How Pacing Trumps Every Other Productivity Strategy

Neera

I did it again. After my near burnout experience, I worked way beyond my capacity and fell in the bed exhausted and devastated. I still hadn’t finished my work. I kept on going back to the computer to keep editing the article, but it wasn’t making any sense. 

I admire the writers who write an article a day. Some even manage two to three articles a day. I want to become like them. But it will take me years to get there. If I try, I might be able to do that for a few weeks, but I won’t sustain it. 

A lot of accomplished writers on Medium advise writing an article a day. It is great advice if you are a seasoned writer. It is not hard to churn out an article a day if you have been writing for a couple of years or more. 

And it is true that the more you write, the easier it becomes. 

How?

  • You have more to say. Your thinking becomes clear, and you build on your previous advice.
  • Your sentence structure improves. Writing every day gives you fluency with sentence construction, which inturns make it say to express your thoughts.
  • The narrator in you is always on. It takes a while for my narrative voice to turn on when I write articles on alternate days. But if I write every day, the narrator in me stays on. It starts seeing a story in everything.

But what if you can’t write every day? What if you are still struggling with coming up with valuable content to write every day? What if you are close to burning out? 

The pacing could be a solution then.

What is Pacing?

Let me explain pacing with a story:

In 1911, two teams arrived in Antarctica with the same goal — become the first to reach the South Pole. Roald Amundsen from Norway and Robert Scott from the UK led two different teams to win the south pole’s race.

Both managed to reach the pole. But Amundsen won the race and reached 34 days earlier than Scott. 

The worst bit? Scott and 4 of his teammates died on the return journey — just 18km away from their food depot.

A lot of comparisons have been made on both teams’ approaches. Books have been written on it in great detail. The spots they choose as their base camps. Dogs vs. ponies. Amundsen used dogs while Scott used ponies. Since dogs can bear cold weather better than ponies, Amundsen could leave 11 days earlier for the expedition, while Scott had to wait for the weather to become warmer. 

Sleds vs. skis. Scott took 3 motor sleds on the expedition, but all 3 broke down very soon. Amundsen focused on making sure everyone on his team knew how to ski well.

Scott’s team was malnourished, and many faced scurvy because of a lack of vitamin C in their diet. Amundsen’s team actually gained weight during their expedition.

But the most significant difference in both their approaches was the pacing of their expedition.

Amundsen made sure his team kept a constant pace of covering between 24–32 km per day. Even if the weather were good, he would not go further. 

On the other hand, Scott pushed and trekked as far as 73 km in a single day when the weather and terrain were perfect. The ponies got extremely tired, and they couldn’t cover the average distance the next day.

While on individual good days, Scott could push and cover a lot more ground than Amundsen, overall, his pace was much slower!

It turned out that Amundsen was not only a much better planner than Scott, but he understood that the pacing was the key to coming back alive. 

The slow tortoise beat the faster hare because the hare was inconsistent in its pacing. Steady wins.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

The American Navy Seal has the saying — slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. 

If you see how elite infantry moves through a battlefield, you’ll notice that they never run. Compare them with not so well trained militia who sprints into the battle.

When things go wrong, the faster moving militia has to scamper to take cover. Their supply lines break up. And they fail to hold on to their land. 

The sure-footed elite infantry, while moving slowly, achieves their win a lot quicker.

Jim Collins tells a tale of a similar competition in his book Great by Choice. In the 1980s, computer chip maker AMD set an audacious goal to grow by 60%. To achieve their goal, they borrowed heavily. And when things didn’t go as per plan, they had to scamper to pay their debt. They almost went bankrupt, while the more sure-footed Intel took the lead!

How do you pace yourself?

Long-distance marathon runners are taught that they will lose two minutes in the second half for every minute they run faster than their average speed in the first half of their race. They need to learn to pace themselves. They need to learn to keep a constant speed even when they are not as tired early on in the race. Because for the latter part of the race, they will have the added advantage of the endorphin rush.

The way they learn to pace themselves is by understanding their bodies during the training period. They are taught to focus on their heart rate while running — to gauge their perceived exertion while running. And to slow down appropriately. They need to be able to run without huffing and puffing!

They are given the guideline always to perform less than their best capacity. 

During training, new runners are told to run a mile as fast as they can. That is their magic mile. And then, over a long distance, they are taught to run two to three minutes slower than their magic mile.

You have to understand that pacing means undershooting your best performance. 

It means doing things without exertion.

How to apply that to article writing?

Find out your peak performance by measuring how many articles you can write in a week. Then and slowing down from there. 

If you can write two articles a week comfortably, then write one article a week. This is the exact opposite of pushing yourself to do your best. It never works in the long run. And you reach your exhaustion point very soon. Once you are tired or burnt out, it takes a long time to recover. 

Besides, your mind stores the unpleasant memory, and resistance develops, which is again very hard to overcome.

Pacing is all about understanding your capabilities and managing your energy.

Tom Kuegler, a well-established Medium writer, wrote an article last week saying he will quit online writing one day because he is tired. I don’t blame him; he has been writing five articles a week for many years. 

So what is the antidote?

Pace yourself. 

Whenever you feel like sprinting, think of Hare and Tortise’s story. 

Whenever you feel like racing to achieve your goal, think of Amundsen and pace yourself.

Understand that pacing about managing your energy—it about knowing your best performance and doing less than that. Only then will you be able to do it consistently.

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Stories courtesy of Ankesh Kothari of Zenstrategies. 

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Are You An Author Or An Authorpreneur

Neera

Let me start by asking you this quesion.

Are you a writer or an author?

The common understanding is that if you have published a book you are an author.

Not exactly.

A writer is someone who enjoys the act of writing, often in solitude.

An author is someone who enjoys everything that comes along with being published. The marketing, the networking, the speaking engagements, being in the public eye, self-promotion.

You can be published, but if you don’t like the marketing and self-promotional side of the business, then you are more of a writer than an author.

Now lets come to the question of whether you are an author or an authorpreneur.

Who is an authorpreneur. It depends upon who you ask. Some say:

An authorpreneur is someone who builds a business around writing books.

But it is not all-encompassing.

Yes, you can build a decent income by writing books alone. Many successful authors are making a good monthly income publishing ebooks alone.

But according to Shanda Trofe the author of Aurthorpreneur, How to Build an Empire and Build the Authority in Your Business:

A real Authorpreneur is someone who builds a lucrative empire using a variety of products that strategically funnel into one another and progressively build upon each other. An Authorpreneur will have published a book as a product for his business, yes, but he won’t stop there. An Authorpereneur will think outside the box and see the bigger picture. An Authorpreneur, simply stated, is someone who creates a business based on the core concepts of a book, repurposing the information into companion products and programs, resulting in a suitable business while creating wealth.

Some authorpreneurs travel extensively, speak at conferences to spread their message, do book signing tours and workshops where they sell their books and other products. They are well-known on social media and YouTube and have a huge mailing list for their email marketing.

Others use writing to promote their work. They manage to find a happy medium by promoting their work through writing. They reach out to the masses by building their list, networking on social media, blogging, crafting newsletters, and writing emails. They run webinars, online courses, do group coaching on Facebook, and run their own forums. They might start with one-on-one clients, doing face-to-face training and personal and group retreats.

To create your author empire you have to take three steps:

  • Begin — You must start somewhere. Whether it is content writing or books or fiction. Begin. To quote Wolfgang von Goethe, Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. 
  • Build — There are many roads to success. Choose one. The others will meet you on the way.
  • Believe — When you have a message within you can build a roadmap to get there. Without a message, no road will take you there. Believe in yourself and implement. So many before you have done it and left clues making your task much easier.

My aim with Autorpreneurs publication is to bring forth the stories of other so that you can learn them.

Here is one right now.

An Authorpreneur case study

Sunny Dawn Johnston wanted to find a niche for herself. Aside from being President and CEO of Transcendent Publishing, her passion was (and still is) working with writers, specifically aspiring authors. She found that she was starting to build a nice reputation for herself by coaching aspiring authors through the book writing process. But there were many coaches out there doing the same. She had to find a way to set herself apart from the rest.

As the founder of Spiritual Writers Network, she was attracting spiritual writers into her circle. Many of her clients had an important message to share, yet most didn’t know how to find the courage to open old wounds and delve deep within to let their story unfold.

She was working with clients who were experiencing fear about the writing process and who needed a little extra coaching in order to write their book and tell their story authentically.

One encouragement she found myself repeating over and over to her clients was to write from the heart. She truly believed if they could get out of ego-based thinking and allowed their creativity to emerge, that’s when their most Heartfelt writing comes forward.

She taught structure and writing systems that must be set in place, but she was also using a variety of spiritual-based techniques to urge them to unlock their creativity.

Before long, she had found a niche in the writing industry. She no longer was just a writing coach, she was a heart-based writing coach who worked primarily, at the time, with aspiring spiritual authors.

In August of 2013 she attended a networking conference for women in business. She came from there with a clear message and plan of action.

She needed to brand herself as the Write from the Heart Writing Coach.

That was just the beginning.

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Photo by Mr TT on Unsplash

She wrote and published a bookWrite from the Heart: A Step-by-Step Writing Guide to Get Your Message from Idea to Publication to act as a product for her business and an extension of her brand.

She strategically launched Write from the Heart and the book went on to sell thousands of copies.

Book was just the tip of the iceberg. From there she saw the potential to turn the concepts she wrote about in her book into an online course. From there Write from the Heart: 8-Week Book Writing Intensive was born. This became her most popular product and service. It was easy to create since she already had much of the content from my book.

But she didn’t stop there. She started her own radio show where she interviewed a different author each week and discussed topics such as writing and publishing.

She created a companion journal to publish as a second product based upon her book and created a CD of affirmations for writers with a mediation to unlock creativity and expand productivity.

She also created an affirmation card deck to sell at events alongside her book, CD, and Journal. She hosted writing retreats and various workshops — all based on theories of her book.

Her business went from working with writers (a generic niche) to narrowing down her area of expertise, finding her ideal clients, and then creating products to reach them specifically.

She repurposed the content and created a autor empire around her brand.

When people heard Write from Heart, they thought of Sunny Dawn Johnston, and she had her book, products, and brand to thank for that.

[ Case Study Source: Sunny Dawn Johnston’s Foreword in Aurthorpreneur, How to Build an Empire and Build the Authority in Your Business]

Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash

Do The Talented People Have Different Wiring

Neera 1 Comment

Are Olympic level swimmers naturally good at swimming? 

Are some people born with an eye for drawing, or throat for singing, or feet for dancing? Is there a gene for writing which bestselling writers have and we missed out on?

Some people seem to be way smarter than us. We all happen to know someone at school who was a genius in maths or wrote beautiful stories, or sang like an angel.

What makes people so good at something that others can’t seem to touch their heights. 

We all want to be good at a few things, but it doesn’t matter how much we desire it or how hard we try; it eludes us.

Did the talented people have different wiring?

Let’s take the case of three well-known talented people and figure out if they had something special going for them.

Was Tiger Woods born with a golf club in hand?

Tiger Woods is often considered a child prodigy. He was introduced to golf before the age of two by his athletic father. At age three, he shot a 48 over nine holes at the Navy course. Before turning seven, he won the Under Age 10 section of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition, held at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress, California. 

At the age of eight, he won the 9–10 boys’ event, the youngest age group at the Junior World Golf Championships. He first broke 80 at age eight. He went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988 to 1991.

In 1996, Woods turned professional at the age of 20. By the end of April 1997, he had won three PGA Tour events and 1997 Masters, which he won by 12 strokes in a record-breaking performance. He reached the number one golfer in the world in less than a year after turning pro.

Was he really born with a golf club in hand, or was there something else going on? 

His father started training him when you and I couldn’t take a spoon to our mouth without spilling food on our bibs.

All through his life, his training regime matched that of a navy SEAL.

According to his former trainer, Hank Haney, Tiger Woods used to have 13-hour marathon training days even when he was young.

“13-hour training days were not uncommon for Woods. He would have one of his two workouts at 6 a.m., then hit the range with Haney for a two-hour session on swings and short game. Afterward, they would play nine holes, have lunch, then play another nine holes. Afterward, they would continue working on other facets of his game until 6 p.m., when Tiger would do his second workout and then have dinner.”  — Hank Haney.

Often Woods would introduce variations to his training routine. He would start the day with a four-mile run, followed by a lift, hours of working on his game, and another four-mile run. If that’s wasn’t enough, he would play basketball or tennis when he was done.

Such laborious training gave Woods a mental edge as he knew nobody would outwork him.

Did Mozart has an inborn talent for composition?

Mozart could master a minuet and trio on the piano in half an hour when he was just four years old. He wrote his first opera at the age of 12.

Certainly, the composer’s extraordinary talents have never been in doubt. But according to Nicholas Kenyon, the author of A Pocket Guide to Mozart, agrees that the composer’s reputation as a genius was created only after his death.

“Mozart saw himself as a practical worker.” wrote Nicholas Kenyon.

“This myth tells us a lot about the difference between the Classical and Romantic ages. The Romantic composers who succeeded him perpetuated this idea that he composed thoughtlessly when all the evidence is that he wrote and rewrote his work.” — Nicholas Kenyon

‘Many people have the misleading impression, principally from Oscar-winning 1984 feature film Amadeus, that Mozart was a bawdy, undisciplined philanderer who occasionally had flashes of genius,’ said Grabsky.

“In fact, he was going to concerts every night, meeting musicians, listening to other people’s work, writing and rewriting his own. He was very practical about his work and entrepreneurial. ‘Of course, Amadeus was a creative reworking of Mozart’s story. But it had a lasting effect on people.”

Even Albert Einstein thought of him out of this world. 

“As an artist, or a musician, Mozart was not a man of this world.” — Albert Einstein

But, let’s have a look at Albert Einstein, someone who was indisputably a genius.

Was Einstein really a genius?

There’s no doubt that Einstein was whip-smart. 

In 1905, in just under four months, Einstein wrote four papers that gave the scientific field a whiplash. 

The first paper explained how to measure molecules’ size in a liquid; the second drooled over packets of light move around in packets called “photons.” The third was related to the first, namely determining molecules’ movement in the liquid—the fourth unwrapped special relativity. 

As sort of P.S., Einstein came up with a fifth paper that showed the matter and energy could be interchangeable at the atomic level. And that equation, E=MC2, is often associated with the genius of Einstein.

Now let’s have a peek into Einstein’s classroom. There were certainly others in his year that were better at maths—others who were exceedingly good at drawing. And we’re guessing here, but, likely, Einstein wasn’t the top student at physics in school. 

If you want to focus on Einstein as a genius, be my guest. But even Einstein was never considered anything more than average by the outside world. It was only in 1905 when his ideas caught up and saw the light. 

Einstein was one of those that needed more time.

Granted, his brain was wired differently, but all brains are wired differently. 

In fact, very efficiently. 

While we may not write papers in physics, we’re exceedingly good and can reach an extremely high standard in one or many disciplines.

We may not write five astounding scientific papers in a year. But we certainly can reach incredibly high levels of skill in many fields. 

A person who loses his sight becomes incredibly adept at the language of braille in about nine months.

A person who’s “hopeless at drawing” becomes pretty astounding in under a year. 

A person who hasn’t ever written an article can write two articles a day. 

We look around us and think people are better than us, and we give up.

When faced with such thoughts, remember, even Einstein fell off the bicycle, like the rest of us.

We make the mistake of looking at people’s results and not the effort they have put into getting there.

We see that Tim Denning writes 6 articles a day and thinks he must be a genius to come up with so much output without realizing how much effort he must put into crafting those articles and consistently coming up with insightful content.

Yet some people never wanted to do some and became excellent at it. 

Michael Phelps, for instance, is recognized as one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He’s won 28 medals. Born swimmer? Sure, except that Phelps hated swimming with a passion.

Many people who seemingly are good at some skills to the extent that we think they had an inborn talent for them have no interest in the field.

Let me wrap it up.

Today all of us can use computers.

Yet less than three decades ago, no one had seen a computer. 

Why did almost everyone believe they were not skilled at computers, only to become proficient at it within a few years.

Writing emails is such a simple activity that we can do it while sitting in a car waiting for a red light to turn green. 

Do you think Einstein would have been intimidated by emails?

Why was boring, everyday e-mail was so intimidating to entire generations that preceded the 90s?

Did the talent fairy douse us with e-mail skills in the late 1990s?

We were all bad at eating with a spoon, bad at walking without falling, bad at forming the most basic sentences. Yet, it’s easy to brush all of that ineptitude under the carpet. It’s easy to say that some people are naturally good at doing certain things.

And as we go across the spectrum of extremely talented people on the planet, we will find that they had put in an insane amount of work in becoming good at something we thought was their inborn talent.

They were not even smart at school. If they were child prodigies, they started early and practiced a lot, even as tiny kids in nappies. 

On the other hand, some brilliant kids didn’t do anything special as they grew up. 

And tens of thousands of ordinary kids became geniuses at making coffee, juggling umbrellas, fixing computers, or figuring out equations in their heads. 

It is up to you whether you want to use the excuse that you have no talent in whatever you ‘so much want to do’ or put in the hours and become a genius at it.

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Are There Any Social Media Etiquettes

Neera

Unlike most people, I have been avoiding social media. This year I realized I can’t keep ignoring the power of social media.

In the first week of January, I started a 100-day project — to write a social media post every day on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

As soon as I started posting regularly, I began getting messages from people who wanted to either sell me something or to read their stuff. Some sent me links to their article, others wanted me to review their website. But this one guy sent me a page-long email asking me to spread the word about his novel. He even wrote the synopsis and included the links where I could buy it.

That tipped the scale for me.

I am new to social media but even I could sense that he had gone too far.

You can’t expect someone who hardly knows you to start recommending your books to others.

He didn’t even try to ascertain whether I read historical fiction or not (His was a historical novel).

That got me thinking, there should be some social media etiquette.

When I started looking for them I couldn’t find any. So I built a list of mine.

  1. Don’t bombard people with your products. If someone knocks on your door and straightway starts selling you a product, would you buy it? How do you feel when someone cold calls you to sell something? I feel exactly that. Cold. No one warms up to a cold caller. The same is true on social media. Social media enable us to reach targeted readers and attract those who might enjoy what we write. But they need to get to know you first. Build the trust. Let your audience warm up to you. Give them some snippets from your life. Once they get to know you, they might get interested in reading your work and later on down the track might want to buy your book.
  2. Be Genuine. People can discern whether you are being honest or not. They can detect whether you are being authentic or putting on a persona. One would think social media is a place for conmen, but surprising people need to be more authentic and congruent with their values on social media than they are even in their real life. Why? Because you get caught out pretty soon. The best way to use any of the social media sites is to be authentic and real. You have a better chance of attracting people and build a long-term relationship that way. Don’t broadcast spammy sales messages. Just be yourself and interact.
  3. Be useful, interesting, or entertaining. Social means social. Social media means a place to interact with other like-minded people. Just as we were taught not to go to anyone’s home with bearing a gift, you shouldn’t appear on social media without bearing a gift. Remember the phrase ‘what’s in it for me.’ Everyone wants to know things that will help them, or interest them, or make them laugh. If you are not offering something that they want you won’t get their attention. You don’t need to do weird things, be nasty or abusive to get attention, you just need to bear a gift whenever you appear on social media.
  4. Develop the relationship first. Building relationships takes time. You will need to invest time and effort. If you are not willing to do that, and just want to flaunt your product at every new contact, people will be put off quickly. People can discern whether you are in it for the long term or are just after a promotional opportunity. People are not stupid. Social media is a long term strategy that you should only follow if you consider someone to be a contact worth pursuing.
  5. Pitch them, but only when it is appropriate. Once they have noticed you in some way, you can ask to share your work. You can make them your beta readers or you can send them announcements whenever you launch a product. Don’t do it all the time and certainly don’t do it before they get to know you.
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Toxicity on Social Media

So many people come off social media because of the toxicity that goes on there.

Recently Tim Denning wrote about the dark side of LinkedIn where he told the story of a woman who had experienced bullying (called womanizing) on LinkedIn. Predators would develop a community around their content, using a group chat like WhatsApp, and then use it to exploit unsuspecting women.

They would pretend to make women feel good and leave nice comments on their LinkedIn posts to get their attention. Then they would try and do anything to meet up with them in person so they could, hopefully, get them in bed.

Many other women reported witnessing the same kind of experience. I too have been contacted by men wanting to talk because they were feeling lonely and asking me personal questions.

Bullying is universal by womanizing is new to the cyberworld. As a woman, we need to be more vigilant on the internet.

Can we ignore social media altogether?

Social media is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it provides community and friends who might never have met in real life, people who ‘get you’ even if they live on the other side of the world.

On the other hand, it makes us the target for bullies, womanizers, and vendors who want to push their products to us.

You can ignore social media and many people do.

But if you need to build a platform it can be a very effective way to reach your audience.

As an author, it has several benefits.

  • You can build your community. Particularly if you are a self-published author who is selling directly to your readers. Authors need to stay in contact with their readers to sell their books
  • Talk to other authors. Writing is a lonely profession. But if you know other writers, the process of writing becomes more bearable plus you discover opportunities to collaborate and to learn from each other. Social Media is a great place to connect with other writers.
  • Advertise to potential readers. You need the means to announce your books. There is no better way than social media.

It is also a brilliant form of marking for introverts and most writers are introverts. You can choose when you interact and you can also be at home in silence and yet still be ‘out there’ connecting with people.

In many ways, social media is still about hand-selling to individuals but on a global scale.

But the real power of social media is about making connections and building relationships.

It is a brilliant way to market organically. This is how the marketing principle AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Actions) works for social media.

Attention

Attention is hard to get in this speedy online world. There are books, TV, podcasts, and streaming. Yet people spend a lot of time on social media and the best thing about it is that it is the only medium where there can be two-way interaction. Pieces of content are breadcrumbs leading to your door. You can share bits of your story, your hobbies, your successes, and even your failure as long as it is interesting, entertaining, or inspirational and you are bound to build a following.

Interest

Social networking is pointless on its own as a marketing mechanism. The aim is to get people to notice you and be interested enough to follow you or click through to your website.

Make sure you have all your social networking links on every page or the sidebar of your site so that you are easy to contact.

Also, make sure to capture people’s interest with a sign-up so that you can develop this fledging relationship further. Social network rise and fall. You don’t own that real estate, you only borrow it for a little while.

Desire

Sometimes people will buy your book, as soon as they hear about you but generally, it takes time for people to make a buying decision.

Once people have found you and are interested in what you’re doing, they might follow your blog, may listen to your interview, or simply continue to follow you on social networks. They may also receive your email newsletters, by producing other pieces of content you will expand the impact you can have over time.

Social Networking is about people knowing you, liking you, and trusting you enough to let you have a slice of their time and attention.

Authenticity over the long term is therefore important so that you can sustain this. Marketing like writing is a long term activity. You might share snippets, and pictures from your writing life while you’re writing your books on social media. And in this way, those who follow you will be ready to buy when you launch.

Action.

Once people know you like you and trust you, they are far more likely to try your books or recommend you to others.

There is no hard sell necessary.

This method is about attracting people who might be interested in what you have to say.

Once you have their attention you have built up a desire to see what you are doing. As you can now ask to take action and buy your book.

Socialising is about having fun.

Social networking doesn’t work if you don’t enjoy it, or if you are unrelentingly negative. Networks are collective energy expressed in one place. If you exude negativity or hype or spam, then that’s what you will experience in return.

Joining a conversation, learning from people, sharing something interesting, and making connections could be fun.

Just like socializing is fun.

So how can you be social on social media?

Social media is about being social. You got to follow all the rules you would follow when you are socializing with people in person. Keep these simple rules in mind.

  • Make friends rather than push products. Friendship will bring you much more rewards than the little financial gain you will have from selling a book or a course.
  • Build trust. Share bits about your life, your interests, and your work so that people get to know you before they decide to buy something from you.
  • Be honest and be yourself.
  • Think long term.

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Understanding Authorpreneurship

Neera 1 Comment

How can one study Botany?

There are millions of plants on our planet. How can one study them? It will take us several lifetimes to understand the differences between species.

Yet Botanists know most of these differences by heart. They have arranged the information so that it is easy to know where everything fits in the big picture. 

Botanists divided all plants into two major groups — non-vascular and vascular. The non-vascular group contains early plants with no vascular system, while the vascular plants have a well-developed vascular system. 

Then they further subdivided the groups. Non-vascular plants have two divisions— Bryophyta(Mosses), Marchantiophyta(Liverworts) and, vascular plants have four divisions — Pteridophyta (Ferns), Coniferophyta (Conifers), Ginkgophyta (Gingko), and Magnoliophyta (Flowering plants).

There you go—the entire plant kingdom can be explained in two paragraphs. Each division has further sub-divisions, classes, order, families, and genus, but all you need is a bird’s-eye view approach to understand Botany.

I am going to use the same approach to understand authorpreneurship. 

Throughout my journey as a writer, I approached everything with the vigor of a student. I wanted to write my memoir, but I didn’t know how to turn my boring anecdotes into stories. I learned it.

I wanted to write a novel but I didn’t know how to develop my idea into an outline. I learned it too.

I didn’t know how to start a blog, write articles, write for social media, sketch. But I learned them.

I learned it mostly from other people. People took the time and shared their knowledge and techniques through books, blogs, videos, and podcasts. 

Now, I am learning authorpreneurship. Although it is not science or skill, it is complex enough to demand full attention.

It is complex because it is new. 

There is no clear path, and there is no one path.

Yet, it is reproducible as several writers are successfully doing it. 

I am reading stories after stories of writers who are turning their writing into a thriving business. I intend to study them and learn from them.

The first person who intrigued me was Jesse Tevelow.

At the not-so-ripe age of 31, Jesse was fired from a start-up company. He had no plans for his future. Instead of looking for another job, Jesse followed his dream. He hunkered down in his one-bedroom apartment and started writing.

He had two #1 bestsellers on Amazon in less than eighteen months, and he was earning thousands of dollars per month in passive income.

Writing can be a viable side-gig, a powerful leveraging tool, and even a lucrative full-time pursuit. It can open doors you never knew existed. But perhaps more importantly, it can bring you more fulfillment than you’ve ever felt before. That’s exactly what it did for me. — Jesse Tevelow.

According to a New York Times article, four out of every five Americans feel the urge to write a book, yet very few of them actually write one. 

Why?

Because writing a book has historically been considered an arduous task. It is like climbing Everest. First, you have to write a greater story. Then you have to hire an agent. Then you have to score a publishing deal. And even if you somehow pull that off, it’ll take years before your book hits the shelves. Writing a book is not everyone’s game.

It was true about two decades ago. Everything has changed since. 

Jesse wrote his first book in six months, making countless mistakes along the way. He didn’t have a publisher or an editor, or a marketing team, yet he still published a #1 bestseller that generates a significant passive income. 

“The experience blew my mind, to put it lightly.” writes Jesse. “I couldn’t help but wonder, are other people seeing the same results?”

As he dug deeper, he found multiple examples of indie authors making five, six, and sometimes even seven figures from their self-published books and related companies. And then it hit him. 

We now live in a world that favors content creators over gatekeepers. — Jesse Tevelow.

Jesse now has a multi-million dollar business build around his books. He is the founder of LaunchTeam, a distributed network of go-to-market experts who help remarkable people launch remarkable things.

I bought all three of Jesse’s books — The Connection Algorithm, Authorpreneur: Build the Brand, Business, Lifestyle You Deserve It’s Time To Write Your Book, Hustle: The Life-Changing Magic of Constant Motion. It was the best $4.50 I ever spent. 

Here is what I learned from his books:

If you’re entrepreneurial and hard-working, you can use books to earn meaningful passive income, gain leverage as an expert in your field, build your legacy, grow a sustainable business, and enrich the world.

And you don’t need anyone’s permission.

You can do it. 

It might sound hyperbolic and crazy, but it’s true.

Now is the most favorable environment for writing books the world has ever seen.

There are two things to keep in mind:

  1. Technology and entrepreneurship have made books more powerful than ever before.

2. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are several successful models available to follow.

Applying the bird’s-eye view approach to classify the models, I have found there are two major categories.

  1. Book Brand: This is where authors rely on producing multiple books in a popular genre targeting the same audience, using paid ads to drive traffic directly to the book sales page. It is usually part of the high production business model. Several fiction writers such as James Patterson, Joanna Penn come in this category. 
  2. Author Brand: This is about branding the author, and attracting the target market over time through content marketing, speaking, social media, and paid advertising. Authors find a niche and build an empire in that niche. Examples include Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Berstein, or Rise of the Youpreneur by Chris Ducker. This design style also applies to biographies like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

In my further articles, I will further explore these models.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Authorpreneur  - A New Publication For Writers

Neera

The dictionary defines ‘author’ as a person who has written something, especially a book, and ‘entrepreneur’ as a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.

Many years ago, I combined the two to develop the word ‘authorpreneur’ to describe someone who takes risks to turn their writing into a business. 

I didn’t give it much thought because I was new to writing and still finding my feet. But soon, I started spotting the word being used by other writers. I even noticed some books with the word ‘authorpreneur’ appearing in the title. That was it.

The time had come to make the term mainstream.

Let me define and elaborate on the term.

An authorpreneur is a person who creates written products, participates in creating her brand, and actively promotes that brand through a variety of outlets.

An Authorpreneur makes use of the twenty-first-century outlets such as websites, blogs, social media, content marketing, writing platforms, newsletters, promotional materials both in print and online, speaking engagements, online and in-person courses, and workshops to create a unique business model to build a community based thriving business.

I started reading about more and more writers who were using these new outlets and becoming considerably successful. Much more successful than it was possible in the traditional way of writing and publishing. 

In less than ten years, a new breed of writers has started dominating the writing industry, and the trend is going not only to continue but explode. 

Yet thousands of writers aspiring are not even aware of it.

Why I started this publication?

One of the myths around writing is that you can’t live off your writing. Indeed, the vast majority of authors do not make a living from their written words. 

The traditional publishing industry that once sustained many writers is now in a freefall accelerated by the pandemic. I have been watching in dismay as publisher after publisher closing their shop. 

Four in five traditionally published books never “earn back” the advances received by their authors, which means they don’t sell enough copies to make the writers any money past the initial amount paid by publishers for writing the books. Most e-books don’t sell more than 560 copies per year and most print books don’t sell more than 250 copies per year. In fact, the average books sell 3,000 copies in its lifetime. — Nina Amir

But that is changing. On the other hand, self-publishing is thriving.

Making a living as an author takes hard work, and the income from just one book or writing on one platform will not pay you enough to live on. If you want to earn a living as an author and not make a living but thrive as an author, you need to think like a business person. Like an authorpreneur.

This publication will help you achieve that.

Writing is the hardest profession to break into. 

Not only learning to write well is arduous but making a living from writing is grueling. But things are changing for good.

Today many more avenues are available to writers to publish and make money while honing their craft. New ones are fast appearing. But the learning curve is sharp.

I have created this publication to help new writers establish their writing business. It will have articles specifically for that purpose.

If you are a writer like me, if you want to do nothing else but write, you want to know the clear pathway to become an authorpreneur. 

I want to dedicate this publication exclusively to help writers become authorpreneurs.

What kind of articles I will be published here

Articles helping you develop an authorpreneur mindset. Articles with practical advice to set up your business. Stories of the writers who have been on the journey before you and have made it. Summaries of the books on the topic.

I want to create a community of writers who want to help each other establish their author business. 

If we all lift each other up in small ways, we can reach new, exciting heights together.

Initially, I will be the sole contributor to this publication. With time I will like other writers to join me to help build this publication. 

I will be looking for high-quality, practical articles that focus on mindset, creativity, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and author business models. 

Here is my rough list of the kind of articles I am envisioning:

  • The mindset of an authorpreneur.
  • The business of writing.
  • The process and habits of writers.
  • Advice on developing writing products.
  • Articles exploring different writing career paths.
  • Unique or creative writing, editing, and publishing tips, tools, and methods. 
  • Book summaries of books on the top of authorpreneurship.
  • First-person accounts of getting a book published.
  • Interviews with experienced writers.
  • Other creative pieces in which fellow writers can learn something new.

Who can contribute?

Any one of you who wants to write on the topic.

If you want to contribute, reach to me via  LinkedIn.

How can you help?

By subscribing to the publication. 

By leaving comments and asking questions about what you would like me to write about.

I am not starting this publication to turn it into a mega publication but as a small portal to share my learning as I progress on the authorpreneur journey.

“True authors don’t write for fame or make a name or money, they write to make impact.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive.

They say a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. For me, that step is this publication and my newsletter A Whimsical Writer.

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Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash