Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

The 3 Rules That Broke My Income Plateau

13 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, Nicolas Cole recounts quitting his full‑time job at 26 to become a ghostwriter, quickly reaching $20,000 a month before hitting a multi‑year plateau. After reflecting on why he couldn’t break the $20K ceiling, he distilled three decisive principles that transformed his earnings: (1) his name must be attached to the work, (2) he must own a stake in the project, and (3) the opportunity must be scalable. By deliberately selecting only opportunities that satisfied all three criteria, he accelerated his income to $30K, $50K, and eventually $100K per month.

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When I was 26, I quit my full time job, I started ghostwriting. And very quickly I got up to making around $20,000 per month as a ghostwriter. But then I got stuck and I stayed there for three or four years and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't break through the 20k a month mark. And eventually I did a lot of reflecting and I came up with these three rules and these three rules are what allowed me to eventually break through that plateau. Rule number one is that my name has to be on it. Rule number two is that I have to own a piece of it. And rule number three is that it has to be scalable. And as soon as I started making decisions that checked all three of boxes, a lot of previous opportunities only checked one or two of those boxes. But once I started picking opportunities that checked all three boxes, all of a sudden 30 grand a month, 50 grand a month, 100 grand a month, things started changing very quickly for me.