The Growth Guide: Self-Improvement | Greatness | Impact | Creators | FI |
How Legendary Writers Create a Category of One with Nicolas Cole
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Creating a niche category attracts a consistent audience for sustained engagement.
- Balancing obvious and non-obvious content ensures diverse audience reach and long-term impact.
- Financial success differs between obvious and non-obvious content, requiring strategic planning for sustained income.
- Achieving financial independence involves managing expenses and investments while prioritizing impactful, non-obvious contributions.
Deep dives
Benefit of Specific Niche Ownership
Becoming known for a specific niche you own allows for creating an infinite number of things within that niche, ensuring sustained interest and engagement over time. This unique positioning attracts a consistent audience interested in the category, promoting continuous content creation.
Distinguishing Obvious and Non-obvious Content
Obvious content offers readily understood insights that are easily consumed and popular, attracting immediate engagement. In contrast, non-obvious content challenges existing beliefs and requires deeper thinking, resonating with a smaller but more attentive audience, delivering timeless impact and prolonged relevance.
Navigating Financial Rewards in Content Creation
The financial success in content creation differs between obvious and non-obvious works. While obvious content often yields immediate financial returns due to broader appeal, non-obvious creations require longer periods to gain traction and recognition, emphasizing the importance of balancing both types for sustained success.
Balancing Clear and Complex Content Creation
Striking a balance between producing clear, engaging obvious content and thought-provoking non-obvious works is key for attracting diverse audiences while maintaining long-term impact. Combining both styles allows for broader reach and deeper resonance, creating a well-rounded content portfolio.
Aligning Expectations with Content Type and Time Horizon
Setting realistic expectations based on the type of content created, whether obvious or non-obvious, and understanding the associated time horizons for impact and financial rewards is crucial for content creators. Aligning expectations with the nature of the content helps manage disappointment and strategize for long-term success.
Understanding the Impact of Obvious vs. Non-Obvious Content
Creating content that resonates with audiences involves recognizing the impact of obvious versus non-obvious content. While obvious topics may attract more attention, addressing non-obvious issues can lead to deeper connections with a select group of individuals. By embracing the uniqueness of non-obvious content, creators can build a dedicated following that values originality and depth.
Financial Independence through Strategic Decision-Making
Achieving financial independence requires strategic decision-making about expenses and income sources. Evaluating one's 'party cost' or overhead and understanding the purpose behind monetary pursuits are crucial steps. By balancing capital and time investments and creating income-generating assets, individuals can attain financial freedom while focusing on impactful, non-obvious contributions to their audience.
One of the best things about being a writer is you provide value to your readers’ lives. You help them overcome their problems and build their lives in a better way.
Our guest today is Nicolas Cole, an author and top writer on Quora. With over 30 million views online, he is one of the most-read digital writer. He has written over a dozen books, including the best-selling ‘The Art & Business of Online Writing.’ He joined us today to talk about his new book Snow Leopard, How Legendary Writers Create a Category of One. Throughout the episode, we’ll dive into Nicolas’ journey to become a writer and thought leader, the five levels of the creative journey, obvious and non-obvious content creation, financial independence, and more.
Wrapping up the conversation, Nicolas comes right back to where he started with the idea of training yourself to let go of external rewards because all the growth comes within you.
[00.08] The path – Nicolas shares his journey from being a gamer to becoming a writer on his own.
[07.59] Discipline – Nicolas talks about how he grew up on the internet and how the games he played became his role model to figure out what he needs to do to be successful.
[14.26] Life goal – Sometimes, sharing the things we achieve in our life could add value to other people’s lives. It could help them to achieve greater things as we did once. Nicolas dives into how writing about his bodybuilding journey drove him toward scaling knowledge and identifying what people are interested in.
[20.46] Thought leader – Nicolas dives into why he doesn’t want the badge of approval and what truly matters when it comes to being a thought leader.
[29.59] The five levels – Consumption, curation, obvious creation, non-obvious, and obvious are the five levels that people go through on their creative journey, according to Nicolas.
[48.21] Getting value – Nicolas dives deep into how we make our success from helping other people because if people get value from our work, we will get our desired results.
[01.01.28] Examples of Non-obvious and obvious – Nicolas discusses one of his favorite examples of a non-obvious book, Think and Grow Rich, and compares it to obvious books and their success over time..
[01.12.31] Financial independence – Nicolas dives into what you need to do to be financially independent if you want to become a creator.
[01.19.11] Making more money – Nicolas talks about how you can make more money in your business.
[01.29.00] Obvious solutions – By pointing out non-obvious problems, you create the market regarding category design. It’s yours, and you are the one who is deciding the cost. According to Nicolas, your goal is to educate people about their non-obvious problems, which they didn’t even know they had.
[01.35.34] Habit mindset – Nicolas shares what works for him in his personal growth and his framework of doing things in his life.
Resources
Connect with Nicolas
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nicolascole/
Twitter: twitter.com/nicolascole77
Instagram: instagram.com/nicolascole77
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCeoMQWq1-dAPave3ythD8MQ
inc.com/author/nicolas-cole
Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One: goodreads.com/en/book/show/61772680-snow-leopard
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
goodreads.com/book/show/28789711-spqr
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