Happy Sunday to 1,358 creators reading The Writer’s Way Newsletter.

Today, I’ve got some super-juicy stuff for you.

But before we dive in, a message from The Steal Club:

Steal Club is a newsletter where every week you'll learn how the best creators grow their audience and income. And how you can do the same by stealing their tactics and strategies.

A couple of days ago, I went down the rabbit hole of studying my favorite creators.

I mean f*cking detailed studying.

And really down the rabbit hole.

I read every single thing they’ve ever posted, on all channels, from all times…

And after a few hours of walking through every single word they’ve ever put out, I’ve found one interesting pattern:

They’ve all built their Mind Following even before they had any extra credibility or crazy achievements to their name.

They made their audience fall in love with their personality first, and fall in love with their content second.

They let their personality shine through.

They’ve been explicit about their philosophy.

And most important of all:

They’ve had the courage to be disliked.

And thinking of my online journey over the past year…

It’s what I have done as well.

And…you can do it too.

In fact, you should.

Because if you nail this principle down (and imma show you how later), you won’t need to care about building a niche of one anymore.

You won’t have to care about you having too many interests that don’t really fit together.

You already have a few people that admire your personality as a whole. And with that sort of fanbase, you can do, build & write about anything.

Think about the creators that you read EVERYTHING from.

You can’t wait for their next newsletter issue.

You purchase their product as soon as it is released.

Believe it or not…you can become this type of creator for someone else.

Not just 1 person.

Hundreds. Or even thousands.

The “Love or Hate” Principle

As they say: Your vibe attracts your tribe.

It’s okay to be bipolar - because if you’ll have people who totally disagree with your methods…on the hand, you’ll have people who will be your strongest fans.

It’s the “Love Them or Hate Them” principle.

The goal is to build a fanbase (even a small one) of people who are going to fall in love with your persona as a whole, not just with the fact that you feed them useful information.

But if you don’t have your vibe defined…

Well, you’ll never build a tribe.

“But Claudia I have no idea what my online vibe is. I don’t really know what’s my personality like. So how can I attract my tribe?”

Those were exactly the questions on my mind 24/7 a few months ago.

Looking back, I’d introduce myself to a dead-simple framework.

If you start applying this framework across all of your content, no matter at what stage you are right now…I guarantee you that after a few months of consistency, you’ll have a fanbase that will make you stand out like no one else.

Even if you’re someone as boring and unimportant as a high-school student in their teens…like me.

Ready?

I mean, are you actually ready?

This is gonna be super-actionable & at the end of this email, there’s going to be a super-tiny request that will move you miles ahead. I won’t tell you what it is…YET.

I just want to know whether you are committed.

Once you say yes, there’s no going back.

You’re still here?

Okay, I guess you take it seriously.

So let me introduce to you the framework I call…

3 P’s Of Building Your Personal Playbook

Personal Playbook is very similar to Naval’s concept of Specific Knowledge (the thing that people behind your die-hard fans for)…and it’s built at the intersection of your

1. Proposition

2. Perspective 

3. Principles

Let’s cover each one in a more detailed way ↓

1. Proposition

Proposition is the vision you want to embody.

It’s the path you’re leading people towards.

And it’s your purpose behind you doing all of that.

A few examples:

• Dan Koe -> Build a great life doing things you enjoy

• Kieran Drew -> Building Digital Freedom

• Zach Pogrob -> Creating a cult of obsessed people

To find your proposition, answer these 3 questions:

• What do you want out of your life?

• How do you NOT want to end up?

• What’s the “why” behind all of that?

Also, if you’re struggling with clarity on all of that, check out this post.

2. Perspectives

This is the single most important determinant of whether people belong to your tribe or not:

Whether they vibe with your perspective that’s based on 2 aspects:

What do you stand for & what do you stand against.

Example:

• George Ten (Grammar Hippy)

  • Stands for: Copywriting is more about thinking than writing

  • Stands against: Using templates

• Justin Welsh

  • Stands for: One-person businesses

  • Stands against: Corporate jobs

• James Clear

  • Stands for: Building habits

  • Stands against: Believing in big, overnight changes

To find and define your perspective, answer these questions:

• What do you stand for?

• What do you stand against?

• What’s the story that led you to this perspective?

If you don’t have a story & well-defined perspective yet, keep building exciting stuff and it’s eventually going to become obvious.

Action precedes clarity.

3. Principles

Principles are…well, the default principles that guide you through life.

They define the way you go about solving your problems & make decisions.

If you’d get 1,000 different creators, you’d get 1,000 different solutions to common problems.

But by you defining 1 path with a few specific principles, you’re going to attract people that vibe with you (exactly our goal, remember?).

Your principles include things like concepts, mentors & books that shaped you the most.

And don’t forget:

This one’s refined over time, and definitely won’t remain the same now.

Examples:

Dan Koe

• Concepts: Ordering Consciousness, Question Everything, One-Person Business

• Books: The Power Of Now, Flow, Wisdom of Insecurity

• Mentors: Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle, Matt Ogus

Zach Pogrob:

• Concepts: Obsession (and everything around that)

• Books: The Purple Cow, The Way Of Superior Man, The 4-Hour Workweek

• Mentors: Steven Pressfield, David Goggins, Steve Jobs

Claudia Stellner (Me):

• Concepts: Breaking out of The Bubble, Pursuing Curiosity, Building a Niche of One, persuasion

• Books: Atomic Habits (haven’t read most of the books I should have lol - as I’ve said, refined over time)

• Mentors: Dan Koe, George Ten, Zach Pogrob

To find your principles, you can ask questions…but you won’t get immediate answers.

Here are a few that might help:

• What mental models/concepts do you use when you feel stuck?

• What books have shaped you the most?

• What people have shaped you the most?

This one takes iteration.

So…

Keep exploring.

Keep feeding your curiosity.

Keep studying big ideas.

You’ll be fine.

And you’ll thank me later.

And now…

The super-tiny requests.

For each of the P’s, I’ve shared a set of questions to answer if you want to find more clarity. And as I’ve said before: You don’t need to fill in everything. With that being said…I want you to reply to this email and answer every single question you know you can answer.

This time, I will actually reply to all of the emails (last time I was leaving for a school trip and was too busy, go easy on me sheesh).

Anyways that’s it for today.

Talk next Sunday,

— Claudia “I PROMISE I’LL REPLY TO YOUR EMAILS THIS TIME!!!” Stellner

P.S.: This was a snippet from the online course I’m building for you right now. It’s gonna be out by the end of March, so stay tuned.

P.S.S: Don’t forget to catch some sunlight today ;)

Claudia’s Digest

🎧️Podcast - Mr. Beast on The Joe Rogan Experience

📖 Book - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

✍️ Blog Post - Very good at a simple game by Seth Godin