Hi Reader, I woke up 30 minutes after my alarm went off the other day. After wolfing down some porridge, I dropped my five-year-old son off at a karate sports camp at a school across town. He says he’s training to be a ninja. Back home, I made an Americano, opened my MacBook, and… I spent the rest of the morning watching the women’s and men’s triathlon races in the Paris Olympics. I’m training for an Ironman in Portugal later this year, so I wanted to pick up some race tips! While I watched the race, I faced… No emails from an angry boss or unhappy client. No toxic social media comments. And no urgent Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings. I can only do this because I’ve built a writing business that works for me rather than the other way around. If I had slacked off like this back when I was an in-house corporate copywriter, my boss would have fired me. That won’t happen today. You see… I’ve set up systems to ensure my business runs even when I’m slacking off! Two employees work on the business. They maintain my content websites, manage my email, and schedule content across social media for me. I thought about hiring more employees to scale up, but I want to keep my operation lean. Now… I still keep a checklist of my daily must-dos. These are the things I can’t or don’t want to outsource. Here’s an example:
This afternoon, I spent just two hours working through my checklist. Then, I picked my son up and enquired about his ninja pursuits. It helps that Summer is a quieter time for coaches and consultants. At other times of the year, I could spend the day working through my checklist. But if I follow my daily checklist, my business runs even when I take time off to watch the Olympics. I work like this because only 20% of what I do drives 80% of my business’s results. I’m all for working harder, but why waste effort? My daily checklist represents that 20%. If I’m going to push like an Olympian, it’ll be on that 20%. (Triathlon training taught me to conserve my energy for when it matters.) So why am I telling you this? Well, you can build a business like mine by sweating your 20%. Then, ditch everything else. Here’s an example:
If you need help putting your coaching and consulting offer together, reply to this email with “Slacker”. I’ve three spots open right now. Write on, Bryan Collins |
Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
You don’t need to write multi-thousand-word prompts to get a usable output from ChatGPT. Most creators overcomplicate writing AI prompts. They write paragraphs of instructions and still get mediocre outputs. A good ChatGPT prompt has four parts, and you can cover them in a few sentences. First, describe the Persona. This is where you tell the AI tool who it is. “You’re a master storyteller” or “You’re Steve Jobs.” This puts GPT in the right mindset. Next comes the Task. Be specific about what...
Writing and creating online has never been easier. I’m a big tools guy. Here are 15 tools any creator can use to get started: 1) SEMRush or AHREFS—for keyword research 2) ChatGPT or Claude—for content ideation 3) Canva—for creating images quickly and easily 4) Grammarly—as an AI-powered writing assistant. 5) Hemingway App—for improving the readability of a piece of writing 6) Ulysses or IA Writer—for writing and formatting articles for the web 7) Workflowy—for creating outlines. Tutorial here...
Hey Reader, I’m working on something for you and want to make sure it’s exactly what you need. Can you take 10 seconds to answer this quick poll? 👇 Which product would you be most interested in? Newsletter Monetization Playbook – How to get sponsors, ads, and recurring revenue from your email list. Content Repurposing and Strategy System – A step-by-step system to turn one piece of content into multiple high-performing formats across platforms. Advanced LinkedIn for B2B Leads – A proven...