Use the One Year Rule to Build a Huge Audience and Print Cash

Frontload the work

Source: https://thebusinessprofessor.com/en_US/economic-analysis-monetary-policy/j-curve-definition

If you knew you could make $100k three years from now, would you be motivated enough to start doing the work?

The money would be guaranteed with the condition you create content daily and use that content to build a business.

Every day you wake up and wouldn’t feel like doing the work, I’d call you and remind you that three years from now your business would be printing cash.

I bet you’d be a hell of a lot more motivated, wouldn’t you?

If you start from nothing and compound year over year for a few years, you’ll make money.

The problem is, although you can build a six-figure business in three years, you still have to wrestle with the self-doubt and lack of momentum you’re feeling now.

The earlier you are in your career as a creator, the more difficult everything seems. There’s all this jargon you have to learn, there’s the tech, then the marketing strategies.

It’s enough to make you dizzy.

So most creators never make it out of the starting gate.

They watch other creators grow huge followings and print cash, while they sit on the sidelines with envy.

I bet you feel that twinge of envy a bit don’t you?

You see successful creators and it feels like they were always that big. It’s hard to fathom that they were once a newbie like you.

All the tension in your mind leads you to the point of wanting to quit.

Don’t.

Use the one-year rule to succeed.

The Work You Do Now, Will Pay Off a Year From Now and Compound into the Future

I learned this concept from Sam Ovens, who owns an eight-figure consulting business.

The premise is just like the title says.

The work you do today will show itself in the results a year from now:

This is because a lot of content creation strategies just have a time delay that needs time to kick in.

• If you write a blog post on your personal website, it might take 6-12 months to reach the front page of Google, and that’s if it’s a well-optimized post published to a strong website.

• If you start a social media account and try to grow, in the beginning, the rewards for your efforts won’t yield much success. You’ll publish posts that get 1 or 2 likes, maybe zero.

• My Medium account started to skyrocket in growth after I had been posting for about three years and I made roughly $140k in a year from posting on the account:

You need to allow time for compounding to work.

Once you understand how exponential progress works, you’ll be willing to put in the work when seemingly nothing is working.

Here’s one of my favorite pictures for reference:

You’ll toil away for years at a time and all of a sudden you’ll be an overnight success.

You’ll get 10-100X the output for the same level of input.

Your Medium posts might get 10 views each when you start, but you’ll get 1,000 -10,000 views on a post s year for the same level of effort.

Lots of Twitter creators say that with around 10k followers, it’s much easier to grow your account.

Look at Kieran Drew, who recently gained 5,000 followers in the span of a week. It probably took him months or years to grow to 5k:

You have to be willing to do the one thing most creators are unwilling to do. You have to front-load the work.

This is One of the Single Most Important Concepts in Content Creation and Entrepreneurship

Frontloading the work is the process of building systems and processes that will pay off in the long run.

Frontloading the work creates vehicles you can use to create passive income.

Because I spent years laying the groundwork for success, I get random deposits into my bank account all the time.

Here are some examples of frontloading the work:

• Content creation: I have videos and blog posts that I wrote years ago that still get views

• Building an email list: When I want to launch a product, I can send an email to 33,000 subscribers. Think it’s a bit easier to sell when you already have an audience of this size

• Creating assets: I have freebies and giveaways to help build my list. I have several assets that make me money like courses, books, and affiliate links

• Email funnels: I create sequences that send automated email messages to people who signup for my email list that eventually lead to sales

• A network: I’ve met dozens, if not hundreds of successful creators over the years. They re-post my content, I do partner deals with them, and when I have a book out I can ask 100 people to send it to their email list for promotion and many of them will

• Studying the game: I’ve read 100+ books. I’ve taken online courses and hired coaches. As a matter of fact, I almost always have a coach or a course to refer to because each new skill I add to my toolbelt makes it easier to create money

The bigger your foundation, the easier it is to keep scaling it. I could take blog posts I’ve written and turn them into a book.

I can repurpose content from blog posts to tweets, tweets to LinkedIn posts, and tweets to IG pictures.

Since I have some money in my pocket, I can hire people to do these tasks instead of doing them myself.

The bigger an audience you have, the more doors it opens for you. People are more likely to respond to your DM if you have 10,000 followers instead of 10. You continue to stack social proof — books with hundreds of reviews, links to your content online, and an entire library of stuff that pops up when people Google your name.

Then it just gets crazy.

You’re making way more money than you’ve ever made, which just makes it easier to make more.

But none of these outcomes will happen unless you front-load the work.

Some Helpful Rules I’ve Found for Staying on the Path

From Alex Hormozi:

Post and assume no one will see it.

From JK Molina:

Assume it's going to take 10 years It's not. But this mindset shift allowed me to detach from the process. Now I just post and don't even check likes. Because I know that in 2032 how well my tweet did in Nov 19 2022 won't matter. And yours won't either.

From Dane Koe:

Think of your content like part of your life’s work because it is. It doesn’t matter if every single individual piece of content hits big.

From Cammi Pham:

Your first 100 blog posts will mostly suck.

Your first 100 podcasts will mostly suck too.

Your first 100 talks will not be perfect.

Your first 100 videos will be nightmares.

From Mark Manson:

Until you’ve written 100 pages about a topic, you really don’t know how much you enjoy writing about it. And until you’ve published 100 pages about a topic, you have no idea how much people will enjoy reading what you have to say about it.

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All of these quotes have the same thing in common. Initial detachment from the results leads to big payoffs down the road.

Early creators are way too attached to the results in the beginning.

There is no reason to micro-analyze your stats when you have a small account. You don’t have reliable data.

Remember what I said in one of the very first editions of the newsletter? In the beginning, you’re supposed to suck.

Your biggest issue is your unwillingness to be bad at creating content. You have unrealistic expectations of success.

Your content isn’t resonating and your business isn’t growing, or you don’t have a business, because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. And that’s okay.

Here’s how the process will work in the long run:

• Skills that were once hard to learn become second nature: I almost quit blogging altogether when I tried to make my first WordPress blog. Now I can whiz around WordPress without conscious thought.

• Once you learn a skill, it’s yours forever: Nobody can take away your skills and experience. When you build a handful of content creation and business skills, even if you go broke, you can build again because you know what to do.

• You’ll keep having epiphanies: You’ll have those moments where you go “ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh….” and that little piece of knowledge that eludes you suddenly clicks into place.

Then the Real Fun Happens

Once you’ve played the content creation game for a couple of years, you get to play the forever game.

I’ve been creating content for 8 years now. I will never stop. It’s not a matter of motivation.

I have done so much work and set my life up in such a way that it would be weird for me to stop.

You’ll get there, too.

You’ll have so much momentum and progress you realize you’re now playing an infinite game. You’re continually compounding.

Every step you take pays off years down the road and it repeats in a constant loop.

Growth gets easier, but if you’re smart, you hit the gas pedal while you’re growing fast instead of resting on your laurels.

Once you have a few wins in the game you realize the point of the game is just to play the game. To grow, build, and see what happens.

Those initial years of creating are just scratching, itching, and clawing for results.

But, after some of those itches are scratched, you realize your big dreams for success weren’t all that important and the fun part of the game is playing it, not what you get out of it.

Onward and upward, forever and ever, for as long as you want to play. Do the work now, and you’ll get there in no time.

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Links to other cool stuff you might enjoy

• Watch this webinar replay I co-hosted with Self-Publishing School to learn how to write a best-selling book

• Take my free 5-day course that teaches you how to make a living writing on Medium

• Buy my best-selling book - Real Help: An Honest Guide to Self-Improvement

• Follow me on Twitter and Instagram because I create unique content on each platform