You are not special.

When you walk up to the market and you go, I'm special. I believe that I'm a talented writer. I took all this time to write this thing, and other people deserve to give me their time, energy, attention, and money. Of course it's not going to work. And yet that's where everyone starts, because I think I blame everything on, you know, the traditional education system. But we all sort of grow up in this world thinking that we are what's special, that we are what's important. And the whole idea of building a personal brand compounds this, where people are like, oh, people want to follow me? No, nobody wants to follow you. What they want to follow and what they want more of is content within a specific topic, helping them solve a specific problem, helping them unlock a specific outcome. So it has very little to do with you and how much you love your own writing. And it has everything to do with who you are helping and how you can help them in their life solve problems, unlock outcomes, whatever it is.