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Waddup Part-Time Creators!

Welcome to the newsletter where I talk about writing, marketing, psychology & creating on the internet if you work a full-time job. Today we're talking about story-led articles, what makes a great entrepreneur & sneaky little new section that gives you some cool examples to get writing on the internet.

In today's email:

• Story-led articles
• Content of the week
• Unlock your potential
• How to write great intros

Read time: 4 minute

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A Storytelling Masterclass

How to Build a Story-led Article

January 2023, I just started getting rumblings of this new thing that was going to take over the world. Yep, another new thing. On today’s list? ChatGPT.

The Twittersphere was flooded with hooks ‘ChatGPT prompts that will transform your life’. It went on and on and on. More and more I heard about the flurry of ChatGPT-led articles.

I saw them hitting the top spots of the most popular publications, I saw people get excited and launch newsletters dedicated to ChatGPT.

I was fearful. Then confused. Then completely fine by lunchtime.

And then I saw a new opportunity.

Why people will always need stories

This whole ChatGPT thing is exciting, sure. It’s a great help when it comes to research, headline generation and a handful of other things but there is one thing that people missing off the list when it comes to using ChatGPT.

The enjoyment in the writing is the writing.

You know, most of us didn’t get into writing to speed up the process with an AI generator. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a place but I am saying that part of the joy of writing is the thinking.

It’s racking your brain for the right word.

It’s ordering and reordering.

It’s spending the time dancing around a million times to get the framing just right. To be able to articulate that thing that you struggled with before.

That’s the joy of writing. And so that brings me to the other joy of writing, storytelling.

More and more storytelling

So it brings me to why storytelling. The one thing ChatGPT won’t have is your experiences of the world. ChatGPT didn’t sit in class dreaming about travelling the world, didn’t fall into the post as he went to kiss the girl, and didn’t miss her grades by one mark.

Stories, human stories. Raw, honest, human experiences are what make writing. They breathe life into the ordinary. They spark imagination and passion in people you’ve never met.

Real human storytelling will separate you from everyone else.

So the question then is how, how do you come up with human stories that make people feel something?

The method in the madness

Grab a piece of paper and a pen, yep, we’re going back to basics on this one. Then, in the middle of the paper, write four boxes.

• People
• Places
• Things
• Beliefs

For each, write down those that are important to you. The ones that you remember first, the ones that you smile as you remember, the ones that changed the way you thought.

Do people, places, and things first. Then come onto ideas. For ideas, you should think through why you have those ideas. For instance, let me tell you the story about the time my entire worldview on money changed.

The money story...

I didn’t know my whole view on money would change after a 5-minute conversation but here we are and it’s exactly what happened.

Twitter is a great place to meet interesting people, and one guy had come out of the Twittersphere and hit my DMs. He was great. He liked my brand and he had a way bigger audience than I did. Anyway, we got talking about the internet and the way of the world.

What? What do you mean?! Here’s me thinking I could maybe make $1,000 per month on top of my day job, and here’s this dude talking about someone making $100k a month. A month.

He went on to say he’s aiming for $20,000 a month personally.

And my world changed in an instant. I can’t really explain it. Maybe if you only ever thought you were going to make $3k a month forever, reading this will have the same impact on you as it did on me.

It broke every idea I had about money. For a long time, I thought I’d make $30k a year forever. Yes of course I had this hope that one day I’d be a millionaire but honestly, I never thought it would actually be me.

And now, well everything feels like I’ve got more control. That I can dream big, swing big, be big.

And that’s how you pull stories from your own life.

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Great content of the week...

• The demands of good writing.
• Good writing is repeating yourself.
• ​Slow reading is a good thing.

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Evolving Emotions

I Wish Somebody Told Me How to Unlock My Potential For a One-Person Business

When you think of great business leaders, the pedestal is so high you can barely see them perching on top.

People all over the world hypothesise why great businessmen and women are where they are. A flurry of idealistic personality traits floods to the surface.

They have infectious personalities!
They are great decision-makers!
They have incredibl vision!
They are ruthless!
Passionate, cut-throat, influential!

The mountain of admirable traits piles so high it’s unfathomable to reach. You sit, looking up, thinking how on Earth do I become that? The space between you and them is worlds apart.

But I’m convinced that none of the aforementioned are the reasons that anybody succeeds or fails in business. There is though, one thing, one thing that is the deal-breaker and I see nobody talking about it. Maybe because some people are just born with it.

But I’m convinced it’s the real reason that some people unlock their one-person business potential whilst others stay in quiet misery.

Success comes from a belief

Back in June of 2015, I was living in a rundown house, in a less-than-desirable location but the only saving grace was that I had two bright-eyed bouncing spaniels to look after.

It’s been my ambition since I was 13 (and I spent two summers working in a dog kennel) to have a dog of my own one day. It was the only reason I fast-tracked the house-buying process. Get a house so I could get a dog.

During the summer of 2015, I’d walk to the park two minutes from my house. There I would launch the ball as far as I could for my bundles of joy to chase. They’d zoom across the field, ears flapping, tongues waving in the wind until they dive and grab the fluffy tennis ball and race back flinging mud and grass up as they went.

On more than one occasion (maybe three times), I’d throw the ball too far (not that I have an impressive arm, but if you’ve ever had the pleasure of using a ball launcher you’ll know those things can send a ball 60m no problem). Now the ball was 10m into dense trees, probably under a foot of leaves somewhere hard to find.

I had no energy to look. I stood, staring at the trees in front, thinking that it was going to take me twenty minutes of looking to try and locate said ball. And even if I did spend those 20 minutes looking, what were the chances I’d find it? I contemplated it for a few minutes. And then decided against it.

I left the ball amongst the brash, I didn’t even try to retrieve it.

The concept that made me small

Back then I had a habit of giving up on everything. I was in the mindset that if I didn’t try I wouldn’t fail. My ego couldn’t take failure. Up until that point in my life, I always had an excuse as to why I wasn’t working on building my own business.

But now, now I was in the real big wide world and I had no idea who I was, what I was doing and where I was going. I was in a job that felt empty, a house that was sucking the life out of me and I had this weak ambition that I wanted to be somebody.

But there was an undercurrent of self-doubt. I’d never done anything remarkable in my life. I was destined to be a nobody. So I just kept on half-hearting everything in an attempt to soften the blow of my sad little life.

I tried everything to make me feel like I was on the path to change my life. A sock business, a dog bed company, a homeware brand, reselling trainers on eBay. The list goes on and on. But it was an empty attempt. Something to say. It was a mask. Because I was afraid of the truth, if I tried and failed, I might have to face the truth that this, this was my life.

Start small

Over the years I’ve built a one-person business by accident. I started writing on the internet in 2020 and I didn’t stop. I’ve now got a thriving newsletter, a vision and gallons of ambition for the future.

Now I actually try.

You see, when I looked back on my life and realised that by not trying I was failing. I realised that I was killing any chance I had of success before I started. So I stopped with the dopamine-inducing goal-setting and took small steps.

• Write an article
• Post on Twitter
• Design a newsletter

Each step built my confidence and in return created a deep self-belief. And it’s that. Right there. That is the reason most people never unlock their one-person business potential. Because they never believed they could, so they never actually tried.

But it’s more important than decision-making, ruthlessness, and hard work. It’s more important than all of it. It’s the way you unlock your one-person business potential.

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Write Great Intros

1) W.R.L Method

• Where are you?
• What does it remind you of?
• How can you bring it to life?

2) In the Story

Throw the reader into the story.

Tweet of the week

TLDR: Write cool stuff about cool stuff.

Happy creating,

Much love, Eve.

P.s. If you really wanna level-up your part-time creator biz, here's how I can help...

The Medium Blueprint comes back on the 13th of August. I've spent the last 4 weeks updating the course, adding 8 new lessons (about AI, storytelling & using your job to create content). Look out for the relaunch. Click here to get on the waiting list.

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