This one skill took my personal brand to over 140k+ followers.

If I had to start from scratch again, I would only need one skill.

Author

Saksham Gaur
July 20, 2024 • Reading Time: 10 minutes

Quick overview of what's in this edition.

  • Why I re-started this newsletter and what to expect every Friday.

  • A little update about my life.

  • How practicing this one skill daily, solved almost all career problems. 

  • Resources of the week.

Starting Again: 

We meet again. It’s been over a year. 

When I started “Baka Breakthroughs”, it was just raw documentation and after about 5-6 weeks I didn’t feel like it was adding any value to people’s lives. (Maybe I was wrong). 

So I gave myself reasons to delay writing it. I removed it from my schedule. Then you know it, I stopped. 

During this time, I’ve been asked regularly to start it again. And since I’m obsessing over this skill of “writing”, I’ll bring it back. 

But this time, it’s “Curate”.

“You don’t need to create things from scratch. There’s a difference between having resources and being resourceful.”

Saksham

I’ll show you that you can make a change in your life with what you have. It’s curating, then creating. 

Earn the right, position to be able to create. It’ll make more sense moving forward. 

This edition will be longer, from the next one it’ll be more concise. 

A little update about my life.

Last year was turbulent. Starting the agency again, getting to $8-9k per month, going back to zero, to over $16k per month. And now a slight dip again, it’s been a rollercoaster. 

I’ve seen the most compounding when it comes to results during this time, and it’ll only increase moving forward. 

The year started well, but recently, things were slipping and it made me get into the zone again. 

Whenever I feel I am slacking, or I don’t see progress, I look back at this.

I am taking jiu-jitsu seriously. I competed in a tournament last month and lost my matches, and it took a serious toll. 

Yet, I got a taste of how it feels. And I needed that. 

I’m taking fitness even more. Hired a coach who curated my diet, gave me weight training schedules, he’s also one of my training partners in jiu-jitsu. This sport is consuming me day by day. And I love it. 

Personally, the last few weeks were great, I made a schedule I can stick to. And still, be able to create time for other things in life. 

This is the main thing I’m working on right now: 

During childhood, I was short-tempered and used to getting into frequent fights. It was the complete opposite in college, I became underconfident. 

Once I started to work on myself again, I became calm. Too calm you can say. In the last 4 years of being on this journey, I’ve genuinely been anxious maybe once. I do worry about things here and there, but I never get phased. 

Then it was MMA, I became too stoic at everything, that sometimes it bit me in the ass. I never fought with aggression, I took things too lightly, holding myself back, never going on the offense, and always thinking about the other person too much. 

I knew it was a problem, yet I never actively solved it. 

Since I lost in jiu-jitsu last month, it was the last thread. I actively started to develop a “calm aggression” towards things. 

Sprinting in work, going a bit harder in training, and putting more strength into the game which I had never done before. 

I started to want my childhood version back, he played football aggressively, studied aggressively (I was a top 5 student during school), and never had an outburst of anger, yet I used it well if I think about it. 

Oftentimes it was the reason I did well, and reflecting on that, I want a bit of that version back. 

And it’s translating to other areas of life now, I’m pursuing a particular goal aggressively. Also documenting that on video every single night. 

Once I get there, I’ll release it all. So you see the real progression. 

That’s pretty much it, let’s move on to the actual skill. 

How writing daily helped me reach 140K+ followers in 1.5 years.

I was always a big note-taker, writing everything and more since school. 

Once I got on this online journey, even without any skills, being able to draw effective diagrams and have good handwriting always helped. 

I never knew until the end of 2022, that I subconsciously became a good writer. 

Once I realized that I went all in. 

Writing has given me everything in this career. 

  1. The viral videos. 

  2. The meetup discussions. 

  3. The TEDx talk. 

  4. The YouTube content. 

  5. The Workshops. 

  6. The confidence to talk on camera. 

  7. The confidence to articulate myself way better than I did in college. 

Writing online daily, and finding patterns within feedback made it all possible. I’ll explain: 

  1. I wrote a video

  2. I published it

  3. I looked at its performance over 1-2 weeks. 

  4. Depending on feedback, I identified the strong and weak points. 

  5. With the next iterations, I kept it in mind and wrote. 

This endless loop ensured that there was constant upskilling. Times when my brand was growing, times when it was stuck. 

This loop got me on the good side each time. 

As entrepreneurs and creators, writing is at the core of what we do. 

“The websites, pitch deck, video script, sales calls, client communication, etc. everything.” 

I’d go to the extreme to say that if you type regularly, but don’t write, you’re missing out big time. 

Let me ask you: 

When was the last time you grabbed a pen and paper and just wrote for 10-15 minutes? 

No mistakes in writing? 

No fuck ups? 

Just being present in the moment and transferring all thoughts on paper. 

If the answer is “I don’t remember”. You know what to do. 

For every issue you’re having in your online journey, think about this: 

“Will better writing solve this issue?” 

Most of the time, the answer will be yes.

Writing Daily built my agency (Metro Media House) to $15k/m.

To be concise here, 

For my work, regularly this is what writing looks like: 

  1. Video scripts

    a. IG

    b. YT

  2. Tweets and LinkedIn Posts

  3. Content strategies

  4. Emails

  5. Captions

  6. Client communication

  7. Note Taking from courses and books

  8. Brainstorming and wireframing

  9. Journaling

  10. To-do list and scheduling

  11. Sales call notes

  12. Prospect personalized outreach

From the top of my head. 

These all activities either: 

  1. Helps me build leverage.

  2. Makes me money.

  3. Makes me productive and efficient.

Of course, there are other skills involved, but without writing none would be possible. 

During the bad and good times, this is what helped me always strive for improvement. 

Not like a lot changed between scaling my agency from 0 to the mark it is at right now. 

I just became more effective, articulate, and just better at this skill.

Why should I learn to write if AI can do it for me?

This is one of the most common issues people face, even before they write. 

Writing is not just the action. It all comes from the mind, if you “know” what good writing is, you can use AI prompts better, and use it to be more effective. 

Learn prompt engineering, along with developing the habit of copywriting. 

Four tips to write better.

  1. Identify what you want to write. 

It’s firstly deciding which direction you want to go in. Search “types of copywriting” on Google, and pick the options you like best. And start. 

It could be landing pages, sales letters, video content, ghostwriting, etc. 

(Remember, writers earn some of the highest amounts of money online). 

  1. Seek feedback. 

There is only one way to improve your writing. Publish your stuff online and get feedback from the audience. 

You learn by doing the thing.

If you don’t have clients, do it for yourself. You all have stories that you can share with the world.

“If you love short writing, use Twitter. If you can write long-form, write on LinkedIn or maybe Twitter threads. If you can record yourself, shoot reels on Instagram.”

The ultimate goal is to get better every day. 

Write a piece of content for over six months, and you now have 180 pieces. Study the hooks, writing style, and frameworks from people above you and get better fast.

  1. Learn to steal.

You cannot learn without consuming content. You cannot create by stealing ideas from other creators. 

To create, you must get inspired, which happens with your eyes wide open for every piece of content.

Make a list of your favorite authors and creators. Learn to study content, not consume it. Try to recreate high-performing content with your ideas.

Pick out what “you” want to learn from them, and try implementing it on your own. 

  1. Write in sessions. 

Don't become a person who writes every waking hour. Everyone has one or two hits in a day where they can dump their thoughts. 

Write every day at the same time for a specific hour. If you give yourself a deadline, you are more likely to finish the task within it.

Or decide on the output every week, and create your schedule based on that. 

Resources of the week.

  1. The book I’m currently reading: Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

  2. Book I’m re-reading: Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson.

  3. YouTube video that was a game changer: Alex Hormozi’s system to outwork everyone.

When you are ready this is how I can help you:

  1. I have a product launching soon, to help you build a personal brand that also gets clients, and makes money. I’m putting my all into it, you’ll be amazed. 

  1. Follow me on YouTube and X (@whysaksham) where I share my insights on everything.