Learn From Me:
- LinkedIn Ultimate Content Mastery: a self-paced LinkedIn course to help you grow on LinkedIn and write compelling stories that attract opportunities. I gained 75k followers in 12 months and became LinkedIn Top Voice within a year of writing, so this stuff works.
- LinkedIn Ultimate Content Mastery(for Indian 🇮🇳 users): Same as above, but enables you to make INR payments with parity pricing (yay).
- Summit 21: Join my flagship cohort-based course, Summit 21. This will be the fourth and last cohort of 2023.
Hi friend,
When I started writing online a thousand days ago, I had no idea this is how life will be, 1000 days later.
Okay, I’ve been writing online for a long time. Since I was 18.
And I’ve been writing otherwise since I was 7.
But I ‘seriously’ started writing online less than 3 years ago. By seriously, I mean I dreamt of making a living doing what I love.
When I started, I:
- had a corporate job I didn’t like
- was dissatisfied with life
- didn’t earn well
Now, I:
- have six sources of income
- work under 4 hours/ day
- am financially alright
As you can make out, my entire life turned around 180 degrees.
And in that process, here’s how my writing has evolved.
1/
Earlier: Only platform rules
I used to only post depending on the platform. So I’d stick to writing Medium-formatted articles for Medium, research on tweet formats for Twitter, and so on.
I still wholeheartedly recommend this and still do it.
The only way to know what works is by observing what's already working and integrating that template into your writing.
Now: A bit of playfulness
I also do my own thing now, because now I:
- already have an audience
- enjoy being a little weird
So I play around with my writing across platforms for fun. I go all-paragraphs on Medium articles sometimes and do a long, long post on LinkedIn.
2/
Earlier: Traction hungry
Let’s look at the performance of my top 3 LinkedIn posts in the past week (at the time of writing this):
18 hours ago:
 |
2 days ago:
 |
6 days ago:
 |
Earlier, I would’ve squealed to get such traction.
Now, I feel good. But I’m more focused on the kind of audience I’m attracting and if it’s helping me build my newsletter list. Likes don’t determine your true audience or future customers.
Now: Audience Hungry
I recognise almost all common faces under my comments section.
I want an engaged audience, which is why I work hard to give them value in my best capacity.
I’d also ultimately want them on my email list.
And a tiny % of them purchase my products as they too, are all created keeping my audience’s online growth in mind.
3/
Earlier: Whoa, viral!
Of course, it gave me a kick to go viral, and all those follow requests that poured in. It made me feel like I’ve truly achieved something.
Now: Uh, okay…
The bubble burst shortly after when I realised virality doesn’t mean opportunities or more money.
I posted this 6 days ago and it has 110K+ views and over 3000 likes:
 |
It ultimately directed my audience to my LinkedIn course, which is inexpensive and has parity pricing for those in my country, India.
It got me zero sales.
And this isn’t the first time it has happened to me.
Even in the early days when I used to freelance, I realised that going viral doesn’t bring in more opportunities.
4/
Earlier: Want to become a freelancer
I wanted to quit my job to freelance so I can own my time and do my own thing.
Now: Build a biz
Since my cohort-based course picked up and is doing well, I want to focus on building a business instead. Scale my products, teach more, and see where it goes.
I don’t have a plan.
But I’m following my bliss.
5/
Earlier: Why would such a big writer talk to me?
I admired so many writers but having battled with low self-esteem, I doubted myself.
While it was a little less than before because it was self-belief that made me quit my job in only 9 months of side hustling. But it was still there.
Deep down, I wasn’t completely rid of my old low-self-esteem self.
Now: What’s the worst that can happen?
My biggest win this month was to get Tim Denning and Ankur Warikoo to speak in my cohort-based course.
I asked, expecting a no.
They said yes.
What’s the worst that can happen? That they’ll say no. It isn’t that, bad really.
So asking for a chance I took and I’m glad it turned out well.
Here’s What Remains Unchanged
Throughout this journey, while I’ve evolved, a lot remains unchanged that helped me reach where I am:
- Detachment: Because of my initial days when rejection was so frequent, I worked on getting detached from my writing. It helps me even today when I write and they don’t work well. I move on and work on the next draft.
- Experiment: having products and teaching a course is purely accidental, or we can say, a consequence of experimenting. I’ve been open to playing around and am always learning from others, which helped me try my hand at multiple things.
- Intention and clarity: My purpose of writing is to help people live happier and healthier lives. If it doesn’t meet this intention, I don’t type that idea.
- Prioritising fun: I can overthink a million things and question everything, but where does that get me? It doesn’t move the needle one bit. I don’t want to be in a position where my passion becomes pressurising and stressful, so I’ve prioritised having fun since day one.
I hope you learnt from this article. All the best and don’t forget, the world is full of an abundance of opportunities.
Love,
N
Before you leave, here's how I can help you ace your goals:
- LinkedIn Ultimate Content Mastery: a self-paced LinkedIn course to help you grow on LinkedIn and write compelling stories that attract opportunities. I gained 75k followers in 12 months and became LinkedIn Top Voice within a year of writing, so this stuff works.
- LinkedIn Ultimate Content Mastery- India (for Indian 🇮🇳 users): Same as above, but enables you to make INR payments with parity pricing (yay).
- Summit 21: Join my flagship cohort-based course, Summit 21. This will be the fourth and last cohort of 2023.
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