My Promise To You

Some of you are already rolling your eyes. Articles like this can easily come across as braggy and prideful, and ugly. You don’t care that I made $12,000+ in 100 days on Medium. And why should you? It’s only helpful if it helps you grow your own content marketing business.

Which is my exact goal with this story.

For subscribers who’ve been following my work for a while now, you know that I try to create ridiculously high-value content that’s well-researched and brutally honest, containing legitimately unique perspectives and original insights you won’t see anywhere else on the internet. …

“A change of pace + a change of place = a change of perspective.” — Mark Batterson

I had a Zoom call with a friend a few months back. He and his wife and kids usually live in a cramped New York City apartment but had relocated to his parents’ basement to ride out the pandemic.

He’d never been happier.

“My kids have a giant backyard to roam and my wife and I aren’t rubbing elbows at all times. We’re closer to family and we’re saving unbelievable amounts of money. I don’t think we’re ever going back.”

My friend’s not…

I hate advertising. It’s lazy and intrusive and generally ineffective. I use a strategy that’s blocked nearly three million ads in the past three years, and I’ve helped thousands of readers do the same. I believe ad-based platforms like Facebook and Instagram are dead, they just don’t know it yet.

And then there’s Ryan Reynolds.

The dude is a marketing genius:

• His movies get a huge boost from his social media teasers.
• Mint Mobile is growing despite the massive mobile monopolies.
• He managed to turn a garbage-tasting gin into a $610 million exit.

I’m one of the 2.5+ million subscribers…

If you’re a night owl like me and you ever get the chance, move to GMT.
It’s the perfect time zone for people who aren’t early risers.

It’s five hours ahead of New York.
It’s eight hours ahead of Los Angeles.

Living in GMT is like starting work at 4 AM in a 9–5 world.

• You can work all morning without calls, emails, or interruption.
• You can publish an article at noon and it’ll hit the North American breakfast crowd and the European lunch rush simultaneously.
• You can put in a full day’s work and deliver it to your New…

“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” — W. H. Auden

If you’re like me, you have this idea in your head of the perfect schedule, the ideal writing day, the exact time structure that will magically help you produce huge amounts of highly creative, wildly popular, and critically-acclaimed world-class work.

Talk about a fantasy.

Here’s my ideal dream-scenario writing day:

• 6:00–9:00 Meditate in silence for three hours
• 9:00–6:00 Write 10,000 perfect words
• 6:00–9:00 Supper, saunter, swim, sauna, study
• 9:00–6:00 Sleep soundly

Now here’s my actual writing day:

• 9:00–10:00ish Check Medium stats in bed and start writing…

You disabled your neocortex.
You came up with a brilliant article idea.
You crushed out a super-ugly, hyper-creative, typo-laden 1.0 draft.

Excellent.

Now it’s time to polish that ugly duckling into an elegant and readable swan that will improve the lives of thousands of people. Most people just do a quick re-read before putting their work out into the world.

And they can’t figure out why they’re failing to connect with readers.

As a full-time book author and filmmaker, I’m used to New York and LA’s brutally-high editorial standards. My first book underwent thirteen edits. One of my screenplays has…

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” — Cicero

I first kissed my future wife in the summer of the seventh grade. We got married at 22, and have been happily hitched for nearly 13 years now.

Not once have we celebrated Valentine’s Day.

My wife is a pure-bred blue-blooded Finn. I’ve literally seen her name in the giant blue-and-white Finnish directory. I had to ask her father for permission to marry her… butt-naked in the sauna!

The good folks in Finland don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. …