You need to start writing essays.
Because if you want to become an intellectual force to be reckoned with, essays will do a lot more than just that.
Writing an essay teaches you how to think.
And thinking is actually the greatest meta-skill you can possibly learn.
Learning is thinking. Writing is thinking. Articulating your ideas and beliefs is thinking. What about negotiation, persuasion, or getting people’s attention online or in person?
Or getting people to subscribe to you, trust you, and therefore pay you?
What you think about (and how you think about it) will determine every outcome in your life.
Which is sad.
Every writer and creator I see nowadays is outsourcing their thinking to a machine that generates based on data, and not real thinking or knowledge. So they get the same results as everyone else who is also doing it.
Screaming into the abyss with your content and attracting no attention to your work is not a fun thing.
Before I show you how to write your first essay, we have to talk about war.
It sounds nuts, but bear with me.
Announcement (skip if you hate promotions)
The Profound Writer is out now.
In the last year and a bit, I’ve grown my newsletter to 45k+ subscribers. I became a Substack bestseller in 4 months with only 11 long-form posts like this one (but put behind a paywall).
I started writing online in May 2025 as a complete beginner.
And writing for 30-60 minutes per day is how I’ve cultivated an audience in that time. And 12k as a side-income, on top of my day job.
All by writing just one essay each week (I’m still growing by 200-500 email subs per day).
This is an evolving course.
6 modules, 3 more on the way. End-of-module feedback surveys, module/lesson/AI prompt requests. Prompts that don’t write anything or think for you, with all the AI-ness stripped away from them (they can only give observations and ask you questions).
The longer the course is around, and the more feedback I get from what you want help with, the more valuable it will be (and more expensive, obviously, so it will never be as cheap as it is now).
I want this to be the best long-form writing course on the internet. I believe it will be.
Early-bird pricing ends July 21st.
It’s 50% off right now, so save yourself the money before it fully launches.
I’ll see you legends inside the course.
Consider enrolling before early-bird disappears
P.S. If you have any questions, shoot me a DM or an email. I’m here to help in any way I can.
Watch this on YouTube:
Or listen while on a walk:
Idea I - Belief
I don’t have to agree with everything you say, but I should attempt at least to understand it, for the opposite of mutual understanding is, quite simply, war. - Ken Wilber
Misunderstanding is the root of (almost) every problem that has ever existed.
War? Misunderstanding.
Fighting with your boss? Misunderstanding.
Your “significant” other? Same again.
Fighting demons in your mind while trying to get out of bed at 7am like you told yourself you would do?
All of us at this very minute act on certain beliefs as if they were fact.
Belief is what the mind acts on as if it were true.
I wanted to filmmaker when I was a kid.
Binge-watching YouTube video essays on the art of making movies, those really were the glory days.
But it thought me that in order to create conflict, all you must do, is put two characters in a room with opposing beliefs.
Why is this important to understand?
Conflict is fundamentally philosophical.
Let me give you the most practical example I can think of, that I feel every one of us can relate with, regarding the concept of philosophical conflict. Sigh.
Think of your boss giving out to you in work.
Specifically, anytime they have ever raised their voice, or said something to you, that very-well could have been considered a little bit of a HR problem... literally because they believe they can do just that.
It’s unconscious to them, the belief that they are in a position of authority over you.
And in most cases being quiet or nodding along or simply apologizing is what we, the employees, resort to. Even if we are not in the wrong.
Why?
Our survival is being threatened.
But on two levels:
Physical - You need money to eat, drink, and keep a roof over your head. Losing your job means losing your source of income, which means no food, drink, or roof over your head (obviously)
Metaphysical - You could speak up and speak your mind. And, if it goes badly, your own self will identify as “a person who got fired,” before that inevitably morphs into “I am a terrible fucking person”
When two people, groups, governments, nations, or sides of the world are in conflict with each other, it’s because of one thing.
Beliefs.
That is what causes philosophical conflict, or any form of conflict, and that includes misunderstanding.
And I know what you’re thinking.
“But Craig! How does this relate to writing essays?”
Conflict comes from conflicting perspectives. And an essay, my friend, is just a perspective, or a belief being argued for so it can be considered.
The word essay in French means “to attempt.”
By writing an essay, you are attempting to solve a problem by offering a solution (perspective) and arguing for it.
And let’s not forget that there’s a big difference between arguing for something and enforcing it…
You do not know what you know until you try to explain it simply, out loud, on paper, or to another person. Especially in the form of a clear and structured argument.
A bad essay full of unexamined biases isn’t really an essay by its own definition.
An essay is meant to tear your thinking apart (both your own thinking and that of the reader) during the process of examining a problem, evaluating it, thinking about it, and offering a solution that could be useful, if it is considered, and acted upon.
That is the purpose of thinking, is it not?
To solve problems, gain beneficial outcomes, and suffer less in your life than you have to?
Allow me to dig a little deeper.
Idea II - Iteration
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. - Heraclitus
Writing is how you stress-test and rebuild beliefs through iteration.
What do I mean by iteration?
Iteration is changing one action based on feedback you have received, as you move toward a meaningful goal of your own choosing. Think trying to achieve a goal, and then failing to achieve it. Shooting for goal in the World Cup and skying it wide, or trying to putt a golf ball like my Dad every Saturday morning and missing by 5 feet (he never misses, he tells me).
What do you do when you fail to achieve a goal? You try something a little different in the hopes that you move closer to the goal this time around.
Iterate consistently toward a goal.
Succeed in achieving it.
And you have the perfect mechanism for changing beliefs.
Why is this relevant?
You cannot believe something about yourself until you’ve succeeded at it, or seen it work.
I have recently been learning how to darce people in jiu-jitsu. A darce is a type of choke that I always thought I was terrible at doing. Because I was.
And for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying one new thing, failing at it, trying another new thing, and so on.
I’ve been getting a lot more setups for the choke… but I still can’t finish them.
But before I started iterating toward that goal, I wasn’t even setting them up. Not a chance.
I used to think I was shit at trying to darce people. Now I believe that I can set them up, because I’ve done it.
Competence creates belief.
Iteration can only occur when there is feedback to iterate with.
And everything you do is feedback. Even everything you don’t do. Doing nothing is still an action. Inaction is metaphysical action. Thinking too, is metaphysical action (compared to physically moving your limbs, talking aloud, using physical tools).
Now that you know how a belief or a perspective is developed across time through iteration, where does this slot in to the big picture?
Some perspectives are more beneficial than other ones.
Some are higher-leverage.
Meaning, they help you reach the same outcome, but faster, cheaper, and with less suffering.
Using AI to write your content is not the highest-leverage thing you can do. If everyone is doing it, where is the value? If you could excuse the AI-sounding “it’s not this, it’s that” statement, it just sounds more impactful when I put it this way:
AI retrieves from data.
Your brain retrieves from unique knowledge.
Yes, knowledge you build through iteration. People don't read your content for information, btw. They read it for your perspective (sorry, another “it’s not this but that” statement).
A perspective only comes from thinking and living and experiencing. Wisdom is not algorithmic.
I have written over 60 of these newsletters in the last year and a bit. The by-product of iterating with each newsletter is my audience, and over 12k as a side-income. All I did was make a 1% improvement with each newsletter each week.
And my first newsletter was dog shit. The only thing that built my brand and content system and income sources was building the competence through iterating on that dog shit. You can’t improve something that doesn’t exist.
Skills do not get handed to you.
You have to build them with trial and error toward a meaningful goal.
Another little AI sounding line to finish this section, just to keep you on your toes ;)
Idea III - Writing (but with impact)
You need to post your essays online.
Publishing content is how you test what you have written and thought about against reality.
Real people.
Not your friends or family, who are going to tell you that your writing is better than anything they have ever read.
Why let your essays gather dust inside a second brain anyway?
Posting your writing online proves transmission.
What do I mean by transmission?
Did you attract people to your work by successfully understanding the principles of human psychology and persuasion?
Once you grabbed or “hooked” people’s attention, did you convert that attention into interest, to keep reading, or to check out a digital product you are promoting?
Did the reader engage? Did they stay silent?
I cannot tell you about my ideas unless I have your attention first. And I cannot persuade you to care about what I have to say, if you have noise-cancelling headphones on.
Learning to attract and maintain attention is a skill. It’s human psychology, attention mechanics, and persuasion. And you absolutely need to learn it.
Nobody wants to read a dull piece of writing.
Would you?
Here is what I recommend you do:
Publish one long-from post each week - On Substack or X. 2000 words on a problem/title/topic you care about solving, using a problem → insight → solution framework. Or AIDA. Google AIDA if you don’t know about copywriting yet. You could use beehiiv if you’d like, but I’m down bad for Substack right now. If you record your essays to a camera, post them on YouTube
Write about topics you yourself wish to learn or think about - And make your title a broad, attention grabbing title (you can search YouTube and watch videos on how to do this. Everybody uses cringy clickbait titles for a reason. They work. Or, you can avoid doing what works, and get the results that come from doing things that do not work)
If you have an offer to promote, promote it at the bottom of your newsletter - I’ve only ever done digital products but you can very much do this with a service as well. If you don’t know what to build yet in terms of an offer, just focus on posting content consistently and turn your best long-form posts into digital products/a service of some kind. AI can teach you how to get started doing either if you don’t know what to do. There’s no excuses.
1 long form post each week is all you need to grow an audience and build authority in your interests, topics, or skills online.
Let’s not forget the one 1% improvement applied somewhere within your writing process each week too.
Idea IV - Your mind is your niche
I’ve been excited to talk about this for some time.
I wanted to wait.
Not until I had a “successful” personal brand or anything like that. Success is relative.
I’m making 1-2k per month writing one of these newsletters each week. On top of working 20-40 hours per week at my day job (on the lower end now).
But I think it’s time to start talking about it. Because my DMs are flooded with questions on this sort of thing.
And, I am in closer proximity to the problem of growing a personal brand and writing content from the ground up, than say, somebody with a million followers making more money than most people would know what to do with it.
The profound idea:
Your mind is your niche.
Let me give you my definition of branding.
Branding is the knowledge people have of you.
Namely:
What you are known for (content topics, ideas, associations)
What you do (offer)
The idea of niching down has always gone against my own nature. Funnily enough, it also goes against the nature of how the human brain actually learns.
The brain learns by connecting ideas.
Learning is thinking… if you think about it.
Which means, the more ideas, positive associations, and beneficial outcomes you’ve helped your audience achieve… the more of those things people connect to your name, the stronger their web of knowledge about you becomes.
I had someone message me the other day.
They thanked me for my knowledge (not my information), telling me they'd bought every product I had ever made. Including The Profound Writer… and I hadn’t even started promoting it yet.
I was already getting sales on it before I wrote this newsletter. Which is still kinda nuts to me to be honest.
If people associate good ideas, good outcomes, and good things with you, that’s trust. You can’t trust something you don’t have any knowledge about.
Enough about me.
Niching down on one topic for life limits two things: reach and growth. Let’s not forget that you will get bored writing about your hyper-specific niche anyways. Simply because you don’t have any range.
Imagine if I told you that you were only allowed to read one Substack article for the rest of your life? Or listen to one song? One TV show?
Which leads to my next question.
Do you think your family and friends only associate you with one thing?
Your one hobby. Your one favorite artist. Your one favorite plain-black t-shirt you wear in every YouTube video…
God no.
You’re a multi-dimensional human being with a mind that loves to connect ideas.
And if you can connect the principles from the skills of persuasion, human psychology, and value creation (yes, they are skills, since skills consist of techniques, which are actions that you can do, or learn to do, by imitation, trial and error, and iteration, and nothing else).
Guess what?
You can write high-performing content on anything you want to write about.
And get paid to write them.
I’m simplifying here, of course.
But you can grow an audience by writing about your genuine interests and ideas, and promote things you have built at the bottom of your newsletter. Or better, positioned within your essay’s argument.
What do you think I’m doing with this essay/newsletter you’re reading?
Yes, I’m trying to stretch my mind beyond its limits this week, like I do every week. But I’m launching my course too. You can mix art and business if you learn the skills I already mentioned.
Like with my own reading and self-education digital products, and my Substack paid-tier posts.
I made a reading digital product from a high-performing, validated post I wrote on that same topic. Same with my Profound Self-Education Guide. I had a paid guide on my Substack do exceptionally well at the time, so I turned it into a 70-page guide with a cool AI-prompt that did really well.
Now I have a writing course. Because every short form post I wrote that talked about writing was doing 3-5x the normal engagement. And I kept getting asked about how I write my weekly essay/newsletter in emails and DMs.
Validating ideas works like a ladder.
Idea → Short Form Post → Long Form Post → Lead Magnet/Paid Newsletter → Digital Product → Course
The only reason I’ve waited so long to talk about all this is because I didn’t have any proof or consistent results yet.
Now I do.
And I’m in much closer proximity to a lot of you in my audience than those making 10k+ each month.
Scroll through my Substack and look for every post you can find on personal branding, audience growth, and writing.
Yep. You will find that there are none.
And for all the posts you see on writing specifically, long form writing, I mean, I only started writing about it when people wouldn’t stop asking me to.
You do not need to write about audience growth in order to grow an audience. Same applies to content creation, personal branding, or making money online.
It kills me to see so many personal brands or content creators (as cringy as I find those words) who are starting out, and wanting to write online, and earn a side income from it, and at 0 subscribers they start talking about content systems and what makes a top 1% personal brand…
Proof is trust.
Trust needs authority, attention, and an audience.
I’m leaving it here for today.
I appreciate your time and attention as always.
If you’ve read this far, it means I like you. I like people who like thinking about long content.
Lot’s more of these essays coming over the coming weeks.
You’re an absolute legend.
- Craig :)
(just so people don’t miss out on early-bird):
Early-bird pricing for The Profound Writer ends July 21st.
If you want to build an audience writing about profound ideas you love, with a dead simple writing/content system, consider enrolling while it’s 50% off.
Love the work bro. I just came on substack for the first time in a while and see you have completely blown up. I am back on the writing train now. I have been enjoying it a lot. Using you for inspiration now.
Thanking you for being a part of my new environment. Reinforcing who I want to become. I hated writing in school, but I can't wait to finish and publish my first essay