Unblocked For

Resources

Oct 13, 2024

Success Stories

I Make $1M/Year As An Introvert

Summary

Business Strategy

Marcos built a $1M/year ghostwriting business in 2 years by focusing on monetizing Twitter content for coaches, consultants, and education companies, scaling from $0 to $65K/month in 1 year.

To differentiate from competitors, Marcos offered a "dumb for you monetization service" that helps clients monetize Twitter growth, rather than just focusing on follower growth.

Sales Approach

Marcos uses a 3-step DM approach (cold, warm, hot) to accelerate client acquisition, sending 100-200 daily cold DMs complimenting profiles and offering services.

Team Building

To build a team, Marcos focuses on vibing with the best talent, selecting writers based on a thread prompt and treating them as partners rather than employees.

Tools and Systems

The ghostwriting business relies on tools like Google Docs, Sheets, Cana, Hemingway, Hype Fury, and Notion, with Notion serving as the company's dashboard, CRM, and client hub.

Timestamps

00:00 A ghostwriter makes $1M/year by helping clients with Twitter ghostwriting, repurposing viral content, and outsourcing their writing needs for business owners, influencers, and education companies.

02:16 Started with $2,000, invested in a $112,000 course, and now makes $1M/year ghostwriting.

03:35 Marcos studied successful businesses, obtained clients through Upwork, built social proof, and focused on getting good results to grow his ghostwriting business to $1M/year.

05:54 Introverted writer shares framework for successful ghostwriting business, emphasizing honesty, human connection, and conviction in sales.

06:41 Shift mindset, engage with followers, and consistently implement client acquisition strategies to build a successful ghostwriting business.

08:33 Build a good team by hiring people who vibe with you and have talent, and use tools like Canva, Twitter, and Hemingway to run the business efficiently.

09:34 Offer a monetization service, study successful writers, build personal brand, and use tools like Hypefury and Notion to manage client accounts for ghostwriting.

11:17 Focus on discipline, play to your strengths, and shut out distractions to succeed in ghostwriting business, and get inspired to start your own with a free report on service-based business ideas.

Transcript

00:00 This guy makes $1 million a year with a business model built for introverts ghost writing and the best part is. He did it all. In Just 2 years I've never been a sales guy. I'm an introvert which is why I became a writer. I drove out to Miami Florida to ask him exactly how it works how he got started and the framework he used to go from0 to $65,000 a month in just one year. What I follow was called the framework when he first started. Marcos was trying buing every business model Under the Sun but he was barely making any money. Then he stumbled upon ghost writing and learned a secret that would change everything. The main thing that people were talking about in ghost. Writing is you're going to get people followers and then I quickly realize there's a much better way to do it. If I just in this video Marcos shares his exact blueprints on how to find cloth and retain clients to build a million doll. Pere ghost rating business from scratch I'm Pat walls and this is starter story. Marcos pleasure thanks for having me yeah tell me about who you are and what you built yeah. I'm Marcos I'm CEO of the birdh house uh. We're a Twitter ghost writing agency and we essentially write the tweets. The threads we repurpose clients videos and we put them on Twitter so that they can obviously go viral get views and make sales and we went Z to 65k a month. In one year. Uh we're looking to scale up to over a million. This year. So 100K a month explain me what what the hell is Ghost writing yeah. When I discovered ghost writing through Twitter. I basically just realized that Founders CEOs business owners even influencers. A lot of these guys have ghost riters on the internet because they just don't have time to do it so we go and help people Outsource that and what I ultimately landed on was coaches consultants and education companies because these are the people that can actually help monetize faster we'll go and repurpose viral clips and viral videos or even full videos and full podcasts.Uh we have long form posts which is a new thing we have. Articles replies you could do spaces you can help set up spaces. There's really so much that goes into it. Now and certain niches have different formats of content that are going to perform the best so depending on the client. We're going to put out a majority of those different kinds of content threads. Posts long forms articles Etc.

02:16 All right so give me a timeline of your backstory and how you get into this yeah. So when I was 19 I was at basic training for the Army and my friend actually showed me like day trading on his cell phone and this was kind of my first introduction to internet money. So I go from there and I'm trying pretty much every business opportunity. Under the Sun Drop Shipping affiliate marketing crypto day trading blogging you name it. I've done it and then from there I quickly realized that I'm a little introvert I played video games. I've had a Blog I did Marketing in college and I've done a little bit of writing. I've actually been on Twitter since 2011. Uh so when I chose copywriting I probably had like 2,000 bucks to my name. It was it was pretty. It was a challenging time but I'm the kind of person that kind of I always knew knew that I would make more money like I always had that mindset I bought a course back. Then it was like 50 bucks a month and it kind of taught me the ins and outs of the ghost. Writing thing it gave me an offer and after I signed my first client for 1,000 bucks and I find a second one for 1,000 bucks. I reinvested all 2,000 into a bigger course that cost me 2,000 bucks per month. So it's actually a $112,000 course. So I spent all of my money that I didn't have and it came back and I had signed a $3,000 per month client. So now $2,000 month course $3,000 a month client I had like just enough money to live.

03:35 The rest is history from there that's amazing yeah my favorite part about. Marcos's story is that he chose one idea and stuck with it until he hit a million dollar a year. But it was never easy. It required having the right idea and studying other businesses that paved the way before him if you want to do something similar to Marcos. But you don't have an idea or you don't know exactly where to start you can download our free report of 50 plus real world product. High services in this report you'll learn exactly how 50 Founders got their ideas how they grew how they got customers and lots more and then if you're really serious about starting something then consider joining the starter Story community with thousands of people building businesses that will change their lives just head to the first link in the description and you can download the report 100% free all right. Let's get back to how Marcos got his first customers.Let's talk about how you got your first client and how you scale it to 10K a month specifically how did you do it yeah. My first ever clients were from upwork from there I always say you have to kind of Stack your case studies and stack your testimonials. So I took that job and used it as social proof for my Twitter DMS and I was sending out 100 200 DMS. A day had it all in my notion following up and that took about a few weeks before I kind of really landed some interest and I was able to sign my first 1K a month CLI I didn't get the best results at the time but what I did get was.He sent me a message and it said like I got seven free trial subscribers and I was like got testimonial. So then I'm using that in my DMs to other software Founders and eventually I landed my first 3K a month client which was a big deal for me and that was a a coach and we crushed it for him. This was the first time I really crushed it for someone viral every week and not only that what I realized is it drove sales and I was like okay. He's paying me 3K a month and this thread probably made him like 20 30k. So it's was like okay well. He just made enough money to pay me for 10 months. So from there it was like referrals in inbound. It was I just focused on getting my clients good results so the referrals would come in my audience was building at the time I think at the time I was going 3K 5K followers. I think I had 10K followers after like eight months in business and then from there it just been compounding ever since yeah you talked a lot about how to get leads but how to actually close clients yeah. This is a tough one cuz I've never been a sales guy.

05:54 I'm an introvert which is why I became a writer and I'm sure a lot of people. Watching are introverts and that's why they do these kind of introvert. Ed businesses right so what I followed was called The Closer framework. What it allowed me to do is have a framework to follow hey why you on this call and kind of take them through a little bit of a journey on the call. But ultimately what what I've really come down to is. If you can just get on a call tell someone how you actually are going to help them and be honest and be a human. Most of people actually Vibe with that and if they don't Vibe with that you probably don't want to work with them. Anyway. Sales is really just about conviction so if you actually believe in what you're doing can actually help someone make more money. It's pretty easy to sell yeah. You grew this super fast. It went from like 1K to almost 15K really fast how can someone else who's watching do something similar yeah. So this is what I was doing and this is also what I actually have clients do or their teams.

06:41 It's cold warm and hot like I said I was sending 100 to 200 cold DMS a day so that's number one and that's really just saying hey giving them a compliment based on checking out their profile giving them your offer and then saying hey if you're interested. Let me know if not you're good don't even answer you don't want to be kind of too pushy and then what's called warm DMS. It's just essentially dming people who are following you engaging with your content Etc. It all starts with kind of creating content on your. Twitter. You always want to practice what you preach and then what's called hot DMS which is the people who are already interested. They're dming you first. They're saying hey. I'm interested right so using those three and having a happy balance. That's how you can really accelerate the clients that you land so it all starts with making content sending cold and warm dmms and getting the inbound leads and it compounds very fast like 100 DMS 200 DMS a day two to three tweets a day including like a thread and you're golden.From there. So you're doing well you got like $10,000 $15,000 a month and then you go to $50,000 a month. What what how did you do that yeah. So it's really two big things. Um. Number one is having kind of a mindset shift from tactic hunting to actually implementing so tactic hunting especially what we just talked about would be you're trying to plan out what am I going to write how am I going to send DMS what's going to be my script. The implementing is actually going out and doing it and doing it not just once not just for a week but for 6 months 12 months straight and doing it every single day. That's the implementing piece that really helps it compound cuz in the back end you're actually delivering your servicing like I said getting referrals and getting leads inbound but then also doing the outbound and when you combine those you kind of create a flywheel and then honestly after 10 20K a month I'd say every business has kind of a different point where you have to ask yourself. Do. I want to be a solo preneur or do I want to be an entrepreneur and that's when I decided to start hiring team members and building a real business under a real business name. Now we're doing about 70k. A month and our margins are about 60%.

08:33 We have two senior writers. One. Junior writer I have an ops manager who was my real employee number one. She was my assistant now my ops manager and then I have a sales representative as well so a team of five six if you include me all right well. Let's talk about building a good team how to hire good people so that you don't have to work on the business all day right. So what I did is. I I put out a tweet I'm looking for my first writer to join the team and help me out and I essentially gave four or five different people. A prompt and I was like write a thread write a Twitter thread and I just picked the best one and then from there I'm like you're on board. I also kind of picked the person who who vibed with me the best from from a culture perspective so who am I going to Vibe with who actually has the talent and really thinking of them as a partner. Not an employee all right. Let's talk about tools. What tools do you use to run this business yeah. So I use all the basic stuff obviously Google Docs Google Sheets. But further than that I use Cana for design. We use Twitter of course we use. Hemingway is a really great app that'll help you with your writing. It'll show you which level grade. You're writing at and help you dumb it down and make it simpler.

09:34 We use a tool called hype. Fury to go and schedule all the tweets and we can schedule them there for clients and you can actually have client account access without actually being in the client's account and then we also use notion which is where we have kind of our company dashboards. Crms client hubs everything like that. So I'd say those are really the main tools all right. Let's talk about competition starting a ghost writing business is seemingly easy. How do you uh differentiate from your competitors. When I started the main thing that people were talking about in ghost writing is you're going to get people followers and then I quickly realized there's a much better way to do it. If I just make somebody more money than they pay me then I'll have a client forever so I differentiated my offer to. I'll help you not only grow on Twitter but the growth is more of a byproduct. I'm actually going to help you monetize with Twitter. So it's a dumb for you monetization service. If you just learn business principles and then you learn writing. You can kind of offer that to anybody yeah so a lot of people love.The idea of ghost writing can kind of sit behind your computer and write for a living. How would you recommend someone to get started with ghost writing yeah so there's really two ways to do it. There's the I have no money way and there's the I have money way. The I have no money way is actually go on Twitter and be a user start to follow people that are going viral and follow people that are actually writing great content study what they're doing do it for yourself use yourself as the case study and then use that to do the the DMS the paid way would be to buy a course and I always say this when you buy a course just copy. Exactly what they tell you. The most important thing is to do it yourself and actually build yourself a bit of a personal brain because what I quickly found out is if I was reaching out to somebody with more followers than me. They'd be like well. I have more followers than you. Why would I you so you have to do it for yourself and then you can do it for other people yeah.

11:17 So we're here in your beautiful Miami apartment tell me about what a day in the life like is for a ghost riding business owner yeah. So I I guess I theme. My days I kind of stole that from I think it's like Jeff Bezos if it's like a Monday I step back my meetings. Uh usually have between 12 and 15 meetings on a Monday so I'll go straight from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. uh and just meetings for those days and then I'll go to Jiu-Jitsu at night or something and then Tuesdays I like to have just like a blank calendar and those are usually the days where I'm going to sit down and edit some client content because I'm still acting as as Chief editor or I'll go out and maybe Source some new clients or I'll talk to the team or work on the business Wednesday again. It's usually a call day/ content day and now as I'm stepping out more as a CEO. I try to spend a lot more more time thinking I try to go on locks and stuff like that but yeah again.I say a majority of my time is either in or on the business and I don't really do a ton else. I know we live in Miami but I don't really go out. I don't really party or anything like that. So I'm usually just either working in around my business or I'm going to like go to Jiu-Jitsu at the gym watch TV play video games do something basic. I'm pretty chill dude have you experienced any struggles uh building a business becoming an entrepreneur yeah. I'd say the biggest struggle was shiny object syndrome like being online and you see people. Flexing Rolexes and Lambos and you just feel so inadequate and just seeing everybody do something new and you're always just peeking out that might be better that might be better. But what I ultimately Learned was once you can finally shut that out and stick to one thing and actually fail through it and and keep going find your itty. Bitty bits of success and again continue to shut out the noise cuz again even at 2K a month 3K a month 5K a month 10K a month you're still seeing all that stuff. It's not like it. Just goes away ultimately being able to have the self-confidence to stick through the trials and tribulations.I think that's that's the ultimate that's the ultimate thing okay last question that we asked to all the founders we interview if you would could have any advice for young Marcos getting started out or anyone getting started out on a business what would it be. I think the number one thing I would tell my younger self is play to your strengths and have the discipline to just stick it out because I think especially at first being an introvert and like I used to play video games and stuff. Like that I I used to try to do things I wasn't good at sales. Video streaming I tried all of it if I played to my strengths which is more introverted writing stuff. Like this I think that would have been a huge help and then again sticking to one thing having the discipline to focus and stick out all the failures. That'd be my number one advice I would have succeeded 5 years earlier. That's amazing well congrats on all your success man yeah thank you you're crushing it.You as well follow this advice and you'll have a million dooll ghost writing business peace. Hey everyone Pat here thank you guys so much for watching. I really hope marcos's story inspires and motivates some of you to get started on your own thing if you're curious about doing something similar. But you're still looking for an idea well. You can download that deep dive product IED Services report for free. It breaks down over 5050 service-based business ideas and tons of other stuff. You'd want to know just click the first link in the description and if you're serious about actually building something then consider joining starter story and we will help you do that much love and I'll see you guys in the next one peace.