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How to Be a 10-Year "Overnight Success" · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Rider.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailyriderlife.com.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since I went full-time in my ghostwriting business this past summer, I've had a lot of conversations about how that happened.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: People have been really interested in the mechanics of my transition from a college professor to a full-time writer.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: They have asked me questions like this.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make a full-time living as a ghostwriter?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: How long did it take you to build up your business?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: When did you find time to build up your business?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: People who have been following me for a while knew this transition had been coming for probably a year or two, but to a lot of other people, it seemed like they saw it as coming out of nowhere because many people in my life sort of act surprised by this.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just the other day, somebody commented that it must be awesome for you to be living your dream.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could do that.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I've got to admit that it's awesome to be in charge of your own schedule and your own income.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, that person's comment seemed to be a way to suggest that I basically just got lucky or that I somehow fell into this thing of having a full-time ghostwriting business.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, I thought it would be good to take this opportunity to share my journey of how all this actually happened.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it has definitely not been a quote unquote overnight success.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this has been a long, long time in the making.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I would do this episode titled How to Be a 10-year quote-unquote overnight success.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me preface this by saying actually two things.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing is other people may look at me as a success.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I do view this as a success on some important levels, but I don't look at myself as necessarily like, hey, everybody should be like me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We all have a lot of learning and growing to do.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to give you the impression like I am the end-all, be all of anything.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's just the opposite.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I see all of my flaws and mistakes, uh, many of which I'm going to share on this episode.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want you to think that I'm presenting myself as like the model for everybody or anything like that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, however, if you want to build a full-time writing business, I do have some things that I think are going to be really helpful for you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I would um just humbly ask that you consider those things.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you look at all the things that I screwed up along the way, it's probably gonna save you several years in the process uh if you pay attention to these things.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that at the end of this episode, I'm gonna share a few practical tips if you are on the same journey.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: My business journey began sometime around 2010 or 2011 when I started blogging, and I had no idea what I was doing other than I just had the impulse to write.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had always wanted to be a writer, but the only opportunities I knew about were things like submitting articles to magazines or trying to find a publisher for a book.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then when blogging came along, I saw it as an opportunity to sharpen my writing skills and maybe help some people along the way.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So for a few years, I wrote on a semi-consistent basis about teaching, faith, family, spirituality worship, and whatever else came to mind.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no rhyme or reason other than just getting my thoughts out there.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And around the same time, I started to follow a few people who gave me a vision for what a writing-based business could look like.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there were five specific people that I followed: Dan Miller, Joanna Penn, Jeff Goines, Michael Hyatt, and Kamanzi Constable.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And each of those people emphasized different topics and they had their own unique way of writing, but each one of them impacted me in a really huge way.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And as I studied these amazing writers, I noticed that they all had several things in common.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: They all wrote books, they all sent email newsletters, they all had courses or memberships that you could purchase, and most of them had some other digital products as well.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They all wrote blog posts, and all but one of them had a podcast where they either shared great content, they interviewed leaders in their field, or both.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is that they all frequently collaborated with other writers through podcasting, blogging, and so forth.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, bit by bit, as I followed these people and some others as well, I saw that it was possible to build a business around writing.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And with each passing month and year, I got more and more hungry to build a business around my writing.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want my life or my schedule to be dictated by anybody else.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the vision that I saw that these people had in their life, and I wanted the same thing for my life eventually.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2014, I had been blogging for a while, but I decided to take things to the next level.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was a big fan of the productivity app, Evernote, and I actually still use it uh every single day.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm reading from it literally right now because my notes for this episode are in Evernote.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I had been teaching uh in 2014, I'd been teaching Evernote to my college students for a while, and I was encouraged by all the online courses I was seeing from other people.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I created my own course on Evernote and I promoted it to a few dozen people that I knew.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: This was just an online course, it was video based.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time creating, I mean, dozen, many, many dozens of hours creating this online course.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I promoted it to some people, and I even got official permission from the Evernote Corporation people so I wouldn't be sued.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I, in fact, I remember emailing them and they sent back like this release form, and I had to tell them what I was making so I could use the the word Evernote in the course title or something like that.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when I released this, a few people bought it, and I remember being so ecstatic that people had given me$47 each for a course.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, when I got those first payments for something that I created, it was a huge, huge rush.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It really was.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's cool when you see those numbers coming over, you know, like your phone that says, hey, you've you got$47 through PayPal from somebody.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really a rush.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty soon after that, I took my course material and I wrote a book on Evernote for pastors.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it was published with a small Christian publisher called Church Mag Press, and it was only an ebook and not print.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think honestly, less than 25 people ever bought that book in the whole time that they had it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if if you look at it in terms of what I made like per hour when I was creating that course, it was really, really low.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the the thing that I took away from that, well, that there was a lot of things.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: One was the value of creating a course, the value of creating a digital product, the value of creating content, um, teaching what you know.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were so many cool things about that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Though I would say the one thing that I really took away from that, though, is that it gave me the confidence to write a book.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So basically I wrote like a 25,000-word book as my course notes for that, and I used that as the basis for the actual book.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that gave me the confidence to write my next book, which was The Artist Suitcase, 26 Essentials for the Creative Journey.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that came out in 2015.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And around the same time, I started a blog and a podcast by the same name, The Artist Suitcase.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I loved podcasting, but it was a lot of work.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I did my podcast for a few months, but I gave up on the show after only doing 37 episodes.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: However, I kept on writing and blogging.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what you're seeing here, I know I'm throwing a lot of stuff at you, but basically what you're seeing me do here back in 2014 and 2015 is you're seeing me experiment with a lot of different things.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was experimenting with courses, uh print books and ebooks, um, self-publishing and working with the publisher, blogging, podcasting.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing all those things kind of separately, and they weren't, I mean, they were tied together, but I didn't really have any overall strategy for it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I was just getting my feet wet.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be a long time before all those really came together in a coherent, in a cohesive way.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I really enjoyed all of that and I was having a blast doing it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't really know what to do with it business-wise.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of something fun that I did.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like a hobby.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they started to coalesce a few years later.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But let me let me kind of take a different route and tell you what was happening in my day job during this time because it does tie into this.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So around this time, 2014, 2015 or so, I had been teaching music and worship ministry at my college for about 10 years.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was totally burned out.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that I needed to either change jobs or teach something different.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I used the negotiation skills that I was learning from my side jobs to gradually work my way into a new role at my college.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And over the next couple of years, I transitioned completely out of the music area and into a newly created role for me, which was professor of communication arts.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember it, I remember this uh very specifically, where uh I had this new role that was going to be centered around communications, and our academic dean, uh, a good friend of mine, Scott Womble, we were talking about what my title should be, because they had to print up some business cards or they had to like get the nameplate for my door or something.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm sorry, I think it was for the website.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to know what my title was for the website.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was sort of like, Well, you're my boss, you know, that's sort of up to you.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, what do you want your title to be?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never had somebody ask me that before.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, What about professor of communication arts?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I chose communication arts instead of communication was because typically, um, if you look at somebody who's a professor of communications at a at a university, they're going to be teaching things like journalism or broadcasting, things that are more like traditional media outlet type of things.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not what I was doing.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I just tacked on arts to the end of that title, and they were okay with that.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just kind of funny.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just got to make literally made up my title there.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the way I figured it, I might as well be doing something similar in my day job as what my side hustle was.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I was learning in my side job were so valuable that I wanted to teach those things to student to students, things like blogging and podcasting and writing and ebooks and storytelling and all those kinds of things.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the advantages of teaching at a small college is that you can work your way into a new role if you play your cards right.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that I did this, again, is I didn't go in just saying, hey, can I have this?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have this?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: What I did was I took the copywriting and the marketing skills and the negotiation skills I was learning.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, well, how can I apply these in my day job?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I would propose an idea and just kind of float it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever I would propose a new course or propose that maybe I transition out of an area, I wouldn't do it with the idea of leading with what I wanted first.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would do it with what the college wanted in mind, was thinking, okay, if I can transition out of this role or I can teach this new class, here's the benefits to the college.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Students will love it, it'll be a good marketing thing, you know, whatever the benefit to the school was.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's an important principle here in using things that you're doing in your side hustle in your day job, or vice versa.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot, there can be a lot of overlap there.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't necessarily have to always keep them totally separate, I guess.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can use what you're learning in one context and apply it to another context.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did was I moved out of the music area and I started teaching classes on film, storytelling, communications, technology, um writing and publishing, and so forth.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I will still remember this.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I started transitioning out of that area of music and worship more into a communications role, and I started teaching more of these kinds of quote unquote fun classes, it irritated one or two of our other professors.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one of them said to me, Why do you get to teach all the fun classes?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I just responded, Well, because I asked.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to settle for what the academic need gives you.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You got to be proactive and you got to negotiate for what you want.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was funny because this seemed to never occur to any other teachers.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if they scheduled me for a class and I didn't like the time of the class, or, you know, if I needed to pick up my son from school at a time when they had scheduled me to teach, I would just go and I would try to get it fixed or try to get it moved.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not insisting on my own way, but I would just say, hey, I've got a situation here.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be possible to consider moving this to another thing?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I can switch with somebody else, or how could we make this work for everybody?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it just seemed to never really occur to many other teachers at our school that you can go ask for what you want.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to just accept whatever other people give to you.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just go, you know, negotiate, figure out what works for everybody, and try to get what you want.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think that's an important principle in life as a whole.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what was kind of going on with me in my side job while I was building all the blogging, podcasting, writing stuff on the side.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually these things sort of merged in some fun and interesting ways.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's talk about uh client work for just a minute.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because around around this time is when I started to dive into doing work for clients and not just doing doing things for myself or as a hobby.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2016, I struck up a friendship with a gentleman named Ray Taylor, who was a podcast producer and he still is a podcast producer and still a gentleman and still an awesome friend.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we connected on a site called 48days.net, which was a networking community and an early version of Dan Miller's Eagles community.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Rai needed somebody to write show notes for a client podcast that he was producing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I agreed to do that, and we worked together on that show until just a few months ago when I handed those off, when I handed the show notes off to another writer.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was actually the only client that I continued to do show notes for, gosh, for probably the last uh the last year and a half until I I stopped doing those a few months ago.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason was because I enjoyed working on the show so much.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um this was a show where I just learned a ton.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every guest was was amazing.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I learned so much from from this client that I was doing show notes for.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was really, really a fun experience.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even though the pay was was fairly low because podcast show notes doesn't really pay that much, but I was taking away a lot of learning and education from this.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I continued on doing, even after I started ghostwriting books, I continued with doing podcast show notes for this client.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in 2017, after I had been doing um show notes for a while, I started podcasting again.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time I was focusing on the topic of creativity, so I started a podcast that was called Born to Create.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was worried on a book of the same title as well.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm embarrassed to admit this now, but I worked on that book, Born to Create, for two or three years and I never finished it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I and this is no exaggeration.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could I could show you if you wanted to see it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I created 150 pages of raw material, of ideas for the book, of character sketches and backstory and and book outlines and ideas, but I never actually wrote the book.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever gotten stuck on a book, I can relate to that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's embarrassing, to be honest with you.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here I am, I'm like a ghostwriter, I'm a podcaster, I'm trying to teach all this writing stuff, and and there are books that I have started but not finished.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you feel that way, um, that is okay.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've all been there, done that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the t-shirt, we've got the souvenir.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and at some point you have to go, do I want to finish this book?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do I not want to finish it?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so forth.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to probably never write that exact book, but I have taken a lot of ideas and pieces of it that are going into other projects.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever started a book but not finished it, just know that you can kind of dismantle those ideas and you can use those in other projects if you want to.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like having a car for spare parts.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there's there's some value in having uh a spare car laying around because you can salvage those parts and use them in other things.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, around the same time, 2017 or so, I started writing for a site called the Goodman Project, which is a website with several million visitors per month.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then after a short time, I became a lead editor there.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this meant that I was not only recruiting new writers, but I was also editing and posting their material on the website.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The pay was really, really low, but the experience and the connections were absolutely essential.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were really, really vital, and I learned a ton from being a lead editor there.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so this went on for a couple of years.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing podcasting, uh, writing for the Goodman Project, doing blogging, you know, thinking about what my next book would be, uh, struggling through trying to figure out what this Born to Create book was gonna be.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And things just kind of went on.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the more that time went on, you know, a couple of years passed, and uh a couple of years ago in 2019, uh was a very frustrating time for me because things in our school were actually um, you know, our enrollment was decreasing a lot.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see that probably we weren't gonna last a couple of more than a couple other years.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, as I'm recording this, in um I'm recording this on October the 21st, 2021.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they announced a few weeks ago that our school, St.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College, is actually going to be merging with another school next May.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this is gonna be the last year that the school exists in its current form.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So my intuition was right all along.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was basically right on with my timing.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: In 2019, I thought we're probably not gonna last, but maybe a couple more years.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I went, that's when I started to get really, really serious about okay, I've got to figure out money-wise, how am I going to make this work?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do to actually create um a job for myself?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've either got to do that or I've got to get a job because my job here probably is not gonna last much longer.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that summer in 2019, I applied for several jobs with companies who needed writers or content consultants.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of those companies required extensive pre-interview work.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent about 25 hours doing required work for one of them, and I made it to the top 50 candidates out of 2,000 candidates, which is nothing to sneeze at, but I didn't get any further with it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously I was immensely disappointed uh by those experiences of spending so much time, you know, you're going through all the process and you're doing the exercises and the sample this and the sample that, which I get, those are important, but man, it's frustrating when you do that and you don't actually get the job.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, later that summer in 2019, I connected with a potential client who was very, very interested in me helping her company implement a company-wide training program.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the possibilities for this were huge.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were so huge, in fact, that if they accepted my proposal to implement this program, it would allow me to quit my teaching job and focus on just doing this client thing for the next year, probably.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this client asked for a detailed proposal.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent about 60 hours over the next two weeks putting together an amazing proposal.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I did a whole bunch of research on her industry, and I put together an incredible proposal that included podcast production, a book, consulting, uh, assessments for her team, like the whole shebang.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It and it was cool because I got to bring in a lot of my education background into this, which I wasn't normally getting to do with client work.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I put this thing together, sent it to her.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I actually emailed it to her, then I texted her and said, Hey, by the way, I just sent you the proposal.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious to see what you think about it.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And gosh, I think probably less than a couple hours later or so, um, she just texted back and said, you know, I forget the exact words, but basically she said, This is this is not really probably gonna work.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're working through some things here, da-da-da-da.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: It would, but it was kind of like a very quick rejection.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I just looked at that and I was just stunned.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just was like, wait, what did I suddenly miss something here?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those moments where you think you feel like a complete fool because you're like, what did I miss here that was so obvious?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And why did I just waste like two weeks of my life putting together this thing that was rejected in about two seconds?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So to say that I was discouraged and defeated is a massive understatement.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is that I was just, I was mad.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was really, really angry about it.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not an outwardly angry guy.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're not gonna see me going around punching people or you know, shouting exp expletives at people or that kind of a thing.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: But internally, I was really upset about this.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I stayed that way for two whole months.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember uh I started the school year really, really just mad about that because I I thought, oh, this was a shoe in.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this was going to be like a sure thing.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had gotten rejected for several jobs that summer that I thought I was perfect for, that I had spent time applying for.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then I then this thing got rejected.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was just so uh demoralizing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was so angry and upset about that.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I started the school year.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In August 2019, uh, in a pretty bad mood.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I could not get over the fact that I had spent all this time on this proposal and it just got rejected.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in hindsight, I realize that happens to a lot of people.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: It happens all the time in the corporate world where you know companies will prepare proposals and they'll spend all this time and human resource energy on things and they just they won't get accepted.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens all the time.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that was the first time that it ever really happened with me.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was really, really discouraging.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like, oh my gosh, all this work is just down the drain.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it turns out that it wasn't really going down the drain.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: All that work had not been in vain, and it was a good thing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was a really, really good thing that that none of those jobs had worked out.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that anger and that desire to succeed and that frustration, that is what fueled me to sit down one day in the fall of 2019 to figure out what in the heck I really wanted out of my career.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought to myself, if I'm going to design a business that's perfect for me, what would it look like?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I sit down over, gosh, this is probably like an hour or so.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I created this huge list of criteria.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what are all the things that I really want in a business?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I just called these the big five.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever direction I went with with a business, it had to include these five things.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: These five things were my non-negotiables.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And here they were.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Number one was the ability to work from anywhere.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to be tied to an office or a location.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number two was the ability to set my own schedule.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I did not want to be tied to somebody else's schedule.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Number three was a focus on writing or content creation.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's my main marketable skill.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Number four was the opportunity to make as much income as I wanted because I didn't want to be limited by somebody else.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had spent 17 years in a college situation where I my salary was always low.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: We very rarely got raises.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard, it was really, really hard to make extra money in a college situation unless you taught overload classes, and even then you can only have so many of them.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I had just spent a long time with a, with what I felt like was an artificial cap on my salary.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I just decided I wasn't going to do that anymore.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be in charge of my own success and my own financial destiny.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then number five was the opportunity to spend time around highly successful business people and creative thinkers.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew from my experience, uh, even then, after being spending a lot of time uh reading people's podcasts, uh I'm sorry, reading people's books, listening to their podcasts, going to conferences, uh doing client work, I had spent enough time around business people at that point that I knew I'd had to get around these kind of people a lot more than I was.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I needed to have a business or a career that put me in the orbit of people who were very successful in business and in life.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So those were my five non-negotiables.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And around that same time, I enrolled in Ghostwriter School, which is a course created by Nick Pavlitas, who is a very successful ghostwriter.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And once I enrolled in that and I started the course and started taking notes, I knew that I had found a business model that met all of my criteria.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ghostwriting would allow me to set my own schedule, be location independent, earn as much as I wanted over time, be writing focused, and also put me in touch with successful people.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it met all of the criteria that I wanted.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it really wasn't until last year, 2020, when things finally started to coalesce into something that I knew could be a viable business.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And once I got my first ghostwriting client, I knew it was going to work if I continued to work the system.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: However, I still had kind of a conundrum, which is I didn't want to focus exclusively on ghostwriting.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I still wanted to create my own stuff and I still wanted to teach writing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love teaching.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm a natural teacher at heart.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love to break down principles, I love to organize material, and I love to help people with things.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't just want to do work for clients, I also wanted to help other writers.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided that my business was going to have two parts Inkwell Ghostwriting, which obviously does client work, and also the Daily Writer, which creates resources for writers.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the Daily Rider includes books.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three of my own books coming out within the next year related to that.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: It includes the Daily Rider membership community and also a podcast, which of course you're listening to right now.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And these are two distinct sides of my business, but there's a lot of overlap.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I'm learning in my client work, I can then teach via the Daily Rider.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And all the material that I develop for the Daily Rider, I can then share with my clients as added bonuses or whatever I need to do as it fits their project.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I do have to say, I think my clients like the fact that I don't just do ghostwriting, I also teach it to other people.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of cool when the person that you hire to do something is also teaching other people.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's something that as we kind of start to wrap this up, and as I get to three lessons I want to share with you in just a minute, uh, I do want to say this.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you see somebody who has a successful business on some level, you might think that you know their story.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: But a business is like an iceberg.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: What you see, or the part that's visible, is only the top 10%.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole lot of stuff and a whole journey that lies under the surface, and that is unseen by most people.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when people see me from the outside, here's what they see.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: They see a guy who has a full-time business doing something that he loves and something that he's good at.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what people see.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here are the things that most people did not see the last 10 years.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't see the late nights, the early mornings, and the weekends that I spent writing, recording podcasts, and editing those interviews and episodes.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most people didn't see the hundreds of podcast show notes that I wrote for clients in my spare time.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't see the frustrations, the dead ends, and the discouragement that cropped up for me on a regular basis.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: People didn't see all the courses I took, the books and articles I read.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't see the audiobooks and podcasts that I was listening to in order to learn new skills and to make myself more valuable.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: They also didn't see the many thousands of dollars of my own money that I spent doing those things.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't see all the weird, the random or the low-paying writing jobs that I did for clients.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I did some weird stuff.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not like bad, not like bad kinds of weird, but just, you know, things that were not that interesting or that were a little different or very niche kind of driven stuff.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of it which just seemed kind of random.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those jobs were not exciting, but I was really grateful for the income and those, those crazy, sometimes weird freelance jobs, they taught me really valuable skills.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: People also didn't see all the times that I have gone for hour-long walks dictating content for articles, newsletters, or podcasts.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: People didn't see the hundreds of phone calls and Zoom calls that I was doing to connect with people over a period of years.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when you when you talk about people who have a similar journey as mine, these things are not unusual.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff that you don't see happening.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: We only see the outward success or the appearance of success.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see all the 90% that's under the water that is helping people to be successful or to have the kind of business that they want.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, it takes a few years to get some skills under your belt and to figure out what the heck your direction is.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's where you are, just keep on plugging away.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep on doing it.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to come together, but you have to keep going.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot quit.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to close out this uh podcast episode with three really quick observations.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to turn your writing into a business, the first thing is that it's critical to get around the right people.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to spend time around people who have a similar vision for their lives.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those people need to be positive, they need to be encouraging, they need to be helpful.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the Daily Writer community is a fantastic place to find those kinds of people.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm recording this, I'm thinking back to a call that we had just this afternoon on repurposing your content.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great call.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was so encouraging and so much fun to hear people's ideas and to share all of our collective wisdom about how can we, how can we take our content and use it a bunch of different places.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Daily Rider community is a great place for you to get connected and to learn how to write better, but also to connect with some of the really cool people.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And also if you do client work, it's a great place to find some ideas for that as well.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you can find out more about that at dailyriderlife.com slash community.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second thing I want to say is you must keep learning and moving forward.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even when it feels like you're not making a lot of progress, you've got to keep trying new things.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to keep putting out content, you have to keep creating, you've got to keep connecting with people.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: The moment that you stand still and say, I'm done learning, is the day that you may as well quit.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: You just got to give up.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just gonna quit when it gets tough, then you're not cut out for this.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds harsh, but this is not about your writing skill.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: That this is not about you being, you know, like the world's greatest artist or the most talented writer or the most creative person or any of that stuff.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is really much more about your tenacity, your stubbornness.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's about you not quitting and not giving up because the vast majority of people are going to give up.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of writers give up way too soon.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you don't think that you're the most talented writer, it doesn't matter because you can you can learn to improve your writing skills.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: You really can.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Writing is a I think writing is like 98% what you learn and hard work and editing and revision and collaboration.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 2% skill and talent.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: I really do believe that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am not the world's greatest writer.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not Shakespeare, you know.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nor would I want to write like Shakespeare because the writing would sound weird.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there are plenty of writers who are far better than me, but I'm really good at connecting with clients and I'm really good at ghostwriting.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really good at capturing people's voices.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what helps me to have a legit business with ghostwriting.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily just about talent, it's way more about working hard and connecting and adding value and all that kind of stuff.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the third lesson I want to share here is this.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend starting a podcast.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: A podcast for me has been essential for meeting new people and creating new opportunities.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have conversations with awesome people, magic things happen.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee I would not have a full-time business today if it had not been for podcasting.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Almost everything good that I have done has in some way been connected to my podcast.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast has kind of been almost like a central hub around which everything else connects to in some way or another.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So those three things I would really encourage you to think about.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: You got to get around the right people.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: You got to keep learning and moving forward.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to either start a podcast or be a guest on podcast.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Podcasting is such a critical element of this.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: I really can't over-emphasize that enough.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I know this has been kind of a long episode, and I appreciate you hanging in there with me, but I hope this has been helpful.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have made a lot of mistakes in my journey, and I honestly left out a lot of stuff in this podcast.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I left out, gosh, one of the things I left out was uh the stupid business decisions I've made and the money that I have uh mistakenly wasted because of just dumb decisions and wasting time and not getting clear on what I wanted to do.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, if my wife was here on this on this episode, she could she could tell you all the dumb things that I did also and and all the frustration that I probably caused for my family.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I kept moving forward and eventually it's all worked out.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't change anything though.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I would because it's only because of those frustrations that I can tell you this story today.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all those things that have led me to where I am now.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you want to have a writing-based business, you have to create it around the things that you like doing, the things that you're good at, your personality.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: So create a business if you want to do that, create it around what you want.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just do what somebody else is doing.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge mistake that I made for such a long time.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is I would hear, oh, this person says you should do consulting.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: This person says you should do online courses.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: This person says you should do speaking.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this person says you should just write books and just focus on that.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're listening to all those voices, it's really paralyzing because you don't know who to believe.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, should I follow this person or this person or this person?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: So just follow two or three people that have the kind of business that you want to have, then just do what they do.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even better, if you want to simplify it, pick one person who is doing exactly what you want to do, read everything that they write, uh, you know, connect with them any way that you can, get on their email list, find out what they did to get where they are, and then just start doing those things.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is way more about action than it is about intelligence or talent or creativity.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to do the work.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what it comes down to.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friends.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, this has been a long episode.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging in there with me.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this is helpful.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as always, if I can help you in any way possible, let me know.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that one of the four practices of a great writer is creativity.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to stay creative, you've got to have great input.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where writing prompts come in.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: A writing prompt is a sentence or two that helps you break through creative blocks, brainstorm new ideas, and get back into a state of flow.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Writing prompts are an awesome creative tool for journaling, storytelling, creative writing, stress relief, social media posts, and so much more.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the great news is that you don't have to create these yourself.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've put together an amazing package of 365 daily writing prompts.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So every day for the next year, you can have a shot of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out at dailyriderlife.comslash writing prompts.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.