Hey friend 👋,
Welcome to Living a Limitless Life!
I help 9-5 workers start a profitable one-person business in 30 days without quitting their jobs so that they can make more money and impact 🚀
If you haven't subscribed, join 3,000+ other brilliant people curious about Living A Limitless Life.
You'll improve your life & biz in 10 minutes by:
-
The Three Best 1% Business & Self-Improvement Tips I've Found This Week:
- The life you want is on the other side of difficult conversations.
- You always have the power to choose mindfulness.
- Most people don't know what they're doing.
-
A 4-Minute Read That Could Change Your Life.
- These 42 Article Headlines Made Me Over $16,048 on Medium. Here’s What They Have In Common
-
Michael's Weekly Book Club
- To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing and Influencing Others - Daniel H Pink
Today's Sponsor is... ME!
P.S - this course will go behind a paywall after March 2024. Get FREE lifetime access now.
|
|
|
The question I am asking myself this week❓
In what ways do you hold yourself back from your potential?
Can you overcome those limiting beliefs?
This week's quote that made me think 💬
"Better to admit you walked through the wrong door than spend your whole life in the wrong room."
The Three Best 1% Business & Self-Improvement Tips I've Found This Week:
- The life you want is on the other side of a difficult conversation - Clear is kind. Your life progresses in proportion to how many difficult conversations you have. This could be with a partner, children, or in my case, a business partner. The anticipation of a difficult conversation can keep you up at night. But the relief you feel afterward is liberating. Action: What's a difficult conversation you've been putting off recently? Start there.
- You always have the power to choose mindfulness - I faced a train delay after work every day last week. I had passive-aggressive clients delay a project (again). I had a Medium article go viral for the wrong reasons. I had numerous first-world problems that could have annoyed me. But instead, I chose to focus on my breath. Action: When you feel overwhelmed, you always have a choice.
- Most people don't know what they're doing - Everyone is just making it up. This is a good thing. It takes all the pressure off you needing to be an expert at everything. Instead of trying to be perfect, aim to be a problem solver. Learn to build the plane while you're flying it. Action: Start imperfectly. Everyone has at some point in their life.
A 4-Minute Read That Could Change Your Life.
Read on: michaellim.co
Read time: 4 minutes
These 42 Article Headlines Made Me Over $16,048 on Medium. Here’s What They Have In Common
I started writing on Medium 4.5 years ago.
I tried everything to grow. Bought courses. Read books. Listened to podcasts. Copied others. Tried every ‘growth hack’ under the sun. You name it, I’ve tried it.
But nothing seemed to work for me.
It was only in the last 9 months that I was able to grow my Medium audience from 6,600 to 30,000+. I’m now growing more in one month than I did in 3 years combined.
So, what did I do differently?
Improve my headlines.
Yep. The humble headline got me way more views and reads in my articles.
My writing quality and quantity stayed roughly the same. But when I focused on creating killer headlines, everything changed for me.
Here’s why…
Most people will only ever read the headline and thumbnail of your article.
You’ve got 2–5 seconds to get their attention, create curiosity, and get them to click.
As David Ogilvy once said,
“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
Here’s are 7 things I did to improve them:
1: Offer painkillers, not vitamins.
People read ONLY to solve their problems and nothing else.
Whenever I write anything, I fill out this formula:
“I’m helping X person achieve Y outcome through Z solution.”
This one sentence helps to frame my entire article.
Understand people’s self-interest, and then write to satisfy that interest.
Don’t treat your writing like a personal diary.
Offer transformations, not just improvements.
2: Master the dark arts of storytelling
Humans are wired for storytelling.
My best-performing articles are about my business failures, rather than successes.
How I got myself into a bad cash flow position. How I almost crashed my one-person business. How I underpriced myself and took on toxic clients. It resonated because it was a real and relatable experience.
You have unique experiences and stories to tell from your life.
So tell them.
3: Be clear, not clever.
Use simple words.
Short sentences.
Dotpoints.
KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid.
4: Use emotions:
Lean into how you feel.
Use anger, frustration, sadness, and desperation in your writing.
Emotion is the only thing that AI can’t automate.
5: Be vulnerable:
Talk from your scars, not your wounds.
Give yourself time to heal.
But use your vulnerability to connect with your audience.
People relate to mistakes, not perfection.
6: Talk about the eternal markets
Eternal markets = health, wealth, or relationships.
These are problems that humans will grapple with their whole life.
How can I make more money? (wealth) How can I live longer with a higher quality of life? (health) How can I have more meaningful connections with people? (relationships)
Link everything you write about back to one of these markets.
Don’t know how? Read the first sentence of this post.
7: I stopped writing alone.
Writing is lonely, but it doesn’t have to be.
The fastest way I improved my writing was by joining a creator community.
Surround yourself with people on the same journey as you. Create a shared channel to give feedback and share wins. Jump on a weekly call to troubleshoot problems and create new ideas. Your writing ability will never exceed your level of investment.
Your headlines can be reused for everything:
- Email subject lines
- Hooks for short-form Reels & TikToks
- YouTube titles
An investment in your headlines pays the best dividends.
Michael's Weekly Book Club 📚
My Book of the Week was...
This is book #11 of the year.
To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing and Influencing Others - Daniel H Pink
I've got limiting beliefs when it comes to selling.
I used to think that selling was dirty. Something that shady people did to rip people off. You immediately think of a used car salesman in a cheap suit trying to sell you a lemon for a car.
Over the last couple of years, I've reprogrammed my mind when it comes to selling.
Human progress fundamentally relies on our ability to sell to each other.
Rating: 9.5/10
You should read this if you're... anyone interested in selling (which is everyone).
Key ideas:
👉 Learning 1: We're all in sales - Doctors sell a patient on a prescription. Lawyers sell a jury on a verdict. A coach sells its athletes on their methodology. Almost every profession involves selling. It's not always for money. But you are trying to convince someone to exchange what they have (time, energy, or resources) for what you have.
👉 Learning 2: Sales skills are easy to learn - I learned sales, marketing, and business development through books, online courses, and YouTube. We have access to high-quality information and content from some of the world's best-sellers. The means of learning sales are abundant, it's the desire to do so that's scarce.
👉 Learning 3: Technology has changed the selling dynamic - Customers can access more information than ever. The world's information is stored in your pocket, and accessible via your fingertips. You can no longer fool customers. Empowered customers mean selling in the 21st century has fundamentally changed.
Best quotes by Daniel H Pink
💬 "We've persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something they've got in exchange for what we've got. We're devoting upward of 40 percent of our time on the job to moving others. And we consider it critical to our professional success."
💬 "The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness. It has helped our species evolve, lifted our living standards, and enhanced our daily lives."
💬 "In 1982, there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile phone subscriber. Today, there are seven billion people in the world and six billion cellular phone subscriptions."
How to apply these ideas:
💡Learn sales and marketing skills or die trying - Whether you like it or not, every job requires sales skills. Your ability to influence your colleagues, clients, and suppliers is critical to survival. If you learn sales and marketing, you'll never go broke. If you don't, you'll struggle in everything you try to do.
💡Action > theory - Sales requires failure. Rejection. Looking foolish. People will judge you. But the skills you gain from action will outweigh all the books, courses, and coaching you receive. You can gain more sales skills from six months of real-world experience than an MBA that will cost you $100k+.
💡Start applying more sales and marketing to your current job - Don't reinvent the wheel. You do more selling than you think you do. If you send out emails, speak in meetings, or deliver to clients, you're spending more than 40% of your time in sales.
You can buy the book HERE (No, this isn't an affiliate link...yet).
Writing Tip Of The Week:
Write scared.
Write unconfident.
Write frustrated and alone.
Feel whatever you want.
But just write.
What can I help you with?
Viral Headline Notion Swipe File
Unlock the Power of Viral Headlines: The 42 Article Headlines That Made Me Over $16,048 (USD) and 459,000+ Views on Medium.
|
|
Mini-Course To Build Your Personal Brand
My mini-course is designed for individuals like you who understand the importance of a personal brand but are unsure where to start.
|
I'll see you next week!
Michael ✌️
P.S - You can also find me here: