Writing has been a gamechanger for establishing and growing my consulting business (consulting is an excellent career or side hustle to jumpstart your FIRE fund!).
When you’re published, people see you as an authority in your field. If you’re new, it’s a way to get established. If you’re pivoting, getting published on different topics can give you traction in a new target area.
Of course, writing itself can be monetized – either by monetizing your blog with sponsors and/or ads or turning your blog into a book and collecting an advance and/or royalties.
When I first started coaching on careers, my focus was early career, but a column with CNBC Executive Careers helped broaden my reach to experienced professionals. Landing a column in Forbes Careers ensured that people would see my work on a regular basis and also led to Jump Ship, my third book project. Since starting my business in 2008, I have written well over 1,000 blogs and still publish one or more new pieces per week.
How do I continue to find fresh subjects to cover? Here are 7 writing prompts I use that could work for you too:
1 – Work you already did or are currently doing with clients
You can keep your client specifics confidential, but the general issues you advise one client about are probably similar to the ones your reader is facing. Write about the before and after with a client you worked with so people can see a real-life transformation (and have a better sense of what you do!).
2 – Emails with prospective clients
When a prospect asks why they should choose you, that’s a potential blog post on the best way to choose a coach, wedding planner, designer, or fill-in-the-blank with your business. Save all the emails where prospects ask you questions, and they might need just a little editing for context to make into a full-fledged piece. Emails with a prospect are likely conversational, easy-to-digest, and therefore already perfectly voiced for a blog post.
3 – Responses to media inquiries
If you pitch your expertise to media outlets (take this free 3-day pitching challenge to start or grow your pitching skills!), those soundbites of advice can be fleshed out into an advice piece or a summary of trends in your field. Oftentimes our expertise comes so easily to us, we forget how valuable it is. Those tips and tricks you pitch to the local reporter are helpful to people. These are the topics that your audience wants to know about.
4 – Holiday-themed topics
There is a holiday most every month (use this free publicity calendar highlights special days throughout the year, including story idea and PR tips). With a little imagination, you can tie your business or your expertise to that holiday. I use holiday themes to guide my editorial calendar – recapping the year in Dec, new year’s resolutions in Jan. You could do love and career for Valentine’s Day in Feb, luck and career for St. Patrick’s Day in March, money and career for income tax deadlines in April, etc.
5 – Quotes
If you feel like writing a snarky piece with bite, start with a funny quote: In a fight between you and the world, bet on the world. – Franz Kafka. As a career coach, I might open with the Kafka quote and write about the importance of listening to feedback (i.e., if lots of people are telling you the same thing, you might be well-served to listen). If you feel like writing a call to action, use a motivational quote: There are no limits. There are plateaus, and you must not stay there; you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. – Bruce Lee. I keep a running Word document where I copy and paste interesting quotes as I find them.
6 – Reader suggestions
When people subscribe to my career newsletter, they get an automated email where I ask them outright what questions they’d like me to cover in future newsletters. Just like I keep a running list of quotes, I keep those questions in a running list and refer back to them for future blog topics.
7 – Past blog posts that need a Part 2
You can’t cover everything in a blog post, so continue where you left off. Or sometimes a previous post suggests a logical companion topic. This piece grew out of an older piece from years ago about repurposing email exchanges to identify client concerns.
As a busy entrepreneur, you already have too much to do, so getting double-duty out of work you already do (emails, media pitches, past blogs!) helps you refocus time on the other things on your to-do list.
What is your favorite way of generating blog ideas?
What should I write about in future posts? (See what I did there – cue prompt #6!)
We are Scott and Caroline, 50-somethings who spent the first 20+ years of our adult lives in New York City, working traditional careers and raising 2 kids. We left full-time work in our mid-40’s for location-independent, part-time consulting projects and real estate investing, in order to create a more flexible and travel-centric lifestyle. 
Financial independence and early retirement is not something we originally focused on, but over time realized it was possible. Our free report, 
