This May be The Hardest Thing I’ve Done All Year…

When I first came up with the idea for my soon-to-be-released Story Power Profit Pack, I thought of publishing it as a pack of playing cards — 52 pointers in all.  

I shelved that idea because, as cool as the cards might have looked, they would been less useful than the format I settled on.

I’ve designed the Profit Pack to be a content creation playbook, a manual to help you transform your content from ignored to adored and turn marketing from frustrating to fun. 

I encourage you to print it out. Keep it handy. Page through it. Write notes in the margins. (Not possible with a pack of cards)

I may roll out the playing cards eventually. That’s why I decided to stick with 52 strategies, tips, and tactics (a.k.a. pointers) for the Profit Pack. 

(Little did I know how painful that decision would be.)

When I drafted my first outline for the Profit Pack, I came up with 127 pointers.

I spent the next several days combining and cutting. I edited the pack down to 61 pointers last week…

…and then I hit a wall. 

(BTW, “hit a wall” is a metaphor. If I literally hit a wall, I might break my hand. I shine a spotlight on metaphors, and why they’re powerful, in Pointer #45.)

So I took a break, fired up the TV, and watched “The Shawshank Redemption…”

…which helped. 

I figured if Andy Dufresne can swim through 500 yards of raw sewage (that’s not a metaphor)…

…I can edit a list of pointers down from 61 to 52. 

And I did! 

I worked a lot over the holiday weekend – which created some family discord (an amusing-in-retrospect tale I tell in the Profit Pack’s welcome letter). But it was all worth the effort. 

I finished the Profit Pack last night…

…or so I thought. 

When I read it this morning, I realized I’d left out one critical pointer, one that can’t be skipped. I thought of it as I reflected on my creation journey. 

Now what? 

Easy. That extra pointer will appear in the Profit Pack’s closing letter as a bonus tip. The letter describes what you can do next after reading the Profit Pack and that bonus tip meshes perfectly with that subject. 

The Profit Pack goes on sale Thursday. And you, dear subscriber, will see a special offer (only visible for those who read to the bottom). That offer will expire when the ball drops in Times Square on Saturday night.