Mountains In Bogota, Beaches In Cartagena, Colombia | #CoffeeWithCole Episode 6

"Where should we go today?" I asked the girl whose knees make a cameo in the above photo.

She brought her lips together, thinking hard. "Mmmm, let's go to the beach. But if it's storming, let's not. But maybe it won't storm. We can see if it's going to storm?"

"Exploring it is," I said. We had come all this way—might as well.

For seven days, we were Colombians. We got lost in the city streets of Bogota, and walked our naked toes along the coral in the ocean. We sat in tiny cafes drinking fresh guanoabana juice while hiding from the rain, pulling our chairs further inside to safety. We ate ceviche and I tried to order more guacamole in Spanish, which she would correct for the waiter, prompting a nod and a smile that said yes, I think I understand. We saw candy cane churches, the exterior a swirling red and white pattern from bottom to top, and we apologized to the guards who told us we could not take pictures of the Capitolio Nacional. We took a cable car up to the top of Monserrate, the mountain that overlooks the vastness that is Bogota, and we spent hours swishing our hands in the warm water of Playa Blanca. 

With each experience, she smiled with nostalgia, and at the same time introduced me to her old friend: home.

This was my first time in Colombia.

One of the greatest challenges I have faced as a writer is remembering the value of not-doing. In fact, catch me in a quiet moment and I will tell you that writing, true writing, has very little to do with "doing," and far more to do with "allowing." 

Ideas, good ones at least, cannot be demanded to work. 

They are like children. All you can do is bring them to the park and let them run around. They will bring their grandest discoveries back to you. Trust.

It didn't hit me until we were lying beside the rooftop pool of our hotel in Cartagena that it has been almost five years since I have taken a vacation in a warm climate. I went to Europe at the start of the year, but it was rainy and cold the entire time, and we did a lot more sightseeing than we did relaxing. 

In Colombia, we saw a lot. But we also relaxed. We kicked our feet up in hammocks and watched the clouds pass through the mountains. We walked up and down the beach, climbing rocks to find a better view of the endless horizon. And I became aware of how long it has been since letting go of the constant need to "do."

I felt like I was seeing the world through new eyes again.

This is the value of travel. This is also the value of stepping away. Productivity, goal-setting, awareness of what you need to get done today so that you can move forward tomorrow, all these things are essential for long-term growth and ultimately "success."

But there is a different kind of success that comes with exploration. 

The kind that only asks one thing of you:

Look around.

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As always, hit me up on social, Tweet me, Instagram me, or ask me a question on Quora. I'm always game for some back and forth.

Also, I have been doing daily mini vlogs on Instagram Stories, if you want to see more of the day to day.

Now, here's all the content you missed:

Inc Magazine

1. Are You Creative or Are You an Artist? (You Might Be Neither)

2. 9 Brutal Truths Every Millennial Looking for a Job Needs to Hear (It Will Put Things in Perspective)

3. The 1 Striking Difference Between a Successful Morning Routine and a Failing One

4. 11 Books Every Entrepreneur Needs to Read in 2017

5. What Do The Future of Bookstores Look Like? Amazon Just Showed Us (And It's Awesome)

Quora

1. What does "know yourself" mean?

2. If you could give a 20-year-old person one piece of advice, what would you tell them?

3. How do I become mentally strong?

4. Why don't people dress nicely when traveling?

5. What are the biggest pains of being a millennial / twentysomething?

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What I'm Currently Reading

So, this was definitely an impulse buy at the bookstore a month ago. I just cracked it open, and I'm hooked. The Best American Short Stories 2016. 

I never really got into short stories when I was studying creative writing in college—I'm not sure why. Maybe I just wasn't ready for the form yet. Either way, I'm on board now, and a big reason why is because of how much movement is packed into a handful of pages. 

Short stories don't waste any time. (I also find reading fiction, in particular, to be extremely colorful, and I find my own writing is far more descriptive and immersive when I am reading stories.)

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What's Next?

Well, I'm moving to LA at the end of July (if you didn't already catch that on Instagram). I'm heading out there next week to look at spots.

But before that, I'll be in New York this Thursday for the Quora Top Writer meet up—which I'm really excited for. There are going to be a few editors from major publications there as well, so that will be cool.

I have been getting a lot of requests to start doing more vlogs, and to make my YouTube channel actually active. I'll be completely honest, I think of all the platforms out there, I'm the least knowledgable about YouTube and what makes a vlog compelling (I'm a writer, remember).

If anyone has any suggestions, good resources to check out, or even just things you'd like to see me vlog and talk about, PLEASE share. Comment here. Tweet me. Instagram me. Pigeon mail me. Whatever works for you. 

Cheers.

Entrepreneur On Fire Podcast Featuring Nicolas Cole

Unreal.

For those that don't know, the Entrepreneur On Fire podcast is a big milestone. It's one of the biggest podcasts in its niche, and the fact that I got the opportunity to chat about my journey with John Lee Dumas, the host (and pretty awesome entrepreneur himself) was so cool.

I remember when I first started getting into talking on podcasts. One of my friends said, "Man, one day you'll be on like, Entrepreneur On Fire, or something." That was three years ago.

Just goes to show the power of patience and persistence. 

Anyway, on this podcast I got into the nitty-gritty of how I became one of the Top Writers on Quora, got my column with Inc Magazine, and mastered the Quora system to get work featured in TIME, Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, The Chicago Tribune, and dozens more.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Cheers!

The jumbleThink Podcast Featuring Nicolas Cole: Millennials, Writing Online, and More

Last week, I chatted with Michael Woodward over at jumbleThink—a podcast focused around helping dreamers, makers, innovators and influencers dream big and refine their ideas. 

This was a really fun podcast. He asked some awesome questions, and I got fired up talking about the Millennial generation. 

Listen below, or check out the full post about the episode on the jumbleThink website here.

Featured In Forbes: Leaving My 9-To-5 To Become A Full-Time Writer

It is beyond humbling to have my story featured in Forbes (click here to read the article). 

Whoever said writing is a dying craft got it all wrong.

I remember when I first started writing on the Internet, way back in 2007 as a gamer. The whole world of blogging and content writing at that time was still very, very new, and everyone was trying to find their footing. I just happened to find mine by writing about World of Warcraft and being a ridiculous teenager.

I took a few years after that to study, first journalism at the University of Missouri and then creative writing at Columbia College Chicago. I spent a lot more time reading and writing short stories. That was a big transition for me, taking an early interest in writing blogs about video games and refining it into a more widely accepted form of expression.

When I came back to writing on the Internet in 2015, I stumbled upon Quora. Quora took everything I had thought I'd known about writing and flipped it on its head. Instead of writing things in isolation, I started writing in public again. Every single Question on that site was a writing prompt, and no matter what came out onto the page, I shared it. I let people read that day's work, and told myself whatever the feedback, I would try again the next day.

When people say they want to be a writer, they talk about it as if it's this elusive sort of title—you wear artsy clothes and hang out at coffee shops and carry around old English classics. But it's that context that has made so many people think that writing is dying. How does that fit into our fast-paced world of today?

It doesn't.

Writing isn't dying. Writing is changing, just like every other art form has changed over the years. And if you want to be a successful writer, or successful at whatever it is you love, you have to be willing to learn and adapt to the demands of today.

I still read the classics. If anything, it's what separates me from a lot of other digitally-minded writers. I study Nabokov, and Hemingway, and Dostoevsky. But I also study viral bloggers, and today's best-selling authors. I feed my brain with both, and then think hard about how I can forge a space of my own.

In the past 4 years, I have reached every single writing goal I have set for myself.

The next one?

I want to write and publish a New York Times best seller, independently.

Everyone who has supported my writing, and follows my content on Quora, or my blog, or my Inc column, thank you. You're the reason I push myself to wake up and write something new, every single day.

We've taken it pretty far—a lot farther than a lot of people ever thought.

I want to take it a whole lot farther.

My next book is going to be called How To Leap, and will be coming out in July, 2017.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Launching Digital Press, a Ghostwriting + Influence Agency

Some exciting news...

Over the past seven months, a good chunk of what I have been doing has been ghostwriting for a handful of serial entrepreneurs, CEOs and successful business owners. The business of ghostwriting is a fascinating one, and for those wondering, I recently wrote an article on LinkedIn about how I even found myself ghostwriting for people in the first place.

Here's the thing: By writing daily on Quora for almost three years now, I have learned something very, very important about the Internet—and honestly, what it means to be "successful" in any industry, period.

When you are seen as an authority figure in your respective space, and when you consistently put out high-quality content that provides real value, you open doors of opportunity for yourself that are simply impossible through conventional means of advertising. And I don't mean content for the sake of content, I mean truly unique pieces of work that someone would actually read, sit back, and think to themselves, "Wow, that completely changed my perspective." 

The problem is that most people don't want to invest the time or the resources in order to actually become true thought leaders. They want to spend money on ads, or hire a PR firm to get them a feature article in a major publication once every other month, because they think those more popular (and usually cost effective) roads will get them where they want to go, faster.

Let me explain something to you: becoming a true thought leader in your industry is hard, hard work. It takes a lot of time. It takes patience. And it takes having a ruthless commitment to providing more value to the people in your space or industry than anyone else out there. It's a competition for attention, and you have to be willing to go the distance in order to keep people's eyeballs on you. 

...But when you become a thought leader? The opportunities start rolling in—at a rate you would have never been able to achieve through conventional means of advertising.

When I started building my personal brand online, I was maybe a year out of college, if that. My dream was to become a successful writer and author, and I knew that in order to make that dream come true, I would need to learn how to market myself and get my writing in front of the right people. 

This is what building a personal brand is all about. People think personal branding means having a really great image on the Internet, having an ultra professional profile picture, social media headers crafted by a graphic designer, and sharing motivational quotes on Instagram. And yes, all of those things do play a part—but if I'm being completely honest, they play a small part, at best. They are spices. Not the dish itself.

The main course is what you say. It's the knowledge you share—and the way you share it. It's what truly makes you worth listening to instead of someone else. Why should anyone call you a thought leader? What do you know that's ACTUALLY different than what everyone else knows? Can you explain it better? Can you come at it from a different angle? Can you take something extremely complicated and make it easy to understand?

This is how I started ghostwriting for high-profile entrepreneurs and executives: they would read my Quora answers and Inc Magazine columns, and they would email me saying, "I love your writing voice. I have so much I want to share, I just don't know how to share it. I can't write like you. Can you help?"

Yes. Yes, I can.

And that's why I've decided to launch my first company, Digital Press.

Some of the smartest, most knowledgable people I have ever had the fortune of speaking with, often do not have the time to write the amount of high-quality content I know from personal experience is absolutely required in order to build a personal brand online.

However, we are now living in a day and age when people are not just interested in the company's story—they are interested in the stories of the people who started it. They want to know the CEO. They want to know their journey. They want to look to the individual for guidance and insight, because they were the one who brought their vision to life.

To have a personal brand, and to be a true thought leader in your industry is the single most valuable thing you could possibly have in today's economy. 

When you are a thought leader, opportunities come to you:

• Inbound clients
• Speaking opportunities
• Book deals (or the ability to write and self-publish your own book, to your own audience)
• Hold mastermind groups
• High-profile podcast appearances
• Your own work featured in major publications like TIME, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc Magazine, etc.
• Opportunities to collaborate and network with other well-known thought leaders

So, what is Digital Press?

Digital Press is a ghostwriting agency, where everything you've seen me do for myself, we do for you.

It's for the person who has built a successful company, and realizes that investing in their own personal brand is the single most valuable return on investment they could possibly make. The person who, instead of paying a PR firm a retainer each month, understands that at a certain point, they can get their own high-quality content republished by major publications. The person who, instead of spending money on digital advertising, can organically attract attention by writing extremely valuable pieces of content on the Internet on social platforms like Quora, Medium, and LinkedIn. 

Digital Press is for the person who has more than enough industry expertise, they just need help with the heavy lifting, and most importantly, want their content crafted in a way that is highly shareable and easy to read.

This is a culmination of my years spent writing online, refining the art of constantly putting out high-performing, extremely valuable content. My work has been featured in dozens of major publications: TIME, Forbes, Fortune, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, The Chicago Tribune, Fox News, Apple News, Entrepreneur, and more. I have amassed over 20,000,000 views on all of my written content. I have appeared on podcasts with millions of listeners, and I have built a powerful network of industry influencers and thought leaders.

All because I wrote one valuable piece of content, every single day, in the right places online.

The same process I discovered and executed on to build myself into a thought leader, is what we do for you at Digital Press.