James Clear did not start as the world’s most famous habits expert. In fact, he started as a guy with a shattered face.
During a high school baseball game, a bat flew out of a hitter’s hands and struck James directly between the eyes. It was a brutal, life altering injury. The seizures and months of rehab meant his dreams of being a top tier athlete were essentially trashed in a second.
But that failure was his greatest teacher.
The Invisible Strategy
While he was recovering, James realized he could not make giant leaps anymore. He had to focus on the tiny changes. Getting to sleep on time. Walking for ten minutes. Studying for one hour. He called these ‘small wins’ (and later, yes, Atomic Habits).
By the time he got out of college, James had started applying this to his business life too. But here’s the rub: At that time, James was still just a guy with a blog. He was a generalist. That’s when he decided something had to change. He would do the one thing many entrepreneurs are not wont to do.
He would pick a lane and stay there.
His one expertise, he knew, was how to create mini-habits that could create maxi-results; an obscure specialty to be sure. While a book was the obvious vehicle for this path, the thing was, he wasn’t a “known” expert. So here is the other thing that set James Clear apart: He made the conscious decision to become the expert in his unique field, whether anyone else considered him one or not, whether any publisher or school or whatever bestowed that moniker on him or not.
While he refused to wait for someone to give him permission to be that expert, Clear also knew that without some sort of platform, he was not someone anyone would listen to. He would be just another guy with an idea.
So he decided to build that platform first.
Diving In Head First
In 2012, Clear launched a newsletter. It was definitely not a big launch as he had no list, no name, and no fancy ads. But what he did have was a commitment to write consistently about the one thing he had learned the hard way – how to get better by changing little habits.
Slowly but surely his list grew, and grew, as did his reputation. Each issue of his newsletter proved his expertise.
The bet paid off.
By the time he was ready to write what would become his runaway bestseller, Atomic Habits, James Clear’s newsletter – and name and expertise – was such that he had all the leverage. He had a line of publishers at his door who had not only seen his book proposal, but his newsletter numbers as well.
When Atomic Habits launched in 2018, it did not just sell well. It exploded.
• 25 million copies sold
• Translated into 60 languages
• 260 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list
• And a newsletter with millions of subscribers promoting it
All because he decided that he didn’t need anyone’s permission to share his gift and vision with the world, that in fact, he did have an expertise worth knowing about. As a result, James Clear now has a multi-million-dollar content company that runs with a tiny (ahem, shall we say “atomic?”) team.
(Like stories like this? If so, you’ll love my own newsletter, Notes to an Entrepreneur, where I share the breakthrough storyies, and strategies, of the world’s best entrepreneurs.)
