The EVA System to Build a Writer’s Brand on Your Personal Values

Let people know who you actually are

Katrina Loos

Dec 31, 2019 · 8 min read

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny from Unsplash

I get it. I really do. All you want to do is write.

You want to tap away at your computer for hours. Sip your favorite beverage while you work. Enchant the world with your stories of adventure or articles of expertise.

Yet you’re stuck.

Not as many people are reading your work as you thought. You’re hopeful yet stressed. You’re starting to doubt yourself and your writing abilities.

“Am I good enough? Am I even a worthy writer? Why isn’t my work getting seen? Nobody finds it interesting enough.”

You feel like something is missing. Like there’s a piece of the puzzle missing, a code you can’t crack.

What’s that code? What’s the secret ingredient to success in your writing, to a dream so delicious, so close you can almost taste it?

Personal branding.

---

Why Writers Need a Personal Brand

Putting together an experience for your target audience is overwhelming. If you make it that way. Photo by Jeff Sheldon from Unsplash

What is a personal brand anyway?

A personal brand is the unique combination of skills and experiences that make you, you. It’s establishing and promoting what you stand for.

As an example, I’ll tell you mine.

My personal writer’s brand is simple: I write what I like and what interests me. People either like it or they don’t. My brand isn’t strict, and it isn’t uptight.

My brand is my personality: Open-minded, thoughtful, uplifting, and kind.

Writers need a personal brand.

According to Nicolas Cole, if you want to do what you love, on your terms, for the rest of your life, then be prepared to learn every aspect of the business: branding, positioning, marketing, distribution, design, partnerships, and more.

Simply put: Building a personal brand for your writing matters.

It enhances your self-awareness of the work you want to put out there and reminds you of your goals.

It requires you to establish and prioritize your values.

It helps you capitalize on the skills and traits you already possess, and it gives you a competitive advantage.

---

Elements of a Successful Writer’s Brand

Photo by Nick Morrison from Unsplash

There are many different structures building upon the foundation that is a writer’s brand.

The most important elements of a successful writer’s brand have a lot to do with what you can offer your target audience, why they should pick you, and how you present yourself to others.

But the number one way to get attention from your writer’s brand is the EVA system.

Expertise. I’m not an expert in some of the subjects I write about, but I do my research. So when I write an article about something, I know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t talk about a subject matter or share relevant information if I didn’t think my readers could benefit from it.

Value proposition. What do you have to offer your audience? Why should they give up something of theirs (like an email address) in exchange for a piece of content that could potentially help them? You need to clearly communicate that with your audience.

Authenticity. You’re either who you say you are (or what you want your brand to be) or you’re not. It’s one or the other. People see through the bullshit.

To learn more about the key elements in an effective brand, check out this Entrepreneur article.

---

Easy Ways To Get Started On Your Writer’s Brand

The most important thing to worry about when creating a writer’s brand is focusing on the “writing” part of it. GIF from Giphy.

Before doing anything, you need to ask yourself these three things:

1. What are my personal values?
2. What is my vision with my writing? Where do I want my writing to take me?
3. What makes me stand out from all of the other writers out there?

Answering these questions will give you a good idea of where to move forward in your personal branding strategy.

You need to know what direction you’re going in or you’ll never know where you’re going. It’s like you took a spur-of-the-moment road trip to the country and didn’t bring your phone or money with you. You’re setting yourself up for failure.

“You can’t hit a target you don’t even have.” — Zig Ziglar

Let me tell you my answers to these questions to give you some ideas for how to create your personal brand.

1. What are my personal values?

Authenticity, happiness, and love. In that exact order.

Let me explain why.

Authenticity because I don’t want or need to change who I am to get other people to like me.

You either like me or you don’t.

I won’t change who I am to satisfy somebody else’s ego.

Happiness because life is too short to be miserable all the time. Yes, life is hard, but I’m still alive and I’m doing what I love.

If I can’t be authentic and true to myself and my writing, I can’t be happy.

Love because it’s the most powerful energy force in the universe. Love can change the world.

All of my personal values tie together three-fold: If I can’t be authentic and true to myself and my writing, I can’t be happy. If I can’t be happy, I can’t love anybody else or love what I do. My writing reflects my personal values.

2. What is my vision with my writing? Where do I want my writing to take me?

My vision is eternal growth.

I want my writing to reach the people who need it the most.

I want my writing to be remembered.

When I’m gone, my words make me immortal.

I want to continue writing my Medium articles, writing and self-publishing my books of poetry and prose, and having people remember my work.

3. What makes me stand out from all of the other writers out there?

I stand out from all the other writers out there because I’m not trying too hard.

I’m not obsessed with checking analytics, posting content I’m not actually interested in, or stressing myself out with numbers.

I failed math multiple times — I obviously don’t care about numbers.

I publish my work and talk about it on social media. That’s it.

I also stand out because I’m a crazy cat lady who thinks cats are infinitely better than dogs. I would rather hang out with cats than people.

---

There are many other elements to defining yourself and what you want your personal brand to consist of.

Nicolas Cole does a fantastic job going into detail about personal branding as a whole, and so he’s an excellent resource to refer to. I’ve also used this article when creating my personal writer’s brand.

---

After Asking Yourself Those Three Main Questions, It’s Time for You to Create Your Mission Statement

Your mission statement defines every facet of who you are and what you want your brand to stand for.

It announces why you exist.

I knew it was important to have a mission statement for my writing — I just never got started on it. That is until I read Holly Lyn Walrath’s insightful article.

Creating a mission statement for your writer’s brand keeps you focused. It’s you reminding yourself, “This is where I’m going. This is how I’m getting there. This is why I’m being consistent with my writing.”

Forbes specifies that your mission statement must be a clear, concise declaration of your writing strategy.

If you don’t have one, it’s time to get one. According to the lovely Holly Lyn’s article, coming up with your mission statement is as simple as brainstorming:

1. Start with your goals. Questions like, “How often do I want to write a year?” and, “What are my weaknesses in writing?” give you a solid foundation to build your mission statement on.
2. Ask yourself how you’re going to get there. You need a game plan for how you’re going to get to where you want to go with your writing. Brushing up on your grammar and vocabulary, reading more books and articles in the niche(s) you want to write in, and creating content calendars are great ways to get started on improving your craft and coming up with your mission statement.
3. Who do you want to write for? This can be anybody you want to write to. There are no limitations to what you can do. It’s your personal writer’s brand, after all. If you’re somebody like me who likes to write about a lot of different topics, you have an infinite number of possibilities with your audience. if you want to narrow your writing down to something more specific, such as B2C business owners, you can do that as well. You just need a content strategy that will entertain, educate, and inspire your target audience.
4. Mush all of your goals into one big goal. Doing this keeps you a bit more organized and not as overwhelmed. Unless you’re a wizard of organization. If you are, please teach me your ways.
5. Finally, make sure you see it every single day. That’s your baby right there! Your completed mission statement. Your future, your vision, your everything.

---

You’ve Asked Yourself the Three Golden Questions and Created Your Mission Statement. What Else Is There to Do?

This is where the hard work comes in, but it will pay off.

Figure out who your target audience is. Who do you want to write for? You need to create an irresistible offer. Something your target audience can’t live without.

Build your website. Create and execute strategies for your social media, email, and content marketing efforts.

Check out this Thinkific article for more details about how to create your personal brand.

---

There’s Another Secret Ingredient I Didn’t Mention

You now know why you need a writer’s brand. You also know how to get started on one before jumping into the nitty-gritty details making up your brand. And you know what the details consist of. Where the real hard work comes in.

But there’s another secret ingredient I didn’t mention before.

This other secret ingredient is actually baked in the center of the delicious personal branding ingredient that makes up your writer’s brand.

This secret ingredient is the one digital marketing, personal branding, and writing blogs don’t reveal to you:

You need to be patient when growing your audience.

“Building an audience takes time. There’s no magic formula. Put in the hard work, improve your writing, and over time people will show up.” — Justin Cox

Nothing is instant. Especially when it comes to your writing.

So trust the process.

Build your writer’s brand, stay patient, and never stop writing. When you stop writing, that’s when you’ve failed.

)

• Writing
• Writing Tips
• Personal Branding
• Marketing
• Self Improvement

WRITTEN BY

Katrina Loos

Blogger. Social media writer. Introverted cat lady. Add more value to your blog content and social media here → https://katrinaloos.com/

Better Marketing

Advice & case studies

AboutHelpLegal

How To Build a Personal Brand Without Any Money

Every step I took to go from college graduate to writer and agency founder

Nicolas Cole Instagram

I started building my personal brand online when I was 23 years old.

I had just graduated from college, had spent about six months working my first full-time job, and felt like “real life” had just punched me in the face. I was living in a small studio apartment on the north side of Chicago with no air conditioning and a heater from the 1950s.

My daily commute was on public transit, an hour each way by train — with a transfer in the middle. Most mornings, the train doors would open and every car would be packed full, and so I would have to take my backpack off, shove it between my legs, squeeze between three or four people, and then reach my hand up to grab one of the metal pillars to hold onto for the next 45 minutes. One morning per week, a homeless person would be part of that group, and the smell would be so bad you had to keep from breathing through your nose.

After working for eight or nine hours, I’d take the train back home. I’d let my backpack fall off my shoulder and onto the floor of my apartment. I’d quickly make myself an oatmeal smoothie — raw gluten-free oats, a banana, cinnamon, frozen blueberries, almond milk, and water, blended up — and guzzle it down before heading to the gym. By the time I got back home again, it was 9:00 p.m. and all I had done was ride the train, work, and lift.

“If I don’t change something, this is going to be my life. Forever,” I thought.

It was a painful realization to have.

I was working as an entry-level copywriter at an ad agency, and while I certainly didn’t mind the work and enjoyed my co-workers, it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to write catchy taglines on billboards for a loaf of bread. I wanted to write books. And so my painful realization was that in order to actually become an author, I needed to do two things I didn’t really have the time or the resources to do:

1. I needed time to write. A lot.
2. I needed to build myself as a writer publicly. I needed to start branding myself.

Now, keep in mind, I had just graduated with a degree in fiction writing. There were no classes in our curriculum called “How To Make Money As A Writer” (which is astonishing to me now), or “How To Sell Your First Book.” Anything related to the business of writing was completely foreign territory and on me to figure out. To be honest, it was the reason why I took (and kept for four years) my job at the ad agency. My day job was, inadvertently, teaching me about business and marketing.

It was my responsibility to take what I learned and apply it to my own dreams, hopes, and desires.

Sitting in my sweltering hot studio apartment that summer in nothing but my boxers, 23 years old, I stared at the library of books next to my desk.

“How can I become that?” I said to myself, letting my eyes take in the names of my favorite authors: Vladimir Nabokov, Dave Eggers, Samuel Wilson Fussell, Ernest Hemingway, etc. I didn’t have any money to invest in making myself “look” like some big, fancy, destined-for-stardom writer. And I barely had enough time to write a few pages in my journal each day, let alone make any real headway on a substantial project like a book.

So, I had to make a decision.

Either I was going to accept my fate as a copywriter, climb my way up the ladder, get a few promotions, and hopefully, one day try to find fulfillment in being a senior copywriter or maybe even a creative director at a big ad agency…

Or…

I was going to figure out how to make the time to write and build myself as an author all on my own.

Knowing I would never be satisfied or happy with the first option, I decided right then and there I was going with the second. I was going to do whatever I had to do in order to build myself as a writer. Period.

There were four things I did to build myself and my personal brand as a writer without any money.

This is, step-by-step, how I went from having a degree in fiction writing and no real portfolio to becoming the number one most-read writer on all of Quora in 2015, an author and Top 10 columnist for Inc. Magazine in 2016, and the founder of a seven-figure ghostwriting business in 2017 called Digital Press.

---

1. Instead of Trying to Generate Press and Media Attention for Myself, I Used My Writing to Build Credibility Through My Work

Unlike most other writers who either receive advances for their first book or make their money elsewhere and then decide to start building themselves as an author/writer after the fact, I didn’t have the means to hire other people to make me look talented.

I couldn’t just go out and hire a PR firm to get publications to call me “an incredible writer on the rise.” I couldn’t hire a digital agency to build a flashy website. I couldn’t spend money on advertising, I couldn’t afford to get a graphic designer to design me a logo. I literally could barely afford to buy myself Chipotle once every two weeks, let alone invest in making myself seem like someone bigger than I was.

So, I didn’t even try.

Instead, I devoted 100% of my time to mastering my craft and letting my talent speak for me. I didn’t want someone else to say I was a great writer. I wanted the results of my writing to speak for me.

I started writing on Quora near the end of 2014

Knowing that I didn’t have any of these other “buyable” options on the table, I committed fully to the process of writing on a daily basis. I told myself I was going to write one Quora answer per day, every day, for a year straight. Worst case scenario, it would be a year of extreme practice. Best case scenario, Quora would be my launchpad.

By forgoing the “instant gratification” of having outside sources (like publications) give me what is called “perceived credibility” (a third-party source saying, “Nicolas Cole is such an incredible writer”), I wrote and wrote and wrote until I earned those badges of credibility for myself. In early 2015, I had my first Quora answer republished by Business Insider. It happened on its own. Someone from Business Insider had come across one of my articles. They thought it would be a terrific fit for their audience. And they asked to republish it.

What I found out after was that Quora had partnerships built with most of the major publications online: TIME, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, Inc. Magazine, etc.

As soon as I realized that Quora could act as a launchpad for republishing (aka credibility), I devoted hours and hours studying what types of material these publications were looking for. I saw that Business Insider loved long lists of quick helpful tips. I saw Inc. Magazine preferred more entrepreneurial focused “self-help” information. I saw TIME had a lifestyle section that frequently republished articles on topics like productivity, confidence, life fulfillment, etc.

With all of these publications in mind, in mid-2015 I changed up my whole Quora strategy.

Nearly everything I wrote on Quora was written with a certain publication in mind. And as a result, I became one of the most re-published writers on the platform. From mid-2015 through 2016, I had one of my articles republished in a major publication each week, every week, for almost an entire year straight.

I spent $0 on PR, and I ended up generating more PR and “credibility” (I racked up a lot of logos) than I could have bought on my own — even if I’d had a $100,000 budget.

---

2. Instead of Spending Money on Hiring a Photographer, I Reached Out to Photography Students Studying at Columbia College Chicago

I’ve always been a huge rap and hip-hop fan.

One of the things I’ve always noticed about music, and the music business, is that a huge amount of emphasis gets placed on the artist’s “image.” Right? You hear that all the time — how you need to “look” like a superstar in order to be a superstar. And so record labels and artists— especially in 2012, 2013, 2014 when more independent artists started to catch fire on the internet —would put a significant amount of resources into their social media photos, music videos, etc. Even if you had never heard their music, if you came across one of their photos on social media, you would assume (just by the quality and execution alone) that they were a “famous artist.”

This is Branding 101.

When I thought about what that would (or “could”) look like in the world of writing, I hit a brick wall. I didn’t, and honestly still don’t, follow any writers on non-writing social media platforms. Not because I don’t want to — but because all my favorite writers are literally invisible. They publish incredible works of art and literature, but then their Instagram account consists of random photos of their cat every seven months, or a picture of what book they’re reading on a vacation from three years ago. Unless the writer has taken it upon themselves to use a platform like Quora, Medium, or their own personal website to share updates or thoughts outside their conventional book format, they don’t really exist anywhere else.

Nearly everyone I pointed this out to said, “That makes sense. Writers write. They don’t do social media.”

As a 23-year-old with zero resources and determined to build myself into a successful, fully independent writer, I saw this as a massive opportunity

Not having any other writer to use as a model, I basically decided to take the branding playbook of an up-and-coming rap artist and apply it to myself. If rappers hired photographers to take on tour with them and capture candid photos of them behind the scenes, then I was going to do the same thing in my everyday life. If rappers made their Instagram pages give the impression that they were this massive superstar, then I was going to do the same thing. If rappers had creative directors, then I was going to be my own creative director.

The only problem was, I couldn’t afford a super expensive photographer.

Instead, I remembered that when I had first transferred to Columbia College Chicago, there was this website where students could connect and collaborate with each other. I had been out of school for about a year now, but I still had access to the site, and so I went poking around for people who were studying photography.

What I found out was that a lot of photography students needed to find “models” (aka people willing to stand in artsy locations) in order for them to complete their class assignments. “Looking for a model for a nighttime shoot,” one person wrote. “Looking for a model for an experimental portrait,” another wrote. For context, no part of me considered myself or even wanted to become a model. What I saw was an opportunity for me to work with photographers for free — and if I wanted professional pictures for my personal brand, then I was somehow going to have to teach myself how to, you know, model.

So I did.

I emailed 20 different students I found on the site

A few got back to me. And I just started meeting up with them, walking to different parts of the city, pretending like I had any idea what I was doing. “Look at me like you’re thinking about something,” this girl said, pointing her camera lens at my face. I thought I was doing what she had asked, until she said, “No, like, actually move your face. Make a different expression.” I didn’t know how to do that. I tried again. She said, “No, OK so like, umm. You know what, nevermind,” and I followed her to a different street where we tried again. And again.

I collaborated with probably 10 different photographers in 2014. I never used most of the pictures — and I hope they never see the light of day. I was really, really bad at “modeling.” But every once in awhile, one of the pictures would turn out super cool. It almost always happened by accident, from afar, and it looked way closer to an accidental photo taken without me knowing.

I decided that this “documentary” look was going to be my style.

From 2014 to 2017, this is how I populated my Instagram page (which now has more than 50,000 followers, despite the fact that it’s not really my primary platform). I collaborated with college students who needed to fill their portfolios. Some I became better friends with than others, and two to three of them ended up becoming regular collaborators. During these three years, I didn’t spend a single dollar on photography. I helped them. They helped me. And that’s how I started to build my “image” as a writer online.

Now, I have the resources to invest more deliberately in this part of my personal brand (which I firmly, firmly believe is one of the best investments you could possibly make in yourself). When I moved to LA, I started collaborating with a very talented photographer named Walid Azami who has photographed everyone from Usher to JLO to Kanye West.

When people comment on my work today, one of the first things they bring up is the fact that, unlike most other writers, I’m extremely visible. I attach pictures to nearly everything I write and do. As a result, I appear as more than just a writer — which was my entire goal from the beginning.

Nicolas Cole Instagram

---

3. Instead of Spending Money on Advertising, I Started Building a Massive Library (a “Web”) of Content to Advertise for Me Long Into the Future

One of my first big lessons in the world of digital advertising happened when I was working as a copywriter at this ad agency right out of college.

I had started running ad campaigns for clients, and I saw the same thing happen over and over again. The client would approve an advertising budget for us to use. We would start running campaigns. While those campaigns were active, their stats would skyrocket — views, likes, comments. And then as soon as their budget hit $0, all their numbers would plummet.

For most clients, this was pretty normal and they were fine with the results. They had huge advertising budgets and they understood they were paying for exposure (the literal definition of advertising).

But as someone who was hoping to learn how to take my knowledge of digital ads and apply it to my own aspirations as a writer, I saw this as a huge problem. My conclusion was: “This approach works great if I have an endless supply of cash. But until then, I’m going to have to find a different way of advertising my work.”

I was 25 years old at the time, and I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for my first book. It was a memoir and coming-of-age story about my teenage years as one of the highest-ranked World of Warcraft players in North America called “Confessions of a Teenage Gamer.” My hope was to publish the book by 2016, and so I wanted to start laying the groundwork to make the book launch successful.

When I started researching how to do that, all I found online were articles about how authors should “start a blog” or spend money on Facebook/Amazon ads directing people to their book. My experiences on Quora up until this point had taught me that starting a blog was a terrible idea — you were far more likely to reach readers by writing in social environments like Quora and Medium than on your own personal site. And spending money on Facebook/Amazon ads to a pre-order page was off the table.

Instead, I started reading and researching a very different form of thinking about online advertising called “evergreen content.” In a nutshell, there are two ways to think about launching a product. You can either:

A) Do a ton of work upfront, start a buzz, build an email list, hype, hype, hype, launch, and hope to blow your product out of the water.

Or…

B) Create what’s called “evergreen content,” which is intended to be “timeless” and will continue to attract the people you are looking to reach long into the future.

In a metaphor, A is like having enough money to buy so many shares of a company that you can force the price to go up and turn a profit. B is like being a broke college student, putting $100 into a stock you believe in, and hoping that $100 turns into $300 a few years later.

B was my only option.

Instead of expecting my first (very niche) memoir to be some blowout success, I took a second to pull back and see the larger vision. This wasn’t going to be the only book I wrote, nor was it going to be the one and only project that represented everything I am.

Instead of hyper-focusing on the success of this one book, I started to make decisions based on the success of my entire career as a writer — that is to say, “me.” My experiences as a teenage pro gamer were niche, yes, but they were also fairly universal. So instead of only thinking of the book as it related to gaming, and instead of writing about the larger lessons gaming taught me about life, I could nod to my book in nearly everything I wrote about.

I even did it here in this article — I’m telling you how I built my personal brand as a writer, and I’m using my first book as a story to highlight the point I’m trying to make. This article could be read by someone tomorrow, or it could be read by someone 10 years from now. Either way, the article will hold its value. And either way, it will point readers to my first book.

That’s not an ad.

That’s an investment that pays you a dividend.

Once I started executing this strategy for myself, I started to see the secret weapon I had unlocked for myself

Every article I wrote was another asset that I owned. The more assets I owned, the more organic viewership I started to attract. The bigger the library got, the wider my reach, the more “sticky” my web of content got, and the higher my average monthly views went.

Today, whether I write anything new or not in a given month, I still average over 500,000 organic views on my written content online.

And unlike those ad campaigns I used to run for clients at the ad agency, those views don’t plummet as soon as the budget runs out. There’s no budget to begin with. I invested my time — hundreds, probably thousands of hours in order to write thousands of articles online — and in return, my content continues to pay me dividends: in exposure, in social proof, in book sales, in ghostwriting clients, in networking opportunities, etc.

---

4. I Sacrificed Short-Term Opportunities to Make Money for Longer-Term Opportunities That Had Exponentially Higher Ceilings

The last thing I did, and this is a choice I continue to make for myself today, is I always questioned whether or not it was time to start monetizing.

Most people who want to build a “personal brand” see it as an easy way to start making extra income. They see other influencers on social media either selling online courses, products, etc., or getting paid as an affiliate/sponsor to promote other people’s products. What they don’t really take the time to question, however, is how that’s going to feel for them once they do it.

Personally, I don’t see anything “cool” about using your audience to sell FitTea or skin creams.

In 2015, I accumulated more than 20,000,000 views on my written content. And I didn’t make a single dollar off any of those views. To someone looking for a short-term dollar, this was a massive failure. To me, this was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to make a dollar today. I wanted to make $100 tomorrow.

Instead of looking for ways to monetize my content, I always thought about my content as a web to bring me larger opportunities. If someone reached out and asked me to promote their plastic product on Instagram for $250, I ignored it. $250 wasn’t going to take me out of my studio apartment with no air conditioning. I wanted opportunities that had the ability to fundamentally change my life. Not just buy me a fancy dinner.

By 2016, I got my first small dose of what this could potentially look like.

I’d been given a column with Inc. Magazine where I was offered to be paid per page view. Now, keep in mind, in 2016 I was literally averaging millions of page views on Quora every single month. So even though the math meant I was going to make pennies on the dollar writing for Inc., I believed in myself so much that I actually preferred being paid on performance and not a more guaranteed flat rate, like $50 per article.

Why?

Because nothing life-changing can happen with a fixed rate of $50 per article.

But something life-changing can absolutely happen when an article racks up a million views and I get cut a check for $10,000.

As I was onboarding and getting my column set up with Inc. Magazine, my editor said, “Now in order for you to get paid, you need to write at least six columns per month. Can you do that?”

I paced around my boss’s office after everyone had left work for the day. I had to take the call there because I needed internet, and I didn’t have internet back at my apartment. I was so determined to finish my book and continue mastering my craft as a writer that I didn’t allow myself to have internet in my studio apartment for four years. From 2013 to the end of 2016, if I wanted an internet connection, I either had to stay late at the office or walk down the street to a coffee shop. You think I’m joking. I’m not.

Eager to take my writing career to the next level, I said to my new editor, “Would it be possible for me to write more than six articles per month?”

Publications live and die by the volume of content they’re able to produce, and so this was music to her ears.

“Sure! How many do you think you would want to write in a month? Eight? Ten?”

“What about thirty,” I said. “Could I write an article per day?”

There was this long silence on the phone, until she said, “I mean, sure. If you think you can make every article high quality, I don’t see why not.”

I had been writing one Quora answer per day, every day, for more than a year at this point. I was in peak condition and ready to kill the game.

From that day forward, I wrote one Quora answer per day and one Inc. Magazine column per day, five to seven days per week, every week, every month, for months on end

In my first month writing for Inc. Magazine, I had my first small viral hit, and I made something like $1,000. The next month, another article caught fire. And then again, and again. Until eventually, what I was earning from Inc. Magazine alone wasn’t too far from what I was making working eight or more hours per day at the ad agency.

Knowing I wanted to “take the leap” and go out on my own, I saved every dollar I made. I didn’t upgrade my lifestyle. I didn’t buy myself a cool pair of sneakers — even though mine were falling apart and covered in dirt and stained from Chicago’s sludgy snow. I didn’t buy myself more take-out food or treat myself to an afternoon of shopping. I saved until I had about $5,000 saved up and knew it was time for me to go all-in on myself as a writer.

Which led to the second big opportunity.

You see, by not spending any of the money I made and not choosing short-term rewards, I was able to make a fundamentally different decision for myself to achieve a much higher ceiling. There were a lot of people who saw me start writing for Inc. and said, “Man, you’ve made it.”

Made it?

Made what?

I was still falling asleep to a heater in my apartment that made gunshot noises. My shower still screamed at me when I turned it on in the morning before running to catch the train for work. My kitchen was my bedroom was my office was my front hallway. I could stand in the middle of my apartment and be in all four rooms at once.

I hadn’t made anything yet.

Instead of seeing my Inc. Magazine money as this nice side hustle that allowed me to buy pointless stuff, I postponed any and all gratification to remove the biggest barrier of success in my life: my nine to five.

Working eight to 10 hours per day is exhausting. It’s mentally draining. It’s tiring. It’s far. It’s stressful. My job was the thing keeping me from being able to maximize my talents as a writer. So, by removing my job from the equation and giving myself 10 more hours each day, I now had so much more time and energy to invest in myself as a writer and my personal brand.

So that’s what I did.

The same day I published my first book was the same day I quit my job. Two weeks later, I had an entire roster of ghostwriting clients and was earning double what I had been making before — with way less stress in my life and way more balance. The month after that, I doubled my income again. The month after that, I doubled it again. And by the time I had been out of my nine to five job for a year, I had founded a seven-figure ghostwriting company with one of my closest friends called Digital Press. And hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business was generated (and is still generated) by my articles online and my personal brand.

)

• Writing
• Personal Branding
• Branding
• Writing Tips
• Marketing 

WRITTEN BY

Nicolas Cole

Writer | Founder of Digital Press | 4x Top Writer on Quora | 50M+ Views | https://www.nicolascole.com

Better Marketing

Advice & case studies

See responses (10)

AboutHelpLegal

How To: Import XY data tables to ArcMap and convert the data to a shapefile using ArcMap 10.0 and previous version

10 Tips to Succeed in the Business of Life

By SUCCESS Staff |

1. Get predictable.

Doubt over predictable income scares too many people from joining the YouEconomy. This weekend, take time to sketch a plan to keep checks rolling in from the same clients at regular intervals.

2. Follow your mind.

Exercise your curiosity muscles. During a break in work, allow yourself to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, clicking links to new pages and learning about things you didn’t even know existed.

3. Scare yourself.

Plan to do something that freaks you out a little bit. Whether it’s something death defying, like skydiving, or makes you anxious like speaking to a stranger on the train, push your boundaries.

4. Log your hours.

This month, keep track of how many hours you work and what you got done. There’s nothing wrong with putting in a lot of time at the mine, but if you see lagging results, you’ll know when to recharge.

5. Find a buddy.

If you have a health goal in mind, enlist a friend or family member to join you on your quest today. Accountability partners make the road to success not only easier, but more enjoyable.

6. Be kind.

Poor self-image can be deflating, and it starts with telling yourself you aren’t good enough. Tonight make a short list of acts to remind yourself of the good you brought to other people today.

7. Think ahead.

You’re going to be old one day! But you get to decide when. Look at all your habits and food cravings. Pick out two bad ones and make a plan to scale back and replace them with better alternatives.

8. Say thanks.

Our relationships shape us. This week, schedule time to reach out to someone close—a friend or family member—who you don’t speak to enough. Share a laugh and a thank you for them being in your life.

9. Fix it.

Often enough you’ll encounter a status quo that just doesn’t work right or isn’t fair. Make it your mission to not complain about it. Instead, think of a way you personally can create change.

10. Treat yourself.

Happiness is a choice. No matter how packed your schedule is, pick out two hours this coming Saturday that are just for you. Take yourself on a date—do only things that you absolutely love.

Related: 10 Tips to Change Your Life for the Better

Read These 6 Books to Make the Best Decisions for Your Mind, Body and Soul

By Jesus Jimenez | October 4, 2018 | 1 

1. Make Time

How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

By Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
In a world obsessed with getting more done, there’s no lack of books available on time management. But few explain it as effectively and simply as Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, who co-wrote a previous New York Times best-seller, Sprint, and created the Time Dorks newsletter.
The new book offers ways to make the most out of each day using lists, fun graphics, and little blurbs. In total, it offers 87 tactics to improve your time management, ranging from managing your email better, avoiding devices when you can, and fitting in a quick workout. But the advice also dives deeper. Knapp and Zeratsky ask readers to question things like how much daily news they really need to consume. By shifting your focus away from things that don’t really matter, you can spend time on the things that do. (September; Currency; $27)

2. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work

By Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
The 40-hour work week doesn’t always end at 40 hours. Many employees are expected to answers emails at late hours or on vacation, or put in extra time to get projects done. But it doesn’t have to be that way, argue authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founders of the workplace software company Basecamp.
The authors offer strategies to create a workplace with less stress and anxiety. They call it a “calm company,” one that “isn’t fueled by stress, or ASAP, or rushing, or late nights, or all-nighter crunches, or impossible promises, or high turnover, or consistently missed deadlines, or projects that never seem to end.” To create a calm company, the duo writes, a business needs to be reasonable in the expectations it set of its employees, and also look for ways to maximize usage of time—nobody likes attending an hour-long meeting that could have been one simple email (October; HarperBusines; $28)

3. The Laws of Human Nature

By Robert Greene
The author of five international bestsellers, most notably The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene looks into ways we can examine our own behavior, and also that of others, to adapt and strategize. His newest book argues that because most of our interactions now happen online instead of face-to-face, our ability to read others has weakened.
To combat that, he offers tools and tips to read the emotions of others, their nonverbal cues, and to understand how we can use these skills to make smart decision like: Should I trust this person? Should I vote for this politician?
Greene uses examples from history—like how Queen Elizabeth I used empathy to lead her country or the ways Martin Luther King, Jr. managed his emotions during the civil rights movement—and follows up the historic stories with insights to interpret and understand their lessons. (October; Viking; $30)

4. Radical Generosity

Unlock the Transformative Power of Giving

By M.J. Ryan
In Radical Generosity, M.J. Ryan describes a common “ledger sheet mentality” that views giving, whether of yourself or a gift, as obligatory—too many of us give because of what we got, or expect to get next time.
She pushes readers to look deeper into generosity and to practice more of it in everyday life. At times the heartfelt advice may seem a little vague or hard to put into practice: “Generosity is also about letting go of grudges, hurts, and concepts of ourselves and the world that stand in the way of our connection to others.” But readers can find ways to make personal connections through her essays. By putting her advice in play, the next time a friend’s birthday comes around, you may give because you want to, not because you feel you must.
Consider Ryan’s influence. Organizations like Microsoft, Time, the U.S. military and AON Hewitt have come to her for help as an executive coach. (October; Conari Press; $17)

5. Can You Learn to Be Lucky?

Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others

By Karla Starr
A serious car accident left Karla Starr with broken bones and internal bleeding. She accumulated more than $200,000 in medical bills and had to declare bankruptcy to get rid of the debt. Starr wondered why it happened to her. Eventually she realized it “just happened.” Was it bad luck she had the wreck, or good that she survived?
For the past seven years, Starr has been searching for an answer on whether luck is real. She has interviewed admissions officers, casting directors and people in neuroscience. Her conclusion? “[It’s] unrealistic to accept that uncontrollable events or external luck exists…
[U]nderstanding what is and isn’t out of our hands can increase our chances of finding success by allowing us to focus on what we can change.”
In her first book, Starr teaches readers that luck might be something you can make yourself, offering techniques that have worked for others. (August; Portfolio; $27)

6. Thirst

A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World

By Scott Harrison
Scott Harrison was making $200,000 a year and had a loft in New York City with a baby grand piano in the living room. But he was also living hard—smoking, drinking and abusing drugs. Every night Harrison would think to himself, “This is not who I am. This is not who I want to be.” So he decided to turn his life around. He spent 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa on a photojournalist assignment, and discovered himself.
In 2006, he became the founder and CEO of charity : water, which helps bring clean drinking water to more than 8 million people around the world. In Thirst, Harrison tells his story of reinvention. This is not a guide to turning your life around, just the inspiring story of someone who did. But it might spur you to make changes of your own, for the good of those around you. (October; Currency; $27)

Related: Read These 6 Books to Create Positive Change

John Addison: How to Find Your ‘Why’ in Life

By John Addison 

In 1981, after I’d been working at Life of Georgia for about a year, I was moved into their management trainee program. A lovely, very intelligent young woman named Loveanne was hired to replace my old position. I was smitten and luckily she was, too. About a year later, we were married, and more than 30 years later, I can honestly still say she is the best thing that ever happened to me.
She also changed my outlook on my future. I hadn’t been really motivated or aspired to greatness. Heck, I considered it a win if I had enough money left over after paying my share of the rent and bills to have a fun weekend. But, now I was married. I had another person to think about. And I wasn’t married to just anyone. I was married to Loveanne. Suddenly, I was plugged into a whole new “why.”

Related: Answer 6 Questions to Reveal Your Life Purpose

German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once said, “He who has a why can endure any how.” Your why is the thing that motivates you to get up every morning and work a little harder to get a little better. It’s the thing that pushes you even on the days when all you want to do is pull the covers over your head and hide from the world. Your why may change throughout your life, as you get married, have a family, have to care for aging parents, etc., but the questions you have to ask yourself in order to stay focused on it and overcome all the obstacles you will inevitably face remain largely the same.

What is my definition of success?

Your definition is yours, no one else’s, so you don’t need anyone’s approval and you don’t have to alter it to fit into some little “acceptable” box. But you do have to know what your definition of success is or you won’t know what your end goal is or why you’re working for it. If you define success as being able to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on and that’s what motivates you, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Once you come up with your definition, dig a little deeper and ask yourself why that is your definition of success. The deeper you dig, the clearer your why becomes and the more motivated you will become to reach it.

What am I passionate about?

Skill and passion are often confused for one another, but they aren’t at all interchangeable. You can be really good at what you’re doing, and not only not be passionate about it, but also totally loathe it. So, ask yourself if you’re passionate about what you’re doing and, if not, what you are passionate about. What excites you? What gets you going and motivates you to keep going? Find your why and then pursue it with gusto.

Related: How to Carve Out Your Life’s Passion

You will find more personal and professional fulfillment at the place where natural talent and skill meets your personal passion. That is the place where you will find your motivation and be able to maintain it for the long haul.

If money were no object, what would I do?

To some degree money is a driver for all of us. Maybe it’s not the main driver, but you know it totally is one. So, look at the job you’re doing every day and ask yourself if you’d still be doing it if money was no object. What would you do? Be realistic—odds are, you aren’t going to be a professional athlete or runway model—but really think about what your dream circumstance would be. If it’s not, you’re in a j-o-b when what you need to be in is a career—a career you love and look forward to giving your all so you can be your best.
So, how are you going to work toward that? How are you going to change your current circumstances (or use them as a jumping off point) to reach that end goal? It may not be something you can do overnight, but it can be the why that gets you up in the morning and motivates you to give your all now so you can have the future you dream of.
One of the biggest whys in my life has been making Loveanne proud. I try to do it both professionally and in our personal lives. It’s what I’m passionate about, and when I do make her proud, I feel like I’ve succeeded. You won’t ever reach your goals unless you do plug into your why and reassess from time to time to make sure you are still plugged into it. But if you are plugged into your why, the how will never be a problem.
Follow John Addison’s 9 simple practices for leading and living with purpose in his Real Leadership Roadmap, a four-week training course brought to you by SUCCESS Academy.

John Addison

+ posts

John Addison is the Leadership Editor for SUCCESS and the author of Real Leadership: 9 Simple Practices for Leading and Living with Purpose, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller. Renowned for his insight and wisdom on leadership, personal development and success, John is a sought-after speaker and motivator. Read more on his blog, and follow John on Facebook and Twitter.