Arvid Kahl: Today, I'm talking to Nicolas Cole, co founder of
Ship 30 for 30 and prolific writer. We discuss the
importance of writing for indie hackers and how it can change
their lives. And we look at different ways of writing and
the shelf life of content and then delve into the evolution of
writing skills and the journey of writing a book. Do you want
to overcome self limiting beliefs about writing? Tune in
today. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that
later. Now, here's Cole.
Hey, Cole, welcome to the show. You're the co founder of Ship 30
for 30. And that's one of the most impactful writing courses
that I've ever seen, which is awesome. Now, for people of my
background, engineers, developers, coders, makers,
shipping mostly means deploying software and writing for other
people. Well, that's by far not as important to many indie
hackers as writing code. And I think that's unfortunate. And
the more indie founders should write, so what can we do today
to convince these busy people that coding away that writing
can change their life?
Nicolas Cole: That's a good question. I don't think you can
convince anyone to do anything unless they understand what it
leads to. Right? So instead of framing it as, how do you get
someone excited about writing? I think a more productive or
helpful question to ask the person is, what do you want?
What's the outcome that you want? Because nobody wants to go
to the gym. But everybody wants the results of going to the gym,
right? Nobody wants to eat healthy. Everyone wants the
result of eating healthy. And writing is sort of no different.
A lot of times, the process of writing isn't always easy or
enjoyable or fun. But the outcomes are worth it. So I
think it just starts with what's the goal? What's the outcome?
And if you're a developer, if you're an indie hacker, if
you're a solopreneur, this sort of doesn't matter what
archetype. Every person in every industry wants some version of
the same things, which is, I sure would love zero customer
acquisition cost on the thing that I'm building, right? You
want $0 CAC. Every person wants, when there's a broader
conversation happening in their industry, they want to be seen
as someone who has a helpful opinion or, you know, the
thought leadership sort of. They want to be seen as that person
who can help and foster and participate in whatever that
broader narrative is. Everybody wants "passive income." So how
do I build something that's going to pay me a dividend over
time? Which you can do through software, you can do through
books, you can do in all sorts of different ways. Everybody
wants some sort of either status or money outcome. And I think
the thing that we're really on a mission to help people
understand is that writing is probably you could make the case
writing is the most effective vehicle for accomplishing any of
those things. Because it is infinitely scalable, you know,
50% plus of the whole internet is text. And it has this very,
very low barrier to entry. It's a lot easier to learn how to
write than it is to learn how to create short form video or start
a podcast or you know, like writing really is the easiest,
but most scalable vehicle, if you think about it that way. And
I also think there's a little asterisk on that. I also think a
lot of people misunderstand what it means to write. I think
people look at creation as forward moving as, if I'm going
to start creating on LinkedIn, I have to create on LinkedIn
forever. If I'm going to start writing on the internet, I have
to write something new every day forever. And in reality, that's
not how I think about writing. I think about writing actually, in
the opposite direction. I think about it as if I invest time in
building a library, that's a library I can use over and over
and over again. And a really easy example is I've started
reposting a lot of my old long form content on Twitter/x right
now. And just this morning, I saw someone comment and go, how
do you have so much time to write so much long form every
day? And I'm sitting there going, you have no idea that I'm
posting long form essays that I wrote seven years ago and you
have no idea. And that's the point is I've built a library
that now I can reuse over and over and over again. So long
winded way of saying, right? It's you can't convince someone
of the vehicle unless they understand the outcome.
Arvid Kahl: That is a wonderful way of phrasing it. And I very
much agree with this because like you leave traces, right?
You leave traces of things that you've thought about and you
leave these traces in the public sphere where people can actually
find them, comment on them and interact with you, which is
again, leading to all these things that you want more
customers, more reputation, more engagement with the community at
higher status or low income. I really liked this. I liked the
rephrasing. It's not the writing part that matters. It's
understanding that through writing, you get to the schools
better and more easily. That's very interesting. So you just
touched on something that I want to dive into because I think
when people that come from a technical background, think
about writing, they think about instructing, right? They think
about, oh, here's how to write an open source library for that
particular framework or here's how to solve this particular
error with this solution. And they think about like the kind
of manual style writing, which in the software world often is
something more, you know, this is going to be useful for the
next few months or six months until there is a completely new
way of doing this. Because technology just revolves so
quickly, right? Throughout this whole cycle that we're all in.
So what would you just said is that you re use content from
seven years ago, kind of evergreen stuff. So do we have
to kind of think about writing in different ways that what we
create has a different shelf life?
Nicolas Cole: Yes. Yeah, that's a great question. And it's
something I think a lot of people don't consider when they
sit down to write. So the first thing is, so that instruction
manual type of thing. I actually think that that is one of the
biggest, like top three biggest opportunities for writers on the
internet today. Because if you think about how many things just
think about anything that happens in your life. A perfect
example, my espresso machine broke this morning. What am I
going to do? I'm going to google how to fix my espresso machine,
right? And it might be a video, but it also might be a really
helpful walkthrough blog post, right? And so informational,
highly actionable, even educational, text based content
is really, really valuable. And I think it's often looked at as
boring. But in reality, you know, something I've learned
with Ship 30 because Ship 30 caters to beginners. It caters
to I've really never written on the internet before, how do I
get started? And it has really humbled me and made me realize
that making things simple is difficult. If you want to
explain it to a beginner, you can't, you have to have a level
of clarity of someone who's mastered it in order to really
explain it in a way that a beginner can understand. And I
kind of I didn't really realize this until very recently, but I
put this thought together that I've learned that I'm very good.
Or maybe I've just practiced so much that I've acquired the
skill, but I'm very good at writing this actionable
educational, instructional "content." And my very first
writing job ever, was when I was 15 years old, 16 years old. And
my parents told me, I needed to get a summer job. And the first
thing that I did because I was a really competitive World of
Warcraft player. And the first thing that I did was I went
online and I started searching for I literally think I typed in
World of Warcraft jobs. How do I get paid to do this video game?
And I stumbled across a site that said they were looking to
hire writers to write walkthrough guides. And my very
first writing job they used to pay me like, I don't know, 25-50
bucks an article. And I would have to write a walkthrough
guide of here's how to go through this dungeon. Here's how
to explore this zone. And I didn't really realize that that
was my introduction to "writing on the internet" or even
monetizing writing like I was paid to write.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, that's awesome!
Nicolas Cole: You know. And so, yeah, a little bit of a tangent,
but I just, I think that that sort of content gets glossed
over a lot. And in reality, it's probably one of the biggest
opportunities you have as a writer.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, let's stay on this tangent because I used to
be a competitive World of Warcraft player as well. And I
want to know who you were writing for, like, what site was
that?
Nicolas Cole: Oh, don't I mean, all of those old sites don't
even exist anymore. I don't even remember, but it was like, some
little indie. Okay, the real question is horder alliance.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, I was a horde back in the day.
Nicolas Cole: Okay. That was the right answer. What class did you
Arvid Kahl: I was an undead rogue and I had a great time.
play?
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, I was an undead mage. There we go. We
would have been great friends.
Arvid Kahl: I think we should still be friends in the future
about this and maybe do it. Do you still play? Like that's a
question that I really would like to know.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, my honest answer is every once in a while,
yeah. This past weekend, I just watched the whole Blizzcon.
Arvid Kahl: Me, too.
Nicolas Cole: And then okay, right? And they shared all these
announcements and I'm like, I am so busy. I don't have time for
this, but at the same time, I'm like, ah, I could squeeze a
weekend then.
Arvid Kahl: Yep. Yep, yep. Yeah, I feel the same way. And it's
like whenever they announced a new expansion coming in the
future, you just like, oh, do I really want to put in these like
10 hours to get from current like to the current max level
and prepare for the next one?
Nicolas Cole: So it's like 50-100 hours.
Nicolas Cole: Hey, you never know.
Arvid Kahl: You never know. And that's the fun part, like how
Arvid Kahl: It's, yeah, it is a lot of work, particularly if you
connections happen now, but retroactively, maybe. But this
is really cool. It's also interesting that you started
want to play multiple characters. But I digress. The
writing so early, because to me, writing was never on the table.
thing is World of Warcraft allowed me something similar. If
it wasn't writing, it was speaking. Like the fact that I
can speak English in any fluid capacity is mostly due to bein,g
a great leader on World of Warcraft because I had to back
in the day, it was vanilla, right? I had to get 40 people to
just coordinate their most basic movements to not all die in the
fire. Right? That was the idea. So to have a grasp of what
Like, I was always a software engineer. My writing was purely
for the machine. I never wrote for people. It was after I built
and sold a SaaS business that I noticed writing is catharsis. I
people are doing what people should be doing, communicating
can actually take my many problems that I have and just
write them out and think in writing about solutions, put
this clearly, that's what I learned from the game as well.
that into a folder and maybe publish it one day. I didn't
And if if writing was your avenue or if the World of
with this one. But later, after we sold the business, I took my
cathartic writing and turned it into something that was actually
accessible to other people. So writing is, to me a way of
Warcraft was your avenue into writing, even better, right?
thinking, kind of calcified into something, you can share it with
It's a complex ecosystem of things that you need to do,
other people. Right? So and you do this spectacularly well, like
you've published, like, what 10 books at this point. I was gonna
like, particularly those guides that you wrote, I probably read
say, like you've done a lot of work to get to the point where
you are in being able to communicate clearly what writing
is about because you have written so extensively, that if
a couple of them back in the day.
you look at your books over time, have they gotten simpler?
Nicolas Cole: Yes, significantly. A lot of these
things you don't. It is really, really hard to understand a lot
of this stuff in the beginning. And it's really hard even if
someone explains it to you. It's very hard for you to get it
until you've crossed certain milestones of reps. Because
there were a lot of things that I look back on that, you know, I
studied fiction writing in college. I had a lot of teachers
tell me things that went in one ear and out the other. And then
it didn't click for me why they were telling me that till eight
years later, you know. And so, yeah, my writing has gotten
simpler. My writing process has gotten faster. The way I wrote
my first book is completely different than the way I write
books now. Everything is different. And I really equate
it a lot to, I grew up playing hockey. My first dream was I
wanted to play in the NHL and then I got injured and that was
never gonna happen. But I'm a really big believer in studying
pro athletes. Because I think that there's a mental
discipline. And there's also a habitual discipline that is
really unique to sports. And ever since I was a little kid, I
feel like ever. I fractured my spine playing hockey when I was
like 14. And then I fractured it again when I was 17. And ever
since then and I always knew I wanted to write. I don't know
why. But ever since then, I really made it a point to think
I was like, if I'm not going to play hockey, then I'm going to
write as if I'm playing hockey, you know and I've always treated
it that way. And I think that's something that I don't, I talked
about it a little bit. I don't know how much it comes across or
how much people gather that but I treat my writing like an
athlete and I train every single day. And at the end of every
year, I'm constantly asking myself the question like okay,
my right hand is more dominant than my left hand. What do I
have to do to cross train? And I'll put myself through
exercises and learning phases that like make no sense to the
average person but to me, I'm like, this is what I need to do
to improve this one small aspect of my craft, you know
Arvid Kahl: Because it looked like
Nicolas Cole: I've done some crazy things. I've done like
everything from like reading a page or two of the Thesaurus
every morning or I'll read books in genres that I have absolutely
no real interest in. But I'll do it just to learn. I'll take
certain books and highlight. Like, I'll grab a handful of
highlighters and go through and be like, okay, which sentence or
even which word in a sentence is communicating the voice, which
sentence is moving the plot forward, which sentence is like,
just so I can really understand how something's being built.
I'll get very in the weeds with it. And I think those are all
the little things, especially in our world of digital writing.
And, you know, I'm sort of in this ecosystem now of
solopreneurs and course creators and you know, indie hackers and
like, we're all in this sort of, weirdly like co related space
building in public. One part of me really resonates with that
because I've always been very digital first and digital
forward. And the other part of me feels very out of place in
that because I think unlike a lot of other people who build
followings, especially build followings off of their writing
and things like that, like, I don't spend a lot of time
studying other people's Twitter's. I spend a lot of time
studying Pulitzer Prize winning authors or reading literature or
putting myself through these weird writing sprints just so I
can improve some part of my craft. Like that's the part
where I don't really feel I don't meet very many people that
I can really like, dig into that with, you know.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it's a different kind of writing too,
right? Lke, if you have a book that it's so many thoughts, all
in a synthesis with other thoughts communicated very
clearly, very extensively. And if you contrast that with like
Twitter, where people just blurt out whatever they think, like,
obviously, the quality of writing is different. But I
guess that's where it starts, right? Because when I think
about writing books, you can't write a book out of nowhere or
at least I don't believe you can. Like you have to have your
thoughts in order to even be able to attempt writing a book.
And for many that starts with blog posts or fragments or long
tweets, right? So is it more important to you to focus on the
ultimate outcome of books of writing books? Or can writing
for founders for solopreneurs also happened without
necessarily wanting to write a book at the end of I don't know,
the year or their work life? Do people need to write books?
That's kind of the question.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, I don't think people need to write
books. And if you're being really objective about it, books
are not the most profitable or efficient or effective vehicle
for monetizing your writing. They're really not like, if you
go hour by hour somewhere else. The thing that I struggle with
this question and it's not you asking it. It's like I struggle
with this question in general, because I have put in so many
hours, not just practicing, but really studying and thinking
deeply about all these different writer career paths. And I'm
starting to get to a place where I sort of feel like, I equate it
to being like a really high level proficient, chess
Grandmaster. I can feel myself starting to get to a point where
I have supreme clarity over whatever the goal is, what are
the steps to get there and sort of like you're playing chess,
you can see 10, 15, 20 moves down the line. And I find that
most of the time, when people ask a question, like, do you
think this or this, you know? The challenge with that is
they're looking at it as if it's one step. They're like, you
know, I'm not writing a book. I make the decision to write a
book, you know, and in reality, it's actually there's 30 steps
between that. And the moment that I start to break it down.
And I try and really let go, okay, that's where you want to
go. Here are all the steps to get there. And here's why each
one is important. I tend to notice, I'm not saying you do
this, I'm just speaking in general. People's eyes sort of
glaze over. And they're like, I didn't want all that. I just
wanted you to tell me that if I write a book, then it's all
going to be okay. And you'd be proud of me.
Arvid Kahl: Right
Nicolas Cole: Right? And like that's I can feel like, every
day that goes by I feel that challenge increasing because I
find fewer and fewer people act. Like most people who say they
want to write a book don't actually want to write a book.
They just want to say that they've written a book, right?
Or most people that want to build a audience on the
internet. It's like they don't actually want to write short
form content five times a day every day for four years in a
row. They just want half a million people applauding them.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that's the gym metaphor, right? Like people
people want the body that the regular gym activity gets, not
the gym activity itself.
Nicolas Cole: Completely. And like, I don't fault anyone for
feeling that way. Because I know that there have been many times
on my own journey where I misconstrue the process for the
outcome. And I probably have said the same thing. But it's a
really hard thing to figure out how to educate people on which
is like, the thing that you want is completely doable, but it's
gonna require you to slow down and understand the steps in
order to get there. And I love this mantra. I say this all the
time, which is the shortcut is the longer road in disguise. You
know, so whenever someone's like, no, no, just tell me like,
it's like learning a musical instrument. They're like, I
don't want to learn the chords, just tell me how to play
Freebird, right? It seems like a shortcut. But really, what
you're doing is you're doing yourself a disservice. And now
you're on the longer road and you don't actually understand
how to get where you want to go. And so circling back to your
question on books, I do not think everyone needs to write
books, you know. It certainly is the the most productive vehicle,
but I love it. And I think there's a lot of money to be
made in writing books, but I also really, really enjoy the
format. And so that's why I like having this contrast of internet
businesses that are very, they're much more efficient and
much more profitable than trying to earn a living writing books.
But that allows me the luxury and time and no stress to go do
the thing that I really enjoy that also may have upside
potential.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Like a lot of I
mean, that's just the general human nature. We want to have
the thing with the cake and eating it too kind of thing,
right? We want to do less and get more. And writing the book
is still kind of a status symbol for many. And I think it
shouldn't have to be, right? People could easily go through
their life and build reputation and credibility without writing
books. It's just that it's a great vehicle for communicating
that with people. I've seen what you just explained to me like
with the software businesses and that as well. A lot of people
who write really good books are people who don't intend to write
books, but aren't just experts in their field. And then they
notice that they have a lot to share. And then they start
writing. That is something like Brennan Dunn is an example for
this. Like, he's recently written this as personal. He was
on the show, too. And he explained his whole process too.
I don't think he ever set up to write that book, really. He just
set out to build a really good marketing tool and understand
the whole email marketing space really well. And then it turned
out that he now he has something to teach. And I think that that
rain reverse is also what keeps many people from writing. They
believe they don't have anything to teach, even though they are
experts in their field. That's also something I want to talk to
you about how we can overcome this kind of weird, self
limiting belief that even though we're experts, we shouldn't
write because somebody else also may have written about this
topic before. So how can we get people to start just sharing
doesn't have to be a book doesn't have to be a newsletter,
but just generally sharing the knowledge more easily?
Nicolas Cole: Yeah so this is, it's a great example of sort of
speaking to my brain immediately goes to like, I can give you the
super action. I can tell you exactly how this plays out. But
the reality is that someone at the very beginning of their
journey, not only do they not need all of that explanation,
but they also don't want it.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah
Nicolas Cole: You know and they can't hear it yet. And so what
I've learned is for someone who really is step one, there's
really only one thing you can do to help them which is encouraged
them. They're not ready for some advanced framework. You got to
just go, hey, you should start sharing and it's kind of up to
them to take the first step and go on that journey, you know.
Now, the advanced version and the real framework from here is
recognizing that okay, so first, let me say. This is what most
people would say, as their framework. Well, the key and
what makes you different, is you just have to speak from the
heart. And you just have to be authentic. And as long as you're
authentic, the world will hear your story. And there is nothing
about that that is actionable. Like that doesn't actually mean
anything, right? And that's what drives me nuts is all of the
"best writing advice" is literally just different
versions of that you have to be authentic, unlock your creative
genius. What does that mean? Right? And so really, tangibly,
right? There's all sorts of frameworks you can use here,
like, what are all the different points? So get super in the
weeds. What are all the different points of
differentiation when it comes to writing? Well, one point of
differentiation is simply the way that it's organized or it's
formatted. Right? So you could take a New Yorker article and
you could keep all of the same content, but if you reformatted
it to look like a Buzzfeed article with a bunch of bulleted
lists and sub heads and all that, it's completely different.
And some people prefer differences on the formatting
side, right? Other people prefer differences or you might find a
point of differentiation in terms of the voice. Okay, but
here's the thing. How do you define voice, right? And voice
is really just a combination of different variables. And those
different variables are word choice, right? Sentence
structure, pacing and rhythm. Right? That's why I love when
people are like Chat GPT will never be able to write like a
human. Yeah, will, if I define the voice and I give it rules,
Chat GPT is gonna write like me. So there's all of you can get
really in the weeds with these things. And that's why I love
studying literature. And I bring out all the highlighters and I'm
like, I want to go word by word. How did this get constructed?
But that's not what most people need in the beginning, right?
What they need is for someone to just go, you got this. I would
love to hear from you. Or where I started on Quora was answering
a question. I found Quora really helpful because I didn't have to
write. All I had to do was answer a question. And that was
way lower barrier to entry for me. And that's where I always
start with people like, I had this joke. Because I used to do
ghost from my first business was I had a ghost writing agency. I
go through it for all these executives. And over and over
again, the executive that I was ghost writing for would go, I
don't know what I want to say about this. And then I would
just say to them, well, what do you think you would say about
this? And then they would say it. And then I'd be like,
great. So we should probably just say that then
Arvid Kahl: Yeah
Nicolas Cole: Right? Everyone already knows. You just have to
give them the container. You have to ask them the question.
And answering a question is way easier than going, here's a
blank page. Now go make art out of it, you know.
Arvid Kahl: It's like a permission thing, right? Like
people need to give themselves permission to actually state
their responses. Like, they don't want to have the blank
page problem where they don't know where to start, like just a
little trigger. That's all people need. That's,an
interesting thing. And I've seen the same like, if you look at
the book side, the complexity of a book, let's just leave that
aside and look at like writing for social media, right? On
Twitter or just like building a presence, building an audience,
whatever that might be. Like, people are deathly afraid of the
empty Twitter prompt because they don't know. First of what
do I need to write to meet? Right? That's even the
perception that people have because they need to write. And
then is it going to resonate with people? Are people even
going to read it? There are so many fears and limitations that
people have before they even start writing. It's not even
published, it's not clicking that button, it's even putting
any sentence up there. And I found personally for myself, in
my own journey and for the people that I tried to help with
this, that going to where other people are already having a
conversation is the best way of dealing with this, like
literally participating in a conversation, which then also
teaches you to be a conversational writer, which is
great, because that's what people like to read, like as if
it was a conversation with you. So gauging with others that
already have something to share that have questions that need
help, I think that's a great starting point for writing.
Nicolas Cole: You could say that an even easier place to start
writing on a platform like x or LinkedIn or whatever is not you
broadcasting but you just replying the other.
Arvid Kahl: Exactly, yeah.
Nicolas Cole: Right? And I yeah, I am a big believer in what is
the simplest action. Simplicity is velocity. So how do you do
the simplest action? But there's an underlying layer to all this.
And it's something that I've started writing about more,
which is, I'm a big believer in therapy. I'm a big believer in
personal development. And the reality is, we can talk all day
about what makes an effective headline or, you know, how do
you format a post really well, so that it's skimmable? But the
reality is, if there's an underlying issue of you have a
really brutal inner critic and every time you sit down to write
your, you know, your internal narrative to yourself is really
hurtful and toxic. Though it really doesn't matter how much
we talk about headlines because you that's the root issue,
right? And so, something that I try and I guess destigmatize
especially in the world of writing, which is dependent on
you sharing. You have to recognize that it's two sides of
the same coin. Right? It's like you have the hard skills which
is the writing, but then you also have that underlying, I
like thinking of it as soft skills, which is well and what's
the relationship you have with yourself? You know, and every
time you sit down to write, do you have your mom and dad
sitting on your shoulders being like, nobody cares about you?
Why would anyone want to listen to you? Right? Well, then you're
never going to hit publish. And so I think both of those are
really important. And you sort of have to ping pong back and
forth and figure out at any given time, what's the real
bottleneck? Is it a hard skill bottleneck? Or is it a soft
skill bottleneck?
Arvid Kahl: Do you consider journaling a way to deal with
this? Or do you actually have to, like, seek mental health
professional to deal with this stuff, if you have this inner
critic in your life?
Nicolas Cole: I mean, I would hardly say that I'm qualified to
give a true objective answer, but I'll just speak for myself.
I've been journaling for a long time. I try and make it a point
to journal almost every single day. I think it's an incredibly
helpful vehicle to a hear yourself outside yourself. And
b, I use it often to just, I think of it like getting the
gunk out. Like before I write something for real, I like just
getting the words moving. And it's a low pressure environment.
But I will say I think that there is a tremendous difference
between you processing through within yourself in a journal and
you processing through with someone else. And I've seen the
benefit that that's had, for me. Some people have the complete
opposite perspective. And that's fine. But I think that there's
something that happens when you get outside yourself. That's
very different than you just sitting in your internal vacuum.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, yeah. Generally, I would say writing
nowadays with the digital community that we have and just
the place in which we write, it's not a solitude thing
anymore, right? Like, you don't have to write all by yourself.
You don't have to be in the cabin in the woods can the
writer anymore. In fact, that actually is hurtful to the
quality and the perception of your writing. And I think you
posted something recently saying that you should write with your
readers. You should write for and with your readers. And I
think that's important to understand because for most
people writing coders in particular, the writing code is
a very, like solipsistic, very isolated activity. But I don't
think it has to be for writing, like long form prose or even mid
form short form, whatever it might be. So how can we approach
other people and form communities with them as writers
as people who want to write?
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, something that's been clicking recently is
because I have this conversation with people all the time. I
mean, we talked about it in Ship 30, which is hundreds or 1000s
of writers, but I also see it with people in my life, friends,
you know, I'm always giving feedback or share, like everyone
wants to write now. And so I tend to get asked a lot of these
questions. And something that has really clicked for me
recently, is that a lot of times people think about writing from
the perspective of I. So here's what I want to write about or
here's what I think other people want to read. Right? And it's
very selfish, in a sense. And then most beginners go through
this loop, right? Where they're like, I want to write this and
then they put it out into the world. And they're like,
nobody's paying attention to me and then they get really upset,
right? And I think you have to get through that initial, I
think of it like the starting zone phase, you know. You got to
get out of the starting zone, for you to ultimately realize
that it's a lot more productive to think about it from the
perspective of you. Right? So not I but you, the reader. And
it goes back to what I was saying, writing with executives.
People go, I don't know what I want to say. And then you just
ask them the question. So what do you want to say? And then
they say it. And so if you think about your writing not as here's
what I want to say, but you think about it more as what do
you need? Oh, I just have to tell you the thing that you
need, right? And it's such a simple thing, but we make it so
complicated because it's so simple. We literally can't step
outside of ourselves and go what is the other person care about?
You know? And I see it I mean, it's really easy to pinpoint if
you just watch most conversations most people don't
ask the other person questions. Right? And that is a very clear
signal of you're in your head and you're like it's my reality,
it's my thoughts. I'm what matters. I'm the main character.
And really, the other person's the main character and if you
want people to read your writing, you have to realize,
like, just think about it super objectively. You want an
external result, right? So you want something from the other
person. Which means the thing that you're doing has to be in
service of them.
Arvid Kahl: Yes, exactly
Nicolas Cole: Right? And it's so simple, but it takes people a
long time to like really shift that way of thinking in their
head. And then once they do, like, massive growth because all
of a sudden, they're solving someone else's problem.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that's it, right? Like I think we've been
conditioned to think of writing as art, as an expression of
self, where we should actually thought of it as like a product
of a productized self, like it's a business thing. You try to
find product market fit. That's the idea, right? You try to
figure out what your market needs and you write the thing
they need and then they consume it. And that's what guarantees
results, not your artistry.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, and I would even clarify that language a
little bit, which is, if you think of it as product market
fit, that language, I think on a very unconscious level still
trains the person to think I have a product and I have to go
fit it into someone else's brain. Right?
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it's a question phrase. Yeah, you're
right.
Nicolas Cole: But if we have to, you know, use that structure, I
would clarify the language and call it more something like
reader problem fit. Like, you're not starting with you. You're
starting with the other person. And you're not starting with,
here's what I want to say. You're starting with, well,
what's their problem? What's their question? And every time I
go down this rabbit hole, inevitably, someone then goes,
yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes sense for like marketing type
writing. But I don't think that that's true for storytelling. I
don't think that's true for fiction. I don't think, okay,
what you don't realize is that Harry Potter answers a question.
And the question is, what is life like for middle schoolers
who go to wizardry school?
Arvid Kahl: Yep.
Nicolas Cole: And the reason you read that book is because you're
interested in that question and you're interested in the
author's answer to that question. And so, again, like,
everything starts with, it's not about you, it's about the
reader. And every, like, every once in a while, I've recently
been going down the rabbit hole of David Foster Wallace, really
eccentric writer and interesting in a lot of different ways. But
I think what people have missed about even someone like him, who
is a very unique literary writer, right? And most people
think, oh, he just sat in a room and was just brilliant. And then
we're all obsessed with his voice. And we all applaud them,
right? But if you go listen to interviews with him and you hear
him talk about his writing, Infinite Jest and all of these
things that he dug into, started with here's what's going on with
my generation. A lot of his writing was speaking to readers
who he felt were struggling with growing up in a world that was
starting to be dominated by TV and media and you never sat in
silence anymore. And it created this strange, you know,
discomfort in the human soul. It really had nothing to do with
him. It was his observation of what other people were going
through and by extension, what he then was going through. And
so like, I love bridging that gap, where whenever I talk about
these things, it's so easy for people to just jump to like,
well, you're just a marketer. And that's, I guess, it's just
marketing writing. And you don't understand that the marketing or
business writing is just the easy way of being able to talk
about it. But the reality is, all of these principles also
exist in the highest forms of literature. But it's hard to
jump there without losing someone's, right? Like, it's
hard for them to follow you there.
Arvid Kahl: It sounds like I mean, mirrored us back at you.
It sounds like you're looking at the writer not as a generator of
wisdom, but as a kind of a conduit between a question and
an answer.
Nicolas Cole: Yes
Arvid Kahl: That's a wonderful visualization. I really enjoy
this because that also makes it so much easier to just do it.
Because you know, there's a question and you know you have
answers that you could potentially give to people. Like
you don't have to be super smart. You just need to answer
this one question as a writer.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah. And also to clarify, you as the conduit
don't always have to be the source of
Arvid Kahl: Yes
Nicolas Cole: Wisdom or brilliance. One of my favorite
examples is Ryan Holiday has now dominated this category of
stoicism, right?
Arvid Kahl: He invented stoicism, right?
Nicolas Cole: Exactly. That's the example that I use. And
everyone looks at someone like him and goes, well, yeah, but
he's an expert. Okay, like, what was his credibility for writing
The Obstacle Is the Way. It was literally, I read Marcus
Aurelius Meditations. And so a lot of times when we talk, this
is a core principle in Ship 30 we talk about all the time,
which is when you sit down to write you as the conduit. Yeah,
you could write from personal experience, but you could also
write from curated experience. Ryan Holliday, his entire career
is not based off of his insights. It's based off of
Marcus Aurelius his insights that he's a conduit for and he
makes it very easy and accessible for other people to
access. And there's value in that. Right? And so, yeah, same
thing is if you want to write about a topic you don't, it's
not like you were born. Another favorite example, Tony Robbins
wasn't born the Tony Robbins you know today. Tony Robbins started
out as a sales trainer. And he was the conduit for I went and
learned all these things. And now I'm going to make them
accessible and share them with other people. And, you know, so
yeah, it could be either.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah. And throughout like Tony Robbins, great
example, I think we still have some cassette tapes fromthe
like, late 80s somewhere in this household here, right? Like he's
been around for a long while. And what he's been teaching also
shifted over time. Like, it's not that he had to know
everything from the start. But he shared. He had things to say
then, and he learned new things. And he shared them again, in
later books, like Tony Robbins is one of the reasons that I got
into understanding or wanting to understand financial investments
or financial lucidity, whatever you might want to call it, just
being aware of what investment is. I kind of access that
through his writing. And I'm glad he did that. Right? He
might not be the world's foremost expert on it. But he
wrote it in a way that was accessible to me. And that's all
I really needed. And he has to give to write in ways like that.
But I don't think everybody loves Tony Robbins either.
Right? Some people would rather read like more academic books on
this issue. But that doesn't mean that Tony Robbins'
contribution is not an important part in people's lives.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, I use this. I think this is a helpful way of
looking at it. You ever have a friend recommend a book? And
they're like, this was the best book I've ever read in my entire
life. And then you open it up and you read the first page,
you're like, there's no way I'm finishing this. There's no way
I'm reading this, right? And a lot of times, people
misunderstand what's happening there. What's happening, there's
a framework in Ship 30 we talked about called the 4A framework,
which is most writing can be reverse engineered back into
these four different buckets. It's either actionable,
aspirational, analytical, or anthropological. And what's
happening in that moment is your friend loves aspirational books.
And you hate aspirational books. You love actionable books,
right? And so it's not that one person thinks the writer is good
and the other person thinks the writer is bad. It's that you as
readers have different expectations. And if you start
with that, when you sit down to write as a writer, the real goal
over time is for you to have supreme clarity over well, who
exactly is my reader? Because if you start like the average
person goes, I want to start writing about real estate. Okay,
well, you're gonna attract very different readers if you write
about actionable, here's how to buy your first property. Or if
you write analytical, here's what's going on in the economy
and real estate trends over the next 25 years or aspirational. I
was dead broke, my life sucked. And then I got into real estate
and everything changed, right? Those are three completely
different experiences as a reader. And so as a writer, it's
about you figuring out which one do I enjoy writing about. Some
people enjoy aspirational, some people enjoy actionable write
and which one attracts which type of reader. And then over
time, your efficiency becomes I know how to not only create
actionable content, but I know what my actionable readers want
from me, which is like a self fulfilling prophecy. It's that
virtuous loop where it keeps spiraling in the right
Arvid Kahl: Oh, that's great. And also and let's maybe pivot a
direction.
little bit to the actionable part here that can make your
money right. At that point, when you have the capacity to write
in a style that is really needed and wanted by certain people.
You don't necessarily even need to write for yourself and think
you too mentioned ghostwriting earlier as well. I find this a
very interesting field because I had very negative opinions about
it in the past. Let me be perfectly honest, because yeah,
because I didn't think about as much. I didn't reflect on it
much. But I have since and I feel that if somebody can write
and can write in a style that is really conducive to people
understanding what they write about, then writing for somebody
else who needs that style and to talk about a topic that they
care about is a perfectly fine occupation like, why wouldn't it
be? So I think that is also part of like productizing yourself as
a writer. You don't need to necessarily build your own, like
literary career, that's not the only way to write. You can also
do other things. So maybe, let's talk a bit about the ways that
you can actually make money from writing.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, I mean, the big two are. So using the
language productizing yourself. So productizing yourself, I
equate more with creating digital products around your
writing. So that's one side of the barbell. You could do that
with books, you could do it with courses, you could do it with
digital downloads, you could do with paid newsletters, those are
all different vehicles for productizing yourself and
productizing your knowledge. The other side of the barbell is
monetizing your talents as a service. Right? And again, this
kind of goes back to the seeing 15 moves on the chessboard,
right? Because the thing that people misunderstand with these
two paths is productizing yourself as a writer is very
difficult in the beginning. So the benefit of productizing
yourself with it and creating some sort of digital product is
that it is "infinitely scalable." If I have a paid
newsletter, the effort it takes me to write one paid newsletter
is identical if I have one subscriber or I have 100,000
subscribers, right? That's the benefit of it. As a result, your
profitability or your financial ceiling is significantly higher.
The challenge is that in the beginning, in the short term,
it's much harder to make a dent in your income, right? Because
if you're selling a $20 a month paid newsletter, you need a lot
of volume. You need a lot of people subscribing for you to
feel that. On the other side, if you're providing writing as a
service, it's a whole lot easier to find one person who's going
to pay you five grand a month, right? Rather than find 100
people who are going to pay you 20 bucks a month or whatever,
whatever it is, right. But as a service, you have a lower
ceiling. So you can get to six figures very quickly providing a
service but then, you know, especially through ghostwriting
or things like that, like it's gonna be hard for you to get
above 30, 40, 50k a month without suddenly hiring other
people and building an agency and doing all of those things.
And so pro con depends on which one, you want. The thing with
ghost writing and I think you'll appreciate this metaphor as a
engineer. Most people think what ghost writing is, is the writer
goes to someone and says I will write for you, you're just going
to put your name on it. And in reality, that's not what's
happening. What's happening is the person who would be your
client has a lot of knowledge. So they've been in their
industry for, you know, 10, 20, 30 years, they have a
significant amount of knowledge. But they have a bottleneck
called I don't have the time to write. And I often not always,
but I often don't have the skill set to write. And the writer has
the complete opposite problem, right? The writer goes, I don't
have 30 years of knowledge. But I have the time. And I have the
skill set. And what I realized very early on is that there's a
magical combination when you pair those two types of people
together, because the writer is really just doing the manual
labor, that the thinker the client doesn't have the time to
do can't rationalize doing and often doesn't have the skill set
to do. And in a metaphor, it's sort of like you being a CTO and
you being like, I have to write every line of code in my
startup, otherwise, it's unethical. Right? And that's not
what we do and the CTO is, like, I'm gonna give you the ideas.
I'm gonna give you the frame. And then all you developers are
going to do the manual labor of writing the code. And that is
identical to what's happening with a client and a ghostwriter.
The client gives the thinking. The ghostwriter goes great, I'm
going to take this transcript. I'm gonna format it. I'm going
to simplify it. They're doing the manual labor.
Arvid Kahl: This is such a nice explanation. Thank you so much
for making this so obviously, clear, would have beneficial,
like almost symbiotic relationship that can be, right?
In the best sense of the word.
Nicolas Cole: It should be.
Nicolas Cole: It should be symbiotic because you, as the
Arvid Kahl: Yes
writer, get to accelerate your knowledge because you're tapping
into someone who has pattern recognition of multiple decades
that you don't have. And you as the smart person, go, yeah, you
know, I'm the founder of $100 million startup. There's no way
I could rationalize sitting here writing all this stuff. My time
is too valuable, but that doesn't mean that your knowledge
isn't valuable and that it wouldn't be appreciated by other
people. Right? So it really is a magical combination. And I mean,
I started the first ghostwriting agency for founders and
executives back in 2016. Like I've been on a mission trying to
educate people on this because I think it's so sad that you have
all these smart people who have these incredible careers and
then they retire and their knowledge just evaporates. No
one knows what's in their brain. And I see that as a detriment to
the compounding of knowledge in our society.
Arvid Kahl: Yes, it is a big problem, particularly as like
the artisanal skills are being lost. Right? That's a big
problem too. As things shift to the digital, there's a lot of
lack of the actual artisanal insights. And I even noticed
this in my personal life, like in the family, there are a lot
of stories that aren't written down. Like or even just the
things that hold us together, the narratives that we have in
the family, if they're not written down, they don't often
last for generations too. I kind of forced in the best sense of
the word, my grandmother to dictate, like books worth of
stories into like Dragon natural speaking like that weird window
software that we could install in our old laptop. And she was
sitting there for weeks and months, just dictating a whole
book into that thing. And she has passed away since but I
still have the stories. The family still has the stories
like there's power in retaining these kinds of stories. And
that's just in the family, a very small unit of people that
care about these things. It is so much more important to do
this on a ocial level, right? On the level of a society where
people pass away without passing on everything they've learned in
a lifetime. I really liked this. And if ghost writing is a way of
doing this, of extracting this information and putting it into
a shape where other people can consume it. If I had known that
that was a writing career a couple years ago, I probably
would have tried it out maybe in my native language, maybe in
German, maybe in English because you know, writing is just
thinking and translating. Well, you can fix that with
professionals, you know, but it's such a wonderful thing,
man. And I'm really happy. You're bringing this into the
focus of what you're working on and how you share it, what you
talk about on Twitter and all these other platforms. And I
follow you for this, you bring this out, you explain it so
well. I really really enjoy it. If people want to find out more
about these things, about you in particular, about ghostwriting,
the thing that you offer, I think there is something out
there where you help people with this. Where do people go to
learn more about this?
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, I think my most active platform is Twitter
slash x at this point. I don't know what we're calling it
Arvid Kahl: What were you calling this again?
Nicolas Cole: It'll take us a year for it to crystallize. But
yeah, like six months ago, we launched our Premium
Ghostwriting Academy, which trains people on how to become
ghost writers. It's all the same things that I was doing for
years as a ghostwriter. And I built my agency off of this.
That's sort of if you want to go the route of monetizing with a
service and the fastest route to monetizing your writing is
providing a service like you will get to 10 or 20k a month by
providing a service significantly faster than you
will creating a digital product. And so the framework and the
model that I try and educate people on is I think it's worth
doing the service first. You know, get yourself to a point
where you're comfortable and you're getting paid to practice
like that's a huge benefit of ghostwriting. You're learning,
you're learning about the industry, you're learning what
works. And then once you get to 10-20k a month as a ghostwriter,
you can start to experiment with the other side, which is
creating digital products that are more infinitely scalable.
And then it becomes a virtuous loop. Right? Is the people
consumer digital products and then go oh, you know a lot, I
would love to hire you as a client. And then your clients
give you the money to reinvest in your digital products. And
then it just goes round and round.
Arvid Kahl: That's quite the flywheel there. That sounds like
a really good career path. It reminds me a lot of the stair
stepping approach that Rob Walling has about software
businesses, right? Where you start with a couple service
oriented things, you build plugins, you try to go to a more
productized thing, but you try to stabilize your income path
first. And then you go for the big SaaS, right? The big
automated thing that makes money forever. And it's kind of also
this loop. I see a lot of similarities there.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah
Arvid Kahl: Go ahead
Nicolas Cole: No, same thing. You know, it's everyone wants to
start by going I'm gonna build the next Uber. And in reality,
you should probably figure out how to make a widget for Chrome
first.
Arvid Kahl: That's right. Yeah, and that also scales in
different ways, right? Maybe not as much, but it also and you set
this and allows you to train your skills, like you need these
coding skills along the way. You need these writing skills along
the way. You do smaller projects. You graduate into
bigger projects and more sustainable things. Man, thank
you so much for going through the world of writing, the world
of making a living of writing, which is also a very important
thing to me as a writer and to the people that are listening
and maybe just intrigued what that is. Thank you so much for
explaining all of this today. That was a wonderful insight
into all of these themes.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, these are great questions, a lot of things
I haven't gotten to fully jam on. So
Arvid Kahl: Well, I'm looking forward to articles and books
around those topics, then in the future.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, coming soon.
Arvid Kahl: And thank you so much for being on the show. That
was wonderful. Thanks for having me. See you in World of
Warcraft.
Nicolas Cole: Yeah, see you in Expansion.
Arvid Kahl: Bye, bye.
And that's it for today. I will know briefly thank my sponsor,
acquire.com. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a
really solid SaaS product, you acquired all those customers,
and everything is generating really consistent monthly
recurring revenue. That's the dream of every SaaS founder,
right? Problem is you're not growing for whatever reason,
maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or play in lack of
interest, you don't know. You just feel stuck in your business
with your business. What should you do? Well, the story that I
would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the
fire, and you started working on the business, not just in the
business and all those things you did like audience building
and marketing and sales and outreach, they really helped you
to go down this road, six months down the road, making all that
money. You tripled your revenue and you have this hyper
successful business. That is the dream. The reality,
unfortunately, is not as simple as this. And the situation that
you might find yourself in is looking different for every
single founder who's facing this crossroad. This problem is
common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't
look different every time it's the story that here just ends up
being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business
becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually
completely worthless if you don't do anything. So if you
find yourself here, already at this point or you think your
story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a
third option and that is selling your business on acquire.com.
Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a
pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing
anything. And acquire.com is free to list. They've helped
hundreds of founders already, just go check it out at
try.acquire.com/arvid, it's me and see for yourself if this is
the right option for you, your business at this time. You might
just want to wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from
now or a year from now. Just check it out. It's always good
to be in the know.
Thank you for listening to the Bootstrapped Founder today. I
really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl.
And you'll find my books and my Twitter course there too. If you
want to support me and this show, please subscribe to my
YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of
choice, whatever that might be. Do let me know. It'd be
interesting to see and leave a rating and a review by going to
(http://ratethispodcast.com/founder). It really makes a big difference
if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in
other people's feeds. And that's, I think, where we all
would like it to be just helping other people learn and see and
understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I
really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a
wonderful day and bye bye.