Hi Reader, This is part 5 of a 7-part series on how to share expertise to attract and create opportunities in life and business. It was Fall 2022. I had just created my first NFT collection – 405 digital tokens to match the number of pages in my award-winning book, Toffy’s Divide. I created the art, wrote the blockchain contract, and added the collection to the blockchain. Simultaneously, I built a following on Twitter, onboarding people into the space, and met fellow tinkerers, artists, and entrepreneurs. I launched the collection in September. In October, the whole space went to sh*t. SBF, the founder of one of the biggest crypto exchanges, had just scammed his way to a Bahamas retreat. Everyone scrambled. No one bought my digital tokens. All I built on Twitter seemed lost. A few months later, just before the new year, I licked my wounds as I doomscrolled on my shattered Twitter feed, that’s when I saw a tweet by Tim Denning that stopped me. “Write a newsletter every week and watch your life change.” I thought “Hmm, why not?” I started the week after, I’m on week 129 now. A lot has changed since then. Lost Signal:As the crypto space deflated, I noticed a rise in AI conversations, especially something called ChatGPT. A lot of people in the NFT space poured their creative energy into this new “ChatGPT” toy. It was only a month old – publicly. Ever since then, AI has been creating most of the content online, reducing the barrier to create. This is good for people who struggled to start. However, the scene is now flooded. As one AI expert told me over a call recently, “the space is too noisy and messy.” It’s hard to stand out. In April 2025, 74.2% of new web pages contained AI-generated content. Since 2022, over 15 billion images have been created using text-to-image AI tools (it took humans 149 years to generate the same amount of images with photography). Most AI models are trained on public data, scraped from the Internet. There’s a premium on private data. Data that’s recently created or in private knowledge bases. A portion of that “private data” is the information stuck in your head. Your personal experiences and stories. AI does not have access to that (yet). In the age of AI, your story is even more important. If you don’t speak from a place of personal experience you’ll sound like everyone else. You have to: Experience. Process. Create.Creating seems like extra work. Don’t you already have enough to do in a day? Being adaptable and building leverage in a changing world is an important part of your career. Attracting and having valuable conversations is how that happens. Your authentic story, clear voice, and unique viewpoint is a sharpened signal and huge magnet to attract those convos. So instead of thinking of it as extra work, think of it as necessary work. But most people stay away from it because it seems daunting. However, all you need is a system to make it easy to get to. And it all starts with following your interest. Writing and creating is easy and fun when you have a system. Step 5: Stack Content Like a System (7 Steps to Create Authentic Content That Resonates with Your Audience When You Have Only 15 Minutes a Day)Share authentic content consistently with only 15 minutes a day. Before I had a system, I’d write whenever I felt like it. Some days I’d write a lot, most days – nothing. I struggled to stay consistent with my blog for my first business. Until I started an AIS system – meaning “A**-In-Seat” That’s where you set a timer, disconnect from the internet, and write until the timer goes off. I’ve been doing it for more than five years. Now, it’s a little more intuitive. I don’t set a timer, I just write early in the morning, for at least 15 minutes, while my phone is still on airplane mode. This system has helped me publish four books and be consistent with this newsletter. You fall to the base of your systems. You need a content assembly line to consistently create, package, and share your valuable expertise. Here’s my exact playbook on how to create authentic stories to share your expertise with only 15 minutes a day, every week. 1. Choose (Monday)This is the easiest but perhaps the most important part of the process. Make a decision. If you don’t, you will not write. I spend about ten intentional minutes thinking about what I’m going to write about for the week. Then I write down an idea or a topic. You can go through your narrative bank for notes and ideas. Write down at least a full sentence on your topic. A lot of people overlook this step but it’s crucial because when you make this commitment, your brain starts to do this interesting thing, noticing concepts around the topic. Your idea begins to germinate. 2. Plan (Tuesday)Based on your topic, lay out a structure. First start with the audience in mind. Ask these three questions:
Always start with the end goal in mind to orient you. Then use this structure to create a scaffold for what you want to write.
The section on “How to do it” is where you share actionable steps on what you want to teach. If you are struggling with this, choose to write a listicle. People love lists. They are easy to follow:
Think about something you can teach in steps. Make sure you write an answer (at least one sentence) for each section in your plan. You might be tempted to begin writing once you get into the flow a bit. Don’t. Stick to the system. Leave your plan for the day and let the topic germinate further. 3. Draft (Wednesday)This happens to be my most intimidating day – it’s usually the longest. Go through each section of the outline and expand your thoughts. Use the magnetic message structure, shared in step 4. Be sure to infuse a story and some rhythm in your writing. Use the 1/3/1 rhythm formula. You might not have noticed, I just did it here. Look at the three paragraphs above. I started with one sentence, then three in the next paragraph, then one sentence after that. This makes your writing visually dynamic. You don’t want to write like this. Where every line is the same. You begin to sound repetitive. And it can get quite boring. So don’t make it all the same. Switch it up. The more you do this, the more natural it becomes as you write articles, emails, memos. Here are some other writing rhythms to keep in mind.
With writing, do one task at a time. Don’t draft and edit. Leave the edits for another day. Create freely on this day. Draft like a child. 4. Edit (Thursday)Write for yourself. If you had a full-stack publishing house, you’ll have the creative writer, the rigid editor, and the money-calculating publisher. Today, the creator, business owner, and entrepreneur are all-three. Think about building a media business to gain attention, attract conversations, and build trust. Edit with the audience in mind. Revisit the answers in your original plan. As you read through the writing, ask “how is this helpful for the audience?” The creative writer from the day before might have gone off track. That’s fine, we want their creativity to flourish. But new day, new you. With your editor hat on, cut as much as you can. Strengthen the title. 5. Publish (Friday)Do the final read. Choose a strong title and publish it on your platform of choice. I schedule mine with KIT. You want to nurture a relationship with the audience you have direct contact with by email or phone. Hit publish. 6. Rest (Saturday)Take a day off. Do something else. Rest is part of the creative process. 7. Schedule (Monday)Take your entire writing and chop it up into small social media posts. This is what I do. I take the same magnetic message structure, find about 5 takeaways and write them up to share on LinkedIn. Since you’ve already spent the time researching, writing, and editing through the week, you’ve already done the heavy lifting. Now you just have to make it match the social media platform you’re focused on. Schedule your posts in an app like Taplio for the week and you’re done. Tip: The goal of posting on social media is to attract your audience to a place you can stay in contact with people (your newsletter), so you can eventually have convos with them. System on RepeatThis system takes 15 minutes every morning. I find consistency hard without a system. Start yours. Then repeat and refine it. For instance, you might get suggestions from your audience on what to write about. You could use AI to unearth topics to write about, use it for research, even create prompts that change your entire writing into LinkedIn posts. The main point is that you do the living, experiencing, processing, and creating. It helps you clarify your thinking, generate content that stands out, attracts the right audience, and actually makes you more interesting when you do get into conversations with people. Use this approach to easily make content. Next week, I’ll show how to attract people into your relationship-nurturing zone.
P.S. What step of the seven steps above seemed the most daunting to you? |
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NapoRepublic Letter #129July 12, 2025Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here Hi Reader, This is part 3 of a 7-part series on how to share expertise to attract and create opportunities in life and business. When I wrote my first blog, I had one goal – rank high for search terms related to my business in 2016. I hardly got an organic lead that came to my website and converted into business. At the same time, I had started writing a fictional story on the weekends. Eventually, I...
NapoRepublic Letter #129July 12, 2025Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here Hi Reader, This is part 2 of a 7-letter series about creating more opportunities in life and business. I'm doing this because I learned about building a business online the hard way. It started with my first business. I tinkered around with an app for almost a year. I paid a developer and a designer. We worked late nights. I got on calls at strange times of the day because of time zone differences. I...
NapoRepublic Letter #129July 12, 2025Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here Hi Reader, Make this your #1 task - Always be attracting opportunities. You deserve to have options and live a more fulfilling life. If you don’t know how to help people, you’ll struggle to find purpose. Purpose is a combination of fueling personal growth and making a contribution to the life of people around you. I’m eternally on the quest for it. In very few moments, I get a glimpse of insight. The...