My secret to becoming a successful writer

How one decision can COMPLETELY change your life

In 2014, I published an eBook called Skinny to Shredded:

• It was 20 pages

• I wrote it on a weekend

• It’s how I made my first $5,000 online

And it changed my life.

Skinny to Shredded made me 50x more money than my first memoir, Confessions of a Teenage Gamer, which took me 4 years to write.

I got the idea when one of my Quora answers went viral.

I told the story of how, all growing up, I was sick & undiagnosed with Celiac Disease:

• How I weighed less than 100 lbs as a senior in high school

• How I had a concave chest and a face full of acne

• How I was super insecure, socially anxious, and struggled to make friends

And how I went gluten-free, got into bodybuilding, put on 70 lbs of muscle, and completely changed my life.

Overnight, that Quora answer went massively viral—and ended up on the front page of Reddit.

And my inbox started flooding with 2 questions:

1. “What are your workouts?”

2. “What do you eat to put on muscle?”

This experience COMPLETELY changed the way I thought about writing.

For the first time, I saw it not from the perspective of the writer (me), but the perspective of the READER.

They were telling me what they needed help with.

And were more than willing to pay in exchange for the information.

That eBook is how I made my first “Internet money.”

But more importantly, it changed my entire trajectory as a writer because it made me realize I am not the main character in the story.

The reader is the main character.

And “the secret” to becoming a successful writer and building profitable digital products is to be in service of the reader.

Even though it changed my trajectory as writer, I still made one fatal mistake:

I didn’t improve the product or ask what my customers wanted next.

I have learned a lot since then, but I still keep coming back to that lesson: you are in service to your reader and your customer.

And since then, I’ve made $15,000,000 selling digital products:

• Cohort-Based Course ($3m+)

• Low-Ticket Digital Products ($2m+)

• High-Ticket Group Coaching ($10m+)

Over the years, I’ve made tons more mistakes and wasted thousands of hours testing different digital product strategies, frameworks, and methods.

And if I’d known even half of what I know today, that $5,000 eBook could have been a $1M business.

But if I could go back to 2014, this is what I’d tell myself:

• Your knowledge is valuable.

• Package your expertise into eBooks, courses, and membership sites.

• You don’t need a massive following to monetize

• Start with what you know

• Serve your reader

• Decide to double-down

• And grow from there

And almost 7 years later, this is exactly how we built Ship 30, Write With AI, & PGA into a $20MM portfolio.

Everyone reading this can build a $10k, $20k, or even $50k/mo business.

And if you need some help getting started…

👉 All you have to do is click right here.

Chat soon,

Cole