I have a habit, 10 daily ideas, that I got from James Altucher.
It’s the first thing I do each morning after turning off the meatlocker like air-conditioning in my apartment and brushing my teeth.
This morning, the topic was “10 new books I could write from the content I’ve been writing about lately.”
It’s a prompt I come back to from time to time. I go through emails I have written recently, and ask myself how I could generalize them, or combine them with other emails have written, and turn them into a book or a course or whatever.
Here’s what I came up with today:
#1. “101 Magic Words”
I already got 5: “Rosebud,” “One,” “Big,” “Black,” “Love.”
#2. “Mystery Merchants: How To Create And Profit From Curiosity”
Everything from Robert Collier to Novak Djokovic.
#3. The nature of reality
Ok that’s not a title, but it’s the core idea, and one I come back to a lot in these emails, including a few times over the past few weeks (“Amputees needed,” “The dark side of social proof”).
#4. Overcoming procrastination/avoidance/resistance to doing what’s needed
I try to distance myself from this topic and from the people who seek out such info, but the fact is I’m one of them and that’s why I find myself writing about it repeatedly.
#5. “How to be an effective teacher”
Certainly not by writing a book titled “How to be an effective teacher.” But I have written a lot, including recently, about how to get people to pay attention, to understand, to accept, to remember, to apply information.
#6. “Online Info Business Quick Start Guide”
Yeah, I won’t be writing that, but I could, since I have content that would definitely fit into such a book.
#7. “Influencers, or what really happens when somebody has a platform”
This is connected in my mind to #3 above, the nature of reality. I’ve written about the strangeness having an audience, and, when you think about it, the equal strangeness of being in somebody else’s audience. Not a practical topic, but interesting to me.
#8. “How To Choose A Niche”
Again, this won’t be happening, but it could.
#9. “Consumption & Digestion”
Related to #4 above. I have an entire training on this, which I’ve sold for good money before. But some part of that training, plus a few recent emails, could become a book as well.
#10. “Flip The Script”
Oren Klaff unfortunately already wrote a bad book by this title, which is a shame, because I find the topic very interesting. I know I could develop it with lots of examples, from different disciplines and different eras (I wrote an email once about a 4th-century B.C. greek general who “flipped the script” to keep assassins from his bedside and poison from his cup).
I don’t know what will come from these ideas. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. In any case, there’s no lack of opportunities.
The point is, if you are writing emails daily, generating a bit of content regularly, this can serve multiple purposes.
It can make you sales today.
It can build a relationship with readers so they keep reading tomorrow.
And it can be repurposed next week or month into a book that gets you lots of new subs to your list, or to a course that gets you lots of new dollars under your mattress.
That’s why my subject line today was “10 books I could not write” rather than “10 books I could write.” Because the idea is, these books will already have been written — by somebody, not me, at least not in that moment. All I really have to do, in that moment, is the editorial work of pulling together that writing and adding a cover on it. And of course, reaping the benefits.
It can be the same for you.
It happens bit by bit. Within a few weeks of daily action, you already have resources that you can do something more with.
But you do gotta take some action though. Maybe even now.
If you want my help in starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails, so you can make sales, and grow a relationship with readers, and have the building blocks of future books and courses: