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The best ghostwriters in the world practice on themselves.
- There is a reason why Will Smith hired Mark Manson, the best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, to write his memoir.
- There is a reason why Rick Rubin, Mötley Crüe, Kevin Hart, and a handful of other notable public figures hired Neil Strauss, author of the best-selling “pickup artist” memoir, The Game, to write their books.
- There is a reason why venture capitalists don’t hire big fancy New York City PR firms, but twenty-year-olds on Twitter with a knack for going viral, to help them write their Threads.
And there is a reason why so many Silicon Valley founders and C-level executives hired me, at 26 years old, to write opinion articles on their behalf.
And the reason is:
Pattern recognition.
When a client hires a ghostwriter, they aren’t looking for someone to manage or “tell them what to do.”
They don’t want to buy your “time” or your “effort.” What they want is your specialized knowledge—and its ability to accelerate upside (helping them succeed faster) and mitigate downside (making sure they don’t present themselves poorly).
Which means the key to unlocking bigger and bigger opportunities for yourself as a ghostwriter is to specialize and build highly valuable pattern recognition—as quickly as possible.
How?
By practicing on yourself.
I’m always amazed at how many people in the world want to get paid to do things for others that they aren’t willing to do for themselves.
Imagine a carpenter pitching you on building your house but doesn’t take care of their own home.
Or imagine a hair stylist offering to cut your hair but has the worst hair you’ve ever seen.
These might seem like ridiculous examples, but there are millions of marketing agencies that sell “social media management” and yet can’t build an audience of their own, and millions of freelance writers that sell services like “sales copywriting” but have never sold a product in their life.
Not practicing on yourself, severely hinders your ability to build highly valuable pattern recognition— which severely limits the amount of opportunities you can unlock in your career.
Ghostwriting is no different.
A lot of writers think of ghostwriting as a completely new skill set.
It isn’t a different kind of “writing.” Ghostwriting is just a new word for “writing for yourself, for someone else.”
- If you want to ghostwrite opinion articles, you should know how to write a really compelling opinion article for yourself.
- If you want to ghostwrite educational email courses, you should know how to create educational email courses for yourself.
- If you want to ghostwrite Tweets, Threads, or LinkedIn posts, you should know how to create these assets for yourself—testing, experimenting, and mastering these mediums.
The most valuable opportunities don’t flow to “ghostwriters.”
The most valuable opportunities flow to those who write (and practice on themselves), AND who also ghostwrite.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I treat writing like an athlete:<br><br>• Practice every day.<br>• Prioritize sleep & hydration.<br>• Seek out new mentors, teachers, etc. <br>• Spend time around people who push me.<br>• Don't read for enjoyment. Read to study the craft.<br>• Find/create weird ways to practice my weaknesses.</p>— Nicolas Cole 🚢 (@Nicolascole77) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nicolascole77/status/1826212815046099132?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This is an extremely important nuance for 4 key reasons.
Reason #1: The energy you bring to your work.
There is a giant energetic difference between working with someone who treats writing as their “day job” vs someone who writes because they love it.
The former will almost always do the bare minimum (and only push themselves when they realize their “job” is at risk). And the latter will almost always go above and beyond—not because they are an overachiever, but because they can’t help but rack up more hours of practice (and improve at an exponentially faster rate). I experienced this firsthand building my ghostwriting agency.
All of the writers I hired who treated ghostwriting as their “day job” were nowhere near as effective as the employees who also wrote for themselves, on their own time.
Reason #2: Clients will trust your opinion more when you speak from personal experience.
Again, the highest-paying clients do not want to buy your “time” or your “effort.”
What they want to buy is your pattern recognition—and part of that pattern recognition is assurance. When you make a recommendation to a client and are able to say, “Trust me, I have done this a thousand times for myself and I know it works.”
- There is no debate.
- There is no discussion.
- There is no doubt in the client’s mind about the right course of action.
They can rest easy knowing they are in good hands.
Reason #3: The opportunities you attract.
The biggest-name, highest-paying clients would rather seek out a well-known writer and try to convince them to be their ghostwriter than interview “a bunch of ghostwriters” and pick the best one.
Which means, if you want to accelerate your career as a ghostwriter quickly, one of the best (and easiest) things you can do is build yourself as a writer, too. The fact that Mark Manson doesn’t say anywhere that he is hirable as a ghostwriter, and yet he was the one who got the opportunity to ghostwrite Will Smith’s memoir, should tell you something.
Practicing on yourself is the single best way to demonstrate your skill.
Reason #4: You can charge more and more as you improve.
The result of all the above, of course, is that you can charge more.
I am just now (8+ years of ghostwriting later) starting to experience this. When someone reaches out, asking if I am available to be their ghostwriter, they contact me because of 3 specific reasons.
- They’ve read one of my books.
- Or they’ve taken one of my courses.
- Or they are subscribed to one of my newsletters.
And they want me to do what I do for myself, for them.
The discussion isn’t, “We need a ghostwriter—how much do you charge?” The discussion is, “What you’re doing is what we want to do—how much money will it take?”
Having your own career as a writer gives you all of the leverage and all of the pricing power.
So, if you want to be a crazy successful (and lucrative ghostwriter), you have to internalize this truth:
You are not ghostwriting. You are writing (and practicing) for yourself, for someone else.
