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You Are An Expert OnYour Own Life

How to Not Suck at Writing Episode #15

​The fact that you are a human being means you have endless ideas for things to write about.

You just don’t know how to unlock those ideas and extract those insights.

That ends today.

By the end of this letter, you should no longer:

• Worry about whether or not you’re qualified to write as an “expert”
• Overthink what to write about next
• Lack the confidence to intelligently and credibly share your ideas

Let’s dive in.

“But What if I’m Not an Expert?!?!”

​A few months ago, when the CEO of Medium was doing rounds of interviews with top writers on the platform, he dropped what seemed to be a bombshell.

Paraphrasing, he said that Medium was going to start focusing on sharing more work from experts and less from creators who write good stories but don’t have enough experience in the fields they’re writing about.

Lots of writers took this as a death sentence to their futures on the platform.

His statement twisted the knife into the already fragile psyches of writers who don’t feel like they’re credible enough to share their knowledge via writing.

When I interviewed him, I wanted to clarify his previous statements.

He said that the whole expert statement was overblown. He also said something that sparked the idea for this email:

You are an expert in your own life.

It doesn’t matter how mundane you think your life is, you have a ton of valuable opinions to share:

• You’ve been through ups and downs and overcome challenges
• You’ve gained relevant experience in a field
• Life, regardless of who you are, has taught you many lessons

You just need to learn how to extract these stories, lessons, insights, and valuable thoughts to share.

It starts with adopting this attitude…

Change Your Definition of Expertise

Remove the idea in your mind that credibility means being perfect.

You don’t have to have flawless levels of productivity to write about self-improvement.

You don’t need to have never had a bad breakup to write about relationships. In fact, going through a bad breakup, learning lessons from it, and getting into newer and better relationships gives you credibility to write about them.

You don’t have to know how to write every single line of code known to man to be able to write about tech.

You do need to spend more time sharing lessons based on your personal experience instead of regurgitating ideas you’ve found elsewhere and citing studies you found on the first page of Google.

That’s the kind of stuff that will keep you from rising up the ranks of platforms like Medium.

Try this approach instead…

How to Extract Credible Insights To Share (Without Being An All-Knowing, Uber Productive, Savaant)

Lower the bar for the magnitude of the events you write about to share your expertise.

You don’t have to share a monumental story of greatness to get your point across. You can take seemingly small moments of your life and use them as proof of the concepts you’re about to share.

• Write about discipline with a story of studying in college
• Write about grit with a story of how you learned to ride a bike
• Write about overcoming doubt with a story about asking your boss for a raise

See how these anecdotes are easier to share than:

• Talking about how you’re endlessly disciplined and focused (when you’re not)
• Talking about how you’ve never given up on anything ever (when you have)
• Talking about how you’ve overcome every single doubt you’ve ever had in your life (when you haven’t)

​Many writing gurus will tell you to write to your former self.

That’s good advice, but here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Write a list of every tiny problem you’ve overcome over the past few years related to your topic. Really, sit down and take a long time to think about this.
• In another column, write down the way you solved those tiny problems
• In the next column, use the solution as seeds for your next article

Example:

• You were struggling with mental focus because your house was cluttered
• You tried the Marie Kondo tidying-up method and you started to get a ton more done
• Article idea = “How to De-Clutter Your Mind by De-Cluttering Your Home”

​This is the process you can use for the stuff you’ve already done. Next, we can talk about how to write about topics you want to talk about, but don’t feel confident enough to talk about (yet).

Three Steps to Sharing Relevant Stories

You can use this three-step method to stop talking from theory and start writing from a place of reality.

1. Learn: Study content related to your niche that you want to write about
2. Test: Run an experiment based on what you learned and see what kind of results you get
3. Teach: Once you’ve achieved those outcomes, write about it

Tim Ferris became one of the most popular bloggers in the world using this strategy. People started nick-naming him “The Human Guinea Pig”

For example, he once tried to see if he could put on tons of muscle without working out a ton.

He ran an experiment: workout twice per week, 30 minutes each, and get jacked AF.

He used this strategy to gain 34 lbs of muscle in one month, then he wrote this blog post about it that went viral.

What this could look like in practice for you:

• You want to write about productivity but struggle with it yourself. Read a book about productivity first.
• Next, run an experiment where you do exactly what the book says. See what outcomes you get.
• Report those lessons back to your audience, e.g., “I Tried a Daily 2-Hour Deep Work Routine for 30 Days, and the Results Were Insane.”

One of my students in Medium Writing Superstars — Khyati Jain-went viral using this strategy.

She wrote an article about health titled My Doctor Asked Me to Eat Two Bananas Daily — This Is What Happened (For 60 days, I ate two bananas a day. The results were astounding.​)​)

It got nearly 9,000 claps and earned her a few thousand bucks. One blog post.

​People love experience-based insights. The ‘learn, test, teach’ method is the perfect way to get those insights.

Also, this helps you stand out from the crowd.

There are too many writers who are just theorizing without sharing relevant experience, e.g., business gurus who’ve never run a business other than their business guru business.

​Do the work upfront and you can build your expertise.

James Clear became an expert on Habits and Wrote a mega-best-selling book about habits because he thoroughly researched the topic, tested out the concepts, then reported them back to his audience.

This is the way to build a solid foundation for your writing career.

If You Want to Tell More Interesting Stories, Live a More Interesting Life

I Paid 20 Bucks To Sit Naked With Strangers​ (It Taught Me a Valuable Lesson About Fucks) ​

That’s a blog post from another one of my students — Just P.A.U.L.A

First off, shout out to Paula’s headline. It makes you want to read her post and figure out what the hell she means by that sentence.

When you dive into the story, you’ll see that it’s about visiting a co-ed German sauna.

The piece does a few things well that you should pay attention to if you want to write a good story:

• If you write travel pieces, contrasting cultures work really well. In Germany, people are cool with being naked in a co-ed sauna. This would mortify most Americans. That makes the story interesting.
• Don’t just talk about what happened. Talk about what was going through your mind while the story plays itself out, like this sentence from the piece “I am amused by the fact I’m self-conscious now about wearing less clothing when I spent the entire summer in Istanbul feeling self-conscious about not covering up more.” That sentence talks about her feelings and contrasts her default state with two different cultures.
• There should be some ultimate point to your story. She ended with this “The surprising lesson those unashamedly naked strangers taught me was to be comfortable with the uncomfortable when the uncomfortable is natural. Or said differently, when it comes to nudity
• “Thou shall give less fucks.”

Storytelling advice aside, the main point of this section is that you should be spending time going out and having cool experiences so you can write about them.

Go travel. Volunteer for a non-profit organization. Take a salsa class. Go to a networking event where you don’t know anyone and work on your social skills. Try a crazy new workout routine.

Do stuff and report back to your audience afterward.

Now that you have these ideas extracting frameworks in mind, you can start trying new things and giving your audience a glimpse into your life.

Use the Story Hook Framework to be More Compelling

With the story hook post, you open the blog post with a story about your life that’s relevant to the topic at hand.

This works well for stories that aim to inspire or educate your audience in some fashion.

I learned this technique from James Altucher, who’s a master of telling stories about his life in a way that’s interesting to his reader.

You open with a story and then provide useful takeaways for your readers.

Here’s what the outline for a story hook blog post looks like:

[Introduction with a shocking, interesting, or compelling story that will illustrate the concepts you’re about to share]

[Main takeaway #1]

[Main takeaway #2]

[Main takeaway #3]

[Close the post by re-telling your story]

When you write the piece, alternate between personal storytelling and advice

Expanding the outline above, your main point section would look like this:

[Main takeaway #1]

• Personal anecdote
• What the reader can learn from said anecdote

[Main takeaway #2]

• Personal anecdote
• What the reader can learn from said anecdote

[Main takeaway #3]

• Personal anecdote
• What the reader can learn from said anecdote

Trading advice and anecdotes help you relate to your readers, position yourself against other writers who just share tips, and help you build an audience by becoming an expert on your own life.

You Already Have Everything You Need

You’re overthinking this.

To position yourself as an expert, you just have to stay one step ahead of the audience you’re talking to. You don’t have to be miles ahead.

You don’t need a fancy degree. Carefully studying a topic, testing the ideas out, and reporting back is sufficient.

Stop thinking you have to knock it out of the park with the most outlandish stories and powerful anecdotes. There’s plenty of material in your everyday life.

The more you learn, share what you know, learn some more, and share some more, the more confident you’ll be.

Everything I share with you in these letters is skills I’ve picked up over the span of eight years. I have a lot of expertise when it comes to writing. but I got that expertise by not being afraid to hone it when I had none.

Start learning, testing, teaching, living, growing, and sharing.

p.s. — If you want to go deep with me and learn a bunch of different writing techniques to help you build authority online, keep your eyes peeled on your inbox. I will be sharing something new with you. It’s the best thing I’ve ever created to help writers and I can’t wait to share it with you.