photo courtesy of https://src.nappy.co/837
Quotes
"May you live all the days of your life." —Jonathan Swift
"Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life." —John Wooden
"Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved." —D. H. Lawrence
“In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” —Robert Frost
"Life is trying things to see if they work." —Ray Bradbury
"Every day I am grateful for what I am today." —Teronie J. Donaldson (yep, that's me, cool, right?)
Notes/Observations
“The best in the world who make money online do it with a foundation of content.
I don’t know anybody who’s succeeded online without video, audio, writing, or images.”— Tim Denning
I came across this quote, which inspired me to continue to create in various forms.
Articles
Watched
I watched a few Patrick Bet David with guests taking about storytelling and marketing.
Patrick Bet-David sits down with Donald Miller to talk about the archetypes of storytelling and marketing and how all these elements influence our lives and perspective.
Book of the Week
“Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
This book discusses the principles of creating memorable and compelling messages.
Chip and Dan found six simple traits all sticky ideas share. They give us a simple acronym to remember them: “SUCCES.” Your ideas should be:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
My biggest takeaway is the stories aspect.
The best way to get your ideas to stick is to tell great stories. I am just learning that aspect, which is becoming a game changer.
I have always been enthralled hearing a great story — now, combine that with something I believe in and a bit of scarcity factor, then I might be on to something.
Let’s see if it works:
Subscribe now to my newsletter as I got the inspiration to create it from wanting to put more positivity online to combat the negativity I kept seeing; also, it was a way for me to stay productive by tracking my week via quotes that inspired me, books I read, music that I vibed to, articles that I created or liked, a note to self, a question to solve and a strategy to apply from the prior week.
But act fast, as it is only available for a limited time!
I know I still have work to do, but I might be the man doing this copywriting stuff in a year. And I was kidding about the limited time; you still have time to subscribe but act now.
Storytelling is a huge skill I am developing.
I was once told the best thing you could do to get more people on board with your ideas is to tell stories. So why not practice every day?
Whether you do it in posts, emails, writing, speaking, video, etc., get the stories going.
Here is another video by Chip Heath about the stackability of a story.
Strategy
Create a system for content creation.
Create one long-form piece of content per week and write it so that it can easily be broken down into shorter pieces and repurposed onto other platforms.
With this content creation system, you’ll never run out of ideas, dramatically reducing stress.
For example, I create this newsletter based on items I come across on a given week - then I break it down into other articles, videos, strategies, and social media posts. I can get 50 pieces of content from one newsletter alone.
Question
Here are some reflective questions to ask yourself if you want to create content and don't have an idea of what to talk about:
What could you happily talk about for hours?
What work would you do for free?
What piece of advice do most people come to you for?
The answers to these questions will provide a useful guide to start taking action.