These Skills Make You A Dangerously Profitable Writer

these are the non-writing skills that make you dangerously profitable as a writer free Consulting sales account management fulfillment business models so upsells down cells negotiating and category creation so not just differentiating yourself but understanding how to leverage that and differentiate other people helping your clients differentiate themselves and the big idea here and what I want to jam on today is that most writers who are stuck not earning the amount of money that they want to make are stuck there because they think the game is about getting better at writing and obviously you have to be

somewhat competent right you can't just not know how to write and then expect to get paid for it but the game is not get better and better at writing only and then other people pay you more that is not the game the game is really get competent at writing and then learn all the other skills that make you more and more valuable because at the end of the day the thing that is going to make you the most money as a writer is not just the writing it is all of the other skills that surround

the writing that makes your readers or makes your clients your customers makes them feel comfortable makes them feel valued makes them feel heard makes them feel like you actually are invested in their success uh makes makes them feel like you would go to the ends of the Earth to overd deliver for them uh makes them feel like you're constantly communicating with them that they're never lost or in the dark right so what I'd like to do is go through each one of these and explain why this is such a valuable tangental skill for you as

a writer and some of the ways that you can leverage these skills to increase how much you earn so let's start with the first one which is free Consulting if you do not understand how to help people for free you will not be able to make more money and get them to pay you for helping them it's so simple and yet everyone over complicates it you have to be able to help people for free in order to get those people to want to pay you and the way I like thinking about this is whenever you

get introduced to someone whether it's a reader for your own writing or whether it's a client for ghost writing your entire goal is not to figure out how to make money from that person day one your entire goal and your neck to earning more is figuring out how you can help them and I think one of the biggest mistakes that writers make is from the very very beginning they jump to how is this going to make me money and obviously that is the goal right that is the end goal of everything a lot of what

we talk about and a lot of what I like to talk about the art and business of writing but your bottleneck to getting there is not can this make money cuz most things in life can make money your bottleneck to getting there is understanding whether or not you can actually help the person because if you can help them they will pay you they will throw money at you I saw this a lot building my ghost writing agency the moment I could demonstrate to a founder or a business owner I can help you they were the

one pitching me on why I should want to work with them right so the way I I I love framing this and this is a huge piece of what we teach in PGA our premium ghost Writing Academy is free Consulting every person you talk to readers or clients you should always be asking the question how can I help them how can I help them for free what is the easiest way that I can demonstrate I understand you I understand what problems you're faced with I understand what outcomes you care about I understand what transformation you

want to experience right and the faster and more effectively you can communicate those things for free the easier it is to open the door for a hey and I would love to give you more of this but paid right and so if you're an individual writer what that looks like something we talk about a lot is writing online for free and then going I understand my reader hey I I wrote a book about it book's 20 bucks or I created a minicourse explaining how to do this right 100 bucks or it's 200 bucks but it

all is based on you understanding how to help that person for free if you're working and providing a service and if you're a ghost writer you're doing the exact same thing but with clients so when you get introduced to someone what's the easiest and fastest way for you to demonstrate I understand your business when I was building my ghost writing agency one of the things that I would do is because my offer was I was trying to uh demonstrate that I could be their ghost writer for Thought leadership articles that was how I built my

entire agency was just writing 800w thought leadership articles well one of the easiest ways for me to demonstrate that I could help them was before the sales call or during the sales call I wouldn't just say hey hire me I can go straight thought leadership articles I would come to the table with ideas I would come to the table with working titles and the reason that I did that and I did a little bit of bit of that you know uh upfront work or quote unquote free Consulting was because I wanted to be able to

say hey whether or not we work together I want you to walk away from this call feeling like you learned something feeling like you have some sort of path forward it'd be great if we work together but that's not what I'm concerned with I'm concerned and want to make sure that if we do work together that can truly help you so here are the types of things that I would recommend that you do and the more often that I did that the more I demonstrated here's how I can help you the more people wanted to

work with me as a ghost riter so skill number one free Consulting understanding what what is the person struggling with and how can I demonstrate that I can help them solve that problem second skill sales there is no other way around it and I'm gonna I'll tell you a story where this really clicked for me after I graduated college I graduated with a degree in fiction writing I got a job at an ad agency and I was working as an entry-level copywriter and after like 6 eight months I got promoted quote unquote I think my

title changed but I didn't maybe I got paid like an extra dollar an hour or something um and a lot of my responsibilities were the same yeah I I essentially stayed an entry-level copywriter for a a long time at that agency and I remember was I eventually got about two years in maybe two and a half years in and I went to one of the managing directors and I said hey I love it here you know I'm enjoying the work I'm learning a lot I like the people but to be perfectly honest I'd like to

figure out how to make more money I was living in a shoe box apartment I had no air conditioning my heater was from the 1960s I lived an hour away from work I had to commute an hour both ways uh to work each day right I was like this is all great but how do I make more and the managing director sat me down and said well what do you want to do and I said I really want to write that's the thing I care the most about and he goes okay Cole well I want

to be honest with you in this role as a copywriter in this agency there isn't really a path to you making that much more and at first I got really frustrated and I was like why I don't understand I work so hard it's it's all the things that you think I work so hard and I care about my job and I'm on time and I'm emotionally invested and I'm a great employee right and he explained to me I was 24 25 years old so he had to be patient cuz I wasn't getting it at first

and he explained to me he goes cold that's great but none of those things matter from a business perspective we can't rationalize paying you more because the skill that you provide is just that one sliver that one little skill and if you want to make more you have to acquire more valuable skills you need to have a bigger impact on the business and so I said okay so what is that how do I do that what would be a higher value skill and he goes well the easiest one would be if you started bringing in

clients of your own if you want to make more help the business generate more and I remember at the time I was so I walked away from that conversation just demoralized because I didn't want to sell I I had this emotional block around feeling like sales was this weird slimy thing and if you sold some someone on something then that meant that you had you know you were a sellout as a writer and it wasn't pure I had all these faulty beliefs and then a couple more weeks went by and I realized yeah but also

you know making no money and only being able to afford Chipotle once a week also sucks so which bag of problems do I want to deal with and it wasn't until I started to really allow myself to be open to the scenario of you know what maybe I could sell my own CL clients and then I could bring them into the agency and I could work with them and I could own the relationship and I I started to see all the benefits of doing it and so for a couple months thereafter I just dedicated myself

to going out and finding clients and I and I probably had 50 conversations before I finally got a sale and it was really you know it was hard I didn't have anyone training me we didn't have a sales department we didn't have someone mentoring me it was me watching like sales seminar on YouTube and then going out and trying to tap my network asking friends I went to college with like do you know anyone who owns a business I was I didn't I had no ins I was just figuring it out as I went and

after probably 50 conversations I finally got a client across the finish line and I remember in that moment I felt so unbelievably accomplished because I felt like I was now responsible for the relationship and I had such a different emotional investment in the work and the project thereafter one of the one of the biggest things that clicked for me was it didn't feel like oh I'm just showing up to work and I'm just doing my job because I was the one who sold them I felt this responsibility to make sure that they were happy and

there's something about that emotional connection I don't think that there's anything that teaches you more and and your growth will that nothing will accelerate your growth more than feeling that responsibility and selling a client on how you can help them uh nothing will Mo motivate you more nothing will inspire you more nothing will hold you accountable as much like you want to talk about accountability you will feel like getting up and getting your work done when your client emails you at 10: a.m. being like Hey where's that draft you promised me last week so that

is one of the beauties of sales and if you want to make more as a writer and it was funny selling that one client at that agency I left my job three months later because I realized oh this is how you sell people why would I do this for for the agency why don't I just go do this for myself right so once that clicked I I really took that in you know to heart and I realized that that skill was so powerful and then thereafter I ended up doing sales myself and then I built

a sales team and I built my ghost writing agency and we scaled that to millions of dollars in Revenue so if you want to make more as a writer there's no other way around it you have to learn the skill of sales and you can delay it and you can tell yourself that you know no sales insert whatever faulty belief uh but I promise you every writer who makes a ton of money ends up learning the skill of sales and what's interesting is also copywriting and sales writing and being able to close people in DMS

or being able to close people via email is really just the written version of what you do on the phone and I think why I was able to learn a lot of the copyrighting skills so quickly thereafter was because I had already sold hundreds and hundreds of clients on the phone I actually didn't even really know what copyrighting was until I had already landed 100 clients and so once I realized oh a lot of these copyrighting techniques are really just the same things I would say on the phone in text form it was so much

easier and I and I clear I had a knack for it it just came very easily to me because I wasn't quote unquote copyrighting I was just saying all the things that I would say on the phone to someone in text and the last thing that I want to harp on here is that sales and if you're if you're listening to this and you have any sort of reservation sales is not about sales the whole secret and how I've sold you know over $5 million worth of ghost writing uh clients at this point and over

$10 million in digital product sales is that sales is about education and when you approach sales as sales it feels really difficult and it feels like you have to convince people of things when you approach sales as education and when you take this free Consulting approach and you go I just want to make sure I can help you the conversation is not let me sell you the conversation is let me help you and when I help you you the client naturally begin to sell yourself you you finally found someone that you can trust you finally

found someone who understands your business you finally found someone who speaks your language and understands what you're going through and actually provides helpful and actionable solutions well when you find someone like that don't you want to hold on to them and by taking that approach that's where I've really noticed so many clients then the conversation very quickly turns from you quote unquote pitching them to them pitching you and that's what you want the third skill account management so what account management is is when you are fulfilling on some sort of work this usually has to

do with services so say you land a ghost writing client account management is you interacting with the client at every stage of the relationship it's you like technically if you were to have an agency these would be two different roles you would have the sales role and someone handling that and then when the client goes yes I would love to work with you the salesperson would pass the client off to the account manager so the account manager's job essentially starts when the client goes I'm I'm ready kickoff call onboarding let's begin right first invoice gets

paid well account management is a whole art in and of itself and because same thing when I was building my agency I was our first account I was our first ghost writer then I was our first account manager then I was our first salesperson right so I play the role and then I would hire someone so that I could replace myself from that role I would move on to the next role Etc and the Art of account management is anticipating the client's needs that is it and the reason that I stress the word anticipating is

because if you are reacting to what the client is asking for that is not the highest level of account management because the true art of account management is not you doing what the client asks you to do the art of account management is you anticipating the next thing that they would like right so it's sort of the difference between imagine going to a you know $100 a night Hotel versus going to a $1,000 a night Hotel one of the key differences is that the thousand a night hotel anticipates pretty much your every want and need

right and they call out things before it even occurs to you that you should ask that question right so for example you go to check in and they're like hey we're so happy to have you um you know by the way uh tomorrow morning I'm not sure if you know but breakfast starts at you know 6:30 a.m. would you like a a complimentary wakeup call um what do you have going on tomorrow do you have any plans uh do you oh you have something going on would it be nice if we maybe dropped breakfast off

in front of your room early right they are constantly trying to to anticipate the next thing that you would want or need the $100 a night Hotel basically just goes yeah we got you know Tom at the front desk here and you know if you need anything uh call Tom and what happens you end up calling Tom like seven times that night because you're like Tom nobody checked my room and I asked for a spare C and there's no spare cot and then Tom's like uh I'll call somebody and see if we can get them

up there right so that is really the way to think about account management is how are you anticipating the clients needs and this is one of those skills that is very hard to read about or even listen here and then go I'm going to go execute it perfectly it very rarely works that way account management is something that you have to be very aware of in the moment and every time the client asks you for something you should then ask yourself the question why didn't I bring that up before they asked it to me why

didn't I anticipate that why didn't I think that was a question that they were going to ask me right why why did they have to remind me why couldn't I have just reminded myself could I have sent that early right you are basically becoming obsessed with anticipating the next thing that the client will ask for and obviously there are times where how could you anticipate that right there will be outlier circumstances but one of the biggest mistakes and I see it all the time with small business owners is they think that their job is to

really just do what the customer asks for and that's not really the job if you if you pay attention to all of the experiences that you value most the experiences that are special and that you remember are experiences where they walk you from point A to point Z they take you by the hand they explain to you what's going to happen next they're like from here we're going to focus on one two three they set expectations they overc communicate they say oh and if I don't hear from you I will follow up you can expect

this by this date right there is a ton of overcommunication happen happening whereas the small businesses or the vendors that you get really frustrated with it's always the opposite it's like well why didn't you tell me that was going to be two days late or if you knew that was going to happen why didn't you call that out for me or if you knew I was going to have all these questions why wouldn't you have just given me all of that upfront so I could review it before our first call right so a lot of

the frustration comes from actually not feeling like the the writer or the the person who's providing the service is anticipating your needs and so same thing like if you don't understand how to make a client or a customer really really happy it's going to be hard to continue making more and more money as a writer because yeah you might get the customer in the door but then they're unhappy right and really the goal is for them to go wow you held my hand and you were so attentive that you're the only person I want to

work with I couldn't imagine trying to find someone who's as attentive as you right that's that's what extends lifetime value that's what builds the relationship so account management if that's not a if that's not something you've ever really thought about that is absolutely a skill to acquire next is different business models so one of the big problems I see with so many different writers and it's both you know in the Creator economy and people who try to build audiences and launch products or write books or build training programs or what whatever it is and I

also see it on the services side people trying to monetize by providing a service the problem is most writers you know they love talking about uh I'm I'm reading the classics I'm studying Hemingway you know or uh I'm subscribed to all of the the top Creator newsletters I'm learning all the growth hacks you know whatever it is but they really don't spend a lot of time studying and learning the underlying business models and so underlying business models when when I say that what I really mean is um for example are you charging something that's higher

ticket where the person has to pay in full or are you breaking up that payment into monthly payments is it a monthly subscription or is it a higher ticket thing that is on a payment plan is it a low ticket offer that upsells people on a high ticket offer is it a free newsletter that nurtures people into a paid product or is it a paid newsletter all of these are different business models and if you don't really understand the pros and cons of each business model what happens is and this is human nature you gravitate

to sort of the the most obvious one and so for example a very obvious one is people thinking uh I will build an audience and I will start a free newsletter and then I'll monetize with ads why do most people default to that business model because they hear about it the most and it also is sort of the easiest to understand you're like I got a bunch of people reading my stuff and then I get other people to sponsor my newsletter and I guess that's how they make money or that's how I make money right

and even that they're they don't even really know what goes into that it's just conceptually they think okay I I understand how that makes money part of what allows you to charge more as a writer is figuring out how figuring out the best possible business model for the thing that you want to do whether that's a service or a product and this is one of those rabbit holes this will probably need to be a different coffee with Coal Episode because I could talk about business models and upsells and down sells all day long but the

tldr here and for those of you who don't know I notic a lot of people don't know what that means tldr means too long didn't read it's internet speak for just get to the point tldr is that as much time as you spend thinking about practicing learning studying the writing component of what you do you should spend the same amount of time studying the business you should understand different business models you you should try different business models part of the reason why I've monetized my writing in a dozen different ways is because I want to

learn I always want to learn well what are the advantages of these different business models I've made six figures with paid newsletters I've made six figures self-publishing books I've made six figures with SAS building writing software I've uh made Seven figures selling low ticket and high ticket uh training programs and and online courses uh I've made Seven figures building a agency providing services right and every time I try these different models I learn oh okay so this works for this model maybe it doesn't work for this model but I could take this thing from this

model and apply it to this model and that is that is how you have more optionality to charge more how you don't charge more is by spending all day just thinking oh if I get better and better at swapping adjectives magically I make more money and that's why that's why you know my my book series is titled the art and business of online writing the art and business of ghost writing because both components are crucial and more and more we live in an age where you can't just be that naive writer who goes I love

spending all day in in the sentences but I don't want to learn about the business that's for somebody else if that's how you feel and that's the point of view that you want to live life through more power to you but then don't complain about how you don't make more money that's my only feeling about it is you can't say I want to play in the sentences and I don't want to learn about the business and then go why isn't my business growing that's the rule of thumb okay the next part personal branding personal branding

is a skill and what I mean by that is I don't mean posting pictures of what you ate for breakfast and doing viral Tik Tok dances okay personal branding is knowing how to evangelize yourself and personal branding this leads into the last Point has everything to do with category creation something that horos talks about a lot and I like this this explanation is that branding is an association that people make it's it's the association people and customers and readers make with you and the the people that you surround yourself with the podcast that you go

on maybe the products that you consume uh but also associations with what type of product do do you deliver what sort of things do you create the nuance and where I would build on that slightly is that really personal branding is about the association people make with your category personal branding is not about becoming known personal branding is about becoming known for a niche that you own or becoming known for a category that you own okay and you can see this very clearly when someone tries to just build themselves so they post about themselves a

lot they're like this is where I went on vacation and this is what I ate for breakfast and here's more pictures of me in a studio looking off into the distance right and the thing about that is that they might get short-term attention but those people very very very very rarely ever make as much money as the people who clearly have categorical Association and the reason is because what the customer the reader The Listener the viewer what they really care about isn't you what they care about is the topic what they care about is the

category what they care about is the niche and then within that Niche within that category they are looking for the best person to deliver whatever thing they're looking for in that category okay so part of personal branding is actually not all the stuff people talk about with personal branding I think it's one of the most misunderstood terms in marketing personal branding is about evangelizing yourself Nuance asterisk within a specific category and if you don't understand that second component yeah okay you might get a bunch of random people following you but you're not going to know

what to do with it and they're not going to know where and how and why to spend money with you it's like attention for attention's sake and that is not the goal and so the reason this is such an important skill is because I find that a lot of writers are very hesitant to evangelize themselves they go I don't want to be on camera I don't want to talk about the things that I've accomplished I don't want to sound like I'm bragging I don't want to tell people oh I've achieved these things and a helpful

reframe one of the things that I always like pointing out is I go okay so remove the internet pretend you're at a dinner party and uh pretend you over here there there's a conversation and someone's asking you know I'm really uh I've had a lot of success this past year I think it's time for me to finally write a book and I'm debating you know should I go the traditional route or should I go the self-published route and you overhear that conversation and you've self-published five books let's say and you start chiming in and just

sharing things that you know well at some point in that conversation with the other person the other person's going to turn and go this is really interesting how do you know all of this and without even thinking about it you're going to go oh well I've self-published five books over the past 5 years so these are all just things that I've learned myself and then they're going to go oh okay cool got it that context is really helpful thanks and you go yeah no problem do you have any other questions and we do that at

dinner parties or over coffee every single day and we don't think anything of it and yet when it comes time to do the exact same thing on the internet everyone gets in their own way and they go how I I couldn't possibly talk about myself I don't want to tell anybody all the things that I've accomplished why why would I quote unquote brag about the fact that I've self-published five books over the past five years right but that's not what you're doing you're not bragging you're literally just providing context to the reader saying hey and

by the way just so you know where this is coming from I've self-published five books so I've gone through all of this right just like when I talk about any of these things I'm not sitting here being like I'm going to tell you the things I've accomplished for the sake of telling you the things that I've accomplished I tell you hey if you want to understand how to increase your earnings as a ghost writer well I can tell you because I've sold over $5 million worth of ghost writing services I've been there let me just

tell you what what to do and so the way to think about quote unquote personal branding and evangelizing yourself is all you're doing is using your own experiences and your own accomplishments as context as examples like by the way how do I know this CU I did XYZ and then more importantly the this is the Nuance that always gets missed because everyone goes you have to tell your story stories are what resonate the secret storytelling it's like all these handwavy statements that don't mean anything and they misunderstand the point the whole point of telling your

story and and sharing anything about yourself is to provide an example to The Reader customer listener view or whoever is giving you their attention and the only purpose of providing an example is to drive home a point and explain something that matters to them it has very very little to do with you no one cares about your story unless your story provides context or an example to the thing that the customer reader listener viewer cares about okay so if I write a piece or make a YouTube video or record a podcast going here's why I'm

awesome and here's how I built my ghost writing agency nobody's G to listen to it but if I say hey I understand exactly why you're stuck as a freelance writer I understand what's holding your earning potential back I understand what mistakes you're making with packaging and pricing I can tell you how to fix all of them by the way just for context I used to be exactly where you are I used to be that freelance writer charging $25 an article I fixed all of these things I ended up building the first ghost writing Agency for

Founders and Executives I've sold over $5 million worth of these Services let me just break it down for you well now you're going to listen and that that is the piece that I find so many people misunderstand is that your story is not what matters your story is an example to help drive home something that matters to the reader to the customer okay and this is a skill and if you don't understand that this is a skill and you don't take the time to get better at it you're not going to have all of the

advantages that all the other people have and something that I really want to share especially if you're watching this on YouTube if you're listening to it on you know Spotify or apple okay just know there's the video version on YouTube okay I tried doing this8 years ago I tried starting a YouTube channel I think it was 2015 and I was terrified and I didn't know what I was going to create content about and I think I have some of the old files and recordings somewhere and I if I pulled them up right now it would

probably be very very cringe and difficult for me to watch and I had a lot of issue with the idea of quote unquote putting myself out there I didn't want to do things on camera it felt uncom comfortable and in hindsight it was all just a new skill and I didn't like the fact that I was bad at it and over the years slowly I have just pushed myself to keep trying keep trying keep trying and I think what's so interesting about where I am now and I just want to be really transparent here you

know I have this new studio I just moved to Arizona I built the home dream Studio that I've wanted my whole life um not because I wanted to have a YouTube channel or a podcast but because I just wanted a space that I could create in you know I just wanted my own creation layer and now that I have this space and now that I've put in enough reps and I've over the years I've seen just you know year by year I get a little bit better a little bit better but not even better like

more comfortable more comfortable very recently probably in the past week two weeks it's clicked for me now it's all just open road ahead I know exactly I know exactly what I want to write and talk about I know exactly who I can help chances are if you're listening to this right now you have every question that I am so excited to answer I've tried enough things where I have I think enough pattern recognition and and valuable and helpful things to share um I'm not confused about the fact that I am not what's important right I

am here to help you all of these things have taken 10 years to really click for me and so this is not something that just happens overnight and so if you're sitting there and you're like okay this all makes sense how am I going to go Implement and get acquire all of these skills tomorrow that's not how it works but the reason that I like laying all of these things out and planting all of these different seeds is to continue to remind you that these are the different things that you have to spend time doing

and if there's one thing I've really learned over the past 10 years is that not every day is going to be a writing day and not every day are you going to feel like your writing is improving but that's okay because all of these other skills are what allow you and your writing to grow in ways that traditional writers are unable to and as speaking as someone who you know I I am very very grateful and very thankful for all of the different writing mentors I've had along the way um I'm really grateful for teachers

that I had when I was studying creative writing at Columbia College uh downtown Chicago but I also have done a lot of reflecting and look and now looking back I can see why I have outgrown so many of the people that I once looked up to and the reason that I have outgrown so many of these people is because of all of these other skills surrounding the writing and that's why I felt really strongly I really wanted to talk about this today because the big idea and I hope I hope hope that this is what

you're left with is that writing is only a piece of the puzzle you can't just spend all day in the sentences and then expect your business to grow expect your Revenue to go up expect your Revenue to become more stable um expect your Revenue to be be more consistent um to to have people seeking you out instead of you always seeking opportunities out if you want all of these things to happen and if you want all of these unfair advantages you have to be willing to do things that the average person is not willing to

do the average writer is not willing to do all of these things and so if you look at someone like me and go how do I do that well one of the one of the most helpful things I can pass along to you is the realization that I don't do the things that a typical writer would do I spend a lot of time acquiring a lot of skills that the traditional writer does not think are important or thinks that they can get away with not having and I am here to tell you that that couldn't

be farther from the truth and there's a reason why those people are stuck where they are I'm I I'll I'll share one little uh story to end here because I think you know this was a a very eye- openening moment for me so a couple years ago I was living in Los Angeles and I've become friends with uh Craig Clemens who's you know a great friend and Mentor now I think he's the most talented living copywriter um he's sold over a billion dollars worth of of products I mean there's a reason why his copy gets

studied and ripped off probably more than anybody else and he has achieved a lot of financial success as a result I think there are very few writers and copywriters on planet Earth that have made as much money as Craig and I remember one day one evening he was having this event uh at his house and he was kind enough you know we became friends he he invited me to his house I I attended this event I got to hang out a lot of really cool accomplished people I remember being in the room thinking how am

I in this room well how I got there is through ghost writing the reason I was able to get into those types of rooms was because I was a ghost riter and I was Ghost writing for so many different Executives and Founders so talk about a tangental benefit of ghost riding and we were at at his house and we were at this event and he grabs my arm and he goes Cole I want you to meet someone and he introduced me to this guy who had just won uh I want to say it was the

Pitzer prize for uh journalism pieace that he had written and Craig was you know enamored with him as I was I thought that was so cool and we were talking to him and he was super intelligent super sharp and Craig just it was so clear that you know both of us really looked up to this person just from a writing perspective you know just purely about the writing it was just so so cool and it's always cool to talk to someone who has like true Mastery over that part of their craft and then we break

up and you know the event goes on and me and this guy continue talking and then there were a couple speakers that came that night and so me and this guy just happened to sit next to each other and we sit down next to each other and as the first Speaker sort of getting ready and the room's getting all quiet he turns to me and he goes do you know whose house this is cu this is a beautiful house and I was like yeah it's Craig we just it was the guy we were just talking

to and he was like oh I didn't know that and then there's like you know 10 15 seconds of Silence uh and then he goes do you know what Craig does for a living and I was like that's funny like I figured this all would have come up in conversation you know but apparently it it hadn't and I go Craig's a writer and he looks at me and he goes what do you mean and I was like what do you mean what do I mean like Craig's a writer and I start sort of just taking

in him and his stature and obviously no there's no judgment here I'm just telling the story right and he's got you know old gym shoes on and jeans he's probably worn for 15 years and a collared shirt he's probably owned and mourn for 15 years and it was kind of clear why he was asking what do you mean Craig is a writer and it was because we were in a a very very very expensive house that you typically would not think a writer could afford and so I just sort of shared with him and I

said yeah Craig Craig's a writer you know he he has this company and he writes all of the ads and and vsls and you know he's he's The Mastermind behind his company's whole advertising and marketing strategy and I remember the look on his face was pure Fusion it it was as if everything he had ever thought about writing in that moment he realized was wrong and you could see in his eyes this this contradiction where on one hand he's like probably very proud of himself and loves his journey and happy that he has this amazing

award to point to and clearly does really really great work and on the other hand the other thought is boy the path that I'm on would there literally isn't a world where I could afford a house like this and sitting in that discomfort as a writer and for me observing that discomfort was really really interesting and it was one of those moments where I realized wow even the even one of the most talented and accomplished writers in their field is sitting here going I don't understand how this is possible and the reason that that s

sort of person sits there and goes I don't understand how this is possible is because for their entire life they've thought the key to becoming more successful as a writer is getting better at writing and yes you know if your goal is I want to win this award or I want some sort of very Niche specific recognition maybe that's the path but then you can't sit there and go but I don't understand why I'm not making more money or you can't sit there and go I don't understand why I can't afford a house like this

right those are two very different things and I feel very strongly that in the world that we are living in now you don't have to pick you you don't have to have one extreme or the other you can have both you can be a writer that is exceptionally talented and even recognized in your industry but you can also make a lot of money and the only thing keeping you from making more money is taking the time and being open to learn learning and acquiring these other skills and it's very clear if you don't take the

time and put in the effort to acquire these other skills you will probably not make more and more money and that's just the reality of the situation so I wanted to share this I hope this gives you a starting point of you know here are the different things to dig into realize that not every day is a writing day there's a lot of value in acquiring and practicing all these other skills and these non-writing skills are what will make you a dangerously profitable writer