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Letters From the Desk of 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.

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The day I quit being the productivity guy

I spent years obsessing over niche selection. When I was a Forbes columnist, branding myself as “the productivity and leadership guy” seemed like a safe bet. I covered topics like time management, leadership, and getting sh*t done at work.I mapped dozens of hot niche-specific topics in a spreadsheet and published articles like: The Fastest Way To Accomplish More This Week How To Use The 4 Ds Of Time Management 4 Common Mistakes New Home Workers Make I wrote about these topics not because they...

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A reader said she’s started writing online. Her main challenge is seeing what content works without getting caught up in the numbers. At first glance, the numbers show creating shallow clickbait content is the way to go. On LinkedIn, round-ups of Harvard Business courses go viral every other week. On Insta, my feed is stuffed with jacked guys and gals running in the snow while wearing headphones and listening to dramatic music. On X, it’s threads starting with lines like, “You won’t believe...

I’m working on three new programs right now. I’ll only go with one, though. Which one interests you the most? Mastering Prompt Engineering: A private daily newsletter offering AI-powered content ideas and prompts. Scalable Content Accelerator: A capped program for content creators serious about scaling their income. The Daily Content Engine: A private Telegram community where I’ll share one actionable idea for a piece of content per day and give you feedback on what you create.

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I use Trello for all sorts of content creation projects, including my YouTube channel. My Trello board has several key columns: To-Do, Next Up, Doing, Ready, and Done. I move my videos from left to right through these stages. The To-Do column contains 10–15 video ideas I want to create. I get these ideas from different places - sometimes, it’s from content I’ve published elsewhere, like an email I want to turn into a video. Other times, I see an interesting video and think I could create...

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When I started using AI, I wasted hours trying to get Claude and ChatGPT to generate a copy. My prompts were all over the place: “Write me compelling sales copy for a coaching program for content creators.”“Make my sales copy more persuasive.”“Improve my copy so it sounds better” The outputs? Generic, bland, and useless. I wanted to set AI aside and write all my content without help, but AI isn’t going anywhere. It is better to learn how to use it or get left behind. So, one morning, I waded...

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A TikTok ban will hit the US within days. Oh, TikTok, what a trail of woe you are leading. The app is already banned in India and it’s in dispute with lawmakers in many more countries. Fear not for our brave army of content-creating TikTokkers. Rumor has it that parent company ByteDance is mulling a TikTok sale to the darling of the right, Elon Musk. TikTok is already rife with bots and misinformation, so it should be perfect for a free-speech absolutist like Musk. I’ve no idea if the sale...

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For years, I thought LinkedIn was for finding jobs or humble-bragging about work achievements. After following the likes of Justin Welsh and Jasmin Alíc, I realized LinkedIn spells opportunities for creators. But I still didn’t take it seriously because I focused on SEO. Big mistake! The engagement and reach on LinkedIn are far better than those on other social networks. It's less noisy than X, and unlike Facebook or Instagram, you only need to post several times a week. So, last year, I...

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I’ve spent thousands on business masterminds over the years. I’ve paid for online and in-person masterminds. Online masterminds are convenient. You can join the weekly accountability calls and check-ins on your lunch break or at night. But I find all those weekly Zoom calls and live cohorts exhausting. It’s also hard to get value from a program where you must wait your turn to ask the facilitator a question. I’ve sometimes paid more to circumvent that problem and get 1:1 time with the...

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Over the years, I’ve started and stopped a few Substack publications. I even interviewed co-founder Hamish McKenzie for my podcast. For a while, I figured Substack was more suitable for journalists and politics bloggers. Now, I’m more bullish on the platform than ever. I love reading stats about how other creators are finding success on it. I recently read a report from Ciler Demiralp of The Newsletter Circle. Her team analyzed 75,000 Substack publications. Here are a few findings that stood...

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Short one today… If you want to build a relationship with readers and followers, try these 21 tactics: Write and send a daily email. Readers will expect to hear from you. Share a recent win…or a loss (people love the losses more than the wins) Ask a new subscriber, “What are you working on?” Describe your morning or evening routine. Offer up a contrarian take on a topic like AI. My take? Write what AI can’t. Write about something you learned or discovered. Include a photo of yourself, not...