How to tell if your creative work's working or if you're just early.
A free webinar on the six signals that separate early from failing.
33,000+
Creators read my work
38 mins
Start to finish, no filler
6 signals
A method, not a pep talk
Six signals. That's the whole method.
What you'll learn
Why your own read on your progress is structurally unreliable, and the specific reason it lags months behind reality. Understand this and a lot of what you've been feeling stops being mysterious.
The scorecard, included
You'll get the six signal scorecard the moment you sign up. Nine pages, space to write, and a scoring page at the end. Have it open while you watch and you'll finish the session with an actual number rather than a vague feeling.
What this isn't
No tactics. No growth hacks. Nothing about algorithms. This is one question, answered properly, and it's the question everything else depends on.
Most advice for creators assumes the problem is knowledge. It usually isn't. You almost certainly know what to do. The information is free and you've consumed plenty of it.
The problem is that you cannot tell whether any of it is working. So every decision you make about your own creative work gets made in the dark, on the basis of a feeling that arrives months late and lies to you in the meantime.
By the end of this session you'll have a number. Not a vibe or a hunch. An actual score against six specific signals, run on your own work, using evidence already sitting in your archive.
You'll know whether you're early or whether something is genuinely broken. Those two situations call for completely different responses, and most creators can't tell them apart, so they push harder when they should be changing something, or change everything when all they needed was more time.
You'll also know which specific thing to work on next, if anything. Most people leave clear on whether their next quarter should go on positioning, frequency, or simply carrying on.
Built for creators who are still in it.
Writers, YouTubers, podcasters and newsletter creators somewhere past the beginning and nowhere near the end.
You've been publishing consistently for a while and the numbers haven't moved the way you expected.
You've watched people who started around the same time as you go quiet, and wondered whether you're next.
You can't tell whether you're building something slowly or wasting your time, and nobody around you can tell you either.
You keep going, but you've started needing a reason to, and "just keep showing up" has stopped being enough.
Hi there!
I'm David - I run How to Write for a Living, a Substack publication with over 30,000 subscribers, alongside a podcast with 100,000+ downloads. I've spent years working with writers, consultants, and thought leaders one-to-one, helping them turn real expertise into an audience and a business that actually works.
I built most of what I know the hard way, mostly alone, which is exactly why Velocity exists. I don't want anyone else to take as long as I did to figure out that the fastest path forward runs through other people, not around them.
David McIlroy
Strategy Coach for Creative Entrepreneurs
What people say:
David has sound advice and great experience. Best of all he's a great guy.
Ryan Maxwell
I just want to put in a plug for David. I've worked with him, and he is a great person to do coaching with.
Marko Schmitt
Own it.
Stop guessing.
Start scoring.
Your work is either early or it isn't. Let's talk about how to tell.
