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The official podcast from the team at BookFunnel, hosted by Jack Shilkaitis, Kelli Tanzi, and Emma Alisyn, featuring guest interviews, self-publishing industry discussions, and tips for using BookFunnel to build an author business.
0:00: When people release a book and it doesn't sell, they want to feel a certain kind of way about that experience.
0:05: Like they want it to mean something about them or about the industry or you don't win the lottery, right?
0:10: But it feels personal if you release a new book and it's crickets, which was maybe a little jarring, which is like, if that's at that phase, what you need is an audience, give that book away, give it away for free and build an audience.
0:23: I'm in a different place now and I know a lot of authors I know are in.
0:26: Different place now than they were 7 years ago.
0:29: And I'm like, the things I needed to quit then are not the things I needed to quit now and vice versa.
0:35: Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast, where indie authors get real world advice on writing, publishing, and growing a career on their own terms.
0:44: Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales, and connect with your audience.
0:52: Each episode we aim To bring you insights from authors, experts, and industry insiders who have been there, done that, and then some.
0:59: My name is Jack.
1:00: I am our lead author, sports specialist here at Book Funnel, and I am joined today, as always by my co-hosts, Emma Allison and Kelly Tanzy.
1:08: And our guest for this episode of the Book Funnel podcast, someone who needs no introduction, the legendary Becca Sime, a returning guest, I should mention, was an introduction.
1:21: Becca, welcome back to the Book Funnel podcast.
1:25: For those in the audience who maybe don't know who you are, what you do, if for some reason they haven't heard of Becca Sime, right?
1:33: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're all about.
1:36: Yeah, I do author coaching mostly.
1:38: I am also an author.
1:40: I've written both fiction and nonfiction, so I use Book Funnel as an author and love it.
1:45: But I also coach authors and so most of my day is taken up with either group coaching calls with authors, individual coaching, and the goal is how do we have more success?
1:56: Like how do we get you to have more success in your author career?
2:00: And so we use a variety of tools to get there.
2:03: We use some archetype work.
2:05: We do like things like Engram as well.
2:07: My primary specialty is in the Clifton.
2:10: Strengths, which is about success.
2:12: Like how are you wired to be the most successful and how do we get you to be acting in those arenas more often.
2:19: And I do some nonfiction writing around that.
2:23: I have, I think, 7 or 8 books out in the QuickBook series currently and then run the Quick Cast podcast as well and do courses.
2:32: Yeah, that's me.
2:33: Right.
2:34: So yeah, you're you're well known.
2:37: In the industry, so I, I don't know that anybody hasn't heard of you at this point, if they've been around for a while.
2:42: But for some, this is probably gonna be an introduction to some of those ideas.
2:45: I know, in, in our last episode, we had talked a little bit about like Clifton strengths and that sort of thing.
2:51: It's not gonna be what we talked about today, although I know there are lots of people, lots of authors who are really interested in that.
2:57: If they are, I would suggest they go and look for your resources on that or maybe watch the last episode of the podcast.
3:02: But you've got A Kickstarter that's running right now and you've been doing some interesting things to promote that, and I want to talk about some of that first and pick your brain on that because I think that'll be relevant to authors too because Kicks we've been talking a lot about Kickstarter on the podcast in recent months.
3:17: A lot of authors are looking at that as an option.
3:20: What, how have you been promoting this, this Kickstarter of yours in a unique way?
3:24: Yeah, I started off, I know, I, I'm like I've got some things that I want to talk about, but I started off by asking myself the question, like, what do I love doing and what am I good at?
3:36: Because I feel like so often when we approach marketing, we are trying to do a best practice thing as though best practice has any relevance.
3:45: And often And this is the thing, I, I just don't think enough people realize that when you are extremely good at something, you are more likely to get better at that at a more exponential rate than you are to get good at something you're not good at already.
4:02: So the sort of leaning into what am I really great at?
4:06: And, and I love the sort of group enthusiasm, kind of like cheer.
4:12: etc.
4:13: Like, let's get everybody really excited about something and I have a real easy time kind of helping a group feel like, Well, let's all stand up and do this thing.
4:21: And so I'm like, Well, let's do something that takes advantage of that.
4:24: So I decided to do like a podcast tour where I went through everybody that I know and love in the podcast arena.
4:32: And and then I set up a tour where I want my whole, and I'm trying to talk about different things on every Single podcast.
4:39: So I'm trying very hard to kind of drop little things from the book.
4:44: The book has 55 chapters in it right now, and there may be more coming.
4:48: And so I have a lot of different things that I can possibly talk about.
4:52: So I'm doing 18 different stops on this podcast tour, and then every single one of those stops has an individualized prize.
5:00: So something that you can only win by listening to the book funnel.
5:03: Podcast.
5:04: You can only win by listening.
5:06: So and we made the prizes ourselves.
5:09: So they're the little like friendship bracelet things that have different sayings on them.
5:14: So sometimes I say in the podcast, like, this is the one that we're playing for today.
5:18: And so it's almost like, can I go and try to collect these things or can I go and try and win these prizes?
5:23: Like there's an element of riling up the base, right?
5:27: When we do things like that, I'm getting everybody excited.
5:29: But the other thing we did that I'm super excited about is that we made a collectible, like a true collectible, something that will only be produced one time.
5:39: We're making a limited number of them and we're we're doing a vinyl album.
5:43: Like an audio selected audio from the book vinyl album that will also come with, of course, a book funnel audio link for the finished audio book.
5:52: But I had this album cover designed, it has like the collectible stamp on it.
5:58: I'm going to hand sign everything and then that's the only time you'll be able to get this particular thing.
6:05: So we're not going to have them available.
6:06: anywhere else.
6:07: We're also giving them away as one of the prizes for the tour stops, because there are some international, we're not doing the vinyls, we're not going to ship them internationally because we've had so many issues with international shipping with Kickstarter.
6:21: So we're going to give them away as prizes so people can still feel, even if they don't live in the US like they have an opportunity to get one of them.
6:28: We don't want to shut the opportunity.
6:29: Down, but, but I intentionally was thinking about what do I love doing?
6:34: Like I love parties and games, and so we are going to do a party and a game to make the Kickstarter and it's long.
6:41: It's like a 35 day Kickstarter.
6:44: So it's just going to be like one continuous party of me talking about it and sharing different things and giving stuff away and hosting lives and It's like it's all the stuff that I like doing.
6:55: Yeah, yeah, no, I love that, not only because you're focusing on like what you enjoy doing, so it makes the process just so much more natural, but then it it it sounds fun to be a part of that Kickstarter, right?
7:10: The rewards notwithstanding, just like being a part of like, almost this like, you know, Easter egg hunt or sort of thing, if you Well, that's really neat.
7:17: I don't think I've heard anybody take that approach.
7:20: I'm sure there's somebody out there who's done something like that.
7:22: But yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting.
7:25: So as for, for, because I know there's going to be somebody who's gonna ask, I don't know if you mind sharing or divulging like for those vinyls, how are you having those produced?
7:34: I know somebody's gonna be thinking, oh, I want to do that for my Kickstarter.
7:37: Do you have any recommendations out there?
7:40: I do.
7:41: We have a local, not a local to me, but like a US based company that we're using, which I have it listed in the Kickstarter.
7:49: So if you want to go look at the page, you can see where Leslie put in the name of the company because they are In the US and they produce vinyl albums, it is not as cheap as it would have been, right?
8:02: Like, which is why we made it collectible instead of making them the way I think about it, the difference is like, if I'm going to make it to sell in my direct sale store.
8:12: I have to be able to reasonably make 4X right?
8:16: So if I buy an album for $8 total, including the shipping to me, I need to be able to charge $24 for that, or wait, $32 for that album.
8:26: I cannot do math.
8:27: Sorry.
8:29: You're math.
8:29: , in order to make any, any amount of money back off of that album, I have to be able to charge a significant amount of money in direct sales.
8:39: And so I thought, this isn't going to be something unlike when we did shipping from China, where we did the card decks and then we're selling those and things like that.
8:47: This is just a collectible.
8:48: And so all it has to do is kind of pay for a reasonable facsimile of the amount of work that it's going to take us to do plus pay for the thing itself.
8:57: And then it becomes something.
8:58: thing for the fans to have as a memory of like, this was something we all did together and it's a commemoration too of like, this is probably the final book in the QuickBook series.
9:10: Like I don't think I don't have any plans to do any more of them.
9:13: So it also is like puts a period on this kind of span of years of my career that is like, you know, memorable, I guess.
9:22: So this is like the period on the QuickBook series.
9:25: Right.
9:26: So we're trying to help people have an opportunity to participate in that memory, and at as cheap of a price as we possibly can, because there's also other elements on that level.
9:38: But I did, I wasn't thinking of it as an investment in future direct sales.
9:43: It was very specifically a collectible.
9:46: Right.
9:46: Right, right.
9:48: No, like I'm having, now that you've mentioned it, I, I'm having daydreams of my, my own in that in that arena, which, you know, it, I, I think what's gonna be interesting to a lot of people too is if you can, if you can do a Kickstarter or any any marketing effort and like you said, do what you enjoy, how, how is, how stressful has this Kickstarter campaign been to previous marketing efforts you've done?
10:13: Yeah, I, I don't feel stressed out about this, because this is something that I really love doing.
10:20: What stresses me out is the stuff that is harder for me, which is like, I had to sit down and do this, you know, email campaign of like, what are all the emails that we're going to send and how am I going to try to convince people to buy this Kickstarter and you know like that kind of thing, which even just you can hear the language.
10:37: that I'm using about it, it tells you how little I enjoy doing that.
10:42: But that part has been extremely stressful because I feel like I'm having to sort of, you know, convince people as opposed to like, this is a fun, exciting thing they can do for free, the podcast tour, right?
10:55: Like you can just go listen to a bunch of episodes and decide if you want to back this or not.
11:00: You don't have to I don't have to persuade you to do it.
11:03: You can listen to the content that I'm delivering, and then you can decide to go back to the Kickstarter on your own if you like the content that I deliver.
11:11: What stresses me out is the idea of having to actively market myself, right?
11:16: Like to try to sell myself to somebody or convince someone that they should spend money on my stuff.
11:21: And that's why I prefer to do a lot of free content.
11:24: So like I give stuff away and then say, if you like this, there's a whole bunch more of it on the paper.
11:29: Patreon.
11:30: That stuff is easy, but the selling is really difficult.
11:34: So I had to kind of decide for myself.
11:36: I do want to give a good faith effort.
11:39: Like we're spending all this time developing this Kickstarter.
11:42: We have all these collectibles.
11:44: I don't want to not utilize them effectively.
11:47: So I had to come up with a way to sort of talk about it for fun, that would make me excited to talk about it.
11:53: And it's been so much less stressful.
11:56: And again, the book It is sort of about sustainability a little bit.
12:00: So it's been a much more sustainable process for me to do the Kickstarter because I get excited about like, oh, I get to do the book funnel recording this morning, or I'm on the spa Girls this afternoon.
12:11: Like I just am seeing my friends and hanging out with my friends, and then inviting other friends to come and check this thing out if they want to, but there's no pressure because we're giving you free content that will help you.
12:23: So.
12:24: Yeah.
12:24: Right.
12:25: Right.
12:25: No, I get that.
12:25: And for some People, the sales aspect of it might be what they're comfortable with.
12:30: They love it, and they would just lean into that then I imagine for some people, like, what's, how do you find out what your, what's your strong point is then?
12:38: I mean, imagine there's some self-awareness because you probably, you know yourself pretty well, but is it just a matter of like, you got to kind of try it and see what aspects of it you do like and then lean into those?
12:49: Yeah, some of it is experimentation.
12:51: Unfortunately, I don't think that they're like the strengths and things.
12:54: Like that, they can't tell you what you're going to like, what you're going to be good at, because even if you look at other people who have my strengths and my anagram type, they're still going to have different personality traits and combos and things.
13:07: But what I know happens, because I see it happen all the time, is when you know that you've done things similar in the past that have worked for you, or you've really struggled to do things in the past, like we have a lot of people who are extremely introverted.
13:23: Which by the way, the talk that I'm doing at Author Nation this upcoming week is called Marketing for Introverts, because there's this whole segment of authors who don't love doing stuff like the big parties and you know like, so how do I market if I don't love doing that?
13:39: How do I market if I don't love asking people to buy my stuff?
13:43: And it's, you will see ways in which in the past you have not loved doing things or things have not gone well for you when you have tried them before.
13:53: That is not likely to have changed.
13:55: So rather than trying to force yourself to do something, so the people who really struggle to run ads because they don't do well with experimentation and numbers and they don't know how to test things, etc.
14:05: it's like OK, how about we take a pause on that then and do something that you are excited about that seems like it might be interesting.
14:13: If social media is not your bag, then don't do it.
14:16: Do something else, right?
14:17: Like we have so much of an intuition, but we just don't trust it because we're always looking at the stage.
14:24: We're trying to see what other people are doing.
14:27: And, and not realizing that there are so many hundreds of people who are successful in ways we've just never heard of, because we don't have the ability to hear from every single successful person.
14:39: So we tend to hear what we want to hear that confirms the bias that we have about ourselves and what's possible.
14:46: Like, I'll never be able to do this because I'm not an extrovert.
14:49: It's like, well, there are 1000 introverted authors who are making six figures, so they are doing it.
14:56: It's possible for you to do it too.
14:57: There's something you said there that I just, I'm sorry, I, I wanted to, I latched on to that.
15:03: Confirming the bias of what we think about ourselves.
15:06: That, that, that hit me.
15:07: Can you speak to that a little bit more?
15:08: I'm sorry, I don't have a great follow-up question, but if you can open up more about that, that's Yeah, we have a tape in our head of things that we are critical about ourselves for.
15:20: So like I hear a lot of authors say things like, Well, I'm, I'm not Social.
15:24: And I'm like, Wow, but what does that mean?
15:26: Like, why are you saying that?
15:27: Is it because of something that happened to you in the 8th grade, or is it because you have different skills?
15:33: Right?
15:34: So if you're not social, then you probably have others, well, I'm not good at anything.
15:37: I'm not good at anything.
15:38: Or we see people who don't want to have a size 11 plate, 11 out of 10.
15:44: And they don't want to be as busy as some of the people are who have these size 11 plates.
15:48: So they're like, Well, I can never be successful because I can't work that hard.
15:52: And it's like, there are so many people who are successful who are working half as hard as those people.
15:58: It's just they are doing it in ways that maximizes the returns.
16:03: So not every single person who works that hard is successful, first of all, but I will assume that they are because there's some kind of bias I have against a part of my And it always comes from something in the past, either people who've told us things or a fear we have about ourselves that we are just convinced that it's true.
16:23: So then we go looking for the things to confirm that bias without realizing it, because what we seek is certainty.
16:30: And again, I think we don't realize about ourselves that we are seeking certainty about our decisions.
16:36: And so we will look for anything we can to to confirm whatever It is.
16:41: And it might be a bias against something, it might be a bias towards something, because it really depends on the person of what that is.
16:50: But you know, high restorative people is one like 1 g, right?
16:55: There are so many people who are problem solving and looking for the problems and what's wrong and I need to fix these things.
17:01: And so they have all of these expectations about themselves that they think negative things.
17:07: So then they go looking for the confirmation.
17:09: that yes, this is really a problem that I have, and this is actually when the reality is, it's probably not the problem that you think it is.
17:17: It's just you're not that person, right?
17:20: I think that's interesting because we think about like the the TikTok, you know, the people that can just put their face on TikTok and do the thing and, and you hear so many people saying like, I can't do that.
17:31: Like I don't want to do, you know, and, but you're always looking for all those authors who are super successful doing that thing.
17:38: And you're like, but I can't do it.
17:39: So I guess I'm not successful.
17:41: And, you know, it's a really good idea to like a reminder that we are all different people and success comes in different.
17:50: Yeah, and even TikTok success comes differently, right?
17:53: Like we tend to see, and this is just, it's the, there are some sort of philosophical or logical truisms that are true about humans because of certain bio.
18:03: Logical tics that we have and things like when I get a pattern that has a certain number of people that have the same thing, I start to extrapolate the pattern to a larger number of people than is actually true, because I'm, again, I'm looking for certainty.
18:20: So if I see 2 or 3 people who have all taken off on TikTok because they are doing dances, right, then I'm like, Well, everybody's doing dances on TikTok and I'm like, Well, no.
18:32: And actually there are probably 15 different versions of like what could potentially be happening that is causing success, but the ones that we hear about are the ones that everybody talks about or the ones that we see from stage, and we don't actually see, there are huge amounts of people who are having success doing other things.
18:53: But they may not be making it onto our for you page, or we may not be hearing about them because they're in a different segment of the industry than we're in.
19:01: So the reality is, Dunbar's number, human beings have only the capacity to know about 212 people.
19:09: And so we're always looking for ways to extrapolate truths into larger segments of the population, because we have A desire to have certainty about the boundaries around those 212 people and what's safe for us.
19:24: Again, it's a biological thing.
19:26: It's not personality.
19:27: So the downside is we go looking for things to confirm an expectation that we have and then we ignore all of the evidence to the contrary.
19:36: Like we just don't.
19:38: So here's a really good thing to try.
19:41: If you are the person who's always speaking negatively of yourself and worried and negative about yourself, the negative confirmation bias that you have needs to be challenged.
19:52: So I would challenge you to find 5 positive things to say about yourself today, because you can come up with 100 negative ones.
20:00: So then you think, Oh, there's nothing good about me.
20:02: I have nothing.
20:03: I'm like, Well, but you're just looking at the negative stuff.
20:06: So let's look for the positive stuff.
20:09: So to go back to Kelly's point about TikTok, OK, so if I don't want to put my face on and dance, is there something I could do?
20:18: Could I put my book page turns?
20:21: Could I put a quote on?
20:22: Could I do a carousel?
20:24: If I struggle with technology, could I hire someone?
20:29: Right?
20:29: Like there's all All these options of things that are possible, but we're going looking for this negative information because we don't want to do the thing, or we are afraid of success, or there's a lot of reasons we might be.
20:42: But we don't stop to challenge the assumptions that we have because we assume our brain is correct when actually our brain lies to us a lot.
20:51: And we just don't know it because it's looking for that security, right, that biological safety.
20:56: My God, you said certainty about our decisions and then you say security.
21:01: And I think I just had a light bulb moment because it's been 7 years since the last quit.
21:06: I'm in a different place now and I know a lot of authors I know are in a different place now than they were 7 years ago.
21:12: And I'm like, the things I needed to quit then are not the things I needed to quit now and vice versa.
21:19: Like 3 years ago I could have dived into TikTok.
21:21: I can't do that now.
21:23: So I'm like struggling.
21:25: If you cannot mark it, which is one of the core tenets of being an indie author, like how do you, how do you mourn that and move on?
21:34: Yeah, I mean, it is, that is really one of the big pieces of sustainable life as an author is learning how to say, this is not going to last forever.
21:45: Like whatever it is that I'm doing is not going to last forever.
21:49: And I feel this way about when there's a downturn in the market, when there's a downturn in the economy, when things look more difficult, when my Genre seems more saturated when I'm not writing the thing that's popular.
22:01: It's like, OK, let's not extrapolate that forever into the future.
22:05: Like let's not try to make ourselves feel ashamed or despair or frustration because those feelings should be reserved for life and death situations.
22:18: Like that that is not publishing.
22:20: There's no life and death situation in publishing.
22:22: Claire Taylor said that.
22:23: It's one of my favorite quotes of hers.
22:26: Like we are extrapolating life and death circumstances onto publishing when they do not exist.
22:32: You can reinvent yourself.
22:34: You can take off at some time in the future.
22:38: You will have less time sometimes to do marketing and more times other times, but what is happening today is not going to happen forever.
22:46: So in the same way, the sort of, you know, is it the Eagles song like to everything there's a season, right?
22:52: And, and then it's like, this is going to change, the leaves are going to change, the snow is going to come, but then winter's going to be over.
22:59: And spring is going to happen or mud season, depending on where you live, but like everything is changeable.
23:06: So when we think about this like There's something that we are looking for to happen in the future or in the present that we are afraid will never happen.
23:16: And when we say things like, you know, I don't have the time to market, and I always want to say right now, right now, because you will have time to market in the future.
23:26: And again, it's sort of like the negative confirmation.
23:29: It's if I, if all I focus on is what is not possible, what I am afraid of, what is not going to happen.
23:36: You know, then that's all I'm going to see.
23:38: I'm going to ignore all evidence to the contrary, and this is one of my favorite lines that I use this all the time now, which is the grass is greener where you water it.
23:49: So it's green on the other side of the fence because they're watering it.
23:53: So if we water the grass, it will be green over here.
23:57: So when I think about like, let's not think about the marketing that I can't do, let's think about the marketing I can do.
24:03: So and let me explain why I focus on this, because this verges on toxic positivity, and that is not what I'm talking about.
24:11: I'm not talking about ignoring pain or ignoring frustration or ignoring evidence.
24:16: Right?
24:18: I'm talking about accepting the fact that bad things are going to happen and then doing good in spite of it.
24:25: So the market's saturated.
24:27: OK, great.
24:27: So maybe I can't expect to make money back right away, so maybe I don't invest my mortgage payment into my books, but I can still invest my fund money into my books.
24:39: I can still invest the previous sales back into my books.
24:43: I still have options.
24:44: There's still things I can do with that amount of money.
24:46: I can still publish one book a year, even if I can't do 10.
24:50: It's OK.
24:51: If I could do 10 before and can only do one now, it's not like I'll only be able to do one forever.
24:56: That's what I mean about that sort of object permanence.
24:59: We do not realize that we extrapolate the current frustration into forever in the future as a way of trying to motivate ourselves to do something, but it's not motivating us.
25:11: Yeah.
25:12: It's demotivating us.
25:14: So again, look at the, look at the outcome.
25:17: So if focusing on the fact that I can't mark it is making me not mark it at all, then that emotion is not doing its job for you.
25:25: Like it's not helpful to feel that way.
25:28: So then I would say, OK, great, let's water the grass then.
25:31: So if the grass is greener where I water it, what could I do for marketing that may not look like what other people are doing?
25:37: Could I send a newsletter once a month to make sure I keep my newsletter people engaged?
25:42: Could I put which which social media channel do I love using?
25:47: If I love one of them, but don't love TikTok, great, then use that one and try to do that one with your whole face as much as you're capable of, right?
25:57: So for me, I feel like there's a story your brain is trying to tell you when it tells you that I can't do the marketing on TikTok, right?
26:06: I can't do this.
26:07: I can't do this.
26:08: Like, OK, what are you trying to say?
26:09: Are you trying to say, Well, then I should just give up, right?
26:12: Because if you're not going to give up, then having that feeling is not helpful, because it's you're not going to give up.
26:19: It's, I think it might be me looking at the business phases and like my business should be in a certain phase, but it's actually gone backwards because I've turned into a complete content person.
26:31: Like, I've turned into one of those authors now who just wants to write.
26:35: And I'm like, so how does, how do the business phases affect what things you need to quit, what things you need to QTP?
26:41: Question the premise for those of you who haven't heard TP.
26:45: Thank you, Emma.
26:45: Yeah.
26:47: So it's really important to know with these business phases, and there are 5 of them, and the most common phase that authors are in is research and development, like something like 85% of authors are in research and development.
27:01: It might be more than 85%, but roughly 85%.
27:04: And that means you're not making more than 100% over your expenses back.
27:09: So, if you're making your expenses back, if you spend $2000 on a book, you're making $2000 or less, you're not making $4000 right?
27:17: So once you make $4000 then you're now into the next phase of business, because their demand is there.
27:23: So when you are in a business phase where you're in one of the later phases, you're making more money, you're able to invest back into your business, you know, you're seeing some growth and then you have to move backwards because life, you know, life, life's, no, no, no, no choice.
27:39: It's so important to know that that is not a final decision.
27:43: Like there's no, there's nothing saying you can't move back into phase three again at some point in 2 years or 3 years or 4 years, especially because it's the most common reason people move out of business phase number one right now, where you have any level of growth, right, where you can grow over what you're investing, is that you hit the right trend at the right time, or you hit a pocket of reader response that they cannot stop talking about.
28:12: That is not something that's predictable.
28:14: You don't know if that's going to happen in the future.
28:17: So if we're using that to motivate ourselves to want to write, then it's any book that you write could take off in the future at any time.
28:27: So allowing yourself to just do the writing and then fit the marketing in wherever you're able to fit the marketing in is doing the thing that's sustainable for you right now.
28:37: It's allowing you to continue to Be in this author business, and the only goal of being an author is to just not quit unless you're done, right?
28:49: Because I have this fear that it's, I'm being indulgent or lazy when I tell myself it's OK to just write.
28:55: And like, I'm struggling with that.
28:57: Like, just do what feels good, but not everything's gonna feel good.
29:01: Like you say, you can't ignore essential pain.
29:03: Yeah, I would say there's a big difference for me though, between like, I'm ignoring, I have all the time in the world and and I'm just deciding not to mark it because I don't want to, that you're top 5 achiever, then that might be indulgent, right, for an achiever, but that also wouldn't happen.
29:26: We're struggling.
29:27: We are struggling.
29:29: Yeah.
29:30: But I think the key for Achiever, because the difficulty about taking steps backward in publishing is reminding myself that that's not a forever step, that like I can just as easily have more success in the future as not.
29:46: And the most beneficial thing I can do for my future self is to accept what is happening to me and to not try to not try to expect something different, because when So let's say you have a 40 hour a week job plus you're a parent, right?
30:00: So you've got 80+ hours a week that you are already fully engaged in something else.
30:06: You still need to sleep, right?
30:08: So you still need roughly, what, like 80 hours a week of sleep or something like that, or 70 some hours a week of sleep.
30:16: So we are edging then into territory if there are no more hours in the week.
30:21: Remaining for the things that are not work, family, and sleep.
30:24: You still have to do all these other things with those hours that are left, right?
30:28: If you do not have the time to do it, then not doing it and accepting that is actually helping yourself because it's making you not want to quit and the danger of long term not accepting the reality of where you are and acknowledging that it could change.
30:45: Any time, things could get better at any time, is that it may make you want to not do it anymore because the the demotivation is so strong.
30:54: Like I'm not seeing this, I'm not moving forward.
30:57: I also want to QTP question the premise of this idea that there is a trajectory you should be on.
31:03: Like somehow, if I have 20 books published that I should be making a certain amount of money.
31:09: It's like that's not promised to anyone that and and that mindset actually of, well, I have 60 books, so I should be making $1000 a book a month and therefore I should be making X amount of money.
31:21: That, that attitude doesn't actually help us to remain stable and sustainable.
31:27: It actually makes it more likely that we're going to quit when we don't need to.
31:31: What we need to internalize about this industry is that it is not a business unless it's making you 100% over your profit.
31:40: Like it's not a business yet.
31:42: So we're still treating it like a research and development project.
31:45: If you are not making enough money to reinvest fully over your expenses back into your business, you do not have a viable business model right now and you need To focus on the research and development of that business model.
32:01: And here's the fun part.
32:02: People who are in phase 5, like which is the mature business phase where they are business is producing enough income for them that they're probably going to have a business probably forever.
32:14: The thing they wish the most is that they could be back in phase one again because they miss research and development.
32:20: They miss the lack of pressure, miss being able to do whatever they want.
32:25: There, there's something beneficial about every single phase of business that we are in, and there's a way that you get to Experience the fun and excitement of that phase that you will never get to have again once you leave it.
32:39: Especially because if you get out of phase one and then go back to it, you feel frustrated by being there.
32:44: It's not fun anymore.
32:45: Now you're like, why am I not selling?
32:47: I've got to build this business back up again.
32:50: And then that becomes stressful.
32:52: Whereas when you get into phase 5 and you're like, Oh, people are expecting this from me.
32:56: I can't not deliver it or I won't make money.
32:59: I'm worried about it going away, etc.
33:01: like that level of stress takes away a lot of the experience of that many of us have in the research and development phase, which is why so many people in Phase 5 start second pen names.
33:12: They start new, right?
33:14: They want that freedom again.
33:16: And so again, the grass is greener where you water it.
33:19: Like there's so much benefit in being in phase one.
33:21: It is the most fun to be in that sort of late phase one, early phase two space because you get all the excitement, but you don't have any of the responsibility yet.
33:33: But yeah, I mean, it's, it's it's just a mindset change, I think.
33:37: Right.
33:37: I, I like how you phrase it as research and development.
33:40: I, I got the chance to, to talk with some like newer authors earlier this week in another webinar, and a lot of authors have this question like, I only have one book, how do I market it?
33:51: And they've got this mindset they're trying.
33:53: They're thinking like they're at phase 5, and it's like you're, you're here and I had to, you know, I, I gave them some of my advice, which was maybe a little jarring, which is like, if that's at that phase, what you need is an audience, give that book away, give it away for free and build an audience was, that's not the only advice for those people.
34:10: But I guess to relate this to those newer authors too.
34:15: Like, you know, don't take for granted phase one, I guess is part of what we're hearing, but then also like, know the season that you're in, and I guess the stage of development that you're in, and be OK with the fact that you're not one of the big kids yet.
34:29: Yeah, and there are so many downsides to being one of the big kids that you will not experience.
34:36: Nobody will talk about.
34:37: with you until you get there.
34:39: So there is an upside to every single phase.
34:41: And so enjoying the phase that we're in becomes part of like, there's this really interesting quote on the office of all places.
34:50: Andy Bernard says, I wish that we knew what the good old days were when we're in them so that we could fully experience it, right?
34:57: And I'm like, Yeah.
34:58: This is the thing I don't think we realize is when we don't take full advantage of the space that we're in and be really excited to be experimenting and to not have pressure yet and where the future is so wide open, like there's a way in which you're never going to feel that again.
35:14: So allowing yourself to fully experience the fun of research and development is a really big deal.
35:20: And even people, and I know there are going to be people who hear this who will not like that I say it this way, and I apologize, but even people who have lost market share can be a real gift to have a platform that deflates a little bit because it takes so much of the pressure away that you didn't realize you were feeling and allows you to reinvent yourself and do something different.
35:43: And yes, we do have to acknowledge the fact that all things end, right?
35:48: Like if I have a big, you know, and I think about this with myself, even if like the the QuickBook series is sort of coming to an end.
35:56: It's like it feels very final and I'm kind of putting a period on things and it feels like that phase of my business is over.
36:04: And there's some sadness there for sure, because when it was at the height of that experience, especially when we were still in the gold rush years of the of the publishing industry, there's a way in which some of that was some of the most fun that I'll ever have in my life, but I always have those memories and I go back to them frequently and I re-experience that.
36:25: I've done a lot of work on myself to make sure that I feel worthy and valuable and excited and competent, like all those like I do a lot of work on myself to make sure that I don't rely on The external validation of the world in order to make me feel something about myself.
36:42: And that's, a journey I think that many of us need to go on because the world isn't always going to show me the version that I want to see.
36:50: Like the results are not always going to look the way that I want them to look.
36:53: And so when good things end and things come to an end, the best thing that we can do is accept that and deal with the reality head on and water.
37:03: The grass wherever we can, because we have to live in that reality no matter what happens.
37:08: We cannot go back to the gold rush, right?
37:12: That's not going to happen.
37:13: And no amount of me wishing it could happen is going to help me go back there.
37:17: All it does is make me feel frustrated with where I'm at.
37:21: And what I would rather see people do is practice the acceptance of the changes and then move into how do I make this phase that I'm in.
37:30: The best that I can possibly make it.
37:32: How do I water the grass here?
37:34: It's interesting because I was thinking about, we've we've talked a lot about like the business aspect and everything, and one of the biggest pieces of advice that newer authors are given is write the next book and like how do you, there's a lot of us that will, a lot of authors who will like have, have trouble writing that next book if they Haven't been confirmed to have been successful with the previous ones, and it's sort of their ability to write, their desire to write or whatever, and maybe like, how do you accept that this is where your business is, and it's how to help with your writing practice to keep going.
38:14: Yeah.
38:15: That's such a good question because it illustrates the need for us to understand context, right?
38:21: Like we have got to understand the full breadth of the context of why books don't sell.
38:27: Like what is it that actually happened when I released a book and it didn't sell?
38:31: If I believe that good books And then my book doesn't sell, then I get, I feel a certain kind of way about it, right?
38:40: I'm like, did I not write a good book?
38:42: Did I not do good marketing?
38:43: Did I not, you know, etc.
38:45: But when you understand that Loki's in charge of this industry, it is a creative industry, it is a competitive industry.
38:53: And that means it is not like, let's say, real estate, right, where things are much more predictable.
39:00: It feels like, oh, that house is going to sell for this and then it does because that house is worth this and the market says that house is worth it, right?
39:07: This is not real estate.
39:08: This is speculating.
39:10: This is gambling, and every book that we release is essentially just a quarter in a slot machine, no matter how successful you are, it still is a quarter in a slot machine.
39:21: And what that does for me is it helps to retranslate the experience that I'm having in the industry if I'm not selling.
39:28: It helps me to take some of the pressure off of, because, because when, when, to Kelly's question, when people release a book and it doesn't sell, they want to feel a certain kind of way about that experience.
39:39: Like they want it to mean something about them or about the industry or about the world.
39:44: And so often it's just, OK, Kevin, the market's really saturated right now.
39:49: You're not selling because the market's saturated.
39:51: It's not you, it's not anything you did.
39:54: It's not whatever.
39:55: It's not AI or I mean, who knows, but it literally is just, there's saturation in the market.
40:01: Don't take it so seriously.
40:03: Don't make it mean something that it doesn't mean, because we can understand the larger context, because what ends up happening, and this is sort of the like, if you could just see the bigger picture that you're in, that there's a, there's an old sort of adage, I guess, or whatever.
40:19: About the prisoner who's digging the tunnel out of the prison, right?
40:23: And they're like digging and not finding, digging, not finding, digging and not finding, and then they, they quit.
40:29: And they're like 2 inches from the actual end of the, like where they could have found freedom, but they assumed that they had gotten it wrong and then they quit and then they got caught, right?
40:41: So it's that sort of adage of like, just because you can't see what's in front of you, you can can't trust your fears about what's in front of you.
40:50: And this for me is about what is it that you're trying to tell yourself the story?
40:55: Like what is the story you're trying to tell yourself when you are not successful?
41:00: Are you trying to tell yourself like, Oh, this has some kind of meaning about, I'm not a good enough writer, I guess it confirms what my mom always told me.
41:07: It's like, Nope, that's an old tape.
41:09: You're you keep digging.
41:11: Like the the sunshine is still in front of you.
41:14: Keep digging.
41:14: And and Understanding that context of the industry and what it is not telling you.
41:20: It's not telling you anything about you.
41:22: It's not telling you anything about your future.
41:25: The context of the release is so much more complicated than we're trying to make it.
41:30: So the, because I think of this myself almost like, I would never not buy another lottery ticket because I didn't win last time.
41:38: It's like my odds are the same of winning the lottery.
41:43: I've had this conversation with my wife before yeah.
41:47: Except she's the one that plays the lottery, not me.
41:49: I was gonna say there might be a limit to there might be a limit to that.
41:53: But I would never not buy a lottery ticket.
41:56: I buy lottery tickets whenever the jackpot goes over 500 million.
42:00: It's like, well, I'm going to buy a lottery ticket, right?
42:02: Well, I didn't win last time.
42:04: So I guess that means I'm never going to win the lottery.
42:06: We all instinctively understand.
42:08: It doesn't mean that, Becca, you still have a chance to win the next time because the lottery is not predictable, right?
42:16: And if we think about the publishing industry, like the real estate industry, like the real estate industry is down.
42:22: You know, your house is likely not to sell, blah, blah, blah, all these things.
42:26: The value is going to go down.
42:27: We think it's so predictable, but it is so low key.
42:31: It is unpredictable.
42:32: It's wild.
42:33: You could take off at any time.
42:35: No amount of lack of success behind you means that you're Guaranteed a lack of success in the future.
42:41: And again, I come back to the grass is green where you water it is really important about the future of your publishing industry, because the last thing I would want to see someone do is tell themselves a story about what's likely to happen in their publishing.
42:56: That is like that prisoner with the 2 inches of, of dirt left, right?
43:00: It's like, let's just keep going.
43:02: Let's find a way to make the fun happen or make the, the future possible or whatever it is that we need to have hope for because that hope is going to be the thing that makes us keep going until we break through.
43:17: And, and the only thing that's going to make us not get what we want for sure is if we listen to the part that is trying to keep us in that sacred space.
43:28: And I think the interesting part of that is how personal it feels in that sense, and that might be You know, it's different than the lottery ticket.
43:36: It's not personal, if you don't win the lottery, right?
43:39: But it feels personal if you release a new book and it's crickets, it feels personal.
43:45: But what you're saying is, you know, go beyond that because Loki just isn't looking at you right now.
43:51: That's it.
43:52: Yep.
43:53: Let's keep trying, right?
43:55: Like, and and and to the original question that just write the next book thing, part of the reason that that is such a consistent piece of advice is because this truism is true.
44:06: You just never know when you're going to break out.
44:09: And, and I use the, I think I may even have said this last, the last time we talked, but I use the Freddie Mercury story a lot in talking about success in the future, which is you don't know what point in the timeline you're at.
44:22: If you talk to Freddie Mercury when he's getting the door slammed in his face over and over and over and over again, he, it would be very easy for him to think, it's never going to happen for Me, because I've had 100 doors slammed.
44:33: Nobody wants me.
44:35: They all think that I I I don't look like a singer, right?
44:39: Which is ironic because eventually they found out that was actually the number of teeth in his mouth being overtoothed made him a better singer.
44:48: There was something about the way the distribution in his, he was scientifically proven to be a better singer than other people because of the way And he was so self-conscious about it because it made him look different, right, from other people, but it turned out to actually be an asset that he just didn't know he had.
45:06: So I keep reminding people about the Freddie Mercury journey because you can't catch yourself too early in the timeline and then assume that the timeline's always going to look that way, because you just don't know.
45:17: You don't know what's in front of you.
45:19: No amount of bad luck in your past is indicative of bad luck in the future.
45:24: The hot hand fallacy is one of those big picture logical fallacies I don't think people realize.
45:30: Bad luck is not predictable.
45:32: It's not oppression.
45:34: Luck is not everything is still random on that level.
45:38: Like it still does not happen.
45:40: There is no such thing as a hot hand.
45:42: So I think when we when we're using that kind of belief about ourselves to make something.
45:47: Feel personal.
45:48: We just want to remind ourselves like we would never not buy a lottery ticket, right?
45:53: And that's why I say some of those things that are repeatable in that way.
45:56: Like, you would never not buy a lottery ticket.
45:58: The grass is greener where you water it.
46:00: Like something that feels more, repeatable, so you can reach for it in the moment when you need it.
46:06: And that's all we need is just that something to tell ourselves that it's OK to continue to have hope about what could happen.
46:13: Thank you.
46:14: That's perfect.
46:15: I think there's, it's one of those things that are really kind of out there for almost every author who's, you know, especially the first time you write something and then you put it out there, you know.
46:25: So we were talking a little bit too about like marketing shifts and publishing shifts from the early days all the way to today.
46:34: What are the trends that you're seeing?
46:36: What are the things that, that you're like wanting to, to talk to people about.
46:41: Yeah, we were, we were discussing this before we started recording, and I sort of realized like, The, the volume of people that I have coached and the number of years that I've been doing this really gives me a perspective that most people in this industry just never get, right?
46:58: Because like I've coached individually, and this is not speaking to a room of 1000 people at a time, right?
47:04: This is like me sitting down for 45 minutes across from you as an individual person for 6000 individual authors, and multiple times a lot of Those people I've coached them more than once, and over the course of since 2014, I think is when I originally started writing coaching, and then from before that to 2006 for individual coaching for of people.
47:26: What it allows me to see in a big picture pattern is what always happens versus what we think is happening, right?
47:35: So when I think that, to use Kelly's example about like, well, I released a book and it was crickets and therefore that means something about me.
47:44: Like my context allows me to be able to say, nope, that's not what it says.
47:48: Let's pull back a little bit and give you a bigger picture, right?
47:53: So when I think about that sort of pull back and give me a bigger picture about the publishing industry, think what a lot of people want to do with the saturation of the industry that has happened since the gold rush ended.
48:05: is that we want it to tell us a story about how little the possibility is that I could ever sell.
48:12: Like that there's just no possibility that I could ever sell.
48:15: And the reality is, even as the market becomes saturated, because it's been just getting more and more saturated since 2010.
48:24: And that was always happening.
48:26: It's just that we don't notice that it's saturated until it's already fully saturated, right?
48:32: So because we just don't have the big enough perspective.
48:35: But what happens when a market is saturated is that better products rise to the top.
48:40: So the rules change in terms of, I need to make sure that I'm writing something that It feels really good to me if I'm that kind of writer.
48:50: Like it meets my expectations or it meets the reader expectations if you're that kind of writer, or it meets what I think are the market expectations if you're that kind of writer, because everybody writes for a different avatar, right?
49:02: But if I write for myself, then I need to make sure that it is the thing that makes me the most happy and excited to be writing.
49:09: If I write for other people and I want to try to make it the best thing that I could make it for that person or for that group of people.
49:16: If I write for a market, then I want to try to hit that target very specifically, right?
49:21: Because what happens when there's too much product is that the choice overwhelm causes people to do person to person marketing more than like, you know.
49:32: Ads and and stuff like that.
49:34: So it's, oh my gosh, you're never going to believe this book, which is why something like romanticy has a big heyday, because when people are talking about it and they're already talking about something like Fourth Wing, well, now all of their friends have heard about Fourth Wing and they're all very excited about it, and they all want other books like Fourth Wing.
49:52: So it makes things be bigger, right?
49:55: It makes trends be bigger because the saturation.
49:58: Point requires personality.
50:00: It requires personalness, sorry, connection.
50:03: But what it doesn't do is make no one sell.
50:08: And I cannot emphasize this enough.
50:11: There's a difference between a saturated market and a closed market.
50:14: A closed market has been closed.
50:17: Like someone physically puts a lock on it and says, you can't sell this anymore.
50:22: As long as no one has done that.
50:24: The saturation should almost not even factor for us in whether we make decisions or not.
50:30: And in fact, the building of your individual platform of just being willing to attract readers in smaller numbers means that the more clear you can be about what you're providing them as an experience, the easier it is for them to talk about it, the easier it is for it to grow, right?
50:47: So over time, there's nothing keeping people from Growing.
50:51: Readers are still reading.
50:52: They're still voracious.
50:53: They're still talking about what they want to read.
50:56: So there there is this mindset about what the gold rush being over means for us, that somehow it means that the publishing industry is closed or that saturation means the publishing industry is closed.
51:07: Nope, it just changes.
51:09: The rules of how people discover books change.
51:11: So then as we adjust to the change in how books are sold, Then we need to look for.
51:18: What are the ways that people are doing marketing in the future?
51:22: What are the, so like I said, the personalness becomes a little bit more important, being really resonant, like being very specifically resonant for one person becomes more important because the higher you resonate with an individual person, the more likely they are to find other people like themselves, things like that.
51:41: It's interesting because I remember, like I was publishing in the early 2010s, that's when I first self-published, and the vibe around self-publishing at that time was pretty positive and just be not even because of like some of the gold rush things going on, but it was like we had, we were the prisoner that made it through, and we were free now, like, we didn't have to, you know, court the the gatekeepers.
52:06: I remember that was a big conversation back at that time, right?
52:08: Like we, we've broken out, and I think with The inevitable changes, it's very easy to lose sight of that positivity we had at that time.
52:16: And if you had told somebody back then, like, this is where the industry is going to go, they'd probably be like, wow, that's whoa, like it'd be a fantastic story to them.
52:26: But for some reason because we've lived through it and gone through those changes and we're here, we find ourselves here now.
52:31: Oh man, it was, it wasn't really what we thought it was, you know, the whole time.
52:35: It's who moved my cheese.
52:37: It really is just who moved my cheese all over again.
52:41: Like we don't realize how as a human race, we suck at change adaptation.
52:48: We really suck at it.
52:49: We get used to comfort and security and safety, and then as soon as something changes, we're like, What happened?
52:57: I don't like this.
52:58: And if we could get better at the acceptance of change and transition.
53:04: It would shorten a lot of our frustration curves and lessen a lot of our stress, rather than feeling like, I want to try to change this thing that's so big, I can't possibly change it.
53:14: It's like, nope, how do I focus on making my individual context the best that I possibly can?
53:21: Having the best impact that I can have.
53:24: On the people around me, building the strongest relationships, protecting the people that matter the most in my individual arena, right?
53:32: So the, the globalization of of communication over the last 40 years, then now that we've reached full saturation of globalization, then we go back to That more individualized communication again.
53:46: So it's going to become more and more important for us to have local networks of people that we really trust and rely on, people that we know very well, that are going to be that kind of core group of people that we can move with and emote with and change with and revolve with and transform with and and that kind of sort of personalization.
54:09: I is coming again, right?
54:11: So I think getting on board with change is just, it's hard for us.
54:17: I get that.
54:18: And also the grass can be green if we will choose to water it.
54:23: We can choose to water the grass.
54:25: Right, but I had this experience recently.
54:27: You're talking about like local, like more intimate interactions.
54:32: With readers, and I've, I've told this story, maybe I told it on the last episode of the podcast, but I think it's relevant here.
54:37: I go to the doctor's office for just a checkup.
54:40: And I'm, I'm, I walk in the door, and before I can check in, some guy sitting there in the doctor's office, he sees me and he goes, hey, I've read all of your books, and I'm like, taken off guard because, because number one, like, I don't, I don't recognize the guy at first, I'll continue the story, and I'm like, well, I'm wearing a book funnel shirt, like, like, did is that what you meant?
55:01: Like, I don't know.
55:02: So I go and I check in and then when I'm done with that, I recognize him, I realize, but this is that guy from the gym, cause I go to our local gym and I have a treadmill desk, and that's where I do work and I write, so people know like, oh yeah, he's an author or whatever.
55:18: And I gave him my links to my books on Amazon, and it was just, it's been several months and I totally forgot about it.
55:24: And I was in this, this like real spiral at the time of like, oh man, nothing's nothing's working, you know, this, that or the other, and then just out of nowhere, I had, there's something about that that really resonated with me and like since then, I have not had to find the motivation to write or to to work on, to make time for it because of that experience, and that's led me to be like, I need to get, I need to meet these readers face to face.
55:52: For me personally, I think I need to, I need to connect with you face to face because that did something for me that no amount of like responses to my newsletter could, you know what I mean?
56:03: Yeah, I feel like there's something that we want to.
56:06: get out of this experience of being a writer, like something very specific that we want to get out of it, that we can have on a small scale as much as we can have it on a big scale.
56:18: And we get so caught up in the metrics of success that other people use to define what's excellent and what's not.
56:26: And we don't realize that the thing that we are looking for, if I can't be happy with having an amount of that is a very small amount of significance, I will not be happy when I have a bigger amount of significance, because I'm always just going to be seeking more and seeking more and seeking more and seeking more.
56:44: So I think there's kind of two journeys for me that most of us need to go through.
56:48: One is, we have got to learn what it is that we are trying to get out of this life as a writer, and we have to be really clear about what the values are that we hold that we're trying to To show to the world and to experience in the world and to have more of that, like make more meaning in our individual lives, almost as like an inoculation against depression, not clinical depression, but against the depressiveness or the sadness that we can feel, right?
57:16: And then the other journey is learning how to actually accept what we get when we get it.
57:23: Because if you're looking for personal, like moving people, right?
57:27: You want To see people experience your stories and you want to see people be moved or entertained or enjoy it, then if you are not happy with a small number of people enjoying and loving your stories, you will never be happy with a large number of people.
57:44: You will always get to that larger number and be like, Well, it's 100,000, but I'd be really happy if it was 150,000.
57:51: No, you wouldn't, Kevin.
57:52: You will still be a miserable son of a, can I swear?
57:57: Go for it.
57:58: Bitch.
57:59: Sorry, because you will not actually feel the thing that you are trying to feel at 150,000 people.
58:06: You didn't feel it at 100, you didn't feel it at 50,000, you didn't feel it at 100 people, right?
58:12: If you can feel that feeling of satisfaction in a small scale, where I feel as significant coaching a single person of no apparent External relevance to the world, right?
58:25: They're just a random person that I come across on a plane.
58:28: If I feel equally as significant coaching that person as I do if I were coaching, I don't know, you know, Meryl Streep, right?
58:36: Then I am actually feeling the significance of the work that I'm doing.
58:41: If I will only think that I will feel significant if I coach Meryl Streep, I will never feel significant because it's not about That.
58:49: It's about, I'm trying not to feel something.
58:52: I'm trying not to feel ashamed or unlovable or unworthy or whatever, and that is never going to get me what I want.
58:59: I have to be willing to go through the gauntlet of transformation interpersonally there.
59:04: But it is a practice to be willing to be satisfied with what we have so that we can be more satisfied when we have more.
59:15: And we always think that if I can just remain unsatisfied, then it will drive me to get more, and we don't realize that that's not actually what's happening.
59:23: When you will never allow yourself to be satisfied with the small amount you have, you're just never going to feel that feeling, no matter how much you have.
59:32: You could have thousands and thousands and thousands of readers, hundreds of millions of dollars, you will never feel it.
59:40: And No amount of wealth, fame, security, friends, like no amount of anything is going to make you feel that thing.
59:49: And therefore, you'll just die a miserable person.
59:52: And I don't want to see us do that.
59:54: I want to see us feel the actual feelings that readers feel about our books when they read them.
1:00:00: I want us to feel the actual security of having a full-time job that pays our bills, even if it's not writing.
1:00:06: I want us to feel the connection of the writers and the networks that are around us that will allow us to feel secure and safe.
1:00:15: I want us to feel the significance of being unique and different from each other and the import of what that brings to the world.
1:00:22: And we will never feel it on a large scale if we don't feel it on a small scale.
1:00:26: I feel like I'm preaching, so I'm going to stop.
1:00:28: And somehow I managed to fit a billionaire joke in there too.
1:00:31: So it's, it's some.
1:00:34: It's like it's like confirmation bias cause I write very much for myself, but I have a very small core group of readers and small, and they'll be like your books live in my head and When they say that it, OK, because I know what that feels like as a reader.
1:00:51: There's a very particular author for 25 years.
1:00:54: Her books have lived in my head, and I'm like that I can do that for like 5 people.
1:00:58: Fuck yeah.
1:01:00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:01: Yeah, that's a very, if you've ever had in the first time it ever happened to me, I've had a few times where somebody's reached out through like Instagram or something and you know, a lot of times you're like, yeah, it's a scam, but this was like, oh my God, your book was amazing.
1:01:15: I love this part and it's, and they're like, when's the next one?
1:01:18: When's the next one?
1:01:18: And it was like, OK, that's kind of like what Jack was feeling and the guy like, you know, just having that one interaction was kind of like a boost and it's OK to, I think to get that endorphin rush and be like, yeah, I mean, we should, we should celebrate those moments for sure.
1:01:37: He asked me the same thing, like, when's the next one coming out?
1:01:39: And I'm like, I've written that book, I haven't edited yet.
1:01:42: I, I wrote it and it set it on the shelf and it was just like, It's over and then I, and then he asked, like, asked me when it was coming next.
1:01:50: I'm like, I didn't think anybody wanted to know.
1:01:52: So it's it's interesting because I think we're, we're always told to like avoid external validation, like it should be in in intrinsic validation all the time.
1:02:02: But I think what you're pointing out is actually key, which is that it's not so much whether it's extrinsic or in intrinsic, it's like the scale of it, and you, so I think for that reason, Writers maybe don't seek out external valid and like you said, possibly because of experiences in the past, negative, you know, associations with that sort of thing or personality traits, but like I know that I need to put myself out there again because that.
1:02:29: 11 thing has driven me for weeks now.
1:02:33: I'm like still my tank is still full off of that that encounter and that experience.
1:02:37: And if it was just one, then I always assume if it's one, then there's going to be another 50 out there who just didn't say it.
1:02:44: So I mean, that is actually scientifically true.
1:02:48: Yep.
1:02:49: Well, and if you can let yourself feel it with one, if that's the thing you want to get out of your career, like I want to know that my life had an impact, right?
1:03:01: I want to know that my breathing and walking around changed the world somehow.
1:03:06: And that means that if I don't feel that me interacting positively with a person changes the world because it changes one person, And that's not really what I want to get out of this.
1:03:18: And then I need to like look at what is it that I really want to get out of it.
1:03:22: And you can want money, you can want fame, you can want validation.
1:03:28: Anything that you want is fine to want, but there is no wrong thing to want like that.
1:03:35: It's OK to be externally motivated.
1:03:37: It's OK to be internally motivated.
1:03:39: It's OK to be money motivated.
1:03:40: It's OK to be fame motivated.
1:03:42: There are certain things, but again, fame, if you're fame motivated, you want your name to be known and you are actually motivated by fame and not by fear, then it will be just as important for you to have one interaction with a person as it will be to have your name mentioned on Oprah's Book Club.
1:04:00: And if it's not, then we have a different conversation.
1:04:04: Because then it's again, it's it's not going to happen.
1:04:07: But I think that's interesting too, because if you think about, you know, goal setting and like thinking ahead and going, OK, well, I want these things, and it's OK to want those things.
1:04:17: And it's OK to set that goal and to try and reach that goal.
1:04:20: That's not what you're talking about when you're saying like you're never going to be satisfied.
1:04:24: It's OK, well, if I have a small increment.
1:04:26: And I don't need to be in Oprah's book club tomorrow, like now, I need to be on, you know, it's, what steps am I taking to get forward a little bit more and a little bit more to water the grass, basically, that's what you're saying.
1:04:39: It's reminding myself that small results can be indicators, right, of larger things rather than, well, it's not enough yet.
1:04:49: Like, well, I'm not making a million yet, and so therefore, I'm not good enough, or I can't stop or etc.
1:04:55: Like, that's a fear space, we need to be really cautious about that, because that will not be sustainable.
1:05:01: Like, we, you will not be able to maintain If you're never satisfied, because then it and then it's not 2 million.
1:05:10: But if I'm like, so I've been seeing growth with my books, things have been going really well.
1:05:15: I've gotten some good ads, things are, and it's giving me a little bit of spark of that marketing.
1:05:20: It's not not the writing part, but this, the marketing part, it's like, OK, well, that's working.
1:05:25: OK, maybe I'm ready to try something else to scale, and I'm starting to scale the amount of money that I'm spending because I'm making that, I'm able, I don't know if that means I'm hitting level 2 or phase two or probably.
1:05:37: I mean, I'm not sure how that works.
1:05:38: Like, I'm not sure where that transition from research and development and what is phase two exactly?
1:05:44: Like what would you say that?
1:05:45: Yeah, phase two is the initial growth period, which is usually where you start to see a lot more responsibility get put on your shoulders.
1:05:54: So like if you, if you, let's say you release book one and to see.
1:05:58: and it doesn't sell and you release book 2 and it doesn't sell and then book 3 starts to sell, right?
1:06:03: And all of a sudden the whole series starts to sell because book 3 is out.
1:06:06: We see this happen a lot.
1:06:08: So if you've been making negative balance, negative balance on the 1st 2 books, and then suddenly you start to make on the whole series, you start to make 400% of what you invested.
1:06:19: Now you have all that money, which brings responsibility, and that means there's likely more demand out there that you now need to figure out how to manage.
1:06:29: So when you see initial growth happen, it's an indicator that you're going in the right direction, right?
1:06:35: That your research and development has worked, and then you want to be as intentional as you can about stewarding the growth that you're seeing.
1:06:44: So that you can be, and this is where in the initial growth phase, I think people try to go to big scale too fast, right?
1:06:52: Like they try to do like I'm doing $40 a day and ads, so let me do $2000 and see if that will crack.
1:07:01: Or they decide, oh, I'm going to do audio and translations now that I finally have, you know, whatever.
1:07:07: And it's like, no, let's Wait, let's steward the growth phase, keep writing more books, get people through that funnel, optimize your marketing channels, right?
1:07:18: Optimize how people are finding you, make sure that your marketing is really targeted.
1:07:23: It's almost like we we try to do business decisions too quickly because we have been trained that treat your author like a business, right?
1:07:31: Treat your business like a business.
1:07:32: And it's like, well, yeah, but treat it like a business in the phase that it's in.
1:07:36: Don't treat it like a business in phase 5, where you're just throwing everything and including the kitchen sink at this book because it sold a little.
1:07:46: It's like, no, let's steward the growth and make sure that there's more demand coming with each book.
1:07:51: So the hardest part about phase two is you're seeing growth and it's exciting, but now you've got to decide.
1:07:59: Do I throw more money at this?
1:08:00: Do I invest more into this?
1:08:02: And usually what I'm going to say is, write the next book.
1:08:05: Unless your growth is so extreme that you're growing vertically, where you're doing like 11,000%, 2000, 3,000% of your original investment.
1:08:15: And that's probably gonna propel you into infrastructure phase, which is the next phase.
1:08:19: And like these phases, you pretty much answered this from context.
1:08:22: They're not necessarily linear.
1:08:24: Like, can the phases reset if you like switch genres and is just enough?
1:08:31: OK.
1:08:32: Yeah, it depends on the person because some people will sell equally as well.
1:08:37: Or their old series will continue to sell for them and then it sort of finances their move into a new genre until they can, you know, take off a little bit more.
1:08:45: But, but it really depends on the person.
1:08:48: I, on, on my Patreon, I have some workshops that we did at a conference last year about the five phases.
1:08:55: So if any of you are really, really interested, go to the Patreon on our shop and look at the packages for the business phases.
1:09:04: Because if you know for sure that you're in one of the phases, having really targeted advice for how to grow where you are at, instead of looking at where a lot of phase 5 authors are and then trying to make the decisions they're making, that's going to kill a phase 2 business.
1:09:21: You've got to know how to make the decisions in a More like strategic smart way about where you are in your growth.
1:09:27: Yeah, yeah, excellent.
1:09:30: Alright, soft, soft pause here.
1:09:32: Any final things we want to get to or anything we we missed that we need to cover this is part of a cut up.
1:09:38: No, that was great.
1:09:39: I, are we going to keep the little dick joke?
1:09:44: Yes, please.
1:09:46: I, I, I, I will, I will review it in post.
1:09:50: Yeah, please, please make sure that it's not too offensive, that it's not going to bother some of your potentially people, because I don't want you guys to get hate for it.
1:09:59: I'm OK getting taken out.
1:10:02: I will, I will review the tape and then I'll, I'll decide.
1:10:05: I usually like swearing, you know, this that or the other is totally fine.
1:10:09: I've had to cut things Emma's set out before, you know.
1:10:12: It's the thing.
1:10:14: So I'll, I'll take a look at, I don't think it should be, I don't think it should be.
1:10:17: I mean, I'm OK if you cut it.
1:10:19: I, I'm not asking for it to get cut cause it was sort of a A landing point, and the, and the argument might not work without it, but yeah, no, like I said, I'll have to listen back to it and be like, OK, is it essential for the context?
1:10:35: Yeah, yes, if it's not essential, I'm OK with it.
1:10:39: We all heard it.
1:10:40: I, I have, I, I have it on my, on my notepad, so I will, I will.
1:10:45: I think we should end with Becca telling people where they can go to find the information to determine what business phase they're in, because you know they're going to be like, OK, what business phase am I?
1:10:54: Is there a quiz?
1:10:55: I'll I'll let, I'll let Becca decide what she wants to send people to.
1:10:59: I think because you mentioned the Patreon for that, but obviously your your Kickstarter here might be the big thing.
1:11:06: So and then maybe I could just end with that too because I describe the sort of the additional.
1:11:12: Right, I, I'll, we'll, we'll resume here in a second.
1:11:16: I'll tee you up for that and then we'll, that'll be the thing we'll wrap up, so.
1:11:19: Also, if you're doing, are you signing on Friday at at A Nation or reader session?
1:11:25: Mhm.
1:11:26: OK.
1:11:26: Yes, OK, yeah, we'll be there.
1:11:28: I will have a lot of books and they're all going to be free.
1:11:32: Oh, that's amazing.
1:11:32: You're doing OK.
1:11:34: Yep.
1:11:35: Yeah, but that was when we did the last one.
1:11:37: Yeah, I was like, please, authors, more of you consider giving books away instead of selling them, and I'm, I, my putting my money where my mouth was.
1:11:46: That's awesome.
1:11:47: By the way, there's going to be a FedEx thing there, Emma, you were talking about.
1:11:50: to bring an extra suitcase for all the books.
1:11:52: They're gonna have a FedEx like shipper right there in the room.
1:11:57: That's so awesome.
1:11:58: Yeah, I noticed that on the floor plan that Richard gave us yesterday, so that's like.
1:12:06: Yeah.
1:12:08: They'll buy more books if they know they can get them home.
1:12:11: Shaq, we should grab like 5 or 10 of Becca's books and use them to like give away on the YouTube channel.
1:12:17: Like like subscribe and maybe you'll get a book and signed them.
1:12:21: Well, and I think your card, you're doing one of the rank code cards, aren't you?
1:12:25: Yeah.
1:12:27: Yeah, awesome.
1:12:29: Thank you for that.
1:12:31: Depending on who we have on as a guest, it might be kind of awkward if we have like another author coach on and they were like, oh yeah, the prize is Becca Simon's book.
1:12:40: Not to, not to say that it wouldn't be a great prize, but some people might feel like, but I'm here.
1:12:45: What about you?
1:12:46: You could, you could give them away on this episode and just not get that, but tell Reader Nation.
1:12:54: Yeah.
1:12:54: Sure, sure, sure.
1:12:56: Reader Nation's in like what, 2 weeks?
1:12:58: Yeah, 2 weeks or a week from Friday, right?
1:13:02: Or 2 weeks from Friday.
1:13:04: Yeah.
1:13:05: All right, it is.
1:13:06: OK, 321, resume.
1:13:10: All right, Becca, this has been unbelievable, as always.
1:13:14: Before we go here though, I want to give you the chance to just shout out, I like your Kickstarter and stuff, where can people go to find out more about that, about about you and so forth.
1:13:22: Yeah, Better Faster Academy.com/lis is the place where you can get the links for the Kickstarter and also for the business phases stuff that we talked about as well, early.
1:13:34: But also inside the Kickstarter, the business phases is going to be a pretty big part of this book.
1:13:40: And my goal in doing this, we actually have a deck that I'm doing.
1:13:45: We're only doing digital decks this time we decided not to print them because of, you know, the shipping costs and stuff.
1:13:50: But this deck is going to be the 5 business phases, and then we're breaking it up both by some of the archetypes that we do and And also anygram.
1:13:59: So we've licensed Claire Taylor's information from her Reclaim your other career stuff so that we can use her anygram stuff and all of the deck information about the different business phases is going to be inside the book and then we're also going to talk about personalizing and individualizing the advice based on who you are and then what phase you're in.
1:14:22: So my hope is to provide a tool that will really help us narrow down how to make choices in our author career.
1:14:28: Excellent, excellent.
1:14:29: Well, Becca, thank you again for joining us.
1:14:32: It is an open invitation at any time.
1:14:35: If you want to come on, you just let us know.
1:14:37: , and, but thank you for joining us and gracing us with your presence on this episode.
1:14:44: Yeah, thanks for having me.
1:14:45: Thank you, of course, I can't forget to my co-hosts, Kelly and Emma couldn't do this without the two of you, so thank you for joining me as always, and thank you to you, our viewers and listeners.
1:14:58: If you're here on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel.
1:15:02: , and, like this video.
1:15:05: If you have a follow-up question or a comment, go ahead and leave that in the comments here on YouTube as well.
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1:15:24: From all of us here at Bookfa, I wanna thank you for listening and we will see you all in the next one.
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