The Next 100 Will Be Yours – Building a Personal Monopoly

This is part two of a series on writing. If you haven’t read the first part on why writing matters and how to get started, start here: The First 100 Will Be Bad

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Finding Your Voice

Once you’ve started writing, the next question hits fast.

What do I actually write about?

Most people get stuck here. They’ve accepted that the first 100 will be bad. They’ve set up their capture system. They’ve curated their information diet. But when they sit down to write, they freeze.

The blank page stares back. Nothing comes.

This is usually a positioning problem, not an ideas problem. You don’t know who you’re writing for or what makes your perspective different. So everything feels either obvious or already said.

Profit vs Passion

Everything you write falls somewhere on a spectrum between profit and passion.

Profit writing is copywriting, sales copy, ghostwriting, anything you sell as a service. It requires high skill. It requires understanding psychology, persuasion, structure at a level most beginners don’t have yet.

Passion writing is learning a skill, sharing experience, exploring interests, building your voice. It’s writing because you have something to say, not because someone is paying you to say it.

Here’s my recommendation for anyone starting out. Write for passion first.
Not because profit writing is bad, but because you’re not ready for it yet.

That’s not an insult. It’s just the reality of early-stage skill development. You need reps before you can charge. You need a voice before you can sell it.

Passion writing is how you get those reps.

The Elevator Pitch for Writers

There’s a framework from product and business that applies directly to defining what you write about.

It has three parts.

Part one is FOR. Who is your audience?

You can segment this two ways. Demographic is one. Location, socio-economic status, career stage. Industry is the other. Tech, health, finance, whatever.

The best results come from combining both.

Example: “Pakistani early-career employees working in tech looking to switch to freelancing.”

That’s a highly specific, low-competition audience. The more specific your audience definition, the easier everything else becomes.

Part two is WHO. What is the unmet need?

What pain points does your audience have that aren’t being addressed? What questions are they asking that nobody is answering well?

Research this through forums, communities, conversations, personal experience. The more specific your audience definition from part one, the easier it is to identify unmet needs.

Generic audience equals generic pain points. Specific audience equals specific problems you can actually solve.

Part three is THAT/UNLIKE. What is your value proposition?

Your value prop is not what you cover. It’s how you cover it.

And it evolves over time.

Early stage, your first ten to twenty articles, your value is fresh perspective. You’re new. Unbiased. Not jaded yet. That’s actually appealing to readers who are tired of the same voices saying the same things.

Later stage, fifty plus articles, your value becomes a tailored approach. Readers know what to expect from you. You have a recognizable angle. A point of view they come back for.

I’ve seen writers covering the exact same industry with completely different value propositions. One explains complex scenarios through creative frameworks. Another systematizes jargon step by step. Another does deep dives into technical architectures. Another focuses on monetization and business models.

Same industry. Completely different positioning. All successful because they found their angle.

The Consistency Threshold

Here’s something that will either encourage you or depress you.

Content creation has far less competition than it appears.

On LinkedIn, less than one percent of users post regularly. On YouTube, less than two percent of creators hit twenty to thirty videos. On podcasts, the vast majority quit before eighty episodes. On newsletters, most die before twenty-five issues. On blogs, most never reach fifty posts.

The threshold to succeed is lower than people think. But almost nobody hits it because they quit.

Consistency is the competitive advantage. Not talent. Not connections. Not luck. Just showing up more than everyone else who started at the same time.

If you hit these thresholds with decent quality, you will outperform the vast majority. Most people start but don’t commit. The bar is literally just not quitting.

Personal Monopoly

The end goal of long-term writing is what some people call a personal monopoly.

A unique online identity that emerges from your skills, experiences, and interests combined.

A strong personal monopoly has four characteristics.

It’s complementary. Different skills that enhance each other rather than compete.
It’s useful. It provides real value to a specific audience.
It’s specific. Narrow enough to be differentiated from everyone else in your space.
It’s experiential. Rooted in lived experience, not just research you Googled.

This combination cannot be replicated by AI. AI can mimic individual components. It can write about product management or tech or career advice. But it can’t replicate the specific intersection of your skills, your experiences, and your interests. That composite is yours alone.

How to Build It

Building a personal monopoly isn’t something you decide in a weekend. It emerges over one to two years of consistent writing.

Write from abundance. Capture ideas constantly so you never run dry.

Write from conversation. Your best material comes from real interactions. Things you actually said to people. Questions you actually answered. Problems you actually solved.

Write in public. Overcome the fear. Build the habit. Let people see your thinking evolve.

Iterate through the loop. Application, analysis, evaluation, back to application. Compare your recent work to your older work. Identify gaps. Close them.

Over time, your voice and positioning will emerge naturally. You can’t force it. You can only create the conditions for it to develop.

Personality First

One thing I’ve learned from years of writing and teaching others to write.

Your writing should have a voice.

AI and GPT output is boring, soulless, completely plain. It says things correctly but it doesn’t say them memorably. There’s no human behind it. No edge. No perspective that could possibly offend anyone because it’s been optimized to offend no one.

Your writing should be identifiably yours. Someone who reads enough of your work should be able to recognize a new piece as yours even without seeing your name on it.

This doesn’t mean being controversial for the sake of it. It means having a point of view. Taking positions. Writing from experience rather than from what you think sounds good.

The Long Game

Defining your audience, your voice, and your value proposition takes one to two years of experimentation.

Not overnight. Not in a month. Not after ten articles.

Most people quit before they’ve given themselves a chance to find their angle. They write for three months, don’t go viral, and conclude that they’re not cut out for this.

They were never going to go viral in three months. Nobody does. The people who look like overnight successes were writing for years before anyone noticed.

The game is long. The thresholds are low. Most people quit before hitting them.

If you just keep showing up, you’ve already beaten most of your competition.

That’s the unsexy truth about building a voice. It’s not about being brilliant. It’s about still being here when everyone else has moved on to the next thing.

Keep writing.

This was part two of a series on writing. If you missed the first part on why writing matters, the learning pyramid, and how to build your capture system, read it here: The First 100 Will Be Bad

This was part two of a series on writing. If you missed the first part on why writing matters, the learning pyramid, and how to build your capture system, read it here: The First 100 Will Be Bad

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With or without my help – I wish you the best.

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