, big reward. Anytime you can engineer a framework that goes. Notice the last sentence of this costs you nothing, but save you hundreds of hours. That is the secret to getting people's attention, to going, hey, this framework, this thing is going to solve a problem in your life. It's going to cost you nothing, and it's going to save you hundreds of hours or it's a dollar, but it's going to turn you into a millionaire.

Right?

Using just outlandish examples on purpose. The second type of Twitter thread that works really, really well are stories. Now, the key to a story is that in the beginning, it's like you ever see the movie Fight Club? Movie Fight Club starts with the ending and then goes back and tells you the whole story. The beginning of your story has to tell the reader, here's where we're starting. Here's where we're going to end up. Now follow me. And we're going to. I'm going to take you on a journey, right? So this is. This is a great example of a thread written by Trung. Beginning when Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980, he was employee 30 and received zero equity. We are at the beginning of the story, then end of the story by its IPO in 1986, he owned 8% of Microsoft, which makes up the majority of his $80 billion fortune today. We're at the end of the story right now. Here's the journey. How did Ballmer get that stake, though? It was through a contract quirk. Here's the story, right? So why you read as A reader is you go, you told me the beginning and you told me the end. And that's a pretty interesting story. Now I want to read to find out how that happened, right? It's every murder podcast ever, right? He was a normal man in the middle of a town until one day he may or may not have murdered his next door neighbor. Listen to the next 10 episodes to find out, right? That. That is every murder podcast ever. So whenever you're telling a story on the Internet, it is very important to not just start, but to tease. Where are we going? That's why the readers invested. I want to see how this all unfolded. Dickie, you did this in some cool ways, too.

I mean, two threads here. I ran for class president my senior year of high school. What followed was two landslide victories, an impeachment trial, pitchforks from three suburban housewives, and three marketing frameworks I'll never forget. I think that personally, is the best hook I've ever written in my entire life. Because it's one sentence. And then how can you not read that whole thing? And the best part about it was people got to the bottom and they said, I can't believe the hook actually delivered on the promise, right? I can't believe the story you just told me actually had all those things. And so a lot of people would see that and say, oh, you're using clickbait. No way. That's clickbait. And what we say in ship 30 is it's only clickbait if you make a promise and you don't deliver on it, right? So something wouldn't be this popular and have a bunch of replies and a bunch of people laughing and saying, wow, this was amazing. If they didn't. If it didn't deliver on all of those things. And so I didn't lie. That's exactly what happened. And boom, by the end, you're like, wow, you made a promise to me. You got my attention and you delivered it. I'm now a long time reader. I'm going to read whatever you have to say pretty much forever. And that's exactly what happened. Same on the other one. I used to have a severe addiction, planning.

Boom.

A little bit unexpected, right? Most people would think, oh, some other addiction. But no, my addiction was planning. My brain loved the cheap dopamine of gathering books to read, tasks to complete, and videos to watch. What ended my addiction? This story of two men learning to fish, right? So beginning I had an addiction. I cured it. How did I get there? And I told the story, right? So anyone would resonate immediately. And then, same thing. People got to the end and they said, wow, this resonated so heavily with me because I had that same exact feeling. And now I can use this story to help me overcome it.

This is a terrific stress test for your own writing, by the way. If you can't summarize the entire story in a beginning and end, you probably don't have a story worth telling. And that's a brutally honest way of looking at it. But it is super helpful because if you can tell all of these examples, you only need to read two sentences, and you're either bought in or you're not.

Right?

You're either like, yeah, I want to go on this journey, or, no, I'm not interested. And that's a good thing. You want that instead. What story writers do is they're like, I don't want to tease the ending, and I want to be mysterious, and I want you to just take my hand, and I'm going to take you on a journey, and you have no idea where you're going to go.

Okay?

Imagine if your friend was like, I'm going to blindfold you, I'm going to put a gag in your mouth, and I'm going to grab you by the hand, and you're just going to walk with me for an indefinite amount of time. Are you game? You'd be like, no, absolutely not. I am not interested in that activity. That is what most storytelling writers do.

Okay?

And so instead, you want to tell them, this is where we're starting, but this is where we're going. And if that is compelling, the reader goes, now I'm interested. Now I want to go with you on that adventure. Okay, let's keep. Let's keep cruising. Third, actionable tips. Anytime you can take anything and go, I went from X to Y, right? Or I achieved Z. Here are some tips for you to accomplish the same. Okay, it's just a list. This is, like, the easiest format to execute. So if you're first starting out, this can be a really great way of just practicing getting some reps in. But easiest way to write this. What's the desirable outcome? What's the unconventional way of unlocking it? And now here are all the ways that you can unlock it. Here are the tips. Here are the mistakes to avoid. Here are the reasons. It's just a very, very simple, straightforward. This is way easier than writing a story. So here's an example. Over the past year, I've tweeted hundreds of small but powerful writing tips. But these 19 accumulated more than a million views and thousands of comments and shares. Here they all are in one place. So when you read that, you go, I'm here for one reason. I'm here for the best 19 writing tips. That's it. No other reason. Let's not overcomplicate it. Just give me the 19 writing tips and that clarity. It might seem really simple, but, you know, I had a mentor that used to say to me, simplicity is velocity. You don't want to overcomplicate it. Simple. Keep it simple. You can do the same thing with. We call them anything lists, right?

You.

Anything you can list out is a list, right? So you could. Here are 10 books that you need to read. Here are 12 podcast episodes that you probably missed in 2021, but are amazing, you know, here. Here are five ways to cultivate better friendships in your life. Anything that you can list out, as long as you have specificity around for who. So that. That's what makes it a compelling list. Who's this for? To what end? To what outcome? So, same thing. I had this Tweet every second, 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter. That's over 350,000 tweets sent per minute. 5 million tweets per day, 200 billion tweets per year. Which means you've probably missed some of the best content this site has to offer. Here are 15 you need to read. Let's not overcomplicate it. I'm here for the 15. That's it.

Right?

And again, so many writers, they introduce problems they don't have. You don't have to make it more complicated. You don't have to be clever. Just tell the reader exactly what you're going to give them and then deliver on that promise.

And then lastly, thread of threads, we can kind of breeze through this one, but it's. Once you've accumulated a library of Twitter threads, you can repackage them into their own and say, hey, I've written a bunch on this topic. Here they are all in one place. And so it's a way of compounding your library. Once you've written a ton, you have, boom, I have a ton of things to share. You don't even have to write anything new. It takes five minutes. And this is the best way to either curate someone else's threads. Say, hey, here are the best copywriting threads on Twitter. Here are the best storytelling threads. Here, all these other things, I'm going to curate them in a long list. Or here are the best things I've written, and there's just an easy way to recycle things and without a bunch of extra work. But we're on the hour mark. But we're just going to keep going because we got more. And it seems like everyone can. Can stick around if they want. We're just. This is going to be a longer one.

Yeah. So real, real quick, we'll breeze. We'll breeze through this. But we have a. We wrote a book called the 22 Laws of Digital Writing. These are basically all the core principles that we teach that we think about every time we sit down to write. This is what guides our decisions. But a few of our favorites from here that are things that we stress very heavily in ship 30, just to kind of give you a sense of where our perspective's coming from. I've been writing on the Internet for over a decade. This is always the first place that people think about when they want to start writing. They go, I want to start a blog.

And if you hear real quick, who here has a blog? Drop in the chat while we're talking about this. But if you've started a blog written on it at all because you heard that was the thing to do, let us know in the chat. But, Cole, keep going.

Show yourselves. Show yourselves. Duh. It's all. It's all good. We all start there. We all make this mistake. The reason people think of starting a blog is because they feel like it's theirs, right? It's like, oh, I want to own it. They hear things like, owned audience versus rented audience, or they. Or they want customization or they want, I want to pick my own colors or I want it. You know what? Whatever the reason is, it's usually some sort of I statement, I want this. The problem is that there's 800,000,000,000 websites on the Internet, and no one except your mom and maybe your dog knows that your blog. Your blog exists, right? That's a problem. So even though it's yours, you're not getting any readership, you're not getting any feedback. And so the thing is, blogging in itself isn't a bad thing. If you want to eventually go have your own website, that's totally fine. But when you are first starting out, the reason starting with a blog is so difficult is because when you're first starting, you actually don't know what you want to write about, or you think you do, but you have no data that says that's what people want to hear about from you. So you start this blog that no one knows exists. And you're walking into it with a giant assumption that says, I know what people want to hear about from me. But you don't. You think you do, but you don't. And so the reason we encourage people to write on social platforms or use a platform like Typeshare that allows you to have a social blog that connects into social platforms is because your biggest problem when you're first starting is you don't have data. You have zero data. Telling you this is what people are interested in, right? So how do you get data and feedback? Well, it's probably better to write in environments with hundreds of millions of readers than to write in an environment where there is zero readers, right? So that is it. The reason that we encourage this so much is because you have some learning to do. And I know this. Dickie knows this. Everyone who's gone through Ship 30 knows this. Because we all started thinking readers want X. And then we started writing. And then we learned, oh, it wasn't X that readers really wanted, it was Y. And I didn't know that until I started writing and gathering feedback. So, Dickie, just real quick, how much. What was the outcome of you blogging for a year versus writing on Twitter for a year?

I wrote 40 blog posts 40 weeks in a row. And by the end, I think I had 2, 200 newsletter subscribers and maybe a hundred people reading each one. So I was slaving over a hot keyboard every single Sunday morning for hours to hit publish, only to be met with the crickets of indifference of the Internet. And I said, what? What am I doing wrong? Why is this happening? But it wasn't even that I assumed other people were wrong, right? I was hitting publish and getting no response. And all I would say is, ah, it means people haven't caught on to me yet, right? It just means people, oh, it's going to come someday. But I didn't have any feedback loops. And then I said, instead, I'm going to write on Twitter every day for 30 days. And I wrote for 27 days in a row. And I almost quit. And on day 28, I had something go viral. I went from 200 to 800 newsletter subscribers. So I went from. It took me 40 weeks to get to 200, in about six hours to go to 800. And that was all because I started writing in a social environment where I had feedback loops instead of hitting publish. No one was reading it. The only people that did were the people I sent it to. And so my mom would say, hey, great post. This week instead of putting it in front of readers who actually would give me feedback on what I said, whether it resonated. And so everything changed when I committed to write every day for 30 days. And the last year and a half have just been kind of sharing that exact idea of. I wasted eight months, pretty much almost quit right on the edge of saying this writing online thing is kind of stupid. And then changed everything when I started to write consistently on a social platform.

I just. Yeah, I just want to drive this home. Dickie, on your blog, you probably got less than a thousand views a month.

Way, way less. Probably less. Yeah.

Yeah.

So we'll go maybe even a hundred. A hundred views a month now. Now I would bet you probably get over 10 million impressions on Twitter every month.

Yeah. So somewhere around there. And I mean, I wrote a Twitter thread that had a million with. I wrote a Twitter thread with 110 followers. I had 110 in July of. So I started from zero. July of 2020. So about what. What's that? 16 months ago, had a hundred followers, wrote every day for 30 days. By the end, published something that went viral. Was it a thousand the next day?

Right.

Versus. And that. That thread itself had a million, two million views.

Right.

So you don't need a big audience to start. You need to start putting your ideas where people can read them.

And this is. Look, I just want to have. I know that especially if you've never thought this way. Hearing this is very easy to just. The impulse is like, you guys are wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about. Blogging is amazing.

Right.

I hope that it's an uncomfortable feeling because that means that you're challenging a long held belief.

Okay.

And I'm just. I'm telling you this is not the place to start. Blogging is not the place to start. If you want to spend four years, you know, spinning your wheels, go for it. But there are much faster ways to grow and to learn. That's. That's the piece you're. You need to learn. You don't know what readers want from you yet. You need to write lots of things. You need to get feedback, and you need to gather data that says objectively, yes, this is what readers want to hear about from me. I went through this process. Dickie went through this process. 3000 plus writers have gone through ship 30 and gone through this process. The faster you confront it, the faster you grow, the faster you learn, the faster you get to where you're trying to go. Okay, so that's a Big thing that we introduce inside ship 30. The second is this idea of practicing in public, which is basically building on that, which is another one of the old writer isms is, hey, what's the best way to write? Well, I'm going to quit my job. Well, first I'm gonna save up a bunch of money. Then I'm gonna quit my job. Then I'm gonna go find a log cabin in the middle of the forest, right? Can't forget my chapeau. Can't forget my cigarettes, right? Maybe bring a candle or two. And then I'm gonna stare out the window, and I'm gonna wait for the magic to happen, and I'm gonna emerge a year later with the great American novel, right? That is. That is the way we are taught to think about writing. And it is very wrong because it doesn't allow you to grow. It doesn't allow you to write in conjunction with your readers. When you go into a log cabin, you assume that you know everything. You assume that you know what's right for your readers. You assume that you've already got it all figured out. And 99.9% of the time you don't. Because what happens is when you practice in public, you write things that allow you to get feedback. A reader asks you a question. A reader points something out. A reader says, wow, I really love the way that you put that. And immediately you get a different idea. You go, oh, I didn't know that was valuable to you. Let me double down on it. Let me create something else for you. So your goal is not everyone wants the big reveal. Everyone wants to go off into the log cabin and then come back and go, look at this amazing masterpiece that I wrote. Aren't I amazing? And that is a recipe for failure. What you want is you want to write with your readers, right? You want to practice in public. You want feedback, you want questions. Okay, so this is another reason why in ship 30, the whole thing that we engineer is don't go write by yourself inside your apartment, right? Everything that you write, you're going to publish. That should feel uncomfortable for 30 days. You're going to write and publish in public. You're going to practice in public. And what that's going to allow you to do is it's going to allow you to break through that very early impediment that stops every writer that goes, I think I know what people want to hear about from me, but you don't. So let's put some content out. Let's figure out what's resonating and what's not. And let's double down on what is. That's the whole ethos of shipping 30 atomic essays in 30 days.

Spot on. Let's keep rolling.

Boom.

This is the third one. It's a fun one, but it's a really interesting way of thinking. Another one of our favorite principles is that the size of the question dictates the size of the audience. So what this means is most people sit down to write, they go, I want to write about X. And then the second question they ask themselves is, well, now, how do I get a million people to read X? The problem is that if you start with a small question, a million people might not be interested in that. So it really doesn't matter how much marketing or how big your budget is or how many influencers retweet or share your content, right? It doesn't matter because you're not answering a big enough question. So you need to start with, what's the size of the audience I'm dealing with?

Okay.

And if you're trying to aim for, I want, you know, millions and millions and millions of people to read my stuff, you intentionally need to do need to write about something that millions and millions of people would be interested in. Conversely, if you want to specifically talk to a niche group of people, you want to do the opposite of that.

Right.

You don't want to tailor it to a gazillion people. You want to go, this is for one type of person who has one specific problem. And most people think, I want millions of millions of people to read my work. They really don't. What they want is they want 10,000 hyper specific people to read their work. And that is a much easier, much more actionable way of approaching writing on the Internet.

The way I think about this is I've written a lot of viral things that didn't lead to any followers or really anyone resonating. Because if you write something on life advice, people just read it and they don't resonate with you. But if you write something that feels handwritten for them, they're going to immediately be a longtime reader, a lifelong reader. Right away it's saying, I don't know how you knew I had this problem, but you solved it so well for me, it felt like you were writing a letter directly to me. I'm going to read everything you write for the rest of time.

Yep.

Whereas think of content marketing, which is like what Zapier does when you hit Google for like, how do I use this tool? And Zap. Somehow you end up on Zapier's website or some content marketing site. You don't think, oh, thanks Zapier, you just read the article and you move on.

Right.

So as you think about, it's okay to write things where that's the case, but don't expect to build a loyal following if all you do is write kind of fortune cookie or things that are super broad, because that's easy and people don't resonate with the author. But once you write something that feels handwritten to them and that you only do through a hyper specific question, then that's how you build a dense following.

Yep. And if that, you know, that isn't the point enough. Just the asterisk here is. And if you want to know the fastest path to making money as a writer, as a digital writer, as a creator on the Internet, start small. It is a thousand times easier to make money serving a small group of people in a hyper specific way than it is to serve the masses in a broad way, full stop. So if you're like, how do I become a profitable creator? You don't say, I want to be the expert of productivity. You say, I'm going to help a very specific niche audience master a tool like notion.

Right.

You're like, oh, that is so weirdly specific. Yeah, well, you know, that group of a couple thousand people are probably going to be really great customers for you because you're solving a very specific problem. And then fourth, this is a whole session in shift 30 we go over formatting, organization of content. This is another big mental unlock for people, is that the way that we get taught to write is like this New Yorker article on the left. We want it to be this dense War and peace type literature, otherwise it's low quality.

Right.

If it doesn't look like Nabokov wrote it, then what is it? Or Dostoevsky wrote it. But people don't read like that on the Internet. They just don't. And the reason people skim on the Internet is because there's so much information that we are trying to find the piece that we find most valuable as quickly as possible. Think about how many pieces you are exposed to in a day you don't have. You could quit your full time job and not read them all start to finish.

Right?

There's too much. So the reason people skim is because they go, there's something here. I just want to find the good part. Which means your job as a writer isn't to go well. I expect you to give me 45 minutes of your undivided attention. Your job as a writer is to go. I want to give you as many entry points into my writing as possible. Let me help you find the part you're looking for. Just take what is most valuable to you and leave. That's fine, right? Because you're achieving a goal. So a big thing that we emphasize and that we walk people through in ship 30 is how to structure their writing using subheads, using bullets, using lists, truncating sections together, grouping ideas together. Because what you want is you want the reader to read the headline, buy into the idea, and then quickly skim and go, that's the thing I'm looking for. And then be gone. And whether they spend three seconds doing it or 30 minutes is kind of irrelevant. You answered a question for them, you fulfilled the promise to them, you delivered for them. And speed is actually your advantage. You want that to happen as quickly as possible. You don't want them to have to slog through 28 long paragraphs in order for them to get their question answered.

And here's the opposite end of this is a lot of people will say, no one's had their life changed by a piece of writing that was skimmed. And I would push back on that and say, you're not writing to read some. You're not writing something skimmable. You're making it skimmable so they'll read the whole thing.

Right.

Because if it is skimmable, where I can say, oh, I see X, Y, and Z, now I'm going to read the full thing versus you just give them a big block of text, they're not even going to get there. And so when you feel strongly about the quality of your writing, you should do everything possible to get as many people to read it as you can. Whether that means a quote, unquote, clickbait headline, or a very nicely formatted piece, feel strongly about, hey, I'm writing something that I know if someone reads, it's going to change their life. And then I'm going to do everything I can to get them to read it.

Yeah, it's not about you. That's a big thing here. It's not about you. Doesn't matter how many hours you spent writing it, doesn't matter how great you think it is. Every choice is in service of the reader. What will the reader find most valuable? What will the reader resonate the most with? What will they find most helpful?

Right.

You're kind of irrelevant. You are the vessel, it. And these are all big point of view, zero to one. Things that we spend a lot of time on in ship 30 is that it's not just, hey, ship 30 atomic essays over 30 days. It's rethink the way you're considering writing and creating in a digital world.