The Lie By Omission to Get You Started

“You, too, can replace your 9-5 income in a few short months by following my [insert digital product here] in as little as two hours a night…”

99% of pitches have this promise at some point in some way, shape, or form.

From time immemorial, marketing has been crafted on lofty promises and compelling dreams that are lobbed towards you from the trebuchets of gurus as they lay siege to the walled kingdom of your ambitions and your bank account.

It’s just business.

You cave in. You buy what they’re selling.

The worst part is that it’s really good stuff.

A good chunk of what they claim is actually true.

The thing that most of them leave out is the practicality of the timeline they pitch.

A few weeks…

A few months…

Try a few years.

What they leave out is that the total amount of time you spend on learning what they provide mathematically comes out to the equivalent of the time they claim.

If you’re a single yuppy with no obligations or someone who is living with your parents in their home for whatever reason, then yeah, the timeline is probably similar in scale.

If you’re a 9-5 career parent who is in the midst of getting your child(ren) towards independence at any stage or a single parent in a similar situation, then that timeline is pretty much a lie.

The truth is that these are just hooks to get you interested in connecting their product to your dream and convincing you to take a chance.

That’s only a fraction of the battle.

The rest, and the hardest, part of the battle begins after the purchase.

Your mileage will vary (drastically)

I stumbled upon this writing thing when I came across Dan Koe in the twilight of my YouTube journey.

After three years of shaving off a few hours a night making videos while juggling a toddler and an infant along with returning to the US from living abroad and reconnecting with my roots, I felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and not a little fearful that my marriage might be in jeopardy.

I realized that I was a horrible scriptwriter and that I didn’t want to make it big by playing video games for the rest of my life (though I will never renounce being a gamer).

You could say I was in the perfect vulnerable position for his pitch.

The 2-hour writer.

I jumped in and started writing posts on what is now the TwiX app.

Now, I’ve seen people come and go on multiple platforms since then.

Some make progress far faster than others over the course of a few months.

Most just disappear after a few weeks, if that.

Engagement groups came and went.

Lead magnet swapping was a rampant thing.

Then came the marathons of spaces that were the equivalent of digital conventions.

Before Elon bought the platform wholesale, the cohort era of Twitter was the last great thing that everyone was excited about.

I now have a mountain of goodies, both free and paid, that I collected from my time there.

After years of writing consistently at two to three hours a night, only now are those products even beginning to make sense.

Why?

Because most of the stuff that people stuffed into their swipe files were curated from incredible writers who dominated the platform without context.

The amount you can get done in the same time period that these juggernauts is night and day.

It takes time and effort, relentless iteration and perseverance.

In two hours a day, they can write a fantastic article, schedule weeks of posts, and command the attention of multitudes of people to generate large sums of money.

When I started out, that was the same amount of time it took me to come up with maybe one or two tweets that were halfway decent while I battled with writer’s block, imposter syndrome, and an infant still adjusting to sleeping through the night in addition to a toddler that also was regressing as he was approaching kindergarten.

It was like starting a push lawnmower with no gas in the dead of summer.

And therein lies the key…

It’s all dependent on you and your choices

Yes, you can reach the level where you have a system that works for you.

You can get to the point where you can sit down with infinite ideas and topics to choose from.

You can reach the point of being present in your everyday life where you can realize and capture moments to relate to your audience.

You can become someone who is free from writer’s block, has a decent handle on your energy levels, manage to navigate the chaos of your situation, whatever it may be, to write consistently.

I’ve only recently reached that point, and it’s taken me years of tweaking and iterating on my own processes adapted from a combination of people like Dan Koe, Kieran Drew, Eve Arnold, Derek Hughes, Christina Piccoli, Deni Sehaya, and Mark Thompson…

The truth is that each of them are successful because they put in the time and effort, and their products and services reflect it for each of their situations.

When you get to that level, it’s reasonable to forget some of the challenges you went through to get there.

You just keep doing it until it just “clicks” one day.

I just got to the starting line in my skill level. I still have no idea what I’m doing…

But I know I can write about anything and everything now.

That’s what prismatic thinking enables me to do.

You can, too.

Show up and put in the work.

P. S.

The first step in any journey is to take stock of your situation. I’ll share something to think about in each area of life in the next issue.