Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday, and a special THANK YOU to all the mothers reading this! Happy Mother’s Day.
Here are three Big Ideas for you to contemplate this week.
Idea 1: Writing is the most lucrative skill entrepreneurs can develop in 2024. I’m going all in on writing and you should too.
Writing is the most lucrative skill for entrepreneurs in the 21st century because of how many ways there are to implement it.
Entrepreneurs write:
- Emails
- Text messages
- Social media content
- Social media direct messaging
- Landing pages
- Copy for websites
- Handwritten notes
- Product and service descriptions
- Newsletter copy
- Blog copy
- YouTube script copy
- Podcast preparation
- Daily journal writing
- Standard operating procedures drafting
- Trademark, grant, loan, and patent application writing
“If writing is the process of thinking through problems and solutions;
And if entrepreneurship is the process of identifying problems other people have and offering them solutions;
Then writing is the most valuable habit entrepreneurs can develop.”
It won’t happen in a day, but if you do the work it takes to establish a consistent writing practice, you will figure out what problems you want to solve, what customers you want to serve, and eventually launch your first business.
You will find your way forward every step of the way through your writing practice.
My story:
- Launched my first service business after 3 years of daily writing.
- Launched my second business after 6 years of daily writing
- Made six figures in a year for the first time after 7 years of daily writing
- Started publishing my writing and building an audience after 12 years of daily writing
Every dollar I’ve ever made as an entrepreneur has been downstream from my writing habit.
This year, I’m going all-in on writing.
I’m writing:
- This newsletter
- Articles for my website and Medium.com
- Tweets and threads on X
- LinkedIn posts
- Email courses
- Copy for Digital Products
I have a healthy real estate sales business that is powered by my writing. Now I want to use writing to build out other revenue streams.
And you can, too. If you want.
Writing is the most lucrative skill entrepreneurs can develop in 2024.
Cody James Cummings
8:50 AM • May 9, 202416Retweets43LikesIdea 2: John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid says Your business grows to the extent you grow
The greatest barrier to business and personal growth is perspective:
- Perspective informs decisions
- Decisions shape reality
- Results are downstream from decisions
- Decisions are downstream from thoughts
- Thoughts emerge from your perspective
- Expanding perspective expands ability to make decisions, opportunities, results, and reality
That’s what growth looks like.
Personal problems stand in the way of professional growth. Professional problems stand in the way of personal growth.
They are interconnected and ultimately one and the same.
To grow your business, grow yourself personally.
To grow personally, grow your business.
The entrepreneurial journey is an adventure of developing awareness, both of self and other. The more you understand yourself and the more you understand the world, the more you understand how to best fit the two together.
And so the entire entrepreneurial enterprise revolves around pursuing curiosity forever.
Your business grows to the extent you grow.
Idea 3: Scale back habits, don’t skip.
According to James Clear, every action you take is a vote for some future identity.
We are building and reshaping our identity every day through the series of actions we take.
This fact should shape how we view our daily decisions.
For the longest time, if I didn’t have a full hour to workout, I would skip. Or if I didn’t have 30 minutes to write, I would skip.
This always resulted in boom and bust cycles for my identity. I would get in shape when I had time, then fall out when I didn’t. I would write consistently when I had time and fall out when I didn’t.
But this idea from James Clear changed all that.
Instead of skipping habits when you don’t have time, scale them back to fit into the time you have.
So if I only have 10 minutes to workout, I might do a few sets of squats or pushups.
And if I only have 5 minutes to write, then I set a timer and write for that entire 5 minutes. Then I move to the next thing I have to do.
This idea is so powerful because it allows you to continue casting votes for the sort of person you want to be even when you can’t do so perfectly.
You are continually saying to yourself, “I am the sort of person who writes every day,” or, “I am the sort of person who works out every day.”
This is how you kill the boom and bust cycle. This is how you achieve consistency.
Scale back habits, don’t skip.