In 1884, Mark Twain gambled everything on a dying President.

Everyone said to walk away.
He offered Ulysses S. Grant 7x the standard publishing royalty.

Together, they created a $12M bestseller and America's greatest military memoir.

This story changed publishing forever:🧵 In 1884, former President Ulysses S. Grant was utterly broken.

• His Wall Street firm collapsed in a Ponzi scheme
• He lost his entire life savings
• At 62, he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer

His family faced poverty after his imminent death.

This is Pharrell Williams.

13 Grammys. An Oscar-nominated film. Creative director at Louis Vuitton.

He doesn’t read sheet music—and sees colors when he hears sound.

His creative formula built a $250M empire.

Here’s his philosophy:🧵 Pharrell once said:

“I’m always just curious. That’s what keeps me going.”

That mindset led him from the studio to fashion runways, films, and LEGO partnerships.

Here's how he sees curiosity (so you can boost your creativity):

You can't beat Writer's Block by:

• Reading more books on writing
• Watching another YouTube video
• Bookmarking motivational quotes on IG

Instead, try this:

7 dead-simple tips to overcome your fear of staring at a blank page:🧵 For context, I have:

• Been writing online since 2007
• Ghostwritten over 2,000 articles for 300+ industry leaders
• Written 10 books & 50+ mini-books

I have overcome the fear of staring at a blank page.

Here's how:

In the last 5 years, I've made $15,000,000 writing online.

Most people overcomplicate wealth building.

Here's my step-by-step system to turn any idea into a 7-figure business:🧵
@dickiebush and I have multiple digital businesses:

• PGA → $10M
• Ship 30 → $3M
• Paid Newsletter → $800K
• Writing Software → $1M

For simplicity, let's dissect @ship30for30. The fundamentals are universal across all our businesses.

Let's begin:

I've journaled for 30 minutes every morning for 15 years straight.

No fancy journal. No complex rules.

Just a pen, paper, and 4 simple prompts to help focus my mind and find clarity.

Here's the dead-simple system I use every single day:🧵 I started journaling deliberately like this when I was 19 years old.

I'd just gotten back from a rehab trip, and felt extremely lost & confused.

I didn't know what I wanted out of life, or whether I would amount to much.

So I wrote to myself about it.

This man created James Bond and lived just as dangerously.

His wartime exploits inspired 007, and his spy operations changed WWII history.

Sadly, he died before witnessing Bond grow into a $7 BILLION empire.

Here's the untold story of Ian Fleming: 🧵
Ian Lancaster Fleming was born May 28th, 1908, to a wealthy London family.

His father, Valentine Fleming, was a Conservative MP for Henley. His family had a background in banking.

But privilege alone wouldn't prepare him for the dangerous world he'd later find himself in.

How Game of Thrones was created is wild: Multiple plots. No single hero. No clear villains.

But it won 59 Emmys and held the World Record for "Most pirated TV show" for years.

I studied its storytelling and psychology tricks.

Here's the philosophy I found: 🧵 George R.R. Martin didn’t just write multiple plots—he made four unstoppable forces clash:

• Power struggle over the Iron Throne
• The Stark-Lannister war
• The White Walker threat
• Rise of Daenerys

Each story crashed into the others, reshaping TV forever.

With 300+ million books sold, James Patterson holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 NYT bestsellers in history.

But many refuse to call him a "real" writer, and Stephen King called his work "terrible."

Here's the controversial writing method behind his $800M empire🧵 Born in Newburgh, NY, in 1947, James was a good student but confessed that he did not enjoy reading until after high school.

He attended Manhattan College before studying at Vanderbilt University.

In 1971, he worked as a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson.

5 dead-simple steps to write a 60,000-word book in 30 days—even if you've never written a book before:🧵 For context:

It took me 4 years to write my 1st book and it took me 4 months to write my 2nd book.

Now, I can write a 60,000 word book in 30 days.

Here's the framework:

The Rick and Morty approach to storytelling is fascinating:

• 1 circle
• 8 plot points
• Repeated over 71 episodes

Dan Harmon adapted The Hero's Journey framework to create one of the most successful TV shows ever.

Here's how it works (and how to master it):🧵 Before Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon was struggling as a writer.

He kept starting scripts but could never finish them. Until he discovered something that would revolutionize television:

I'm a TV addict.

Over the last 10 years, I thought I had seen it all, but when I found Seinfeld 'a show about nothing,' it blew my mind.

Everyone should understand the psychology that created one of the most successful TV sitcoms in history.

Here's how it works: 🧵 Larry David had two simple rules for every episode:

"No hugs and no learning."

While other sitcoms taught life lessons and showed character growth, Seinfeld did the opposite:

This guy has published 83 novels and more than 200 short stories.

He is a towering figure in the world of writing.

All writers should memorize these 14 epic tips from Stephen King's book "On Writing":🧵
Tip #1: Above all others: read and write a lot.

Your fingers have to learn the feel of the keys and your mind must acquire the habit of story-making.

Combine the two and copy a short story by hand to absorb the style.

I bet my mortgage Brandon Sanderson is the last great fantasy writer of this century.

Not just because of The Stormlight Archive, 40M books sold, or his $41M Kickstarter.

But because he cracked the code for world-building—and made it irresistible.

Here’s his philosophy: 🧵 Most fantasy authors make ONE fatal mistake when building their worlds.

They overload readers with too much lore—history, geography, politics, and culture.

Sanderson? He flips the script:

January is over.

So there's no better time than February 1st to start writing online.

Use these 25 prompts to write & publish every day for the next 25 days:🧵 1. What was your first job, and what's 1 lesson you learned you'll remember forever?

2. Who was your first mentor, and what's something they taught you that changed the way you saw the world (and yourself)?

This man was Steve Jobs's secret weapon in creating Apple's iconic brand.

He turned 'Think Different' into $3 trillion, crafted the iMac story, and helped save Apple from bankruptcy.

Here's how ONE writer transformed Apple into the world's most valuable brand: 🧵 When Ken Segall joined Apple's ad agency in 1997, Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy.

Apple wasn't just failing financially—its brand message was a mess.

My first book took me 4 years to write.

But now I can write a 60,000-word book in 30 days.

The secret?

Outlining.

Here’s how to outline your first book in 35 minutes:🧵 For context, I have written 10 books, including:

• 3 non-fiction books on writing
• A personal memoir
• A book on habits
• A book of poetry

And more.

I have sold tens of thousands of copies of these books.

Here's how I outline a book in 35 minutes:

J.R.R. Tolkien spent 60 years creating over 15 languages while writing The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Roverandom, etc.

Some called it madness. But now Pixar, Universal, and Marvel use his ideas.

Here's Tolkien's 4-part framework for world-building and storytelling: 🧵 At Oxford, Tolkien was obsessed with languages.

By day, he taught Old English and Norse mythology & literature.

By night, he created entire linguistic systems from scratch—and shared his ideas with friends, including C.S. Lewis, who encouraged his creativity.

This is Shonda Rhimes.

She's the legendary TV writer behind Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, & Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

From unemployed scriptwriter in Hollywood, she is now worth $240M. Her storytelling is why Netflix gave her a $450M deal.

Here's her philosophy:🧵 When Rhimes first pitched Grey's Anatomy, ABC executives said:

"No one would watch a show about a woman sleeping with a man the night before starting a new job."

16.25M viewers tuned in for the pilot.

This wasn’t luck—it was science.

Rhimes followed 10 storytelling rules:

I write 5,000 words every day.

How?

By treating writing like a mental sport.

9 simple habits I use to stay mentally fit as a pro writer:🧵 1/ Read 1-2 pages of a thesaurus

This takes me 15 minutes every morning.

It’s a great brain exercise and teaches you a lot about language.

Words are your tools, so keep adding to your toolbox.

Here's how I fit it into my routine:

I can write a 60,000-word book in 30 days.

Here's how I write a 5,000-word chapter in 90 minutes (in 3 simple steps): Before you start writing, you need to have two items in place:

1. Your title
2. Your outline

If you don't have these, you don't know what you're writing about.

Check the end of the thread—there are 2 extra resources to help you.

Before we dive in, let's do some quick math:

I asked 195,000 people for the best book they read in 2024.

These 14 turned up the most (so they will make for great reading over the holidays):🧵 1. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

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