How To Make Your First Million Dollars Writing Online (Anyone Can Do This!) | Nicolas Cole

We went from me and one of my best friends on his couch to 23 full time employees doing 2 million a year in revenue and 80 clients in 18 months. It was really fast. You can enter ghostwriting without writing yourself, right? You can acquire the skill and then go DM or email, pitch someone and you can get a client. But if you want to accelerate your journey, you make yourself the case study.

How do I go from tweets to clients? How do I go from LinkedIn posts to clients?

It's so easy. People don't realize that the beauty of ghostwriting is that you get paid a dividend on your talent. That's literally what's happening.

Today's guest is Nicholas Cole. This episode was recorded in Miami at Cole's studio. And Cole, I think the interesting part of his story, he has this real passion for writing. And, and over the last few years, he's built a portfolio of different writing businesses to over $10 million in value. And here's really where it gets so valuable to you. And really where I took the value is that Cole breaks down some of the main ways that you can build a multimillion dollar business writing on the Internet. From ghostwriting to starting courses to starting a newsletter. Everything that you need in order to get started. And so I think the feeling, and this is the feeling that I had after recording this episode is that it's never over. There's always an opportunity to get back up and to keep pursuing that thing that is for you. And on the other side of that, and on the other side of that hardship is a life that you can be proud of and something that you dreamed of growing up. And so, without further ado, let's get into this week's episode with Nicholas Cole.

Here's where I wanted to start because I was scrolling through your Twitter as you do, and there was something that you said, which it just resonated and I was like, okay, this is the perfect starting point for this conversation. So let me read it. Let me read it to you. If you want to do what you love, you have to work three times as hard as everyone else. Most people do not get to spend their lives doing whatever, whatever it is that they love to do. Instead, they do what they are told they should do or what their parents, town friends, or peers suggest that they do. So if you want to work on what you love, you need to see that as a privilege and not an expectation. If that's what you truly want, you have to put in the work now. Okay, so I'm Speaking to someone who wrote that. No, who did write that?

No, seriously.

That was you.

That was me.

That was you. That was your words.

At least I'm listening to it. I'm like, that's. That's pretty good. I, like, I totally forgot I wrote that. Literally. Yeah.

No, that was you.

Okay.

I thought you were with me. I know that was you. So here's where I want to begin, which is if you want to work on the things that you love, you have to work three times as hard as everyone else. I'm curious. When you. When you look at your story, when you look at your beginning, when did that belief kind of crystallize for you? When did that realization come that if I want to work on the thing that I love to do, I'm going to need to apply this kind of gargantuan work ethic to it? When did that become clear?

When I was 15 years old. I was 15, I wanted. I wanted to play in the NHL more than I wanted to do anything else in life ever. And I was the cat. I used to watch, like, the Mighty Ducks. You ever see that movie? Mighty Ducks? Oh, my God. Old school movie. But it's about all these kids, and they love playing hockey. And I used to watch that movie on repeat. And when I was 15, I fractured my spine playing hockey, and I was like, okay, the season's done. I'm not gonna be able to play anymore. And while I was sitting in bed with a brace wrapped around the bottom of my neck or bottom of my back, I started playing a video game called World of Warcraft. And there was something that clicked in my brain where I realized that I was never going to make it to the NHL, but I could do this thing even if I was injured in real life. And, like, overnight, everything that I had channeled into I want to play in the NHL got channeled into I want to play this video game. The more competitive I got at the game, the less my parents wanted me to play it. The less my parents wanted me to play it, the more rules they instituted, which meant, you know, I could only play so many hours a day, or I could only play for an hour after school or whatever it was. And that made me realize, okay, well, I'm never going to get as good at this game as I want to get unless I find ways to circumvent the system. So I started doing ridiculous things. Like, I would wait for everyone in my family to go to sleep, and then I would set an alarm and wake myself back up at midnight. And get out of bed and then play the game from midnight till 3am, then get three hours of sleep, wake up, go to school, you know. And as the years went on, the things that I was willing to do just got more and more ridiculous. And until eventually I was 17, I was one of the highest ranked players in the country. And I mean, my life was a disaster because I was barely sleeping, I was insomniac, I was up in the middle of the night competing, and it was crazy. But it taught me a lot about the lengths that you have to go to if you really want something. Because my parents were never going to sit there and go, sure, we support you playing a video game for eight hours a day. But I knew that that's what was required. And so I had a choice. Do you prioritize that and do you do that, or do you just give up and be like, okay, I guess I'm never going to achieve the thing I want to achieve? And ever since then, every single thing that I've done, I've done with that exact same energy, and I've essentially replicated the outcome over and over and over again. I was really sick growing up, undiagnosed with celiac disease. I graduated high school weighing less than £100. And then when my gaming chapter was done and I decided to throw all that focus into bodybuilding, I just did the same thing. And I ate six meals a day, every day for six years in a row. And I found the best people in downtown Chicago where I was living, like, all the big guys who were hitting the gym hard. And I was like, I'm going to become friends with you. And I just replicated the exact same thing. Put on 70 pounds of muscle, completely changed my life. Did the same thing in entrepreneurship, did the same thing in writing. It's the same thing over and over and over again. It's just applied in different vehicles.

You know, the word that comes to mind is intensity. So when I, when I hear you say that, it's like you apply this singular focus and intensity to reaching one outcome. It's like your entire mind is like focused on this thing. And that's what's helping you kind of unlock these different edges and these ways to get the outcome that you want. I'm curious, where does that intensity come from? Like, was that just at 15 years old, was that just built in that whatever the thing that I want, I'm just going to go do whatever I have to do to get it? Or is there something else? Is there a story that Kind of switch that. That unlock that intensity?

Yeah. No, I think at my core, I'm a very lazy person. If I ever take my foot off the gas, my default is I'll go right back to playing video games and I'll watch TV and I'll eat whatever I want. I'll just hang out. Like, that is my default. I have learned how to turn that intensity on and leave it on. And now I'm at a phase of my life where I'm learning how to turn it off, because there have been a lot of periods where I will turn on that intensity, leave it on. And then, like, when I was building my first company, I pushed so hard that I ended up in the hospital with shingles, and I was on painkillers for two months because I'd pushed myself into burnout. And so it is a skill. I think it's a skill a lot more people can learn than they might think or give themselves credit for. But, yeah, now I'm at a phase where I'm learning how to turn it off and how to pull back. But I think I get it from my parents. They're both really driven individuals. I grew up in a very driven household. All of my siblings are driven. Just, it's always, what are you doing? What are you achieving? How's it going? What's the problem? Why aren't you achieving? You know, and, yeah, I do think it's something that anyone can learn, though, you know What?

So at 15 years old, and I. And I always think about this and reflect on this, because when I was 19, I tore my Achilles tendon. And at the time, I was in my second year of university, and I was studying abroad in Canada in Vancouver, and it always been my dream to study at a university in North America. And one month in, I turn my Achilles. And I remember the first. The first week or so afterwards was just getting over the mental barrier of, like, I always wanted this thing. And then it felt like it was taken away.

Oh, yeah, it's horrible.

And so I'm curious for you, because you have this dream of being a hockey player, and then you suffer this injury, which must feel so debilitating, but then you make this pivot into World of Warcraft, and I'm like, I just remember the place that I was at when I taught my Achilles, and the. Just almost like a lethargy, like a. Just no energy to apply myself to something else. So what flipped the switch for you that made you kind of start applying yourself to being a World of Warcraft player?

At this time, this is, this has been something I've reflected on a lot because I think the difference between a video game versus a real life pursuit, there are, there are concrete similarities, but the difference is a video game is very stimulating. There's a lot of baked in dopamine. And so in the beginning, it wasn't day one. I was like, I give up on this dream and now I have a different one. The first step was this dream just got ripped away from me. This new vehicle is an awesome way to distract myself. So it was a coping mechanism. But in that coping mechanism was a lot of other ways to trigger my brain into taking action. So it's like, oh, you completed a quest. Okay, your character gained a level. Oh, you made friends with some new players. Now you're in a guild. Oh, your guild just killed a boss. Now you got an epic piece of loot. And all those little carrots eventually then motivated me to go, oh, I could get better, I could get better, I could get better. Until eventually I thought, well, I could get so good at this that maybe I can compete. And this is, I told my parents I don't even want to go to college. I just want to play video games professionally. This was 2007 before esports was even a thing. So keep in mind, like, there's not a lot to point to to be like, this is a career path. Now today is very different. But yeah, there was a lot in that experience that I think trained my brain. It gave me a model, it showed me as a kid. This game gave you quests and if you completed them, you made progress. And I think the growth that I had to go through was eventually saying goodbye to the game and being like, okay, this was a great learning vehicle. Now I need to go apply myself in real life. And something I still do today is I come up with those quests for myself. Like, if, if I'm ever confronted with an obstacle, I, without even meaning to, I think back to something that I experienced as a 15 year old being like, you really wanted that cape. You really didn't want to go slay 300 bores in order to get it, but you did. Okay, well, this is no different. You want this outcome, There's a fixed number of reps between you and that outcome. Go do it. And so I've, even today I still use that as a model for understanding how to make progress in something.

You know what I'm curious about the, the writing quest and, and where that began. Because if I look at your, your Twitter bio It's going to say that you're a digital writer and that you're building a $10 million like, portfolio of writing businesses. And so it feels to me like there's been a number of successful quests to get to that point with everything that you, you guys have built among the ghost writing and the cohort based courses and the software. And there's so many quests that you've gone on. But take me back to the first one. Like where did the writing, the writing quest, if we call it that, where did that begin?

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The first one was just a journal. I just wanted to understand myself. It was just me as a kid and I can't explain it. Sometimes I think that we have these innate interests coming into life. Like you just gravitate to something and you were just meant to gravitate to it. But even as a kid, the idea of journaling was so mind blowing to me because I felt like it was a way to see myself outside myself, which is really powerful because then if you're feeling a certain way, it's one thing to feel it. It's one thing to know that you're feeling it, but it's very different to have to vocalize it and put it on the page and then look at it outside of yourself. And that Was mind blowing to me. And once I got the taste of that, I was hooked. I'm pretty sure in my yearbook as a fourth grader, when they ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? What's your dream? I said, I want to write a book. I have no idea why I said that. I just, I like couldn't help it. I was just gravitating to it. And the injury component is interesting because I, I fractured my spine when I was 15, then I came back and tried to play hockey again my junior year and I fractured it again when I was 17. And then I got into bodybuilding as a way of healing my back because I, I was having so many issues. And one of the things, my dad's a spine surgeon, ironically, and my dad said, you really need to work on strengthening all these muscles in your back. Because I was really malnourished. I didn't know I had celiac disease. I had all of these issues going on. So I fixed my diet. I started eating a gluten free diet, which I didn't realize I was essentially making myself sick for 18 years. And I started going to the gym, both as ways of fixing my health and fixing my back. Got super into bodybuilding for six, seven years. Thought maybe this is a career path. And then when I was 26, herniated a disc in my neck. So then, okay, now bodybuilding's gone. And one of the things that's, to me, one of the things that's interesting about the, the meta game of writing is especially after having gone through three somewhat major injuries through like sports or something, competitive writing is a game that I can play until I'm dead. I would say I could write even like 50% into Alzheimer's. Like, who knows what that would produce? You know, like, you can write pretty much up until the point when you're done. And I'm fascinated by the idea that sports and other, a lot of other games, even business to some degree, you can't play forever. Athletes have a fixed window. Even CEOs tend to have a fixed window. But in a lot of cases, the greatest writers of all time don't even end up producing their best works until the last third of their life. And so if you acquire a certain level of proficiency as an athlete in 10 years or 20 years, to me it's an interesting question of, well, what level of proficiency can you acquire over 80 years? And so to me that's like the meta quest. That's the, I want to see where that lands the very first quest was, I'm just journaling. And then the quest that made me go, well, maybe I can do something with writing was I had a gaming blog as a teenager, so I would go compete against the best players around the world, and then before bed, I would write a blog post like, here are the strategies to build these types of teams. Or ironically, it's very similar to exactly what we're doing right now. Same way I'm explaining, here's how to write, here's how to build a digital business, here's how to do something. My introduction to writing was how to. In the gaming world, it's the same thing. How to beat these types of players, how to beat these types of teams, how to optimize your character. And all I did was just take that and then duplicate it across a bunch of different industries until we are where we are now.

You know, it reminds me of something that Gary Vaynerchuk says, which I think is so good, and I've stuck onto it for years, which is document, don't create. So it's like the way that you were writing, it wasn't really like you were creating something. It was, I'm already doing this thing. I'm already playing World of Warcraft, and then I'm just documenting what's happening, like what I'm doing, how I would do it better. And it's this way to create content in any arena that is deeply authentic and you're an expert in it because it's all based off your experiences. So it's something that you can start right now, which, like, you're truly an expert in this one thing, guaranteed an expert in your experiences. That's kind of what it sounds like.

Yeah. You know, what's interesting is, and I have a lot of respect for what Gary's built, like, there were a lot of things that he did way before a lot of other people, and you have to respect that. But I don't really agree with the document versus create, because there. There's a big nuance in there that gets ignored, which is when. When you say the word document, it essentially implies you're not thinking about what's being created, you're just doing. And so what. What happens is then you have a lot of people that go, all right, I'm going to document myself walking to work, and then I'm going to document myself eating lunch, and then I'm going to document myself doing a mundane task. It's not valuable like that that you haven't captured anything. And the Irony is the moment that you then start asking the question, well, how do I document something in a way that is valuable? Well, you've inherently moved into the creation side because now you're pretty. You're pre thinking about the thing that you're documenting, right? So document versus create is. It sounds nice, but that's not really what's happening. Because anyone who's successfully quote, unquote, documenting isn't just documenting. They're thinking about what to document, which means they're creating. You know, I think what you're alluding to is more, and I see this every day with the things that we build. It's almost like there's something in between the two, which is synthesizing. It's like you did a thing and now you have to take the time to think about how you did the thing. Most people just live their lives in a vacuum. They take for granted all the things that they know. And because they take for granted the things that they know, they don't ever ask the question, well, who would get value out of me sharing the things that I know? That's a lot of the work we end up doing in ship 30 or other. Some of our other writing programs is just helping people realize you're sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of monetizable knowledge. The problem is you take for granted the fact that you know things because you're not aware of all the people who don't know the things that you know. And so if you go back to the gaming example, right, It's. It would be one thing for me to just compete, it would be another. Documenting would be, I'm just going to record my screen while I compete. Today, that's known as streaming, right? That is documenting. You're just going to watch me play the game. But you inherently move into creation the moment I have to sit there and go, okay, yeah, I just beat this team. But how did I do it? How do I explain that to someone? And then there's levels. And this is what makes the world of education such a rabbit hole. I think education is one of the most misunderstood industries on planet Earth because everyone thinks that if you ask someone how they do what they do, everyone thinks, oh, I just have to tell you that I did it and that you should do it too. Like, how many times do you read a book or you listen to a podcast or you are talking to someone and you're like, how did you do that thing? And they go, well, it's all about authenticity. You just have to Be authentic. And you just got to do it. And you just got to apply yourself. That's not helpful. That doesn't actually tell you what to do. Right. So the levels to education is recognizing that to make things easily understood is difficult. It takes time to really synthesize and understand, okay, I beat this team. But how? And then recognizing a layer below that, okay, if I explain how, there's probably a bunch of terms in there you don't understand. So now I have to explain those terms, and then I have to explain the context of those terms. And why is that important? And so that's. I just think. I mean, traditional education now is facing the biggest problem with this. But even digital creators or people that want to create courses or write books or launch products or whatever it is, it's one of those games that's very easy to start and very easy to play, and anyone can play it. But it is hard to master because it requires you to take a lot of time and ask the hard questions. How did that actually happen? But how? Because of what? How? Because of what? You have to go seven layers deep.

You know what I'm curious about? I'm actually really interested to get your opinion on this. If I said to you that every aspiring entrepreneur should develop a writing habit, and, and here's the reason that I ask it. When you mentioned your writing journey, your writing quest started with journaling, and I listened to the way that you describe it, it becomes clear to me that what it was allowing you to do was process your experiences. Yeah, and here's what I mean. I was reading this book called Story Worthy, and it's written by, like this. I think it's like a poet, like a grand slam poetry champion or something, incredible storyteller. And a lot of the stories he tells are just everyday experiences that were happening in his life. He was walking his dog. Something happened while he was walking his dog. He was going to the grocery store, you know, car swung by, something happened. And it's these like, trivial, everyday things. But because of the way that he's processed it, reflected on it, and pulled out kind of this story, this engaging story, it's now something. And it reminds me. It's like there's actually all of these things that are happening to us every day in our lives that are not interesting at all to us because they seem so routine, they seem so normal, they seem so everyday. But if you could reflect on that and then also frame it in the right way and deliver it the right way, there's actually something there. And that kind of feels to a certain extent, when you talk about becoming a creator, there's this kind of like, critical. This is kind of critical thinking component to it, which is, okay, this thing is happening, but what's actually the really interesting part of this experience?

Mm.

And so I go back to my original question. Should every aspiring entrepreneur should start their journey with developing a writing habit? Quick break.

I think one of the things that I understand is that when you're unhappy with your situation, when you're unhappy with your job, your workplace, your manager, whatever, and you're looking for that route out, sometimes the most dispiriting thing can be not knowing what to do. However, it's so important to get started. And the sponsor of today's show gives you a profitable side hustle that you can get started with right now. And so the sponsor is the Premium Ghostwriting Academy. This is Cole's free five day email course that will teach you how to get ghost writing clients right now. Now, in terms of Cole's credentials, he built his own ghostwriting business to over $2 million in revenue in just 18 months. And in that time, he worked with over 300 industry leaders writing for them. And he's broken down the main lessons, the core of what you need to know so that you can start to get those results and start to land $5,000 a month clients. And here's the key. When you get started, you build momentum. And when you build momentum, you achieve outcomes that you never dreamed of. And so I just wanted to make it so easy. So go to the link in the description. You'll find the free five day email course. Get started and thank me later.

Now back to the show.

I'm gonna go with no. I think writing is extremely beneficial for a lot of different reasons that you covered, but entrepreneurship in general, it completely depends on, well, what are you building, what's your goal? And. And also, what do we mean by building a writing habit? Because the reality is we all write probably more than we do anything else. Text is the communication of the. It's the foundation of communication, right? So even if entrepreneur isn't sitting there going, well, I've blocked off 30 minutes every morning to journal or to develop this writing habit. They're already writing. They're writing in emails, they're writing in memos, they're writing in, hey, I think we should do XYZ in Slack. And so A, it depends on, well, what's the goal? What do they want to get out of it? And B, the real benefit of building any sort of habit is understanding what it compounds to. So are you building the habit because you want to practice building a habit? Great vehicle for that. Do you want to build a daily writing habit because you want to clarify your thinking? Also a great vehicle. Do you want to build a daily writing habit because, you know, 500 words a day multiplied across 365 days in a year means you will write a book in a year and that's your goal, you know, so the real question is, well, what do you want it to compound to?

You know, that makes sense. That makes sense. You know, I'm. I was reading a medium post by someone, a lady that had worked with you, and you know, actually I want to pull up exactly the thing that she said. She says, I know of no one better at merging writing passion with entrepreneurial success. And here's where my mind went when I heard that, which is, I think, I think what you've been able to do at a really high level is not only master the skill of writing, but then also make it incredibly effective at driving business success. And so it's like business plus writing. And so it feels to me like when I even hear your story and the beginnings and the origins of kind of your writing journey, it started as almost like a passion, like it was just something that you wanted to do and you put it out there and you did. What was the point when it actually started driving business money outcomes for you? Where did that begin?

I would say Probably I was 26, I had just quit my full time job and said, I'm going to go all in on writing. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to figure it out. And I fell into ghostwriting a month later. And all I, I went from making three grand a month to 20 grand a month very, very quickly. And that, I mean a, you know, so what was the catalyst for that? Well, the catalyst for that was quitting my job and realizing if I don't figure something out, I'm screwed. And I think there's, there can be a lot of benefit to sort of putting yourself in a, not an extreme situation, but a slight situation of you got to figure this out, otherwise you're not going to be happy with the outcome. So I'd say that was the emotional catalyst. But as soon as I started ghostwriting, my. The way I thought about writing and monetizing writing completely changed. It made me realize that writers have so many more skills that are valuable to other people than you're ever taught or are aware of. Kind of Goes back to what I was saying. You take for granted the information that you have. You take for granted the things that you know. Ghostwriting has led to all sorts of different things. I mean, I started writing out or writing for individuals, but that moved into messaging for companies, messaging for startups, helping startups clarify pitch decks so they could raise huge amounts of money. Sales, training, salespeople, copywriting, selling products. I ended up essentially doing everything. And I've written almost every way that you could write on the Internet. I think I've probably done at some point. But, yeah, I think it was probably when I was 26 and I started to. And again, the catalyst for that is realizing I didn't want to do anything else. Like, nothing else interested me. I wanted to write. Before that, I wanted to be a bodybuilder. I got injured. Before that, I wanted to be a pro gamer. And that was like, actually, I missed the boat on that one. If I had kept with it, I probably would have done great because esports really flourished, like, 18 months after I quit. So I was like, okay, I missed the boat on that one. And hockey, I got injured. So all the other things that I've been interested in didn't pan out. And writing was. I was always interested, and I knew it was a game I could play for the rest of my life, and I didn't want to do anything else. So when that's the case, you're confronted with a decision. You're like, I either figure out how to do the thing that I want to do, or I give up and then what? I just go get a job and that's my life. And I just wasn't satisfied with that. So something I am a very firm believer in and I encourage other writers to do is to study lots of different types of writing and study lots of different types of business models. You know, that's part of why I've been able to create what I've created. Because I haven't just done one type of writing. I've done 15 different types of writing, and I haven't worked with one business model. I've built companies in 10 different business models. So I think if more writers were open to learning. Why don't fiction writers study sales copywriters? That's stupid. You should. And why don't sales copywriters study more literature? They should. And I don't meet very many people that do both. But sitting on my desk right now is Nabokov's Lolita and the entire archive of Gary Halpert's Most successful sales letters. I am such a firm believer in studying at these unlikely intersections.

You know, you said something interesting, which is you stumbled into ghostwriting. And I think the reason I say it's interesting, you have to also look at the time period in that it was happening. I think especially on Twitter and LinkedIn and these sort of platforms. Being a ghostwriter has become more of a trendy thing. It's more of, like a common thing, I think in the time period that you're speaking about.

Oh, no one was doing it.

Yeah. Maybe like a music sense or writing a book, I guess you would have, like a ghostwriter. But, like, on Twitter or on LinkedIn, that was not common at all.

Yeah.

I'm curious at that point. How do you. How does one stumble into it? Like, how did it come about?

It literally was. I started working with a guy. He was a CEO, had built a family business, ended up selling it for a billion dollars, and was writing a book about his entrepreneurship advice. And he found my writing on Quora. It's all the same stuff. It's like I started at the same place that everyone else starts at. You know, it's not like I woke up and was like, oh, I immediately have it figured out. I started in the same. Same spot. He came across something I wrote on Quora. We got on the phone, I started giving him some ideas and some feedback, and I was like, I think these are some interesting things you could do. And he was the one who said to me, oh, it's like, you're my ghostwriter. And I literally sat there. I didn't say it out loud because I didn't want to sound stupid, but I was like, what is that? I don't know. What? I've never. I've never heard that term in the context of what we're talking about. And after he said that, I thought, okay, well, if he thinks that, I bet a bunch of other people will think that. So I started referring to myself as a ghostwriter. And then one client turned to 2, 2 turned to 4, 4 turned to 8. Most people don't know or realize that I built the first ghostwriting agency for founders and executives and investors and New York Times bestsellers and industry thought leaders. Like, everyone that you see now that. Where from your perspective, you go, this is now a trend. Like, that was not a trend. It was the complete opposite. A lot of times I would tell people, yeah, I'm a ghoster. And they'd be like, isn't that unethical? You know, so there's A. There's been a lot of work that came before this, and now I wouldn't even say that it's trendy yet I still think it's a fraction of how big the category is ultimately going to be. Because so many people need ghostwriters. The misunderstanding is that people think a ghostwriter. So say you're the client and I'm the ghostwriter. What people think is happening is you go, I need a ghostwriter. And I go, I got you. And you go, make me sound smart. And I go, sounds good. And that's the nature of our relationship. And that's not what's happening at all, really. An amazing ghostwriter is a co collaborator. Why am I saying that? Weird. Co collaborator. What? Co collaborator?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's. That's a word, right? Yeah, Wordsmith over here. And. And so what you're doing, your job is to stress test the client's thinking. Your job is to get on the phone or meet up with them and go, you have this idea. Okay, great. I did some reading of my own. I thought about it. I talked to a couple other people that are knowledgeable without divulging who you are, you know, and here's some other things to think about. Here's some interesting research that I found. What if we built it on this? You are helping them clarify their idea. You're helping them organize it, you're helping them bring it to life. And so it is very much a situation where you couldn't create that without them, and in many ways, they couldn't create it without you. And there's a magical combination that happens when you pair those two types of people together, you know, and so I believe, same way I believed back in 2016 when I started doing this, that there are so many smart people in the world who struggle to share all of the knowledge that they've accumulated in their career because they don't have the time and they don't have the expertise. And even if they have the expertise, it's not worth their time. So think about how many people in the world need a ghostwriter to help them. Otherwise, their knowledge stays stuck in their head and it never gets shared. What a shame.

It's almost like you're the unlock. It reminds me of when you were speaking about the journaling, where it's like you have all of these experiences in your head, but the journal was like the conduit to formalizing that, to codifying it.

Yep.

And then for the ghost, for the ghostwriter, and then the client, it's like, the client already has all of these things. The ghostwriters, like the. The conduit to unlocking it.

Yeah.

So formalizing it, codifying it, you know, we're actually. Where I want to go next is here, which is you speak about the power of that moment, of that prospect at the time, saying, oh, you're almost like my ghostwriter. Like, I call that. That's almost like it's a moment of signal. And what I mean by that, and I experienced this with the podcast, is if you're trying to do something creative or you're producing something, even if you're doing a business, actually in the beginning, you're, like, sending out a bunch of tests, like experiments. You're sending out a bunch of things. And for most people in the beginning, nothing is really catching traction. You do not have that moment of signal where something out of the ordinary happens, and it just. It directs you. It shows you that you're in the right space. And here's the problem that I see with a lot of people is that they're not sending out enough things to get any response back. And so when I. When I listen to your story, I'm curious about the mindset of posting these answers to Quora. And even for the person that's like, okay, I think ghost writing could be my thing, or it's something that I'm at least interested in. Maybe they know. They're certain of that in their mind, but they have no idea of how to get the first client, how to get that first person that says to them, oh, you're kind of like my ghostwriter. They have no idea how to get to that moment.

Mm.

So I'm curious, both from your experience and then the experience of teaching over 10,000 other people how to do it, how does someone get to that first moment of signal?

The.

Oh, you could be my ghostwriter. Or, you know, here's your shot. Here's the kind of. Here's the start. Here's the step one, where you start.

Yeah. So the thing with signal is a. Everyone is creating significantly less than they think is required. Creating or doing reps or whatever it is. It's like the amount of volume it takes to move the needle in anything is more than you think. It just is. But then second is even when you start doing something. We see this in ship 30, just helping people start writing on the Internet. There is signal. Signal happens. It's just people don't realize it. So, for example, you write 10 things, nine of them all get one, like, one of them gets two likes. What someone does is they look and they go, I wrote 10 things and nothing happened. That's not what I see. I see one thing that outperformed everything else by double because there's 100% difference between one like and two likes, right? So I. I feel like, especially on the Internet, we're also desensitized because we see so many big numbers all the time. It's like, oh, this video got 178 million views, and this person has 56 million followers. Like, we're so desensitized that when you're starting out, you think that the signal you're looking for is, I wrote nine things. They all got one like. And I wrote the 10th thing, and it got 5,000 likes. That's what you think you're looking for. And that's not what you should be looking for. Should be looking for all of the tiny little mountains, right? All the little. It's like not even a mountain. It's like a hill of sand on the sidewalk. You know what I mean? Like, it's nothing, but at the same time, it's everything. Because that tiny little thing is what shows you, hey, you should steer in that direction a little bit. And if all you did was just look for those little moments and then keep following them, you will find what you're looking for. And I know it because I've done it over and over and over again in industries that couldn't be more different than each other, right? Like, gaming and bodybuilding have very little to do with each other, literally speaking, Right? And those have very. Have nothing to do with writing. But why can I replicate success over and over and over again? Because you have to attune yourself to all these little signals and recognize that there's only one way you lose the game. You stop. So whenever someone comes to me and they're like, I started doing this thing, and I guess it's not for me, I'm like, how long have you been doing it? They're like a couple weeks or four days. I'm like, okay, I've been doing it since I was 17 years old and I'm 33. Every day, like, there's a level of volume and intensity that we talked about that it is not that difficult. And the reason that it's not difficult is because the only way that you lose is if you stop. That's it. So it's your choice, you know?

You know, it reminds me of something that Alex Hormozy said, which is most businesses that he comes across Especially early on. The problem that they have is a volume problem.

Yeah.

Just haven't done the thing enough. It's purely a volume problem. You know, I want to take. I want to take the example and the analogy further. So let's say I want to be a ghostwriter. I want to make 10,000, 100,000, maybe even a million from doing ghostwriting. And I start out, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to start tweeting. People tell me I need to produce content. I'm just going to start doing it. Send out 10 tweets, nine of those tweets, one like one of those tweets, 10 likes. What am I doing? It's like a little. It's exactly how you describe it. It's a little kind of Mohill of signal.

Mm.

It's not a massive, outsized result. Oh, I'm viral. But it's many orders of magnitude better than the one like tweets.

Mm.

So what's the mindset? What's the psychology? Okay, I've gotten a little bit of something. What am I doing next?

You're doubling down on it. You're doing. You're going, whatever. Whatever variables are in that thing that just worked, I'm going to try and replicate. It's a science experiment. So, for example, and I. The thing that's interesting about this is I and Dickie, my business partner, and everyone that's in our ecosystem that sort of has adopted this philosophy of ours. It is a very scientific approach to getting better at something. Right. And so, for example, I still do this today, at the end of the week, roughly, I will look back at everything I wrote that week. And I write about lots of different types of things. I write about how to start writing online. I write about ghostwriting. I write about copywriting. I write about AI and the intersection of AI and writing. I write about fiction writing, write about all these different types of sub niches within the larger umbrella of writing. And at the end of the week, I look at those, and one week I might go, wow, I wrote this long form. This literally just happened last week. I wrote this long form about how we use copywriting in our emails to convert people from our email list to ship 30 that outperformed everything else I wrote that week. So what am I going to do? I am going to go write about that topic a hundred more times. And what most people do is a. They don't recognize when a little blip happens. Just goes right by them. They're like, oh, that outperformed everything. Else cool. And then they just leave it. And then second is when they see something work, they go, oh, I'll try that again. And then they write about it a second time, and then it sort of flops. And then they go, I guess this isn't for me. Volume, like, what you have, it's momentum. You. You can't stop doing the thing and expect the ball to keep rolling, you know, and it becomes addictive. Like, I think part of what drives me now at this stage of where I am just with writing in general, is now there's almost this built in dopamine for me where I go, I've been doing this for so long that I have such a competitive advantage. Think about how long it would take if someone else was like, I want to have all of the skills that Cole has. A, I would love to share what I know and help accelerate the journey. But B, one of the things that they have to confront or recognize is, well, he's been doing this for 12 years. And so to me, as you do something more and more, the longer you do something, it's almost like this confirmation bias where for yourself, you go, I am so far ahead that I have such a competitive advantage. So when you think about where to invest your time, like, for me, whenever someone's like, oh, this would be a really interesting thing you should do. If it means exiting the lane that I'm in, I'm like, why would I do that? That's like me creating a new character. That's like me playing a completely new game. Why? I'm like, miles and miles and miles ahead in this game. And so the success compounds which allows you to move faster. So the hardest part of the journey is day one, because the more you do something, the larger the competitive advantage grows. Right? Something we say in chip 30 is the more you write, the more you write. The hardest part of writing is when you're not writing. Because when you're not writing, you have no data. You have no signal. The more you write, the more data you gather, the more feedback you get. The more ideas you have, the more you write, the more data you gather, right? And then it starts rolling faster and faster and faster.

You know what? Actually, when I. And. And I, it was really good, actually, when I researched Dickie. And then also you. Which is the premise of the ship. 30 for 30 is just to write for 30 consecutive days. And it's not actually even so much the tactic of that. It's the mindset behind that.

Oh, yeah.

Which is just doing that consistent action first of all, it's so actionable. Like any human can start by doing that. And it's going to give you all of the data you need. It's going to be the basis of everything you do afterwards. Yeah, it's going to give you so much data for what's next. And I want to get into to what's next because I think one of the interesting things is, and I can feel it. It's probably the question is on people's minds as they're listening to this, which is, how do I go from tweets to clients? How do I go from LinkedIn posts to clients?

Oh, so, so easy. Tell me it's so easy. People, people don't realize that the beauty of ghostwriting is that you get paid a dividend on your talent. That's literally what's happening. So my first ghostwriting client, you can, you can enter ghostwriting without writing yourself. You can acquire the skill and then go DM or email, pitch someone, and you can get a client without writing yourself. You can, but if you want to accelerate your journey, you make yourself the case study. The reason that my ghostwriting journey accelerated so quickly was because I was my own case study. I would talk to someone and they would go, I want to start writing articles on the Internet. And I would go, great, I know how to do that. And they're like, well, how do I know that you know how to do that? And I would pull up my Quora and I'd go, well, I got a quarter million views on my articles last month. I can do that for you. Right? So I was my own case study. And I. And I was my own case study way before a lot of the more impressive quote unquote metrics or accomplishments that I've collected since, like, I. My beginning was literally I wrote something that got 17 positive comments, and it seemed like people really liked it. Well, that's 17 more than whoever I'm talking to, you know, so whenever people go, how do I. How do I transition from, yeah, I'm creating some type of content to how do I start landing clients again? You have to not take for granted what you know. By practicing on yourself, you now know things that the person that you're pitching doesn't know. So your job is to consult them. Your job is to be a free consultant and help educate them and go, oh, you want to start writing on X? You want to start writing on LinkedIn? Well, I've been doing that for six months. Let me tell you how this game works and what Happens. This is like the no sell sell, right? The no sell sell is I'm going to educate you and I'm going to tell you how the game works. And the more I educate you, the more you're going to sit there and go, boy, that sounds like a lot of work. I don't want to do that on my own. So I'm not convincing you of anything. I'm literally just telling you, hey, I want you to be successful if you go do this on your own. Here's what you need to do. Here's how to optimize your bio, here's how to think about viral hooks, here's how to structure your posts, here's the way to think about formatting. And the longer I go on, the more likely you are to go, you know what, I'm good. Can I just hire you? Can you just do all that for me? And that that whole strategy is everything that we teach people in our premium ghost trading academy. But it's the same thing I've been preaching for years, which is free value, free value, free value. Be a free consultant. Because the more you educate someone, the more likely they are to trust you, the more likely they are to just go ask her. Doing this on my own, just you come help me.

You know, I like that way of doing things because I think so many people have and I was like this. So I speak to it personally. They have a limiting belief around sales.

Oh yeah.

It's like they don't see themselves as a say, I'm not a salesperson, I'm not a salesman. It feels incredibly like inauthentic, like disingenuous, like I'm trying to get money out of this. It just, there's just so much of this limiting beliefs and there's so much working against them when it comes to sales. And so the mindset of it's not even really, it's not selling in the way that you would think about it. It's not going to the market and someone's trying to get you to buy something. It's education and sharing expertise and demonstrating that expertise. Has someone think to themselves, well, they kind of sound like they could really execute on this.

Yeah.

Like they're the person.

Let me, I'll give you an example. I use this all the time. Okay. Imagine you're a plumber. You're walking down, you're walking through the suburbs and you walk past this house and you can see, it's very subtle, but you can see that the lawn is flooding a little bit like there's all this moisture coming out of the lawn. And you're like, I know what's causing that. So you walk up to the door and you knock. You're like, hello, introduce myself. I was just in the neighborhood, I was walking by, I see your lawn here. I don't know if you're aware, but it looks like there's, it's flooding. It looks like there's an underlying problem. Person goes, that's so funny you say that because I've been looking at that for three weeks and I have no idea where it's coming from. You're like, well, hey, for context, I'm a plumber. I know what's probably causing that. I've seen this in a bunch of other houses. It's probably connected to your side bathroom here on the side. You know, we've seen this happen a couple times. Do you mind if I come in and just point it out? That way you at least know what's going on. Person's like, oh my gosh, thank you. I've been sitting here wondering how does this work, right? So you walk in, you go into the bathroom. You're like, yep, there it is right there. And they go, well, what do I do about it? And you're like, well, I'm happy to fix it for you if you'd like. What are they gonna say? Did you sell them? You didn't quote, unquote, sell anything. All you did was just say you have a problem. And I know why you have that problem. Which is no different than me pulling up the website of a multibillion dollar company and going, hey, that's interesting. You have all of this web traffic, but your CTA to your newsletter is horrible. And I looked up your web traffic and you're getting, you know, 50 million views a month. And I bet your opt in rate is garbage. I know how to fix that. I'm just going to tell you how to fix it. Oh, and by the way, here are all the things that you should know when fixing it. At the end of that call, they're going to go, thank you. And sorry, do you do this for people? Can we just pay you to help do this for us? Done. And so whenever someone goes, I don't want to sell, I don't want to be salesy. It's like A, you don't even know what that means. You don't really know what you're saying, and B, that's fine, I don't either. The whole strategy isn't to sell something. The strategy is to educate people on a problem they didn't know they had, or a problem they know they have, but they've been waiting for someone to come knocking on the door going, I know how to fix that.

No, that's pretty good. That's really good. You know, I like it when people make things really simple. And an example of this is Alex Hormozi has this thing where he says if you want to go from zero, from zero dollars to a million dollars, what you need to do is you need to focus on one product, one customer avatar, one channel to sell it through zero to a million, focus on those things. And so I'm curious when it comes to, I think so many people are trying to figure out like their niche or who's the customer avatar. And when I, when I think about your story, it feels like not only were you doing this thing that no one was really doing it in that way at the time, but it also feels like you took up a lot of the market share in a very specific area. Like the entrepreneur, the leader, the executive, you were kind of the guy for that. And so I'm curious, what's the process of doing that? Of like, I have some clients within this field and I have an idea of, you know, the person that seems to really resonate with what I do. How do I now take over that whole thing and really establish myself as I'm the person in this industry to go to?

There's a lot of pieces in that question. I mean, I think it's worth recognizing that our agency got to a couple million in revenue, 20, 20 ish full time employees. I forget maybe like 20 to 23. And even that, like if you talk about dominating a market, like the market for people who need ghostwriters is in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. So even my agency, I mean in the context of that, like that's a blip on the radar. You know, maybe from a perception standpoint it was bigger. And also it helps when you essentially have zero competition because we were the first ones to do it. So I think over time that will change, you know, but really it's just about looking for patterns. Like we started to notice very early on that our target client was the founder of a series A B ish startup. That was our sweet spot. If we could talk to someone who had just raised a big round of funding, the likelihood that they would want to hire us, hearing our pitch and the way that we understood you just raised a round, this is what you're going to need to do with the money. Right. We could, out of 10 sales calls, we would close seven of them. Like it. We understood exactly what to say to that type of person. And the reason that we understood that was because we talked to that type of person over and over and over again. And every time we would talk to them, me and my co founder at the time, different business, we would jam with each other and go, okay, well when we said this, didn't get a great response. But when we said this, they immediately were hooked. Okay, so let's ditch the first thing and let's keep the second thing. Right. And you're just iterating from there, but same thing. It's like the signal is there. I just find that it's almost like the skill, the root of the root, the skill that most people either don't have or need to prioritize working on is recognizing when these opportunities arise and having the discipline yourself to iterate. It takes, it takes focus. Right? It's like you have an experience and then you pause and you go, okay, what happened? Okay, I learned from what happened. Now let me implement that the next time I have an experience. Okay, what happened? You know, and I find a lot of people skip that mini reflection process in between. It's probably why we've grown so quickly, because both Dickie and I are avid journalers. Like, not a day goes by where one of us doesn't say to the other, I was just journaling about X. I came to a conclusion, you know, and so if you think about the speed at which we're able to have an experience, learn, and then implement our learnings is very, very high.

Yeah, the speed of learning and like pulling insights. I, I think about that. Like certain people are having experiences, but they're not pulling any insights from those experiences.

Yeah, what's the point?

Yeah, yeah, it's such a good point. You know what? I had, I had a moment as I was listening to you and you talk about ghostwriting and you say the fact that this is potentially an industry that is several hundreds of million to a billion. And I had a moment almost of disbelief where, when you think at its core what the skill of ghost writing is, to think that that's like a billion dollar plus industry. I'm curious, when you reflect even on your own story, is there a moment? And I don't know whether when it, whether it was, whether when your agency was making like $2 million or even when you guys were doing ship 30 for 30. You guys have educated over 10,000 students at this point, was there a moment of disbelief of like, how big this opportunity is because anyone can write, right? Like most, most people. Most people have the ability to write and have never thought about doing this. So was there a moment of disbelief for you?

Yeah, there were two. There was, there was one. When we started my ghostwriting agency, and I remember at the time, it was my first business. I was young and I remember I was, I was staying with my, my co founder at the time. He's one of my best friends and I was in his one bedroom apartment in Atlanta. We were just hanging out. We had had like a couple clients and then in one weekend we like doubled. We went from like three clients to six clients. And all of a sudden we went from, we're trying to do this thing to. Both of us were making more than we had ever made before. We were both making like, I don't know, quarter million bucks a year each. And I was like, this is going to be something. And we both just knew it. And we were like, okay. And at our height, we were working with 80 clients at any given time. And really well known people, like really, really impressive titans, you know, and it was, it was such a cool business. It taught me so much. That's why I also love now mentoring and helping other people start ghostwriting businesses. Because I think it was. I really believe that ghostwriting is the most effective vehicle for learning. Getting paid to learn, building your network, practicing all of the skills that you're going to practice as a writer anyways and getting paid really, really well for it relative to any other sort of career path for writers. It's the ultimate, you know. And then I had the same moment happen about maybe like six months into starting ship 30 with Dickie, like six months in. It really clicked for me because it, because before that I was like, who's going to want to write? There can't be that many people in the world that want to write. And then about six months in, I realized, no, like, everyone in the world is going to want to write. And now the opportunity in front of us is so much bigger than I think I, he or anyone else really recognizes.

So, so that moment with ship 30 was, was that just the volume, the volume of people that were interested confirmed to you there's a lot of people.

That want to know how to write? Yeah, we, we went from 80 people in a cohort to 200 people to 300 people to 500 people to a thousand people really quickly. And, and it wasn't just the number of people. It was what they were saying. It was the experience of it. Like, people would finish ship 30 and on the celebration call they would be like, yeah, writing had a big impact on me. But even just practicing this habit spilled over into my health and wellness and that spilled over into my family and my everyday habits got better. And I feel like I just experienced this life changing outcome. We didn't hear that once or twice. We heard that over and over and over and over and over again. And when you see that, and you see that happen with the majority of people who don't identify as a writer, they just want to start writing or they view writing as a vehicle for something else. You realize that the market isn't people who identify as writers and want to get better. The market is everyone who hasn't started writing yet. And that's a lot of people. That's a big.

That's a big shift. That's a big shift. Okay. You know, I want to go a bit deeper with the ghost writing, which is there gets to a point where you're getting clients and you even spoke about it at one point. You have 80 clients. And for someone like me, that is, I go into this bunker sometimes where I'm like, I want to do everything myself. And the thought of having 80 clients myself is dizzying. Like, I don't even want to think about it. And so I'm curious. I'm curious about kind of making it an operation of. Of being able to scale something without reducing quality. And so can you talk me through that? Like, I. You're starting to get clients, you're starting to really hit scale, and you have something, an offer that is working, you have the level of confidence that you can sell it again and again and again. What about internally? What is it starting to look like in the organization? Like, walk me through it.

Yeah. So first of all, I'm a pretty firm believer that the ideal ghostwriting agency is not as big as we grew ours to. I think ideal ghostwriting agencies are small, boutique, very specialized businesses. And the reason I think that is because a, it's very hard to scale quality in ghostwriting. There's a reason why all the ad agencies that are hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars, the reason that they're that big is because the majority of what they're selling is just advertising. Right. That scales. It's very difficult to scale something as subjective as ghostwriting. The other reason I think that it's better to have a small boutique agency is because the people that you're working with are very high quality, high caliber people and it ends up being a very relationship based business. But more importantly is what all of those things can lead to. And if you're smart, your boutique agency can lead to lots of other really interesting opportunities. It could lead to you working more closely with one of your clients. It could lead to you potentially getting equity in a company and working with them in a heightened capacity. It could lead to you deciding that you want to diversify a bit and launch digital products, you know, and do something different. So I don't think you should scale to the moon is answer number one. But internally, what that looks like, the way we structured it is we basically would pair account managers and ghostwriters. So the account manager would be responsible for anywhere from six to 12 clients. They would talk to the clients, they would interview them, they would record the calls, they would organize everything and then they would pass the transcript and the idea to the ghostwriter. And the ghostwriter would work with them, sort of like a, like a team of two. And the ghostwriter would write for these six to 12 different clients. And then that one team could support a certain amount of revenue. So we knew, you know, for each account manager and ghostwriter, if their average was say 10 clients, that team is producing a certain amount of revenue. We pay those people salaries, me and my co founder at the end of that, then get, you know, 20% left or whatever it is, and then we would just duplicate that. So at our height, we had, I don't know, six, seven, eight different teams, you know, and so each of them is managing 10 clients. 10 clients. 10 clients, 10 clients, right. Some had more than others, some teams were more efficient than others. And then we also had a sales team. So now, okay, now you're finding the people and you're getting on the phone with them. Here's how to get on the phone with them. Right? So it. And we built all of that over 18 months. We went from me and one of my best friends on his couch, just US 2 to 23 full time employees doing 2 million a year in revenue and 80 clients in 18 months. It was really fast.

That is insane. You know what I'm curious about as I listen to that? How does AI change all of that?

Oh, I love this question because I am not in the camp of AI is going to replace writers the same way that Instagram didn't ruin? Well, depends on who you ask. But Instagram didn't ruin photography, right? It's not like Instagram came along and the photography business collapsed. Instagram Made the photography business ten times bigger. Right? It turned everyone into a photographer. Same thing with Photoshop. Everyone was drawing cartoons and doing sketches and things by hand. Photoshop comes along, right? It didn't ruin all of those. It didn't ruin that industry. It made that industry 10 times bigger because it lowered the barrier to entry. AI is going to do the same thing. It's not going to ruin writers, it's not going to ruin the writing industry. It's going to lower the barrier to entry and it's going to produce exponentially more writers.

Okay, that's interesting. That's interesting. Okay, so zero to 2 million in 18 months. Zero or two of you to 23 full time members of staff in 18 months. I'm curious. You have a business like that that is taking off at that rate and it's producing those, not just the monetary outcomes, but you mentioned titans, like titans of industry. So it's network money, skills. You're getting all of those things just from this thing. I'm curious, if you look at actually what you do now and what you're working on with Dickie, why was there a. Why was there a transition? Because it feels now that you're more so focused towards education. You've obviously written several books since then. Why, why was it not just, okay, we've been doing this for like 18 months, let's just do this. I don't know, 10 years, 20 years. Why, why was there a shift that was.

I was certainly a thought there, There was part of me that thought I was going to be the ghostwriter forever. But the honest answer to that question is it has. It had a lot more to do with my own aspirations and what I wanted to do. Ghost trading was an amazing vehicle, but ultimately I wanted to write things for myself. I wanted to write my own books, you know, I didn't want to just get paid to write for other people. And the other thing was A, education is more scalable than services, you know, B, digital products are more profitable than services. Services are linear. Digital products are exponential. There are some clear differences in business model. But also too, I just needed to do something different. I, I got so proficient with ghostwriting that it, I wasn't thinking anymore. It was just Autopilot and I, and I, even today, I can't turn it off. Like anytime I talk to someone in my head, somewhere on some burner is me outlining if we were to write something together, I'm like, oh, that would be a good headline. Okay. That's how I would structure the intro oh, like, I could go straight an article in 20 minutes. And it. It got so E and I. And just to establish, like, that's because I ghost wrote thousands and thousands of articles. Like, I just did an extreme amount of volume in a very compressed amount of time. But it got to the point where I was bored. I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not. It's not mentally stimulating.

You know, I. I think that shift is so interesting of, like.

Being the.

Ghostwriter and having the mindset of. It's almost like you're telling everyone else's stories. You're pulling insights from them and putting it into text for everyone else. And then the mindset shift of wanting to do that for yourself. Like the ghost writer that now just wants to. The person that's writing for a famous music artist that now just wants to put out their own songs.

Travis Scott. Yeah, Travis Scott, most people don't know, started as a ghostwriter.

I had no idea about that.

Yeah, yeah. He was a ghostwriter for years, and then eventually he was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to have a career of my own. And I think that's normal, and I think that's great, and you should. And every once in a while, you know, I'm like, well, I could always fall back on ghostwriting if it all doesn't work out. But things are going fine. But it's. I still. It's. That's not me saying that I don't like it as a career path. You know, it's an amazing career path. I just think, a, it's the most valuable thing you could do on the front end of your career. And then B, all it does is just unlock more optionality. If you're a successful ghostwriter, chances are you now know what works. You now know how to create things that people want to read well. The likelihood that your own writing is going to perform well goes up. All you're doing is getting paid to practice. Your proficiency is still increasing.

You know, I'm conscious we have to get out of here. So I want to. Here's where I want to go. Here's where I want to go next before we get out of here. I'm a big believer that when starting any journey or pursuing any path, the only thing I really need clarity on is. Is the big picture vision. So 20 steps ahead, and then what is step one? And I really focus on, like, what is the first thing I'm going to do. And so when we talk about and you know, you use the example of Travis Scott, the ghostwriter who now wants to write his own songs, wants to write his own tweets, build his own audience following whatever it is. And I was to say to that person, that's in that moment, here is step one. Because the way that I think about it, it's actually like a shift. Like it's different to write for someone else versus doing it for yourself.

It's not.

Okay, explain.

That's that. I think that is one of the biggest misunderstandings of getting paid to write by other people. What. What a client is really buying is they are buying what you already figured out works for you. Yes, yes, There might be some turning things up, turning things down, especially if you have a very strong voice. And the client goes, I want to sound different, but broadly speaking, what they are buying is you. And the same, like, it was really wild, but the same quote unquote voice that I would write my Quora answers in. It's what I ghost wrote thousands and thousands of articles in. Everyone loves to say my voice is unique. My voice this, my voice. It's not. It's very rare for someone to have a truly unique voice in writing. Most of the time it is made up in your head and what the reader is reading is not as extreme as you think. And so the client, what. What the clients were really buying from me was conviction. They want their writing to sound like they know what they're talking about, which is what I was already doing for myself. I know what I'm talking about within these handful of topics. So I literally just took that conviction, put it in a different wrapper, looked at, you know, what's the industry you want to write about? What information do I need to know? And then I would just give it to them. And so many writers, they have this obstacle where they're like, that's unethical or that's what a moral dilemma. I could never allow myself to do that. Okay, but that means you're leaving a massive dividend on your talent on the table. And all it's going to do is force you to, A, get better at your voice in many cases, and B, it's just going to show you that you can create a voice. So wouldn't you want the superpower of being able to create whatever type of voice you want, you know?

Yeah. Okay, so when you were writing, when you started writing for yourself, what did that look like then? Was that just you going back to posting on Twitter or Quora or whatever? It was like, what Was the. What did the business look like in those early stages of from being a ghostwriter to now building your own audience and being able to monetize that?

Yeah, it was a little bit of. I started writing it on the Internet, I mean, as a teenager, but I really started taking it seriously in 2014, writing on Quora. So I started for myself. Then ghostwriting picked up and my writing got deprioritized. So I didn't really write a whole lot for myself during my ghostwriting days because I was so busy writing for other people. And then I had to go through the process of, I'm going to scale down my agency. I want to get back to doing more of my own writing and then ramping up my own writing again. I still remember in the pandemic, I was. I was like, oh, I need to build my daily writing habit again. Oh, it's a different muscle getting back to doing this for me, opposed to doing it for a client who's like, where's my piece? You know, so. But now, now I'm back in it and I'm, you know, producing more than I ever have. So, yeah, you know what?

Here's where I want to end from listening you, from that moment of being 15, of being the World of Warcraft player, that's now like sharing what you're learning and how you're doing it on a blog, online, or the ghostwriter, or the person that's writing the books, or the person that's posting on Twitter, or the person that's teaching other people how to become a writer? On your courses, everything always comes back to this love of the craft. It just, it. The writing is the central component. It feels like it always comes back to that genuine love for that craft. And I'm just curious, when you reflect on your journey, was there ever a moment where that wavered where the love for the craft of writing, you got disillusioned with that, where it was, it wasn't so clear, am I doing the right thing? Is this what I really want to be doing forever? Is this the game that I want to keep compounding in? Was there ever a haziness? Was there ever a lack of clarity around the love for that.

In small moments maybe. You know, I think part of getting disillusioned with anything is it's, you know, it's easy to think something is a certain way before you start doing it. And then when you start doing it, you realize, this is harder than I thought. This might take longer than I thought. There's more involved in this than I thought. So I've certainly gotten, quote, unquote, disillusioned in different sort of things. Like, one of them is like writing books and book publishing. As a kid, I thought, oh, you write a book and someone pays you a million dollars, and then you're just an author. I had no idea how it actually worked. And as I've learned more about publishing, I've had to be more real with myself on what does that business look like? How do you play that game? What does that, you know, do you want to play that game? But just because you get disillusioned by something doesn't necessarily mean that you give up. For me, it just means, okay, now I woke up to the reality of the situation. Now what am I going to do with it? You know? But the question of, did I ever want to just stop writing, or did I ever want to just not do any part of this? No. And anytime I did, it would last for like an hour. I'd be like, this is so frustrating. I never want to do this again. And then I'd be right back at my laptop two hours later, you know, So I don't know. I, I, I have a couple friends that remind me often. Maybe that's a unique trait. I don't know if everyone has something where they feel that strongly about it. And they remind me often to not take that for granted because I, I do love it. And there's literally nothing else that I would rather do. I plan on doing this or some variation of this until the day I die.