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How I Became a Full-Time Writer · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to The Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I became a full-time writer in May 2021, a little bit over five years ago.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And since those days, dozens of people have asked how I actually made the transition from teaching college to full-time writing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: After all, going from teaching to full-time writing is not a transition you exactly hear about every day.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever thought of becoming a full-time writer or if you have that as a goal, I think today's episode is going to help you think about a strategy to get there.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And on this episode, I want to share some big principles that I followed in making this transition, as well as three conditions that had to be true before I made the leap.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, let's talk about three really important principles.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is that my burning desire was to leave my college job and build a business.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes when people ask me how I made the leap, I tell them that it was desperation because, you know, they look at the fact that I was a teacher and they think, well, how did you actually go from being a teacher to having your own full-time business as a writer?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because that seems like that would involve a lot of you know strategy or uh super high intelligence or some sort of thing that's really unusual, which um obviously does involve some intelligence, uh, at least I hope it does, and does involve strategy, of course, which I'll get into a little bit more in a couple moments.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But more than anything, this transition was driven by desperation.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not kidding about that at all.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 2015 or so, uh, our college began to go into a steep decline.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Our student enrollment was shrinking, and I knew that in the next few years the college was probably going to close.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So ironically, it actually closed a year after I left.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, it merged with another school.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would consider it that another school actually took over our school.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really a merger, but that's beside the point.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I got out just in time because the school closed in spring of 2022.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I did just get out in time.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a disparagement on the school, by the way.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love teaching there.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I truly loved my job, but it wasn't just a it was just a financial reality.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And until you have a burning desire to build a business and to escape whatever you're doing now, you won't make it happen.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have to want building your own business as much as you want oxygen or food.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that really was the case for me.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So starting in 2015, we really went into this steep decline and I knew that I really needed to get my my plan B in order here.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you could really call it my plan A.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I had to get my ducks in a row if I was gonna make this happen.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It took me a few years, but I eventually did make it happen.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one is I had a burning desire to leave that job and build a business.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, I settled on ghostwriting as my main service.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: This was gonna be my main income source.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really important because ghostwriting is a straightforward, high-priced service that I could do really well.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I did not choose this by accident.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: This was extremely intentional on my part.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to have a full-time business doing something, you have to offer products or services where you can make real money.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't escape that fact.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really, really important.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be something that you enjoy or something that you're really good at or that you can learn to be good at, and it has to be something that can be really profitable.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, I needed my ghostwriting income to match my college income.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I will be honest and tell you, this was not really that hard to do because even at the low ghostwriting rates that I was charging way back then, I was able to match my college salary within about 18 months.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And once I knew that I had a sustainable business, then it was time to plan for the transition away from the college.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And just given those overall principles that I laid out, after that, my wife and I agreed that there were three conditions that had to be true in order for me to officially quit my job, you know, give notice there, and then go into my business full time.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Condition number one was that we had to have at least six months of savings in the bank.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is just a really basic Dave Ramsey principle that's super useful.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife insisted on this.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, insisted maybe isn't the right word, but you know, this isn't, by the way, just as a side note, this transition was not something that I decided to do on my own.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was very much something that my wife and I had to be in total and complete agreement on before I made this happen.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we both agreed we've got to have six months of savings in the bank.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That just seemed like a wise thing to do.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, I needed to have six months of consistent client work that I had done before I was gonna officially quit my college job.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I actually had quite a bit more than six months of consistent client work that I'd done.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the basic idea here was that there had to be a proven repeated demand for my services, not just a one-off random client that I got because I was lucky.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, number three, I also had to have six months of client work lined up in the pipeline.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I figured that if I had six months of client work lined up, I could probably find more clients, even if I later on ran into ran into a dry spell.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The short story here is that I approached this decision really logically.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Quitting my college job and going full-time into my business was not a matter of guesswork, but it was a matter of careful and strategic planning.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I understand, you know, I'm kind of in my head hearing the chorus of people who have worked W 2 jobs their whole lives, and they will say, Oh, Kent, but that sounds so risky.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna totally disagree with you.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's actually the opposite.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that it's far more risky to depend on somebody else for your total income than it is to create a business that depends on you to bring in your own income.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would far rather depend on myself than assume that I have income coming in from a company or an organization that's always gonna continue coming in.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many times have we heard of people who just get let go from jobs that they've maybe had even for decades?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard it happen a million times.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's happened to you before, so you know that this can happen.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm talking about here is the whole idea of this principle that I keep coming back to here on this podcast, which is the idea of authorship.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that is taking control of your life, taking control of your career, taking control of your work and your income.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at this point, I've been in my business full-time for five years.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am not the world's smartest person, I'm not the world's best business guy, by long shot, and I'm not even the world's best writer, not even close.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, the thing is, I have approached my business in a strategic and measured way that minimizes my risk while also trying to maximize my income and my opportunities.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, if I can do it, you can do it too.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am an introvert who worked in the nonprofit and education space for a long time.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two industries that are not known for business thinking.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh again, I'm an introvert, I'm not a natural, you know, business whiz or anything like that.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can do this, there is literally hope for anybody.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bottom line is that I just wanted this really, really bad.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was willing to do basically anything I needed to do to escape a job that I knew was going to end eventually.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, I've got to make my I've got to make another plan here.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I got into this whole ghostwriting thing, honestly.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I will always be grateful for this because it's it's changed my life in a whole bunch of different ways.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that this is helpful to you.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you have thought of becoming a full time writer, or if you've thought about getting into ghostwriting, these are some principles that I believe can really, really help you make that transition.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for listening today.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this was helpful.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing, keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.