Nicolas Cole

What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

Okay, so a couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80-20, you know?

Okay, so a couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80-20, you know?

I remember the days. 14 on the internet. Yeah. But now it's like 50-50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female-oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through, and every single book cover is like, male enters game world, defeats dragon.

I remember the days. 14 on the internet. Yeah. But now it's like 50-50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female-oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through, and every single book cover is like, male enters game world, defeats dragon.

Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly, but it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers... cause you have a part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle unlimited, like for free part of your subscription, basically they read something like eight to 12 plus books a month.

Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly, but it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers... cause you have a part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle unlimited, like for free part of your subscription, basically they read something like eight to 12 plus books a month.

And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover's. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything. I like to know everything about this shit. She's moving like millions of copies. And her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days.

And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover's. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything. I like to know everything about this shit. She's moving like millions of copies. And her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days.

So there is tremendous demand. And even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out. Like what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out.

So there is tremendous demand. And even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out. Like what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out.

So if you pair all that together and go female oriented like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.

So if you pair all that together and go female oriented like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.

Okay, just to entertain the shiny object, there's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? couple grand, couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books, like one a month, and you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops,

Okay, just to entertain the shiny object, there's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? couple grand, couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books, like one a month, and you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops,

what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really liked that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer or longer. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really liked that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer or longer. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

I mean, there are books as big, and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative, like my book is doing well, could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. On Amazon, the books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.

I mean, there are books as big, and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative, like my book is doing well, could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. On Amazon, the books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.

I think it depends. But I think on average, it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months. And then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.

I think it depends. But I think on average, it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months. And then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.

I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which it's like the whole game, you know?

I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which it's like the whole game, you know?

There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. Sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently, what I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book.

Oh, okay. Sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently, what I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book.

And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make a hundred grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series.

And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make a hundred grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series.

And I was, when he said that, I was like, Like not only is the cash return 10 or 20X if you get it right, but the long-term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of, copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing.

And I was, when he said that, I was like, Like not only is the cash return 10 or 20X if you get it right, but the long-term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of, copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing.

He's like, if you know how to do that, and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are 10 times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like, and the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at

He's like, if you know how to do that, and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are 10 times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like, and the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at

The best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers. The IP value is astronomically different. You know, James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of legal thrillers. plus the value of his library and IP.

The best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers. The IP value is astronomically different. You know, James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of legal thrillers. plus the value of his library and IP.

So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm gonna go into a sub-genre, I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm gonna flood it with quality volume, you're also not just building Cashflow from book sales or long-term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library.

So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm gonna go into a sub-genre, I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm gonna flood it with quality volume, you're also not just building Cashflow from book sales or long-term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library.

We'll acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.

We'll acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.

Okay, so I have a very niche one. Go. So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur because his business is he has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon- organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories.

Okay, so I have a very niche one. Go. So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur because his business is he has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon- organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories.

I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like five or 10 X cause you're buying IP. It's gotta be, it's not two X, you know, five to 10 X profit or revenue. I'm going to guess it's probably top line because they care more about the longterm value.

I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like five or 10 X cause you're buying IP. It's gotta be, it's not two X, you know, five to 10 X profit or revenue. I'm going to guess it's probably top line because they care more about the longterm value.

That's a nice round number to use. Let's just say it's 7.28x is the average.

That's a nice round number to use. Let's just say it's 7.28x is the average.

No, dude, I got it even better.

No, dude, I got it even better.

Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific subject.

Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific subject.

So it's one thing to go, I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt. where AI can create the version of each new book to 80%, and then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.

So it's one thing to go, I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt. where AI can create the version of each new book to 80%, and then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.

And by the way, the total side, maybe people are doing this already, but talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category.

And by the way, the total side, maybe people are doing this already, but talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category.

And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing, I'm dead serious.

And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing, I'm dead serious.

No, but this is the thing, is that the majority of romance books are women that are literally reading porn at home.

No, but this is the thing, is that the majority of romance books are women that are literally reading porn at home.

There you go, right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular OnlyFans girl be like, here's my tell-all e-book of this experience that I had on OnlyFans, I have to believe that that would do some numbers.

There you go, right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular OnlyFans girl be like, here's my tell-all e-book of this experience that I had on OnlyFans, I have to believe that that would do some numbers.

And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is, you could publish to anyone or you could do Kindle Unlimited. That's like specific to their subscription service.

And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is, you could publish to anyone or you could do Kindle Unlimited. That's like specific to their subscription service.

Or you need a, just the rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.

Or you need a, just the rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.

Yeah, the real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.

Yeah, the real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.

You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this, too, is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the lit RPG stuff is an amazing idea. But I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it, you know. And so when you when you come up with ideas.

You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this, too, is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the lit RPG stuff is an amazing idea. But I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it, you know. And so when you when you come up with ideas.

The mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on versus you're like, I know that's a great idea and I know that would crush, but I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it.

The mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on versus you're like, I know that's a great idea and I know that would crush, but I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it.

Maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like what what is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?

Maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like what what is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?

And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on the number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So you get these little like royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was, he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide.

And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on the number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So you get these little like royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was, he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide.

With and like taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went, we took this idea from the podcast. We researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.

With and like taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went, we took this idea from the podcast. We researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.

That's a great idea. It's also, that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely rewarding. repeatable. It's tied to a financial outcome.

That's a great idea. It's also, that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely rewarding. repeatable. It's tied to a financial outcome.

But if you're creating something really niche, You should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically like try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You know, you're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire. That's called lit RPG.

But if you're creating something really niche, You should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically like try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You know, you're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire. That's called lit RPG.

Like I have to go in person?

Like I have to go in person?

I have to leave my house?

I have to leave my house?

But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example, could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this, you know?

But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example, could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this, you know?

Have you heard of this? No. OK, so it's RPG like role playing games literature, right? Lit RPG, but it's not literature. This is, I mean, this is, this stuff is not well-written at all, but it's essentially reading a video game. So you would, the story, like you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver.

Have you heard of this? No. OK, so it's RPG like role playing games literature, right? Lit RPG, but it's not literature. This is, I mean, this is, this stuff is not well-written at all, but it's essentially reading a video game. So you would, the story, like you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver.

If you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited, multiplied by a hundred books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the backend,

If you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited, multiplied by a hundred books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the backend,

He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow. And I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game. which if you think about it is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay.

He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow. And I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game. which if you think about it is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay.

So lit RPG, anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire.

So lit RPG, anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire.

New subgenre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs. And I'm like, wow.

New subgenre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs. And I'm like, wow.

wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like very indie. The cover design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're going to elevate the writing. We're going to elevate the stories. We're going to elevate the book covers.

wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like very indie. The cover design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're going to elevate the writing. We're going to elevate the stories. We're going to elevate the book covers.

We're going to elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where like you had a lit RPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel. You had a paid newsletter. You had like a digital product. Like you created that whole value ladder, but it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre in Kindle Unlimited.

We're going to elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where like you had a lit RPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel. You had a paid newsletter. You had like a digital product. Like you created that whole value ladder, but it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre in Kindle Unlimited.

I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like publishing houses where like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us. We're like, what would that take? I would literally take, you could hire a writer. You could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month.

I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like publishing houses where like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us. We're like, what would that take? I would literally take, you could hire a writer. You could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month.

They write those stories full-time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub-genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up, there are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

They write those stories full-time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub-genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up, there are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

So there, so there's a tool called publisher rocket and it's made by this guy. This guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called, um, the site's called something self-publishing and basically, or, uh, Kindle publishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon. Super niche, but like really lucrative site.

So there, so there's a tool called publisher rocket and it's made by this guy. This guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called, um, the site's called something self-publishing and basically, or, uh, Kindle publishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon. Super niche, but like really lucrative site.

And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any anything, and it shows you the search volume. It shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I'm obsessed with this tool. Like once a month, I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see.

And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any anything, and it shows you the search volume. It shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I'm obsessed with this tool. Like once a month, I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see.

But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you like look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory.

But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you like look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory.

And then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. you're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding, lit RPG. I don't wanna just write one book in that category. I wanna write a hundred books in that category.

And then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. you're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding, lit RPG. I don't wanna just write one book in that category. I wanna write a hundred books in that category.

So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality cover in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing.

So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality cover in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing.

Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear. you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over, but it doesn't cost that much money.

Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear. you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over, but it doesn't cost that much money.

The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.

The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.

So this is what's so interesting about this subcategory. Great question. Okay, did anyone see, this is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?

So this is what's so interesting about this subcategory. Great question. Okay, did anyone see, this is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?

Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like neither one is really my target consumption.

Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like neither one is really my target consumption.

But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books and he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book.

But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books and he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book.

I have one, but is there somewhere you'd like to start?

I have one, but is there somewhere you'd like to start?

These are guys, like just guys that want to read about his debauchery. He's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of especially because the majority of readers are female, like two thirds of all readers are female, not male.

These are guys, like just guys that want to read about his debauchery. He's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of especially because the majority of readers are female, like two thirds of all readers are female, not male.

But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming, because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know?

But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming, because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know?

I think, so I've seen some interesting stats like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?

I think, so I've seen some interesting stats like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?

Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff, but Wattpad is, is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton, but it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.

Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff, but Wattpad is, is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton, but it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.

From Asia.

From Asia.

There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and things like that. Like your average.

There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and things like that. Like your average.

Tell us what the kids are doing.

Tell us what the kids are doing.

You know what's another great data point that proves that? Do you remember, this was a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the Explorer, but it's DM. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like,

You know what's another great data point that proves that? Do you remember, this was a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the Explorer, but it's DM. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like,

I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like what? This is the most used feature?

I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like what? This is the most used feature?

The editor or the editor-in-chief literally gives the columnist or the writer this prompt in the form of, hey, come into my office and let's talk about it. Right. And then the lower writer listens and goes, I better come back with 20 high quality ideas. Just so everyone, we're on the same page. This already happens. It just happens between two human beings.

The editor or the editor-in-chief literally gives the columnist or the writer this prompt in the form of, hey, come into my office and let's talk about it. Right. And then the lower writer listens and goes, I better come back with 20 high quality ideas. Just so everyone, we're on the same page. This already happens. It just happens between two human beings.

All we're doing is we're going, hey, instead of me passing this along to my junior columnist, I'm going to feed this to ChatGPT, which means we just got to elevate ourselves up to editor-in-chief, where our primary value is taste. right? So, so we're looking through these and you're like, Ooh, I actually really liked the word ban. And you have all the context as to why that word works, right?

All we're doing is we're going, hey, instead of me passing this along to my junior columnist, I'm going to feed this to ChatGPT, which means we just got to elevate ourselves up to editor-in-chief, where our primary value is taste. right? So, so we're looking through these and you're like, Ooh, I actually really liked the word ban. And you have all the context as to why that word works, right?

Oh, ban implies conflict. I think it'll make for a better hook, right? Like you have your own taste and metrics for why this will work. And that's why you picked that one.

Oh, ban implies conflict. I think it'll make for a better hook, right? Like you have your own taste and metrics for why this will work. And that's why you picked that one.

That's why these writing frameworks and these skills are so powerful, because once you understand them once, you can apply them to everything. It doesn't matter if you're writing an email or an article or a Twitter thread or a landing page. It's all the same. And then second is this is where the world's moving.

That's why these writing frameworks and these skills are so powerful, because once you understand them once, you can apply them to everything. It doesn't matter if you're writing an email or an article or a Twitter thread or a landing page. It's all the same. And then second is this is where the world's moving.

Yep. Okay. So let's, let's actually, we'll, we'll take a small scenic route detour here and let's play this out because this is, this is what I mean when I say, when you understand how these frameworks work, they work for everything and you can use them across any medium. So we're going to take this headline. So, so our taste, we elevated to editor in chief of chat to be tea for the day.

Yep. Okay. So let's, let's actually, we'll, we'll take a small scenic route detour here and let's play this out because this is, this is what I mean when I say, when you understand how these frameworks work, they work for everything and you can use them across any medium. So we're going to take this headline. So, so our taste, we elevated to editor in chief of chat to be tea for the day.

So we're going to take this headline, we're going to put it here, and you go, you know what? I actually, as I'm thinking through this, realize that I don't want this to be necessarily an article. Maybe I want this to be a thread on Twitter. Now we're going to come back to the article because it's very easy to show how all of these things work, but let's play this out as a thread hook, for example.

So we're going to take this headline, we're going to put it here, and you go, you know what? I actually, as I'm thinking through this, realize that I don't want this to be necessarily an article. Maybe I want this to be a thread on Twitter. Now we're going to come back to the article because it's very easy to show how all of these things work, but let's play this out as a thread hook, for example.

So Greg, do you have a recent viral thread that has a hook that you thought was awesome?

So Greg, do you have a recent viral thread that has a hook that you thought was awesome?

So throw it over. Feed it to me.

So throw it over. Feed it to me.

That counts for something.

That counts for something.

Do you want me to... Yeah, throw it in the chat here. We're going to pull this up.

Do you want me to... Yeah, throw it in the chat here. We're going to pull this up.

So here's the next thing. What we're going to do is we're going to take this and we're going to treat it as a template, and then we're going to put this idea inside this template. Now, whenever I show people how to do this, very often writers will say back some version of, A, isn't that stealing? Well, for one, you wrote the first one, so no. But even with other people, isn't that stealing? And no.

So here's the next thing. What we're going to do is we're going to take this and we're going to treat it as a template, and then we're going to put this idea inside this template. Now, whenever I show people how to do this, very often writers will say back some version of, A, isn't that stealing? Well, for one, you wrote the first one, so no. But even with other people, isn't that stealing? And no.

I was just writing a piece this morning about like different career paths that writers can take. And the one that I was working on is the career path of a content writer. And so often I hear, I see it in my comments on my content, like all day long is people saying, you know, what's the point of even building these skills? AI is just going to take all our jobs. AI is going to remove all writers.

I was just writing a piece this morning about like different career paths that writers can take. And the one that I was working on is the career path of a content writer. And so often I hear, I see it in my comments on my content, like all day long is people saying, you know, what's the point of even building these skills? AI is just going to take all our jobs. AI is going to remove all writers.

you're not stealing the content. You are stealing the architecture, right? So everybody's read the, what is it? Austin Klein's book, steal like an artist, right? This is what that means. So you are stealing the bones of the house, but you're going to design it in a different way. Okay. Second is often writers will say some version of, well, this isn't real writing.

you're not stealing the content. You are stealing the architecture, right? So everybody's read the, what is it? Austin Klein's book, steal like an artist, right? This is what that means. So you are stealing the bones of the house, but you're going to design it in a different way. Okay. Second is often writers will say some version of, well, this isn't real writing.

Like you're just, you're just taking something that works and then reswizzling it. to which I have to slow down and explain, you don't realize that you are already doing this every single time you sit down to write. You just call it intuition.

Like you're just, you're just taking something that works and then reswizzling it. to which I have to slow down and explain, you don't realize that you are already doing this every single time you sit down to write. You just call it intuition.

But what's really happening is every time you sit down to write, your brain is cycling through previous quote unquote templates that you have seen work, either something you've read and were inspired by or something that you've done already and you received a positive response from. You're like, oh, that hook worked last time. My subconscious is like, maybe I should do that again.

But what's really happening is every time you sit down to write, your brain is cycling through previous quote unquote templates that you have seen work, either something you've read and were inspired by or something that you've done already and you received a positive response from. You're like, oh, that hook worked last time. My subconscious is like, maybe I should do that again.

So this is already happening. All we're doing is we're just making this conscious. So how do we do this? Well, you take the hook and some hooks, if you pull, it might not be a perfect fit, but we'll do our best with this one. So here, just had a fascinating lunch with a 22-year-old Stanford grad. Smart kid, perfect resume. Something felled off though.

So this is already happening. All we're doing is we're just making this conscious. So how do we do this? Well, you take the hook and some hooks, if you pull, it might not be a perfect fit, but we'll do our best with this one. So here, just had a fascinating lunch with a 22-year-old Stanford grad. Smart kid, perfect resume. Something felled off though.

He kept pausing mid-sentence, searching for words. No complex words, basic ones, like his brain was buffering. Finally asked if he was okay. His response floored me. This is such a good hook, man. This is such a good hook. Okay.

He kept pausing mid-sentence, searching for words. No complex words, basic ones, like his brain was buffering. Finally asked if he was okay. His response floored me. This is such a good hook, man. This is such a good hook. Okay.

Okay. In 2002. Reed Hastings had a meeting with his executives.

Okay. In 2002. Reed Hastings had a meeting with his executives.

And just to show how close we're... I'll try and stick to this as much as possible. Searching for words. Reed Hastings looked out the window and said, we're banning the word blockbuster.

And just to show how close we're... I'll try and stick to this as much as possible. Searching for words. Reed Hastings looked out the window and said, we're banning the word blockbuster.

Of course, yeah. You don't steal the content, you steal the format.

Of course, yeah. You don't steal the content, you steal the format.

Right? And so here, now here's the really cool part. What is an AI model? An AI model is really just lots of examples of a scenario. And so I love when – like it's actually comical to me when people say things like, I tried using AI, but it just takes too long to get an end result. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, I've been writing on the internet for 10 years.

Right? And so here, now here's the really cool part. What is an AI model? An AI model is really just lots of examples of a scenario. And so I love when – like it's actually comical to me when people say things like, I tried using AI, but it just takes too long to get an end result. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, I've been writing on the internet for 10 years.

No one's going to need a writer anymore. And that really fails to understand what's happening. And the analogy that I always use is when Photoshop was invented in 1990, if you can believe it was that long ago at this point, That didn't ruin design, it created a thousand times more designers, right? It created exponentially more design in the world.

No one's going to need a writer anymore. And that really fails to understand what's happening. And the analogy that I always use is when Photoshop was invented in 1990, if you can believe it was that long ago at this point, That didn't ruin design, it created a thousand times more designers, right? It created exponentially more design in the world.

I've written 8,000 articles on the internet. And you're frustrated that it's taking you like three reps to get an end result. So what you don't realize is that when you do this one time, so we took the original hook and then we manually created a new version. set a different way. You just created a mini model.

I've written 8,000 articles on the internet. And you're frustrated that it's taking you like three reps to get an end result. So what you don't realize is that when you do this one time, so we took the original hook and then we manually created a new version. set a different way. You just created a mini model.

And so what you can do and why it's so important to understand how to do these things manually is because then we can take this hook and this now, this is what I would do. This is how you can keep working with ChatGPT. So you go, it gives us this list, your editor in chief, you go, okay, great. This is the headline that I like the most.

And so what you can do and why it's so important to understand how to do these things manually is because then we can take this hook and this now, this is what I would do. This is how you can keep working with ChatGPT. So you go, it gives us this list, your editor in chief, you go, okay, great. This is the headline that I like the most.

but I want to write this in the form of a Twitter slash X thread. Let's start by writing a viral hook. Here's a hook I wrote recently that went mega viral. We take this. This is the first part of training our little model. Then we go now here's a different version of that viral hook based on the headline that I picked that I think could work.

but I want to write this in the form of a Twitter slash X thread. Let's start by writing a viral hook. Here's a hook I wrote recently that went mega viral. We take this. This is the first part of training our little model. Then we go now here's a different version of that viral hook based on the headline that I picked that I think could work.

And then we take this, we copy paste this, and then we go. Now I'd like for you to come up with five other variations of this same viral hook to increase the likelihood of people reading this piece about Reed Hastings. Okay, so what are we doing? We're literally just saying, here's what I want to do. Here's an example of the thing I sort of want to mirror.

And then we take this, we copy paste this, and then we go. Now I'd like for you to come up with five other variations of this same viral hook to increase the likelihood of people reading this piece about Reed Hastings. Okay, so what are we doing? We're literally just saying, here's what I want to do. Here's an example of the thing I sort of want to mirror.

And then you close the loop by saying, and here's my first try. And when you give it your first try, you just created this mini model that it now has something to learn off of, right? So here's variation two. Picture this, a 2002 Netflix leadership meeting, NBA hotshots, top engineers, all eyes on Reed Hastings. That's a pretty great intro. Fuck yeah.

And then you close the loop by saying, and here's my first try. And when you give it your first try, you just created this mini model that it now has something to learn off of, right? So here's variation two. Picture this, a 2002 Netflix leadership meeting, NBA hotshots, top engineers, all eyes on Reed Hastings. That's a pretty great intro. Fuck yeah.

The reason that this is so cool is because you have to remove your own ego and be like, who cares that AI actually produced a better hook? The reason it was able to was because I prompted it the right way. And that fundamental piece is what is changing everything. And either you get on board with that and you become an orchestrator and editor in chief, or you don't have a job anymore.

The reason that this is so cool is because you have to remove your own ego and be like, who cares that AI actually produced a better hook? The reason it was able to was because I prompted it the right way. And that fundamental piece is what is changing everything. And either you get on board with that and you become an orchestrator and editor in chief, or you don't have a job anymore.

And it's self-inflicted because you could have changed. What we're doing right now is not hard. Pretty cool.

And it's self-inflicted because you could have changed. What we're doing right now is not hard. Pretty cool.

I think that's sort of like saying, I don't know how to drive yet. Should I go book a time at the Porsche track and learn how to drift a high-speed 911? And people have a miraculous ability to want to solve problems they don't have yet. Chachapiti and Claude are so powerful that you do not need much more than this for a long time.

I think that's sort of like saying, I don't know how to drive yet. Should I go book a time at the Porsche track and learn how to drift a high-speed 911? And people have a miraculous ability to want to solve problems they don't have yet. Chachapiti and Claude are so powerful that you do not need much more than this for a long time.

When Instagram launched in 2010, that didn't remove photographers, it made everyone a photographer, right? It exponentially increased the amount of photography in the world. And ChatGPT and Claude and all these AI writing platforms are gonna do the same exact thing. They're going to make everyone a writer because it's reducing the barrier to entry.

When Instagram launched in 2010, that didn't remove photographers, it made everyone a photographer, right? It exponentially increased the amount of photography in the world. And ChatGPT and Claude and all these AI writing platforms are gonna do the same exact thing. They're going to make everyone a writer because it's reducing the barrier to entry.

I've played with them a tad, but it's not even worth the effort for me yet. Yeah. It doesn't solve a problem for me.

I've played with them a tad, but it's not even worth the effort for me yet. Yeah. It doesn't solve a problem for me.

Fair. You know? Okay. So that was our little detour about Twitter hooks. Okay. But let's go back. I'm just going to move these down here just so we have them. But let's go back to if we were to turn this into an 800-word article because I want to show – the different levels and decisions that go into you making the high leverage decisions and then AI doing the lower leverage stuff.

Fair. You know? Okay. So that was our little detour about Twitter hooks. Okay. But let's go back. I'm just going to move these down here just so we have them. But let's go back to if we were to turn this into an 800-word article because I want to show – the different levels and decisions that go into you making the high leverage decisions and then AI doing the lower leverage stuff.

So when you have a headline, As a default, the easiest container for creating content is to think in terms of chunks of three. So the average 800-word article, give or take, and when I say article, you can post it on Twitter as long form, you can post it on Medium as an article, you can post it on Quora as an answer. I just mean generally that amount of words, right?

So when you have a headline, As a default, the easiest container for creating content is to think in terms of chunks of three. So the average 800-word article, give or take, and when I say article, you can post it on Twitter as long form, you can post it on Medium as an article, you can post it on Quora as an answer. I just mean generally that amount of words, right?

This is what it typically looks like. You have your intro, and then you have three main sections. Now, can you have five sections? Yes. Could you have 50 sections? Sure, if you wanted to, right? But generally speaking, 800 words, three sections. The first decision that needs to get made are what are, let's just stick with three here. What are the three things that we are going to give the reader?

This is what it typically looks like. You have your intro, and then you have three main sections. Now, can you have five sections? Yes. Could you have 50 sections? Sure, if you wanted to, right? But generally speaking, 800 words, three sections. The first decision that needs to get made are what are, let's just stick with three here. What are the three things that we are going to give the reader?

and this is something that took me a really long time to understand is that 90% of the value of a piece is the headline and the quality of the three main points. Okay. So I'll give you a really simple example. Let's, let's say the title was how to make your first million dollars or actually here's, here's a better one here. How to save

and this is something that took me a really long time to understand is that 90% of the value of a piece is the headline and the quality of the three main points. Okay. So I'll give you a really simple example. Let's, let's say the title was how to make your first million dollars or actually here's, here's a better one here. How to save

million dollars in taxes in 2025 let's pretend this was the headline of our piece and v1 is our sub heads were you gotta learn about money you should hire a CPA and don't be dumb okay let's pretend that's v1 and What so many writers fail to understand is that 90% of the value of the thing gets evaluated just based on this.

million dollars in taxes in 2025 let's pretend this was the headline of our piece and v1 is our sub heads were you gotta learn about money you should hire a CPA and don't be dumb okay let's pretend that's v1 and What so many writers fail to understand is that 90% of the value of the thing gets evaluated just based on this.

So if you saw this headline and then you clicked on this piece and you skimmed these three subheads, you would immediately say to yourself, this is worthless and you would leave. And all of that would happen in less than two seconds, right? The value equation changes dramatically when these main points are even more specific, even more tangible.

So if you saw this headline and then you clicked on this piece and you skimmed these three subheads, you would immediately say to yourself, this is worthless and you would leave. And all of that would happen in less than two seconds, right? The value equation changes dramatically when these main points are even more specific, even more tangible.

I'm not going to sit here and stress test this for 10 different iterations, but just to show the example, it would be something like if you aren't taking advantage of the, I'm sure there's some sort of loophole.

I'm not going to sit here and stress test this for 10 different iterations, but just to show the example, it would be something like if you aren't taking advantage of the, I'm sure there's some sort of loophole.

If you pair that trend with the fact that 20 years ago, people couldn't imagine what it meant to create content online. If you owned a fax machine brand or a candy brand or a local spa, 20 years ago, you were like, what does it even mean to create content? You want me to post pictures of my fax machine on the internet?

If you pair that trend with the fact that 20 years ago, people couldn't imagine what it meant to create content online. If you owned a fax machine brand or a candy brand or a local spa, 20 years ago, you were like, what does it even mean to create content? You want me to post pictures of my fax machine on the internet?

right this can easily save you an extra 250k you know you should be taking all money into a personal S corp not an LLC and then subhead number three is there's a program where you can buy section 8 housing and get paid dividends that you can write off against your income okay So those three main points, for example, are significantly more specific and they are significantly more tangible.

right this can easily save you an extra 250k you know you should be taking all money into a personal S corp not an LLC and then subhead number three is there's a program where you can buy section 8 housing and get paid dividends that you can write off against your income okay So those three main points, for example, are significantly more specific and they are significantly more tangible.

And when you see each main point, inherently, if you read this, you're like, oh, I've never heard of that loophole, which sells you on reading the actual content. And so if the title doesn't promise you something that is worthwhile, and if the main points aren't tangible enough to show that you're going to deliver on that promise, nobody reads the content.

And when you see each main point, inherently, if you read this, you're like, oh, I've never heard of that loophole, which sells you on reading the actual content. And so if the title doesn't promise you something that is worthwhile, and if the main points aren't tangible enough to show that you're going to deliver on that promise, nobody reads the content.

And so instead, you have all these people that are sitting there and they're like, oh, well, I got to start writing. And they start with the first word and they're like, This is how you save a million dollars. No, I don't like that. I'm going to say a million. No, I don't like that. Here's save a lot of money. No, I don't like that. I don't like that adjective. Wait, I don't like any of this.

And so instead, you have all these people that are sitting there and they're like, oh, well, I got to start writing. And they start with the first word and they're like, This is how you save a million dollars. No, I don't like that. I'm going to say a million. No, I don't like that. Here's save a lot of money. No, I don't like that. I don't like that adjective. Wait, I don't like any of this.

Wait, I shouldn't be a writer. Like that's what most people do. And they don't even realize that they've dove into the writing before they've made the most important decision, which is what's the promise and how are you delivering on the promise in the main points? Does that make sense?

Wait, I shouldn't be a writer. Like that's what most people do. And they don't even realize that they've dove into the writing before they've made the most important decision, which is what's the promise and how are you delivering on the promise in the main points? Does that make sense?

Sometimes it's intuitive. Oftentimes I will see that there's always people that do a lot of these things accidentally or they do them every once in a while. And my goal is to make them conscious so that as you're writing, you're sitting there and you're like, this is the next thing. This is the next thing, right?

Sometimes it's intuitive. Oftentimes I will see that there's always people that do a lot of these things accidentally or they do them every once in a while. And my goal is to make them conscious so that as you're writing, you're sitting there and you're like, this is the next thing. This is the next thing, right?

literally days weeks per year yeah it's no different than when someone's like oh you know it takes me five years to write a book well it's not because the book took you five years it's because you had to make five years of mistakes in order to write it totally okay so you want to you want to keep it pushing yeah we got like 15 20 minutes max Cool. We got it.

literally days weeks per year yeah it's no different than when someone's like oh you know it takes me five years to write a book well it's not because the book took you five years it's because you had to make five years of mistakes in order to write it totally okay so you want to you want to keep it pushing yeah we got like 15 20 minutes max Cool. We got it.

And now today, every single business and every single individual understands I should probably create and share content online. It's why spas share pictures of their spas, right? And so if you take those two things together, you realize that quote unquote content, branded content, educational content is not ever going to go down. It's only going to go up.

And now today, every single business and every single individual understands I should probably create and share content online. It's why spas share pictures of their spas, right? And so if you take those two things together, you realize that quote unquote content, branded content, educational content is not ever going to go down. It's only going to go up.

We're going to compress it in and then we can talk takeaways. So next I'm going to introduce my, one of my favorite frameworks that I've ever come up with. I call it the 10 magical ways. The 10 magical ways are you could reverse engineer 99% of all nonfiction writing back into these 10 ways.

We're going to compress it in and then we can talk takeaways. So next I'm going to introduce my, one of my favorite frameworks that I've ever come up with. I call it the 10 magical ways. The 10 magical ways are you could reverse engineer 99% of all nonfiction writing back into these 10 ways.

And the reason that this little list is so powerful is because it is the easiest way to remove any sort of writer's block that happens at every single stage. So the first way to use this is to look at the headline. And this is a great hook, why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, but this is a pretty vague and what I like to call intangible promise. So, and what it means for your startup.

And the reason that this little list is so powerful is because it is the easiest way to remove any sort of writer's block that happens at every single stage. So the first way to use this is to look at the headline. And this is a great hook, why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, but this is a pretty vague and what I like to call intangible promise. So, and what it means for your startup.

It's like, well, what it means for my startup? Okay, kind of interesting, but how can we make this more interesting or more tangible? And the question to ask is actually, which of these 10 things am I going to give the reader? Am I going to give them tips? Am I going to give them stats? Am I going to give them steps? Am I going to give them lessons? Right?

It's like, well, what it means for my startup? Okay, kind of interesting, but how can we make this more interesting or more tangible? And the question to ask is actually, which of these 10 things am I going to give the reader? Am I going to give them tips? Am I going to give them stats? Am I going to give them steps? Am I going to give them lessons? Right?

So for example, you know, and three lessons that can be learned from the, what's Netflix's market cap now? Something stupid.

So for example, you know, and three lessons that can be learned from the, what's Netflix's market cap now? Something stupid.

Okay. Why, why did my brain immediately go here? Because again, another framework, big numbers and headlines, big numbers and hooks always perform well. Right.

Okay. Why, why did my brain immediately go here? Because again, another framework, big numbers and headlines, big numbers and hooks always perform well. Right.

Yep, exactly. Okay. So here's where things get really interesting. And I think that this step that we are about to talk about is the primary skill. It is the primary value. Okay. So we use the 10 magical ways and we clarify, what are we actually going to give the reader? We're going to give them three lessons. It's very simple. Okay.

Yep, exactly. Okay. So here's where things get really interesting. And I think that this step that we are about to talk about is the primary skill. It is the primary value. Okay. So we use the 10 magical ways and we clarify, what are we actually going to give the reader? We're going to give them three lessons. It's very simple. Okay.

If you don't have clarity over which thing you're giving the reader, guess what? The reader's not going to know. And if the reader doesn't know, they're not going to give you their attention. Okay. So you give them three lessons. Now, here's where it's so simple, it's complicated. If we were to break this into sections, what do we think the three subheads are going to be?

If you don't have clarity over which thing you're giving the reader, guess what? The reader's not going to know. And if the reader doesn't know, they're not going to give you their attention. Okay. So you give them three lessons. Now, here's where it's so simple, it's complicated. If we were to break this into sections, what do we think the three subheads are going to be?

You want to take a guess, Greg?

You want to take a guess, Greg?

Well, just generally, like the three subheads are going to share three

Well, just generally, like the three subheads are going to share three

Every single day, more and more people, more and more businesses want to create more and more content. If you are constrained as a human by 24 hours in a day or really like eight to 12 working hours a day and seven days a week, well, your productivity can only go so far. You can only produce so much content in a given day or a given week.

Every single day, more and more people, more and more businesses want to create more and more content. If you are constrained as a human by 24 hours in a day or really like eight to 12 working hours a day and seven days a week, well, your productivity can only go so far. You can only produce so much content in a given day or a given week.

Three lessons, right? It's so simple, it's complicated, right? So this is lesson number one, this is lesson number two, and this is lesson number three. Here's a very simple rule of thumb. If your subheads do not deliver clearly on the promise in the headline, the reader will not take the time to figure it out. Okay.

Three lessons, right? It's so simple, it's complicated, right? So this is lesson number one, this is lesson number two, and this is lesson number three. Here's a very simple rule of thumb. If your subheads do not deliver clearly on the promise in the headline, the reader will not take the time to figure it out. Okay.

So whatever magical way is in the headline is going to be the thing in the sub heads. Okay. Now the highest leverage decision about the entire piece is what the three lessons are. And this is what so many people misunderstand. Okay. 90% of the value is not in the writing. Okay. It is in the fact that you said, I'm going to give you three lessons.

So whatever magical way is in the headline is going to be the thing in the sub heads. Okay. Now the highest leverage decision about the entire piece is what the three lessons are. And this is what so many people misunderstand. Okay. 90% of the value is not in the writing. Okay. It is in the fact that you said, I'm going to give you three lessons.

And if those three lessons are, you got to work hard, you got to out-compete, And you gotta care. If those are the three lessons, you wrote a shitty piece. It doesn't matter how many beautiful sentences there are. It doesn't matter how clever your adjectives. Nothing else matters, right? So, editor-in-chief, we gotta come up with the three lessons.

And if those three lessons are, you got to work hard, you got to out-compete, And you gotta care. If those are the three lessons, you wrote a shitty piece. It doesn't matter how many beautiful sentences there are. It doesn't matter how clever your adjectives. Nothing else matters, right? So, editor-in-chief, we gotta come up with the three lessons.

Do we want to come up with them, or do we want Chachapiti to come up with them?

Do we want to come up with them, or do we want Chachapiti to come up with them?

I think that that is the best lens and point of view for all of this. I think that you should always try yourself first and then weigh it against what Chachapiti comes up with and then improve the quality together. That is why I don't defer the writing to AI, I write with AI. Give me some lessons, Greg. And I'll help you improve them if you just say things out loud as they come to you.

I think that that is the best lens and point of view for all of this. I think that you should always try yourself first and then weigh it against what Chachapiti comes up with and then improve the quality together. That is why I don't defer the writing to AI, I write with AI. Give me some lessons, Greg. And I'll help you improve them if you just say things out loud as they come to you.

Not alienate them. Okay.

Not alienate them. Okay.

100%. So said differently, my little framework for that is whenever I'm coming up with the main points of a piece, doesn't matter if it's an email, article, Twitter thread, doesn't matter. Once I've come up with all the main points, I then stack rank them in the ones that are most interesting or most compelling.

100%. So said differently, my little framework for that is whenever I'm coming up with the main points of a piece, doesn't matter if it's an email, article, Twitter thread, doesn't matter. Once I've come up with all the main points, I then stack rank them in the ones that are most interesting or most compelling.

Because inherently, once you come up with them, usually there's one where you're like, oh, what a great main point. Well, you should make that the first one, right? Because that hooks the person.

Because inherently, once you come up with them, usually there's one where you're like, oh, what a great main point. Well, you should make that the first one, right? Because that hooks the person.

So if you add AI into the equation, it's not that AI removes people's jobs. AI becomes the stress test of, do you know how to use this to double, triple, quadruple your output? If yes, you will make even more money than you were making before because you are more valuable. And if you don't know how to use this, you become less valuable. And people conflate the two. They think AI stole my job.

So if you add AI into the equation, it's not that AI removes people's jobs. AI becomes the stress test of, do you know how to use this to double, triple, quadruple your output? If yes, you will make even more money than you were making before because you are more valuable. And if you don't know how to use this, you become less valuable. And people conflate the two. They think AI stole my job.

Okay, so cool. So now what do we do? We take this, we take our improved headline, And we go, okay, great. So going back to writing this as an 800 word article, here's the headline I came up with. Feed that into there we go. And here are the three lessons I came up with. We take these copy paste here. Then we say, but I want to stress test the quality of these lessons.

Okay, so cool. So now what do we do? We take this, we take our improved headline, And we go, okay, great. So going back to writing this as an 800 word article, here's the headline I came up with. Feed that into there we go. And here are the three lessons I came up with. We take these copy paste here. Then we say, but I want to stress test the quality of these lessons.

Can you please come up with five more batches of three lessons related to this article headline? So I can see if there are any other opportunities to improve. GHPT's thinking. Again, I want to emphasize this process that we're going through is exactly the process that an editor-in-chief and a columnist go through. It's the same thing.

Can you please come up with five more batches of three lessons related to this article headline? So I can see if there are any other opportunities to improve. GHPT's thinking. Again, I want to emphasize this process that we're going through is exactly the process that an editor-in-chief and a columnist go through. It's the same thing.

You're just deferring to someone else's brain, or you could use the AI brain, right? So here, adopt a contrarian mindset, treat frustration as a business opportunity.

You're just deferring to someone else's brain, or you could use the AI brain, right? So here, adopt a contrarian mindset, treat frustration as a business opportunity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, great example of how AI gives a bunch of options, but your taste has the context to be like, the risk reward of me using that phrasing maybe isn't going to be as effective, right? You are editor in chief. Little writing pro tip for everyone. A lot of times when people come up with subheads, they think the same way that AI does. They think in terms of quippy main titles.

Again, great example of how AI gives a bunch of options, but your taste has the context to be like, the risk reward of me using that phrasing maybe isn't going to be as effective, right? You are editor in chief. Little writing pro tip for everyone. A lot of times when people come up with subheads, they think the same way that AI does. They think in terms of quippy main titles.

Main titles typically lean more clever, not as clear. I've always found that the best main points and subheads are actually more like sentences where you're literally just saying to the reader, you clicked on this title, I'm going to give you all the value in three sentences bolded as subheads.

Main titles typically lean more clever, not as clear. I've always found that the best main points and subheads are actually more like sentences where you're literally just saying to the reader, you clicked on this title, I'm going to give you all the value in three sentences bolded as subheads.

Whenever you do that, it's so much more likely that the person then gives each section their attention versus if you give them something more vague, stay agile even when growing. They don't really know what they're going to get out of that section, which means they don't give it their attention. Here, we actually like our output even more. Now, if I wanted to clarify this further, I could say,

Whenever you do that, it's so much more likely that the person then gives each section their attention versus if you give them something more vague, stay agile even when growing. They don't really know what they're going to get out of that section, which means they don't give it their attention. Here, we actually like our output even more. Now, if I wanted to clarify this further, I could say,

At a minimum, you will have a baseline understanding of how to use AI in writing. And at a maximum, you will have a very clear framework for being able to use AI to produce very high quality long form content.

At a minimum, you will have a baseline understanding of how to use AI in writing. And at a maximum, you will have a very clear framework for being able to use AI to produce very high quality long form content.

These aren't bad, but all of these main points are written as vague, clever main points titles. The ones I came up with are in sentence format and are much more tangible, actionable. Can you please come up with five more batches of three main points that are written in sentence format and are as tangible, actionable for the reader as possible.

These aren't bad, but all of these main points are written as vague, clever main points titles. The ones I came up with are in sentence format and are much more tangible, actionable. Can you please come up with five more batches of three main points that are written in sentence format and are as tangible, actionable for the reader as possible.

So this is where you're working with AI in that conversational format. And we might not have time to get to it, so just to sort of skip to the answer. The reason why all this back and forth is so important is because you don't realize that as you're doing this, you are creating all the Lego blocks to go assemble the mega prompt.

So this is where you're working with AI in that conversational format. And we might not have time to get to it, so just to sort of skip to the answer. The reason why all this back and forth is so important is because you don't realize that as you're doing this, you are creating all the Lego blocks to go assemble the mega prompt.

So whenever we create prompts for our paid newsletter, right with AI, for example, all of them are the end result of this sort of back and forth with chat GPT or, or back and forth with Claude, right? You're learning what works. You're learning what yields the best output. And then you're basically going back through that entire conversation.

So whenever we create prompts for our paid newsletter, right with AI, for example, all of them are the end result of this sort of back and forth with chat GPT or, or back and forth with Claude, right? You're learning what works. You're learning what yields the best output. And then you're basically going back through that entire conversation.

That's not what happened. AI changed the barrier to entry and changed the baseline skill level. You failed to change with it. And then AI says, well, you didn't change, so you don't get the next opportunity, which is like Darwinism at its finest, right? So everyone's sitting here thinking AI is ruining things. And no, it's changing things, and you are failing to change with it.

That's not what happened. AI changed the barrier to entry and changed the baseline skill level. You failed to change with it. And then AI says, well, you didn't change, so you don't get the next opportunity, which is like Darwinism at its finest, right? So everyone's sitting here thinking AI is ruining things. And no, it's changing things, and you are failing to change with it.

And then you go, now, how can I skip to the end faster next time? How can I just compress all of this into, into one prompt, right? Or one decision. So here, these are more actionable, regularly map out your customer's biggest frustrations like late fees, then eliminate those pain points. Your product stands out on convenience. That's actually a cool, a cool point.

And then you go, now, how can I skip to the end faster next time? How can I just compress all of this into, into one prompt, right? Or one decision. So here, these are more actionable, regularly map out your customer's biggest frustrations like late fees, then eliminate those pain points. Your product stands out on convenience. That's actually a cool, a cool point.

I might consider putting that underneath that main point, right? Run a banned words experiment in which you exclude all direct competitor names during strategic planning. Cool. So you can see how this has improved. And it's improved because we know what to ask for. And we know what to ask for because we've done it manually.

I might consider putting that underneath that main point, right? Run a banned words experiment in which you exclude all direct competitor names during strategic planning. Cool. So you can see how this has improved. And it's improved because we know what to ask for. And we know what to ask for because we've done it manually.

So then just to close the loop and just to sort of complete this for everyone, once you have the three main points, the next thing that you do, and this is what completes the writing, is you go back to the 10 magical ways and you go, so what am I going to give the reader in each one of these sections? So here, lesson one, every founder should ban one word most closely to whatever.

So then just to close the loop and just to sort of complete this for everyone, once you have the three main points, the next thing that you do, and this is what completes the writing, is you go back to the 10 magical ways and you go, so what am I going to give the reader in each one of these sections? So here, lesson one, every founder should ban one word most closely to whatever.

So here, we really like the run a banned words experiment. So we put this here. how do we make this the most valuable we can? Well, we would explain to people the steps of running a banned words experiment, right? So here are the magical ways we're going to go with steps, right? Convenience can be a product differentiator.

So here, we really like the run a banned words experiment. So we put this here. how do we make this the most valuable we can? Well, we would explain to people the steps of running a banned words experiment, right? So here are the magical ways we're going to go with steps, right? Convenience can be a product differentiator.

Okay, well, if I'm explaining that convenience can be a product differentiator, what might make sense? Maybe some stats might be interesting as to why it can be like proving that, or maybe it's like examples of other companies that have used

Okay, well, if I'm explaining that convenience can be a product differentiator, what might make sense? Maybe some stats might be interesting as to why it can be like proving that, or maybe it's like examples of other companies that have used

um convenience in order to differentiate themselves right and then lesson number three businesses built around guilt empower the customer not alienate them well whenever you're explaining something right maybe here we need some like and here are you know reasons why Here's why that is, right? That's another one of the 10 magical ways.

um convenience in order to differentiate themselves right and then lesson number three businesses built around guilt empower the customer not alienate them well whenever you're explaining something right maybe here we need some like and here are you know reasons why Here's why that is, right? That's another one of the 10 magical ways.

So this list is insanely powerful because then you just go through each section and you go, all right, here, lesson one, I'm going to give people steps on how to run a banned words experiment. Lesson number two, I'm going to give some stats to back up why this is a thing. And I'm going to give a couple examples of other companies that have done it.

So this list is insanely powerful because then you just go through each section and you go, all right, here, lesson one, I'm going to give people steps on how to run a banned words experiment. Lesson number two, I'm going to give some stats to back up why this is a thing. And I'm going to give a couple examples of other companies that have done it.

And then lesson three, businesses built around guilt empower the customer, not alienate them. Here are a couple tangible reasons why. We haven't written a single full paragraph or anything, and all the decisions are made. So now when you sit down to write, this isn't hard. You just go, oh, I fill this in in this section. And so then if you were to bring that over to AI, what would you do?

And then lesson three, businesses built around guilt empower the customer, not alienate them. Here are a couple tangible reasons why. We haven't written a single full paragraph or anything, and all the decisions are made. So now when you sit down to write, this isn't hard. You just go, oh, I fill this in in this section. And so then if you were to bring that over to AI, what would you do?

You would literally just articulate what I just said. And then it would come up with a V1, and then you would run it back and do it again. You'd go section by section. You'd be like, lesson one, I think those steps aren't tangible enough. Could you rewrite that in sentence form? You are the editor-in-chief.

You would literally just articulate what I just said. And then it would come up with a V1, and then you would run it back and do it again. You'd go section by section. You'd be like, lesson one, I think those steps aren't tangible enough. Could you rewrite that in sentence form? You are the editor-in-chief.

I want to end on a meta concept.

I want to end on a meta concept.

Why is paying for education so powerful? And why is paying for education even more powerful in the digital age? Take Ship 30 for 30 as an example, our writing program. In Ship 30, We basically have broken out, I don't know how many, 30, 40, 50 different little writing frameworks. It's like when writing first sentences, do it like this. When writing headlines, do it like this.

Why is paying for education so powerful? And why is paying for education even more powerful in the digital age? Take Ship 30 for 30 as an example, our writing program. In Ship 30, We basically have broken out, I don't know how many, 30, 40, 50 different little writing frameworks. It's like when writing first sentences, do it like this. When writing headlines, do it like this.

When formatting, do it like this. And in the age of AI, every time you buy a course, a book, you listen to a talk, and any sort of education... You are not just learning. What you are doing is you are downloading that little framework into your repository that you can then go leverage with technology.

When formatting, do it like this. And in the age of AI, every time you buy a course, a book, you listen to a talk, and any sort of education... You are not just learning. What you are doing is you are downloading that little framework into your repository that you can then go leverage with technology.

So that's my little preamble for what we're going to dig into. That is why these things are so important. What is a topic that you want to create a piece of content on? 800 word article. You could also post it as a long form on X. You could post it as a long form on LinkedIn if you want. Is there any topic you've been noodling on?

So that's my little preamble for what we're going to dig into. That is why these things are so important. What is a topic that you want to create a piece of content on? 800 word article. You could also post it as a long form on X. You could post it as a long form on LinkedIn if you want. Is there any topic you've been noodling on?

So there's actually no reason why someone couldn't take Ship 30, take out all 30 of the different frameworks that we give them, and then be able to articulate to AI, hey, when we write first sentences, we want them to be like this. When we write titles, we want it to be like this. And you just increased your own productivity and efficiency and quality of output by 100x for the rest of your life.

So there's actually no reason why someone couldn't take Ship 30, take out all 30 of the different frameworks that we give them, and then be able to articulate to AI, hey, when we write first sentences, we want them to be like this. When we write titles, we want it to be like this. And you just increased your own productivity and efficiency and quality of output by 100x for the rest of your life.

And like, Ship 30 is a $350 course, for example. And once that clicked for me, I was like, oh... So you're telling me that I can basically just go spend a fraction of the amount of money buying things that have taken people – it has taken me 12 years to learn how to articulate all of this. 12 years and thousands of articles and thousands of everything, right?

And like, Ship 30 is a $350 course, for example. And once that clicked for me, I was like, oh... So you're telling me that I can basically just go spend a fraction of the amount of money buying things that have taken people – it has taken me 12 years to learn how to articulate all of this. 12 years and thousands of articles and thousands of everything, right?

And you can literally just take it, download it into your brain, and then articulate it to AI and yield a very similar output. And that is why paying for education is so fascinating in the digital world.

And you can literally just take it, download it into your brain, and then articulate it to AI and yield a very similar output. And that is why paying for education is so fascinating in the digital world.

Yep. Yeah. Said in the most simplest way, it took me 12 years to figure out the six proven single sentence openers for almost all writing. You could internalize that framework from me in four minutes. And then you can take that framework and then use it with AI for the rest of your life. The return on that is unbelievable. And this is also true for me.

Yep. Yeah. Said in the most simplest way, it took me 12 years to figure out the six proven single sentence openers for almost all writing. You could internalize that framework from me in four minutes. And then you can take that framework and then use it with AI for the rest of your life. The return on that is unbelievable. And this is also true for me.

Like if I want to learn how to do something and I go to you and I'm like, oh, Greg's an expert in this thing. Just give me the frame. I'll pay whatever for the framework because now I know I have it and I can go use it for the rest of my life.

Like if I want to learn how to do something and I go to you and I'm like, oh, Greg's an expert in this thing. Just give me the frame. I'll pay whatever for the framework because now I know I have it and I can go use it for the rest of my life.

It was great.

It was great.

I think he's doing okay.

I think he's doing okay.

We cooked up a lot.

We cooked up a lot.

They'll find me on the internet. I talk about this stuff for free all day. I love this stuff.

They'll find me on the internet. I talk about this stuff for free all day. I love this stuff.

I'll send you this doc that we were using. If you want to just show it as a PDF, that's fine.

I'll send you this doc that we were using. If you want to just show it as a PDF, that's fine.

Yes, you do. I'm waiting for the book.

Yes, you do. I'm waiting for the book.

Well, listen, you have cold GPT here whenever you need it.

Well, listen, you have cold GPT here whenever you need it.

All right.

All right.

Okay, so this is an amazing place to start because this is how most people begin the writing process. They come up with some sort of seed of an idea and then it's hard to know where does this go, right?

Okay, so this is an amazing place to start because this is how most people begin the writing process. They come up with some sort of seed of an idea and then it's hard to know where does this go, right?

And this is why something that I think is really important in the context of us talking about AI is that people expect AI to automate and do things that they don't understand how to do themselves. And so it is worth recognizing that AI is not a silver bullet.

And this is why something that I think is really important in the context of us talking about AI is that people expect AI to automate and do things that they don't understand how to do themselves. And so it is worth recognizing that AI is not a silver bullet.

On some level, you do have to have a baseline understanding of how the thing is supposed to work so that you can prompt AI in order to do it. It's no different than being a CEO and you hire an intern and you're like, hey, I want you to take this over. If you ask the intern to take over a department that you've never even run, well, how are you going to get the intern to do it?

On some level, you do have to have a baseline understanding of how the thing is supposed to work so that you can prompt AI in order to do it. It's no different than being a CEO and you hire an intern and you're like, hey, I want you to take this over. If you ask the intern to take over a department that you've never even run, well, how are you going to get the intern to do it?

So here's the first framework. When you have a seed of an idea, there's two ways of looking at this idea. And this is the first decision to make essentially for you, Greg. Either this is an idea and this is one point within it, or this is one point within a different idea. So either, let's just spell this out really simply. Two types of ideas.

So here's the first framework. When you have a seed of an idea, there's two ways of looking at this idea. And this is the first decision to make essentially for you, Greg. Either this is an idea and this is one point within it, or this is one point within a different idea. So either, let's just spell this out really simply. Two types of ideas.

Either this is the idea, so this is about Reed Hastings' strange rule during Netflix's early days. Either that is going to be the piece, this is the theme of the piece, or this little idea is a sub-point within a larger idea. Okay, so what might an example of that be? Well, very easy one would be three CEOs who had strange rules at the beginning of their startup journeys or something, right?

Either this is the idea, so this is about Reed Hastings' strange rule during Netflix's early days. Either that is going to be the piece, this is the theme of the piece, or this little idea is a sub-point within a larger idea. Okay, so what might an example of that be? Well, very easy one would be three CEOs who had strange rules at the beginning of their startup journeys or something, right?

So Reid becomes one of three, not necessarily the focal point. Okay? Yeah. So this is the first decision to make. Do you have a preference? Do you want me to pick one?

So Reid becomes one of three, not necessarily the focal point. Okay? Yeah. So this is the first decision to make. Do you have a preference? Do you want me to pick one?

We are going to write with AI. And I mean that in the most literal sense. We are going to write and we are going to do it with AI. And so what I want to do is I want to share my screen and I want to go back and forth and show how I do this and also how I train other writers to do this.

We are going to write with AI. And I mean that in the most literal sense. We are going to write and we are going to do it with AI. And so what I want to do is I want to share my screen and I want to go back and forth and show how I do this and also how I train other writers to do this.

Yeah, it does. So this is where my years as a ghostwriter, that part of my brain is kicking in. Because if we sort of change the lens for a moment, let's pretend that what we're doing, you are a client and I'm a ghostwriter. It's very similar. This is exactly what I would be doing with a client anyway. And you just said something really smart. And so I go, okay, that's great.

Yeah, it does. So this is where my years as a ghostwriter, that part of my brain is kicking in. Because if we sort of change the lens for a moment, let's pretend that what we're doing, you are a client and I'm a ghostwriter. It's very similar. This is exactly what I would be doing with a client anyway. And you just said something really smart. And so I go, okay, that's great.

I just don't know where to put that yet. So I think of it like a Lego block, right? You're like, that's a really great Lego block. I just don't know where it fits yet. Okay. So we put that there. Now we've got some ideas swirling around and in some way we can, let's summarize sort of our goals here. Our goals are we want this piece to be connected to startup ideas.

I just don't know where to put that yet. So I think of it like a Lego block, right? You're like, that's a really great Lego block. I just don't know where it fits yet. Okay. So we put that there. Now we've got some ideas swirling around and in some way we can, let's summarize sort of our goals here. Our goals are we want this piece to be connected to startup ideas.

I think the two biggest reasons is one, when you understand how these frameworks work, like so many people only think about how things work in an individual silo. So I'll give you an example. Like in all of our writing programs, if I explain how to write a thread hook, 99% of people will ask the follow-up question, does this also work on LinkedIn? Or does this also work for a reel?

I think the two biggest reasons is one, when you understand how these frameworks work, like so many people only think about how things work in an individual silo. So I'll give you an example. Like in all of our writing programs, if I explain how to write a thread hook, 99% of people will ask the follow-up question, does this also work on LinkedIn? Or does this also work for a reel?

We want this piece to, in some way, be actionable because a lot of the value that you provide is like how to, how to get started, how to do something, right? And ideally, we want this piece to be connected to our Reed Hastings, you know, strange rule during Netflix's early days. Fair enough?

We want this piece to, in some way, be actionable because a lot of the value that you provide is like how to, how to get started, how to do something, right? And ideally, we want this piece to be connected to our Reed Hastings, you know, strange rule during Netflix's early days. Fair enough?

Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's so simple, right? The majority of people don't have a talent problem. They have a thing called, I don't want to practice and execute the basics. And I would rather, no offense, drink a bunch of coffee, close my eyes and hope that something smart comes out when I hit the keyboard, right? And that's not a very reliable strategy. You're good like one out of every 10 times.

Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's so simple, right? The majority of people don't have a talent problem. They have a thing called, I don't want to practice and execute the basics. And I would rather, no offense, drink a bunch of coffee, close my eyes and hope that something smart comes out when I hit the keyboard, right? And that's not a very reliable strategy. You're good like one out of every 10 times.

So that's why these frameworks are so helpful. So before I I know how to do all of this manually. So I'm going to slow down and do this in stages so that even someone who's a complete beginner and you don't understand and haven't internalized these frameworks yet, you have a starting place. So whenever I'm coming up with ideas.

So that's why these frameworks are so helpful. So before I I know how to do all of this manually. So I'm going to slow down and do this in stages so that even someone who's a complete beginner and you don't understand and haven't internalized these frameworks yet, you have a starting place. So whenever I'm coming up with ideas.

And I'm trying to narrow down the idea of the thing that I want to write. A really easy place to start is to take these goals and to plug them into AI. You could use ChatGPT, you could use Claude. It really doesn't matter. Those are the two big ones that I use most often. And the whole point here is not really for the AI to start writing yet. What you want is you want it to feed you ideas, right?

And I'm trying to narrow down the idea of the thing that I want to write. A really easy place to start is to take these goals and to plug them into AI. You could use ChatGPT, you could use Claude. It really doesn't matter. Those are the two big ones that I use most often. And the whole point here is not really for the AI to start writing yet. What you want is you want it to feed you ideas, right?

So how do you think about prompting AI? I think there's, let's just pause here. There's two very different types of ways of interacting with ChatGPT, Claude, any AI model. One is conversationally, so you're sort of chunking things out piece by piece and it's more of a dialogue.

So how do you think about prompting AI? I think there's, let's just pause here. There's two very different types of ways of interacting with ChatGPT, Claude, any AI model. One is conversationally, so you're sort of chunking things out piece by piece and it's more of a dialogue.

And another is where you think through all of the potential situations and hypotheticals and you assemble a massive prompt that then you feed into the AI model and it generates some sort of output. And I think part of where people go wrong is A, they don't realize that those are two different things.

And another is where you think through all of the potential situations and hypotheticals and you assemble a massive prompt that then you feed into the AI model and it generates some sort of output. And I think part of where people go wrong is A, they don't realize that those are two different things.

And then B, they sort of sit in the middle and it's like a half-baked prompt that's sort of mid-conversation and then the AI is not giving it the output that they want. So that's usually the problem that I see. So here, if we're starting to write something, I start conversationally. So I might say something like,

And then B, they sort of sit in the middle and it's like a half-baked prompt that's sort of mid-conversation and then the AI is not giving it the output that they want. So that's usually the problem that I see. So here, if we're starting to write something, I start conversationally. So I might say something like,

I'm going to take this, I'm going to say, I recently came up with an idea for an 800 word article. Reed Hastings had a strange rule, right? That thing. And then I go back and I take my goals and I'm like, here are the goals of the piece I want to write. And I might give some extra context here because I have a podcast where I share startup ideas with entrepreneurial listeners.

I'm going to take this, I'm going to say, I recently came up with an idea for an 800 word article. Reed Hastings had a strange rule, right? That thing. And then I go back and I take my goals and I'm like, here are the goals of the piece I want to write. And I might give some extra context here because I have a podcast where I share startup ideas with entrepreneurial listeners.

Because a lot of the value I provide is how to get started doing something entrepreneurial. and want this piece to be connected to our Reed to Hastings story. Can you please generate 20 potential headlines for this sort of piece, and under each headline, list out three to five main points that would make up the content of that piece.

Because a lot of the value I provide is how to get started doing something entrepreneurial. and want this piece to be connected to our Reed to Hastings story. Can you please generate 20 potential headlines for this sort of piece, and under each headline, list out three to five main points that would make up the content of that piece.

So all we're doing is we're basically saying, here's the little bit that we came up with. Now, can you just start feeding me ideas? Here, the reason that I ask for these bullets and these main points is because the thing that most writers and most people who want to write don't realize is that many of the decisions get made before you start writing.

So all we're doing is we're basically saying, here's the little bit that we came up with. Now, can you just start feeding me ideas? Here, the reason that I ask for these bullets and these main points is because the thing that most writers and most people who want to write don't realize is that many of the decisions get made before you start writing.

The answer is always yes, but human beings do a terrible job of thinking orthogonally. It's like, if you tell me this is how to write a Twitter thread hook, it's hard for the average person to fathom how that gets played out across other things, but it does.

The answer is always yes, but human beings do a terrible job of thinking orthogonally. It's like, if you tell me this is how to write a Twitter thread hook, it's hard for the average person to fathom how that gets played out across other things, but it does.

If you come up with an idea and your first thought is, I should open a Google Doc and I should start writing, you've already failed. You already did it wrong. And the reason is because so many of these ideas, you can come to the conclusions that you need to before you begin the writing process. And when you do that, the writing is significantly easier.

If you come up with an idea and your first thought is, I should open a Google Doc and I should start writing, you've already failed. You already did it wrong. And the reason is because so many of these ideas, you can come to the conclusions that you need to before you begin the writing process. And when you do that, the writing is significantly easier.

It gets compounded with AI where not only does it get easier, but now you can defer a lot of the lower leverage stuff to the technology. So there's like a hierarchy. And if you make the first mistake, then you make all the mistakes under it, right? So here's a, like, this is kind of cool. Stop saying blockbuster. Why ignoring the obvious can accelerate your startup growth.

It gets compounded with AI where not only does it get easier, but now you can defer a lot of the lower leverage stuff to the technology. So there's like a hierarchy. And if you make the first mistake, then you make all the mistakes under it, right? So here's a, like, this is kind of cool. Stop saying blockbuster. Why ignoring the obvious can accelerate your startup growth.

Psychology of ignoring the market leader, right? All of these. Why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, what it means for your startup.

Psychology of ignoring the market leader, right? All of these. Why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, what it means for your startup.

I like that actually better.

I like that actually better.

Yep. Okay. So I just want to pause and point out, what are we doing right now? What we are doing is we just deferred the lower leverage task of come up with 20 different iterations. Now, for everyone who doesn't know, this is the hierarchy of every single magazine and publishing house and newspaper.

Yep. Okay. So I just want to pause and point out, what are we doing right now? What we are doing is we just deferred the lower leverage task of come up with 20 different iterations. Now, for everyone who doesn't know, this is the hierarchy of every single magazine and publishing house and newspaper.

The editor or the editor-in-chief literally gives the columnist or the writer this prompt in the form of, hey, come into my office and let's talk about it. Right. And then the lower writer listens and goes, I better come back with 20 high quality ideas. Just so everyone, we're on the same page. This already happens. It just happens between two human beings.

All we're doing is we're going, hey, instead of me passing this along to my junior columnist, I'm going to feed this to ChatGPT, which means we just got to elevate ourselves up to editor-in-chief, where our primary value is taste. right? So, so we're looking through these and you're like, Ooh, I actually really liked the word ban. And you have all the context as to why that word works, right?

Oh, ban implies conflict. I think it'll make for a better hook, right? Like you have your own taste and metrics for why this will work. And that's why you picked that one.

That's why these writing frameworks and these skills are so powerful, because once you understand them once, you can apply them to everything. It doesn't matter if you're writing an email or an article or a Twitter thread or a landing page. It's all the same. And then second is this is where the world's moving.

Yep. Okay. So let's, let's actually, we'll, we'll take a small scenic route detour here and let's play this out because this is, this is what I mean when I say, when you understand how these frameworks work, they work for everything and you can use them across any medium. So we're going to take this headline. So, so our taste, we elevated to editor in chief of chat to be tea for the day.

So we're going to take this headline, we're going to put it here, and you go, you know what? I actually, as I'm thinking through this, realize that I don't want this to be necessarily an article. Maybe I want this to be a thread on Twitter. Now we're going to come back to the article because it's very easy to show how all of these things work, but let's play this out as a thread hook, for example.

So Greg, do you have a recent viral thread that has a hook that you thought was awesome?

So throw it over. Feed it to me.

That counts for something.

Do you want me to... Yeah, throw it in the chat here. We're going to pull this up.

So here's the next thing. What we're going to do is we're going to take this and we're going to treat it as a template, and then we're going to put this idea inside this template. Now, whenever I show people how to do this, very often writers will say back some version of, A, isn't that stealing? Well, for one, you wrote the first one, so no. But even with other people, isn't that stealing? And no.

I was just writing a piece this morning about like different career paths that writers can take. And the one that I was working on is the career path of a content writer. And so often I hear, I see it in my comments on my content, like all day long is people saying, you know, what's the point of even building these skills? AI is just going to take all our jobs. AI is going to remove all writers.

you're not stealing the content. You are stealing the architecture, right? So everybody's read the, what is it? Austin Klein's book, steal like an artist, right? This is what that means. So you are stealing the bones of the house, but you're going to design it in a different way. Okay. Second is often writers will say some version of, well, this isn't real writing.

Like you're just, you're just taking something that works and then reswizzling it. to which I have to slow down and explain, you don't realize that you are already doing this every single time you sit down to write. You just call it intuition.

But what's really happening is every time you sit down to write, your brain is cycling through previous quote unquote templates that you have seen work, either something you've read and were inspired by or something that you've done already and you received a positive response from. You're like, oh, that hook worked last time. My subconscious is like, maybe I should do that again.

So this is already happening. All we're doing is we're just making this conscious. So how do we do this? Well, you take the hook and some hooks, if you pull, it might not be a perfect fit, but we'll do our best with this one. So here, just had a fascinating lunch with a 22-year-old Stanford grad. Smart kid, perfect resume. Something felled off though.

He kept pausing mid-sentence, searching for words. No complex words, basic ones, like his brain was buffering. Finally asked if he was okay. His response floored me. This is such a good hook, man. This is such a good hook. Okay.

Okay. In 2002. Reed Hastings had a meeting with his executives.

And just to show how close we're... I'll try and stick to this as much as possible. Searching for words. Reed Hastings looked out the window and said, we're banning the word blockbuster.

Of course, yeah. You don't steal the content, you steal the format.

Right? And so here, now here's the really cool part. What is an AI model? An AI model is really just lots of examples of a scenario. And so I love when – like it's actually comical to me when people say things like, I tried using AI, but it just takes too long to get an end result. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, I've been writing on the internet for 10 years.

No one's going to need a writer anymore. And that really fails to understand what's happening. And the analogy that I always use is when Photoshop was invented in 1990, if you can believe it was that long ago at this point, That didn't ruin design, it created a thousand times more designers, right? It created exponentially more design in the world.

I've written 8,000 articles on the internet. And you're frustrated that it's taking you like three reps to get an end result. So what you don't realize is that when you do this one time, so we took the original hook and then we manually created a new version. set a different way. You just created a mini model.

And so what you can do and why it's so important to understand how to do these things manually is because then we can take this hook and this now, this is what I would do. This is how you can keep working with ChatGPT. So you go, it gives us this list, your editor in chief, you go, okay, great. This is the headline that I like the most.

but I want to write this in the form of a Twitter slash X thread. Let's start by writing a viral hook. Here's a hook I wrote recently that went mega viral. We take this. This is the first part of training our little model. Then we go now here's a different version of that viral hook based on the headline that I picked that I think could work.

And then we take this, we copy paste this, and then we go. Now I'd like for you to come up with five other variations of this same viral hook to increase the likelihood of people reading this piece about Reed Hastings. Okay, so what are we doing? We're literally just saying, here's what I want to do. Here's an example of the thing I sort of want to mirror.

And then you close the loop by saying, and here's my first try. And when you give it your first try, you just created this mini model that it now has something to learn off of, right? So here's variation two. Picture this, a 2002 Netflix leadership meeting, NBA hotshots, top engineers, all eyes on Reed Hastings. That's a pretty great intro. Fuck yeah.

The reason that this is so cool is because you have to remove your own ego and be like, who cares that AI actually produced a better hook? The reason it was able to was because I prompted it the right way. And that fundamental piece is what is changing everything. And either you get on board with that and you become an orchestrator and editor in chief, or you don't have a job anymore.

And it's self-inflicted because you could have changed. What we're doing right now is not hard. Pretty cool.

I think that's sort of like saying, I don't know how to drive yet. Should I go book a time at the Porsche track and learn how to drift a high-speed 911? And people have a miraculous ability to want to solve problems they don't have yet. Chachapiti and Claude are so powerful that you do not need much more than this for a long time.

When Instagram launched in 2010, that didn't remove photographers, it made everyone a photographer, right? It exponentially increased the amount of photography in the world. And ChatGPT and Claude and all these AI writing platforms are gonna do the same exact thing. They're going to make everyone a writer because it's reducing the barrier to entry.

I've played with them a tad, but it's not even worth the effort for me yet. Yeah. It doesn't solve a problem for me.

Fair. You know? Okay. So that was our little detour about Twitter hooks. Okay. But let's go back. I'm just going to move these down here just so we have them. But let's go back to if we were to turn this into an 800-word article because I want to show – the different levels and decisions that go into you making the high leverage decisions and then AI doing the lower leverage stuff.

So when you have a headline, As a default, the easiest container for creating content is to think in terms of chunks of three. So the average 800-word article, give or take, and when I say article, you can post it on Twitter as long form, you can post it on Medium as an article, you can post it on Quora as an answer. I just mean generally that amount of words, right?

This is what it typically looks like. You have your intro, and then you have three main sections. Now, can you have five sections? Yes. Could you have 50 sections? Sure, if you wanted to, right? But generally speaking, 800 words, three sections. The first decision that needs to get made are what are, let's just stick with three here. What are the three things that we are going to give the reader?

and this is something that took me a really long time to understand is that 90% of the value of a piece is the headline and the quality of the three main points. Okay. So I'll give you a really simple example. Let's, let's say the title was how to make your first million dollars or actually here's, here's a better one here. How to save

million dollars in taxes in 2025 let's pretend this was the headline of our piece and v1 is our sub heads were you gotta learn about money you should hire a CPA and don't be dumb okay let's pretend that's v1 and What so many writers fail to understand is that 90% of the value of the thing gets evaluated just based on this.

So if you saw this headline and then you clicked on this piece and you skimmed these three subheads, you would immediately say to yourself, this is worthless and you would leave. And all of that would happen in less than two seconds, right? The value equation changes dramatically when these main points are even more specific, even more tangible.

I'm not going to sit here and stress test this for 10 different iterations, but just to show the example, it would be something like if you aren't taking advantage of the, I'm sure there's some sort of loophole.

If you pair that trend with the fact that 20 years ago, people couldn't imagine what it meant to create content online. If you owned a fax machine brand or a candy brand or a local spa, 20 years ago, you were like, what does it even mean to create content? You want me to post pictures of my fax machine on the internet?

right this can easily save you an extra 250k you know you should be taking all money into a personal S corp not an LLC and then subhead number three is there's a program where you can buy section 8 housing and get paid dividends that you can write off against your income okay So those three main points, for example, are significantly more specific and they are significantly more tangible.

And when you see each main point, inherently, if you read this, you're like, oh, I've never heard of that loophole, which sells you on reading the actual content. And so if the title doesn't promise you something that is worthwhile, and if the main points aren't tangible enough to show that you're going to deliver on that promise, nobody reads the content.

And so instead, you have all these people that are sitting there and they're like, oh, well, I got to start writing. And they start with the first word and they're like, This is how you save a million dollars. No, I don't like that. I'm going to say a million. No, I don't like that. Here's save a lot of money. No, I don't like that. I don't like that adjective. Wait, I don't like any of this.

Wait, I shouldn't be a writer. Like that's what most people do. And they don't even realize that they've dove into the writing before they've made the most important decision, which is what's the promise and how are you delivering on the promise in the main points? Does that make sense?

Sometimes it's intuitive. Oftentimes I will see that there's always people that do a lot of these things accidentally or they do them every once in a while. And my goal is to make them conscious so that as you're writing, you're sitting there and you're like, this is the next thing. This is the next thing, right?

literally days weeks per year yeah it's no different than when someone's like oh you know it takes me five years to write a book well it's not because the book took you five years it's because you had to make five years of mistakes in order to write it totally okay so you want to you want to keep it pushing yeah we got like 15 20 minutes max Cool. We got it.

And now today, every single business and every single individual understands I should probably create and share content online. It's why spas share pictures of their spas, right? And so if you take those two things together, you realize that quote unquote content, branded content, educational content is not ever going to go down. It's only going to go up.

We're going to compress it in and then we can talk takeaways. So next I'm going to introduce my, one of my favorite frameworks that I've ever come up with. I call it the 10 magical ways. The 10 magical ways are you could reverse engineer 99% of all nonfiction writing back into these 10 ways.

And the reason that this little list is so powerful is because it is the easiest way to remove any sort of writer's block that happens at every single stage. So the first way to use this is to look at the headline. And this is a great hook, why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, but this is a pretty vague and what I like to call intangible promise. So, and what it means for your startup.

It's like, well, what it means for my startup? Okay, kind of interesting, but how can we make this more interesting or more tangible? And the question to ask is actually, which of these 10 things am I going to give the reader? Am I going to give them tips? Am I going to give them stats? Am I going to give them steps? Am I going to give them lessons? Right?

So for example, you know, and three lessons that can be learned from the, what's Netflix's market cap now? Something stupid.

Okay. Why, why did my brain immediately go here? Because again, another framework, big numbers and headlines, big numbers and hooks always perform well. Right.

Yep, exactly. Okay. So here's where things get really interesting. And I think that this step that we are about to talk about is the primary skill. It is the primary value. Okay. So we use the 10 magical ways and we clarify, what are we actually going to give the reader? We're going to give them three lessons. It's very simple. Okay.

If you don't have clarity over which thing you're giving the reader, guess what? The reader's not going to know. And if the reader doesn't know, they're not going to give you their attention. Okay. So you give them three lessons. Now, here's where it's so simple, it's complicated. If we were to break this into sections, what do we think the three subheads are going to be?

You want to take a guess, Greg?

Well, just generally, like the three subheads are going to share three

Every single day, more and more people, more and more businesses want to create more and more content. If you are constrained as a human by 24 hours in a day or really like eight to 12 working hours a day and seven days a week, well, your productivity can only go so far. You can only produce so much content in a given day or a given week.

Three lessons, right? It's so simple, it's complicated, right? So this is lesson number one, this is lesson number two, and this is lesson number three. Here's a very simple rule of thumb. If your subheads do not deliver clearly on the promise in the headline, the reader will not take the time to figure it out. Okay.

So whatever magical way is in the headline is going to be the thing in the sub heads. Okay. Now the highest leverage decision about the entire piece is what the three lessons are. And this is what so many people misunderstand. Okay. 90% of the value is not in the writing. Okay. It is in the fact that you said, I'm going to give you three lessons.

And if those three lessons are, you got to work hard, you got to out-compete, And you gotta care. If those are the three lessons, you wrote a shitty piece. It doesn't matter how many beautiful sentences there are. It doesn't matter how clever your adjectives. Nothing else matters, right? So, editor-in-chief, we gotta come up with the three lessons.

Do we want to come up with them, or do we want Chachapiti to come up with them?

I think that that is the best lens and point of view for all of this. I think that you should always try yourself first and then weigh it against what Chachapiti comes up with and then improve the quality together. That is why I don't defer the writing to AI, I write with AI. Give me some lessons, Greg. And I'll help you improve them if you just say things out loud as they come to you.

Not alienate them. Okay.

100%. So said differently, my little framework for that is whenever I'm coming up with the main points of a piece, doesn't matter if it's an email, article, Twitter thread, doesn't matter. Once I've come up with all the main points, I then stack rank them in the ones that are most interesting or most compelling.

Because inherently, once you come up with them, usually there's one where you're like, oh, what a great main point. Well, you should make that the first one, right? Because that hooks the person.

So if you add AI into the equation, it's not that AI removes people's jobs. AI becomes the stress test of, do you know how to use this to double, triple, quadruple your output? If yes, you will make even more money than you were making before because you are more valuable. And if you don't know how to use this, you become less valuable. And people conflate the two. They think AI stole my job.

Okay, so cool. So now what do we do? We take this, we take our improved headline, And we go, okay, great. So going back to writing this as an 800 word article, here's the headline I came up with. Feed that into there we go. And here are the three lessons I came up with. We take these copy paste here. Then we say, but I want to stress test the quality of these lessons.

Can you please come up with five more batches of three lessons related to this article headline? So I can see if there are any other opportunities to improve. GHPT's thinking. Again, I want to emphasize this process that we're going through is exactly the process that an editor-in-chief and a columnist go through. It's the same thing.

You're just deferring to someone else's brain, or you could use the AI brain, right? So here, adopt a contrarian mindset, treat frustration as a business opportunity.

Yeah.

Again, great example of how AI gives a bunch of options, but your taste has the context to be like, the risk reward of me using that phrasing maybe isn't going to be as effective, right? You are editor in chief. Little writing pro tip for everyone. A lot of times when people come up with subheads, they think the same way that AI does. They think in terms of quippy main titles.

Main titles typically lean more clever, not as clear. I've always found that the best main points and subheads are actually more like sentences where you're literally just saying to the reader, you clicked on this title, I'm going to give you all the value in three sentences bolded as subheads.

Whenever you do that, it's so much more likely that the person then gives each section their attention versus if you give them something more vague, stay agile even when growing. They don't really know what they're going to get out of that section, which means they don't give it their attention. Here, we actually like our output even more. Now, if I wanted to clarify this further, I could say,

At a minimum, you will have a baseline understanding of how to use AI in writing. And at a maximum, you will have a very clear framework for being able to use AI to produce very high quality long form content.

These aren't bad, but all of these main points are written as vague, clever main points titles. The ones I came up with are in sentence format and are much more tangible, actionable. Can you please come up with five more batches of three main points that are written in sentence format and are as tangible, actionable for the reader as possible.

So this is where you're working with AI in that conversational format. And we might not have time to get to it, so just to sort of skip to the answer. The reason why all this back and forth is so important is because you don't realize that as you're doing this, you are creating all the Lego blocks to go assemble the mega prompt.

So whenever we create prompts for our paid newsletter, right with AI, for example, all of them are the end result of this sort of back and forth with chat GPT or, or back and forth with Claude, right? You're learning what works. You're learning what yields the best output. And then you're basically going back through that entire conversation.

That's not what happened. AI changed the barrier to entry and changed the baseline skill level. You failed to change with it. And then AI says, well, you didn't change, so you don't get the next opportunity, which is like Darwinism at its finest, right? So everyone's sitting here thinking AI is ruining things. And no, it's changing things, and you are failing to change with it.

And then you go, now, how can I skip to the end faster next time? How can I just compress all of this into, into one prompt, right? Or one decision. So here, these are more actionable, regularly map out your customer's biggest frustrations like late fees, then eliminate those pain points. Your product stands out on convenience. That's actually a cool, a cool point.

I might consider putting that underneath that main point, right? Run a banned words experiment in which you exclude all direct competitor names during strategic planning. Cool. So you can see how this has improved. And it's improved because we know what to ask for. And we know what to ask for because we've done it manually.

So then just to close the loop and just to sort of complete this for everyone, once you have the three main points, the next thing that you do, and this is what completes the writing, is you go back to the 10 magical ways and you go, so what am I going to give the reader in each one of these sections? So here, lesson one, every founder should ban one word most closely to whatever.

So here, we really like the run a banned words experiment. So we put this here. how do we make this the most valuable we can? Well, we would explain to people the steps of running a banned words experiment, right? So here are the magical ways we're going to go with steps, right? Convenience can be a product differentiator.

Okay, well, if I'm explaining that convenience can be a product differentiator, what might make sense? Maybe some stats might be interesting as to why it can be like proving that, or maybe it's like examples of other companies that have used

um convenience in order to differentiate themselves right and then lesson number three businesses built around guilt empower the customer not alienate them well whenever you're explaining something right maybe here we need some like and here are you know reasons why Here's why that is, right? That's another one of the 10 magical ways.

So this list is insanely powerful because then you just go through each section and you go, all right, here, lesson one, I'm going to give people steps on how to run a banned words experiment. Lesson number two, I'm going to give some stats to back up why this is a thing. And I'm going to give a couple examples of other companies that have done it.

And then lesson three, businesses built around guilt empower the customer, not alienate them. Here are a couple tangible reasons why. We haven't written a single full paragraph or anything, and all the decisions are made. So now when you sit down to write, this isn't hard. You just go, oh, I fill this in in this section. And so then if you were to bring that over to AI, what would you do?

You would literally just articulate what I just said. And then it would come up with a V1, and then you would run it back and do it again. You'd go section by section. You'd be like, lesson one, I think those steps aren't tangible enough. Could you rewrite that in sentence form? You are the editor-in-chief.

I want to end on a meta concept.

Why is paying for education so powerful? And why is paying for education even more powerful in the digital age? Take Ship 30 for 30 as an example, our writing program. In Ship 30, We basically have broken out, I don't know how many, 30, 40, 50 different little writing frameworks. It's like when writing first sentences, do it like this. When writing headlines, do it like this.

When formatting, do it like this. And in the age of AI, every time you buy a course, a book, you listen to a talk, and any sort of education... You are not just learning. What you are doing is you are downloading that little framework into your repository that you can then go leverage with technology.

So that's my little preamble for what we're going to dig into. That is why these things are so important. What is a topic that you want to create a piece of content on? 800 word article. You could also post it as a long form on X. You could post it as a long form on LinkedIn if you want. Is there any topic you've been noodling on?

So there's actually no reason why someone couldn't take Ship 30, take out all 30 of the different frameworks that we give them, and then be able to articulate to AI, hey, when we write first sentences, we want them to be like this. When we write titles, we want it to be like this. And you just increased your own productivity and efficiency and quality of output by 100x for the rest of your life.

And like, Ship 30 is a $350 course, for example. And once that clicked for me, I was like, oh... So you're telling me that I can basically just go spend a fraction of the amount of money buying things that have taken people – it has taken me 12 years to learn how to articulate all of this. 12 years and thousands of articles and thousands of everything, right?

And you can literally just take it, download it into your brain, and then articulate it to AI and yield a very similar output. And that is why paying for education is so fascinating in the digital world.

Yep. Yeah. Said in the most simplest way, it took me 12 years to figure out the six proven single sentence openers for almost all writing. You could internalize that framework from me in four minutes. And then you can take that framework and then use it with AI for the rest of your life. The return on that is unbelievable. And this is also true for me.

Like if I want to learn how to do something and I go to you and I'm like, oh, Greg's an expert in this thing. Just give me the frame. I'll pay whatever for the framework because now I know I have it and I can go use it for the rest of my life.

It was great.

I think he's doing okay.

We cooked up a lot.

They'll find me on the internet. I talk about this stuff for free all day. I love this stuff.

I'll send you this doc that we were using. If you want to just show it as a PDF, that's fine.

Yes, you do. I'm waiting for the book.

Well, listen, you have cold GPT here whenever you need it.

All right.

Okay, so this is an amazing place to start because this is how most people begin the writing process. They come up with some sort of seed of an idea and then it's hard to know where does this go, right?

And this is why something that I think is really important in the context of us talking about AI is that people expect AI to automate and do things that they don't understand how to do themselves. And so it is worth recognizing that AI is not a silver bullet.

On some level, you do have to have a baseline understanding of how the thing is supposed to work so that you can prompt AI in order to do it. It's no different than being a CEO and you hire an intern and you're like, hey, I want you to take this over. If you ask the intern to take over a department that you've never even run, well, how are you going to get the intern to do it?

So here's the first framework. When you have a seed of an idea, there's two ways of looking at this idea. And this is the first decision to make essentially for you, Greg. Either this is an idea and this is one point within it, or this is one point within a different idea. So either, let's just spell this out really simply. Two types of ideas.

Either this is the idea, so this is about Reed Hastings' strange rule during Netflix's early days. Either that is going to be the piece, this is the theme of the piece, or this little idea is a sub-point within a larger idea. Okay, so what might an example of that be? Well, very easy one would be three CEOs who had strange rules at the beginning of their startup journeys or something, right?

So Reid becomes one of three, not necessarily the focal point. Okay? Yeah. So this is the first decision to make. Do you have a preference? Do you want me to pick one?

We are going to write with AI. And I mean that in the most literal sense. We are going to write and we are going to do it with AI. And so what I want to do is I want to share my screen and I want to go back and forth and show how I do this and also how I train other writers to do this.

Yeah, it does. So this is where my years as a ghostwriter, that part of my brain is kicking in. Because if we sort of change the lens for a moment, let's pretend that what we're doing, you are a client and I'm a ghostwriter. It's very similar. This is exactly what I would be doing with a client anyway. And you just said something really smart. And so I go, okay, that's great.

I just don't know where to put that yet. So I think of it like a Lego block, right? You're like, that's a really great Lego block. I just don't know where it fits yet. Okay. So we put that there. Now we've got some ideas swirling around and in some way we can, let's summarize sort of our goals here. Our goals are we want this piece to be connected to startup ideas.

I think the two biggest reasons is one, when you understand how these frameworks work, like so many people only think about how things work in an individual silo. So I'll give you an example. Like in all of our writing programs, if I explain how to write a thread hook, 99% of people will ask the follow-up question, does this also work on LinkedIn? Or does this also work for a reel?

We want this piece to, in some way, be actionable because a lot of the value that you provide is like how to, how to get started, how to do something, right? And ideally, we want this piece to be connected to our Reed Hastings, you know, strange rule during Netflix's early days. Fair enough?

Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's so simple, right? The majority of people don't have a talent problem. They have a thing called, I don't want to practice and execute the basics. And I would rather, no offense, drink a bunch of coffee, close my eyes and hope that something smart comes out when I hit the keyboard, right? And that's not a very reliable strategy. You're good like one out of every 10 times.

So that's why these frameworks are so helpful. So before I I know how to do all of this manually. So I'm going to slow down and do this in stages so that even someone who's a complete beginner and you don't understand and haven't internalized these frameworks yet, you have a starting place. So whenever I'm coming up with ideas.

And I'm trying to narrow down the idea of the thing that I want to write. A really easy place to start is to take these goals and to plug them into AI. You could use ChatGPT, you could use Claude. It really doesn't matter. Those are the two big ones that I use most often. And the whole point here is not really for the AI to start writing yet. What you want is you want it to feed you ideas, right?

So how do you think about prompting AI? I think there's, let's just pause here. There's two very different types of ways of interacting with ChatGPT, Claude, any AI model. One is conversationally, so you're sort of chunking things out piece by piece and it's more of a dialogue.

And another is where you think through all of the potential situations and hypotheticals and you assemble a massive prompt that then you feed into the AI model and it generates some sort of output. And I think part of where people go wrong is A, they don't realize that those are two different things.

And then B, they sort of sit in the middle and it's like a half-baked prompt that's sort of mid-conversation and then the AI is not giving it the output that they want. So that's usually the problem that I see. So here, if we're starting to write something, I start conversationally. So I might say something like,

I'm going to take this, I'm going to say, I recently came up with an idea for an 800 word article. Reed Hastings had a strange rule, right? That thing. And then I go back and I take my goals and I'm like, here are the goals of the piece I want to write. And I might give some extra context here because I have a podcast where I share startup ideas with entrepreneurial listeners.

Because a lot of the value I provide is how to get started doing something entrepreneurial. and want this piece to be connected to our Reed to Hastings story. Can you please generate 20 potential headlines for this sort of piece, and under each headline, list out three to five main points that would make up the content of that piece.

So all we're doing is we're basically saying, here's the little bit that we came up with. Now, can you just start feeding me ideas? Here, the reason that I ask for these bullets and these main points is because the thing that most writers and most people who want to write don't realize is that many of the decisions get made before you start writing.

The answer is always yes, but human beings do a terrible job of thinking orthogonally. It's like, if you tell me this is how to write a Twitter thread hook, it's hard for the average person to fathom how that gets played out across other things, but it does.

If you come up with an idea and your first thought is, I should open a Google Doc and I should start writing, you've already failed. You already did it wrong. And the reason is because so many of these ideas, you can come to the conclusions that you need to before you begin the writing process. And when you do that, the writing is significantly easier.

It gets compounded with AI where not only does it get easier, but now you can defer a lot of the lower leverage stuff to the technology. So there's like a hierarchy. And if you make the first mistake, then you make all the mistakes under it, right? So here's a, like, this is kind of cool. Stop saying blockbuster. Why ignoring the obvious can accelerate your startup growth.

Psychology of ignoring the market leader, right? All of these. Why Reed Hastings banned the word blockbuster, what it means for your startup.

I like that actually better.

Yep. Okay. So I just want to pause and point out, what are we doing right now? What we are doing is we just deferred the lower leverage task of come up with 20 different iterations. Now, for everyone who doesn't know, this is the hierarchy of every single magazine and publishing house and newspaper.

What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

Okay, so a couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80-20, you know?

I remember the days. 14 on the internet. Yeah. But now it's like 50-50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female-oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through, and every single book cover is like, male enters game world, defeats dragon.

Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly, but it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers... cause you have a part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle unlimited, like for free part of your subscription, basically they read something like eight to 12 plus books a month.

And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover's. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything. I like to know everything about this shit. She's moving like millions of copies. And her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days.

So there is tremendous demand. And even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out. Like what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out.

So if you pair all that together and go female oriented like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.

Okay, just to entertain the shiny object, there's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? couple grand, couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books, like one a month, and you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops,

what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really liked that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer or longer. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

I mean, there are books as big, and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative, like my book is doing well, could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. On Amazon, the books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.

I think it depends. But I think on average, it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months. And then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.

I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which it's like the whole game, you know?

There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. Sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently, what I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book.

And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make a hundred grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series.

And I was, when he said that, I was like, Like not only is the cash return 10 or 20X if you get it right, but the long-term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of, copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing.

He's like, if you know how to do that, and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are 10 times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like, and the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at

The best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers. The IP value is astronomically different. You know, James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of legal thrillers. plus the value of his library and IP.

So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm gonna go into a sub-genre, I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm gonna flood it with quality volume, you're also not just building Cashflow from book sales or long-term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library.

We'll acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.

Okay, so I have a very niche one. Go. So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur because his business is he has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon- organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories.

I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like five or 10 X cause you're buying IP. It's gotta be, it's not two X, you know, five to 10 X profit or revenue. I'm going to guess it's probably top line because they care more about the longterm value.

That's a nice round number to use. Let's just say it's 7.28x is the average.

No, dude, I got it even better.

Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific subject.

So it's one thing to go, I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt. where AI can create the version of each new book to 80%, and then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.

And by the way, the total side, maybe people are doing this already, but talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category.

And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing, I'm dead serious.

No, but this is the thing, is that the majority of romance books are women that are literally reading porn at home.

There you go, right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular OnlyFans girl be like, here's my tell-all e-book of this experience that I had on OnlyFans, I have to believe that that would do some numbers.

And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is, you could publish to anyone or you could do Kindle Unlimited. That's like specific to their subscription service.

Or you need a, just the rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.

Yeah, the real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.

You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this, too, is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the lit RPG stuff is an amazing idea. But I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it, you know. And so when you when you come up with ideas.

The mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on versus you're like, I know that's a great idea and I know that would crush, but I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it.

Maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like what what is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?

And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on the number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So you get these little like royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was, he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide.

With and like taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went, we took this idea from the podcast. We researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.

That's a great idea. It's also, that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely rewarding. repeatable. It's tied to a financial outcome.

But if you're creating something really niche, You should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically like try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You know, you're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire. That's called lit RPG.

Like I have to go in person?

I have to leave my house?

But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example, could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this, you know?

Have you heard of this? No. OK, so it's RPG like role playing games literature, right? Lit RPG, but it's not literature. This is, I mean, this is, this stuff is not well-written at all, but it's essentially reading a video game. So you would, the story, like you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver.

If you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited, multiplied by a hundred books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the backend,

He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow. And I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game. which if you think about it is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay.

So lit RPG, anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire.

New subgenre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs. And I'm like, wow.

wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like very indie. The cover design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're going to elevate the writing. We're going to elevate the stories. We're going to elevate the book covers.

We're going to elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where like you had a lit RPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel. You had a paid newsletter. You had like a digital product. Like you created that whole value ladder, but it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre in Kindle Unlimited.

I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like publishing houses where like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us. We're like, what would that take? I would literally take, you could hire a writer. You could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month.

They write those stories full-time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub-genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up, there are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

So there, so there's a tool called publisher rocket and it's made by this guy. This guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called, um, the site's called something self-publishing and basically, or, uh, Kindle publishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon. Super niche, but like really lucrative site.

And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any anything, and it shows you the search volume. It shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I'm obsessed with this tool. Like once a month, I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see.

But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you like look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory.

And then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. you're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding, lit RPG. I don't wanna just write one book in that category. I wanna write a hundred books in that category.

So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality cover in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing.

Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear. you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over, but it doesn't cost that much money.

The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.

So this is what's so interesting about this subcategory. Great question. Okay, did anyone see, this is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?

Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like neither one is really my target consumption.

But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books and he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book.

I have one, but is there somewhere you'd like to start?

These are guys, like just guys that want to read about his debauchery. He's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of especially because the majority of readers are female, like two thirds of all readers are female, not male.

But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming, because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know?

I think, so I've seen some interesting stats like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?

Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff, but Wattpad is, is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton, but it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.

From Asia.

There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and things like that. Like your average.

Tell us what the kids are doing.

You know what's another great data point that proves that? Do you remember, this was a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the Explorer, but it's DM. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like,

I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like what? This is the most used feature?