I like literary prose. 

It helps me. 

It’s therapeutic in some way. 

Probably someone else feels that way about car mechanics.

I want more than anything to be successful in a way that is aligned with this proclivity I have.

I want to sell book copies. I want to be successful from a literary sense.

Part of me believes it’s a lost art, and no one reads anymore. 

But perhaps the car mechanic believes the same thing. 

In fact, it’s advancing, both of these fields are. 

I will continue working at this like a crazed person. 

Perhaps continuing this work for my entire life, finally breaking through at some distant point in the future, gradually building up a career in the meantime to support these endeavors.

Why does one do this? 

I am unsure completely, it’s like the writers of old say, it must be done. 

There is some sort of romantic drive, some sort of romantic exclusive, passionate declaration excluding all those who do not fall into the exclusive camp of those who are possessed to write. 

An affliction, a gift, a passion, a lust, a sentencing, a soulmate. 

Some sort of passionate romantic thing locked up behind the high walls of ivory towers, exclusive to a select few that are chosen to participate in such an endeavor.

The reality is, I don’t believe in such a thing. 

There is some truth to it, you must have a proclivity. 

The same ivory tower, or maybe steel tower, could be said for the car mechanic. 

He must construct, he must build, he must understand and solve. 

This really comes to a head though when we are discussing market success. 

When it comes to market success, being a writer does fall into its own realm. 
(But the lessons can be applied everywhere.)

Nowadays particularly. The economics behind writing are quite fascinating.

It requires one to have a very clear and effective business acumen. 

Particularly it requires a business acumen that is contextually relevant for the modern era.

The internet has de-platformed the major publishers. 

They basically serve no function anymore except for preserving some old connections that they guard with their life.

Like an old king surrounded in siege by an outside force, desperately clinging to the relics of his preserved family dynasty. 

The truth is, most authors nowadays who are successful do so not because of the publishers, it is because of other factors that tip the scales.

A very broad social media following, a raving community, an ability to run ads successfully, a company that makes money on the back of the book.

For all these reasons and more, books will become successful. 

But it’s a double edged sword. 

Meaning, prior, the publishers would provide the distribution.

The writer would work hard at his craft, create a compelling story, oftentimes working for a quarter of a year on a single long form article spanning many pages, this would go out in a newspaper or magazine and the author would be paid accordingly.

Becoming an author like this was a grind and the odds were very low. 

This was the classic gatekeeper scenario and the author required approval, if the work was good, then it would catch and the author could focus on the craft and the craft alone.

Nowadays, there is no need for a gatekeeper, it is open sourced. 

More accurately, there are many gatekeepers, and the odds of getting in with any number of them is relatively high. 

The gatekeeper is the open market, and a successful hit and resonance with the hoards of crowds outside in the streets will dictate whether you gain traction or not. 

You can play the field, get some leverage, gain social acceptance and approval by playing them off each other much easier than back in the day.

Though this does require perception, awareness, and a business structure on the part of the author.

For if he or she wishes to be an author full time, then they must write and publish to social media. 

This is their bull-horn

They can become the publisher.

They require no permission, there are also no guarantees.

But here’s the thing.

You can stack the deck in your favor, but you need to think like a capitalist. 

You can guarantee reach by paying for ads. 

But you can't guarantee readership. 

You can guarantee readership by collecting enough social proof that convinces a decent citizen to stop what they're doing and be intrigued enough to inquire about your work. 

You can compel them to read more by having good prose, refined thought, and punchy points. 

And a certain number of them will purchase something you are selling. 

Whether that be a book. Or a service. 

If you seek to do this sustainably, then you must create positive unit economics, meaning that you need to have some sort of function that generates cash for you.

This alone is a whole aspect of the business that needs to be well thought out and developed. 

What is your item purchasable? 

A book? A product? A course? A service? Ads? Community? 

All of the above? 

If so, what are the contents and deliverables? 

For many “Creatives”, the process and refinement of all of these things is the actual gatekeeper. 

There is no more gatekeeper other than the course itself. 

The long hard road which must be run.

Currently my form of doing this is a consulting service that I provide for entrepreneurs, helping them gain awareness of themselves and their business, recognizing the bottlenecks both internally and externally, and helping them to solve for them.

The result, is my clients grow their businesses. 

They often see drastic results in a short period of time, naturally since they had something blocking the flow of movement and progression for them and now it is released. 

The water can flow freely. 

It happens all the time with my clients, and in a sense I am doing this for myself just as I am doing it for my clients. 

Building a business from writing is one that can be challenging. 

There are pros and cons to every business. 

We want to stack the deck in your favor and intelligently choose the profession at hand in accordance with skill sets and proclivities. 

The pro’s of a writing business is that it develops a unique set of authority. 

It’s also incredibly challenging, so if one can successfully succeed in doing so, it establishes multiple fronts of authority.

One, is that the word “Authority” has the word “Author” in it. 

To be an author on a subject, even if the book was not a bestseller, inherently implies a certain level of mastery over a subject. 

Now obviously that is a very wide range, the one two punch comes from a market successful book. 

In that case, the people have spoken and indeed you have been accepted by the populace to be an expert on a topic. 

This is of course the case in non-fiction, for fiction, having a successful book means you are a master of writing and of selling as it pertains to storytelling, (which of course has crossover into many other areas.) 

Both are incredibly challenging and do not happen by accident. If they do, it is a very rare case and certainly not the rule.

In my case, for example, I “accidentally” wrote a book. 

But writing the first draft for a book and having a bestselling book are worlds apart. 

Accidentally writing a book means that I have the proclivity towards it and that I could, with enough effort, become a market success at this, probably more likely than others. 

And I can continually increase the chance of success by continuing to work at it, double down, re-invest, stack the deck, build leverage, until it becomes inevitable. 

But still, the delta between these two end points is very far indeed.

For example, Brandon Sanderson, one of the best selling fantasy writers today, wrote I think 12 (or was it 16??) first drafts of various books before he sold one to a publisher. 

(Here’s an amazing(!) recent interview with him and Tim Ferriss.)

And even then, that first book wasn’t successful in the market, it wasn’t until his third published book that he started to really take off. 

He clearly had a proclivity towards it, but it still requires an immense amount of effort to become successful in this craft.

Non-fiction is the same in the principles and slightly different in the application. 

My personal dream is to be able to write for a living full time. And make good money doing it.

I also want to have other businesses and projects going on, to have an investment portfolio, to have other businesses. 

I have a lot of dreams, but I would like the locus of my energy and attention to be focused on writing and creating something for the world to see.

I think that it follows that I am taking a long term approach to this.

In the meantime, they will start to feed each other. 

My short term goal is to write non-fiction successfully, because that will enable my consulting business, which obviously provides cash flow.

I can make a good living and start to build out my revenue and profits by investing in ads and other forms of marketing.

My goal is as such. (The first bullet point I have completed, the following I am currently pursuing.) 

• Write a book that can be used to gain leverage in the marketplace.  Check. (Cultivate Thyself) 

• Market this book successfully to gain social proof, high level blurbs from influencers, and reviews from the masses. (Early stages) 

• Refine the book and improve upon it. Make it cleaner, re-invest into the actual book itself. Create a better product. 

• Gain traction in the podcasting space. Guest on peoples shows 

• Acquire clients, and book sales. 

• Re-invest into my writing and my marketing. 

  • Hire an agency to drive signups for my newsletter. 

  • Fill up clientele and expand my offerings maximizing revenue to 7Figs a year. 

  • Invest in Amazon Ads and off-Amazon ads for the book sales. 

  • Social media content. 

• Establish a Hybrid Publishing model that will allow for expanded distribution and more professional printing and publishing.

• Rinse and repeat. 

The goal is to grow this all to be very large. 

The interim goal is:

• To get 1K subscribers on my newsletter. 

• Fill up my 1on1 coaching clients. 

• Get on podcasts consistently. 

Achieving this is actually the hardest part of all of this.

After these three bullets are accomplished, I will be able to grow with a lot more ease because I have much more leverage in the forms of social leverage and capital leverage. 

I can buy distribution, acquire emails, get the book into more hands, which in turn creates more customers both for the books and for my consulting clients. 

The social proof enables me to continue getting on podcasts and on other peoples platforms to help organically expand my distribution.

At the same time I am investing in my own platform to grow my socials and email list.

The hardest part has been everything up until now. 

And still the hardest part is ahead of me.

• Get to 1K subscribers on my newsletter. 

• Fill up my 1on1 coaching clients. 

• Get on podcasts consistently. 

It will still be hard after that, but the work will be much easier relative to the terrain I have already traversed.

• Writing multiple books. 

• Publishing multiple books. 

• Establishing something that can be successful in the market. 

• Developing my positioning in the form of content and outlook on life. 

• Developing the business model.

• Getting good at consulting. 

• ….and much much more. 

As a writer and a creator, you must always go back to the well and create something new, continue creating, continue improving.

But the ability to ‘forcefully’ make something successful is there and can be leveraged at will given you use your brain and have the endurance to stay in the game.

The trick is to engineer your life to allow for this to happen.

Build a life that will make it easy for you to write, or work as a high end car mechanic, or whatever it is you want to do.

Of course, what you make must be good as a prerequisite to being successful in the marketplace. 

But granted that it’s good, which is a whole nother conversation, and you have the invaluable skill set to be able to bring something to market, persuade people to buy, make a profit and re-invest into your business, you will never go hungry and you can go wherever you would like to in this wide open world.

The high seas call your name and you can set sail in whichever direction you'd like, because you understand how to navigate the oceans.

The oceans come with an inherent risk, an inherent danger, that is life.

Nonetheless, you have successfully navigated and can do it again.

Build these skills, whether it be for writing, or for something else, and you will live a life doing what you want.

Speak to you soon! 

Ciao. 

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