Whenever I run a conference, I always present somewhere around 8-12 hours a day. Somewhere between 3 and 5 days in a row. Every year, our virtual conference is a collection of what I’m going to be working on and thinking about for the upcoming year. It’s usually a combination of patterns I’m seeing in…
There are only three things that make your author platform grow. Content (the books you write) Personal Access (who you are, what you do, how you think) World Access (who the character are, what the world is like) (Yes, discovery and advertising and marketing. But that’s still just drawing attention to the thing that makes…
Is it a basement or is it a barrier label? On each of the Strengths development cards, there’s a section for the “barrier labels” of each Strength. Those are the things people call you or the mean things people say about you, when you have that Strength. Many of them have the word “too” in…
Y’know what builds community? Losing. As a Vikings fan, there is no time I feel more close to other people in the Vikings-Nation than when we almost win. (I have a t-shirt that says, “We Almost Always Almost Win” with purple and gold lettering. I get more comments on that shirt when I wear it…
If you’ve seen the reel that’s going around about “what’s more important: an increase in positive self-talk, or a decrease in negative self-talk” from the happiness doctor… Their behavioral studies found a decrease in negative self-talk was far more effective in reprogramming old wiring. So for right now, I’m trying to gentle the critical inner…
It can be a frustrating experience to have a bad release. Completely understand that. And the urge to deconstruct what we did wrong after is super normal. No judgment there. That is helpful to a point. I just want to add a specific perspective about releasing right now that I think is important to note.…
Subscription fatigue. (On a call with a bunch of creators and we’re talking about this.) I feel like we don’t talk enough about the way consumers are fatigued right now. We’re gonna talk about this more in the upcoming months, but sometimes it helps to have a word for what it is that we’re feeling.…
I have been baseline-happy the last two weeks. But not spikey-happy, like “I just had a cookie and I feel artificially pushed up by sugar” happy. Peaceful happy. Like, I can just lay back and enjoy. No effort required to enjoy. It doesn’t mean I haven’t felt a huge range of emotion. The days we’re…
If you’ve lost joy in writing… Of course, solidarity. Most of us who are professional writers go through that at some point. So you are not alone. First, of course, we do have to acknowledge it. That ole GI Joe saying… knowing is half the battle. That’s our whole vibe around here. So, acknowledge, solidarity,…
For some of us, we will have instant chemistry in our author career. Things will “just work.” Chemistry is instant. (In the “colloquial” way we use “chemistry” as meaning, “it’s just working” or “it just feels right.”) Alchemy is a process. (In that it’s transformational, and has to happen by transmuting things from their current…