The publishing industry is broken, but it doesn't have to break us

There are three words that can help, but you're probably gonna gag when you hear them. In fact, you are likely gonna have a lot of feelings reading this one.

Yes, some authors can just write the next book and release a new book every month for months, or sometimes even years...

...but then they almost always burn out.

My friend says that you have to push hard for three years to break through, and I think that's about the limit somebody can push their body to write that much before it rebels on them.

I think most people start burning out at six months at this pace and they just can't keep it up after two years, maybe three if they are really stubborn.

If they don't burn out, then they either transition to co-writing, transition to running a publishing company, or transition to building their brand in other mediums.

There are so many well intentioned and helpful humans in this industry. You can basically walk up to any author and they will spill every secret they have to you at any time.

The industry is in the best shape it's every been...

...and everyone is still broke.

On top of that, everyone is burned out from writing and writing and writing and writing without ever getting anywhere they feel "safe" taking their foot off the gas.

People are out here writing 60+ marketable books and still struggling. As Monica Leonelle said recently, we were sold a bill of goods that if you built up a catalog then we'd be good to go.

More and more I see that every system on the internet requires us to give a piece of content to either get audience (growth) or get money (monetization). We live in this deeply content-driven online world, but we struggle to profit from content, too.

In truth both audience and money come from relationships, not content. But we have been told "content is king" endlessly. Or, in the author world, "write the next book."

"Write the next book" as it pertains to selling books and making money is completely breaking down for authors though. There are people with 50+ books who are going broke. It's time to unpack that toxic message!

There's sustainability around productivity and sustainability around money. And these two things can't be uncoupled for the most part. Energetically one begets the other as it stands in the most prominent business models for authors.

A lot of authors are working on one or the other or both. But no one or at least not many are saying, "hey maybe these prominent business models are not the answer and were never particularly sustainable for most people."

Sure, you can have a sustainable production system but you aren't going to plug that into an unsustainable business model and get sustainable money. And many discussions about this still feel suspicious because we can all see and feel that.

The business model needs to be reworked, rethought, etc. in addition to rethinking beliefs about productivity and money.

“Write the next book” is still being pushed as the dominant narrative to find success in publishing, and we don’t think that it’s doing authors any favors.

Yes, it’s obviously important to have a critical mass of writing to break through and build a successful career. What does a critical mass mean, though? Is it three books? Five? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

At what point does it become a burden instead of a blessing? Following that advice is causing people to write dozens of books for years and years while still riding the struggle bus the whole time.

If that's really the best practice to find success, then show me the receipts.

• If that's true, then why isn't it working for some many people?

• If that's true, then why is everyone at their wit's end?

• If that's true, then why do I get texts from my successful friends damn near weekly at this point telling me they don't think they're gonna make it to 2025?

Of course, writing books is how we make money. I’m not saying you don’t have to write books as an author. That would be like telling a baker to stop baking bread.

You can’t have success as an author without books, but I’m not convinced writing the next book is the best marketing action for all authors at all time, just like I don’t think baking bread is the best marketing action for somebody who can’t drive foot traffic into their bakery storefront.

Sir Terry Pratchett wrote over 50 books in his career and has sold 100 million books in the process. Stephen King has published 65 novels in his career. Anne Rice published 37 novels. Jane Austen wrote 6 novels. Melissa Albert has also written 6 books.

Meanwhile, I’ve written over 40 novels and have seen almost none of the success of these people. I have a pretty decent career going, but there has to be something beyond “write the next book” that’s driving these people forward. I can tell you I’m nowhere near 100 million copies sold, and I’m working just as hard as Sir Terry.

*** Please note that if you are reading this via email, Substack only sent out a partial version and the article will eventually stop without notice. If you want to read the whole 6,500-word article, then go to this website or download the app.***

Systemic issues facing authors

So, what’s happening here? Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as pointing a finger. There are systemic issues that no single author can fix by themselves, or even collectively, without a lot of help. They include, but are not limited to:

• Capitalism, but not in the way you think: I have plenty of vitriol to throw at capitalism, but the biggest problem for authors is that capitalism works consistently, but not intuitively. People think 1+1=2, but really 1+potato=cheese sandwich. It's nonsense, but it is consistent nonsense. Once you understand how to connect the right nonsense to the right outcome, you can build predictable money.

• Price elasticity: Books have a very narrow band in which they can operate. They can basically be $0-$10 in ebook or $10-$30 in print. This is what Monica called The Novelist's Dilemma. This is why we need a bunch of books before we can hope to break even on books, because we have to price low. On top of that, readers have been trained to devalue the price of a book. The hardest thing to do in business is sell on volume, and the whole industry does that, because books are so cheap there's no other choice.

• The Power Law curve: When you chart an industry like tech, there are companies worth trillions of dollars, which means there are a bunch of companies that are worth hundreds of billions, even more worth billions, and tons worth millions. Meanwhile, an indie author might push 8 figures, which means when you chart that power law curve back, there are fewer people at every stage, and the majority are making a pittance.

• Trying to shoehorn everyone into a very few business models: In the past few posts I've made, it's proven out that people still think if you do the right thing for the right length of time in the right genre then you'll still probably not make it and I just...don't agree with that. Being exposed to many other types of business this year it's clear there are hundreds of business models that might work for an author, but they are only ever exposed to but a very few.

• The whole industry mainly knows how to do one thing: That thing is change the price of their book. They don't use any other psychological trigger except put book out, raise price, and lower price.

• Only going after the 1/5: Amazon teaches us to focus on the cheap, quick wins. If somebody isn't ready to buy now now now, then they have always been seen as being worthless to authors. However, being a sales manager I know that if you show something to 5 people 1 will say no, 1 will say yes, and the other 3 will be on the fence. What separates a decent salesperson from a great one is the ability to convert 2-4 out of 5, instead of just that 1. You can literally double your sales if you just convert 1 out of 5 people without doing any other work.

• Authors think about collaborations all wrong, or at least not expansively enough: They are very good about finding collaborations with people who are the exact same as them, but they are terrible at the thing that really moves the needle once you get more success, which is finding people dimilar (different but complementary) than the medium you currently use. Have you ever approached a local business who does something different than you do, but has a complementary audience, to see if they wanted to offer your books in a bundle with their stuff? I hear a few authors doing it here or there, but nobody ever talks or thinks about how to make this happen outside of book bundles.

• We are still taught that we are annoying our readers when we sell to them: I can't believe people still say this to me consistently, but if somebody joins your list to hear about your books, you aren't annoying them by sharing your books with them. That is such a wild thing to say, and yet 95% of the authors I know still think this. They "don't want to bother their readers" and everyone just kind of agrees with that advice.

• We have to compete against every product that ever been made: In very few industries are the business owners up against a 400 year old dead person for somebody's money and attention. Maybe a winery has to compete against the past sometimes, but then at least that older wine is way more expensive which prices people out of the market for it. Even film and radio only go back a hundred years, but books have been published for thousands of years, and you can read them all for a pittance. No musical artist will ever have to go up against Mozart, only a cheap facsimile of Mozart as told through a modern orchestra.

• We think "x is the answer": It doesn’t matter what x is, as long as it’s something authors haven’t tried yet, or haven’t tried in a while. This happens all the time. Direct sales is not the answer for comic book people...they already do direct sales. Fiction apps are not the answer for genre authors because they pay shit outside of romance. Community isn't the answer to anything. Community is a nice, blobby, nebulous word that is so squishy that it can mean anything. There are really a suite of answers that could help, but we have to get better at trying stuff that hasn't been done before.

• The publishing industry is elitist: Yeah, we are inclusive on some level, but we are super cliquey, and we don't believe everyone can or should be an author. We definitely don't believe everyone can succeed as an author. This is an industry started by elites and run by elites. For eons the only way you could prove you were really an "author" was by not needing the money, but what that really proved was you were an aristocrat, which is what they really wanted to do. Why have we carried this through to 2024?

• Authors don't want to run businesses: Not only don't they want to do it, they will actively sabotage themselves and the industry at every turn to "make art". Meanwhile, they wrote a book with their name on it, and think they don't want attention. Why did you write the book then? Just admit you want to run a business, make money, and that it's okay to want to be seen. It is impossible to teach authors because they are gleefully ignorant of the things that they need to do, and they complain about it.

• We actively suppress information on new things that don't fit our mental model of what "right" is: It literally happened to me for 10+ years and I see it happen all the time. For something to break through it has to be so few degrees from what is already done that it's almost unhelpful just by it's proximity.

How do we fix these issues? Well, there are some general things we can do to fix this at a systemic level…but honestly most of these will probably only help around the margins without traditional publishing houses on board, and it doesn’t make sense for them to blow up an industry that benefits them.

• Some of the price stuff is being helped by special edition campaigns pricing books at $80+.

• We need more authors to make way more money, like a stupid amount more money, and then drag people up to show other people doing it. Yes, this is also happening, slowly.

• We have gotta stop being scared to reach out to our fans with things they can buy.

• We have to be better at testing things that could work, and then jettisoning things that don't to streamline our business.

• We have to find ways to up the prices on books at a systemic level. Luckily, most book publishers are pricing their trades at $18.99, which allows us to up our own prices, but still...woof.

• We gotta start building different types of business that have never been built before in our industry. Everyone is way too timid to do anything until they see 100 other people exactly like them do it, and by that time...it probably doesn't work anymore, or at least not as well.

• We have to start believing everyone can succeed, but not in the way that other people succeed. It's so exhausting to hear that everyone can't succeed by people who did. It's elitist as fuck and it's gotta stop. Not everyone can succeed like you, but everyone can chart a path, even if it's never been done before.

What can you change?

This has not been the most hopeful message as of yet, so let’s flip this and talk about what you can do as a single human to overcome what seems like overwhelming odds stacked against them?

I have studied and thought about this a lot as Monica and I work to figure out a way to help writers through this morass, and it really comes down to three words.

Build leveraged assets.

Yes, I know the words “building leveraged assets” is peak business speak and your eyes are glazing over, but bear with me because those three words can change your life, reduce your overwhelm, and help you recover from (or prevent) burnout.

What is a leveraged asset? It's something that becomes more valuable with every new bit that goes into it without it making you do more work or expend significantly more effort.

• An email list (should) be a leveraged asset. You should make more (or at least the same amount of) money with every person that enters your list.

• A community can be a leveraged asset if you do it right. The main way to tell if your community works is whether your effort increases or stays the same with every person that enters. You can build a leveraged asset if you find ways to connect people with each other instead of having to be in there every day. If it becomes harder to control, you are doing it wrong.

• A subscription should be a leveraged asset. If it gets harder to manage with each person, then it isn't a leveraged asset. However, if you charge enough to hire people who can manage it for you, then yes, it is a leveraged asset. It should build with each person who enters it.

• Translations can be a great leveraged asset. I mean for most of us it's not, but Lee Savino often says that she only hit seven figures once her books went into translation, and it doesn't take a lot of her energy to do. That is the ideal leveraged asset.

• A series should be a leveraged asset, but it usually isn't right now. If you aren't making more with each installment of a series, then it isn't a leveraged asset. We have been taught to write in a way that negates the value of a book about the minute it is released.

• Advertising can be a leveraged asset. If you get your ads humming, they can generate a ton of money without taking a lot of work. They usually aren't leveraged because something is broken, but they can be leveraged.

There are all sorts of leveraged assets that exist all around us. The more leveraged assets you have in your business, the better your business works.

There are hundreds of ways to build leveraged assets, and we are taught how to build exactly 1, maybe 2 of them.

Do you know why you probably hate your community, your books, your publication, and/or your email list?

Because they are not leveraged assets…yet.

If every time you wrote a post or sent an email you made more and more money without costing you more time, then you would love your email list, and love sending posting in your community.

It’s obviously possible to build an email list of the wrong humans that don’t care about you, but it’s equally, or maybe even more, possible to build a list of the right people who perform the wrong actions.

For instance, people often try to equate list size with list health, but that is false equivalence.

It doesn’t matter if you have 100 or 10,000 people on your list if they don’t actually perform the action you want them to take.

Of course, that can mean a lot of things. Do you want them to engage, to click, to buy, to join somethingm or what? If you’re selling your own products, you probably want them to buy, but if you are trying to sell advertising, you probably want them to click and/or engage on the ads.

Those are two very different metrics. My email list has a very healthy open rate and sales conversion rate for my own products, but it has a terrible ad click through rate, which is killing us with advertisers right now.

Leveraged assets are not about more. They are about less.

We’re looking for less time investment to get greater returns.

Unfortunately, up until now the whole industry has exclusively taught the "pump method" of building a business, which is when you exert some amount force and a predictable outcome happens every time forever.

These kinds of actions are easy to start doing, so authors latch onto them.

Release a book, slam through some ads, take the win, move on to write the next book, and repeat until dead is not a sustainable business strategy for 90% of authors.

The problem with a pump is that it takes the same effort on the first pump and the thousandth pump. Yeah, it’s easy to get excited to write that first book, but it takes equal energy to write the 10th book and the 40th book. Eventually, it wears on you.

Thus, burnout, especially if you’re money situation isn’t improving with each book.

Instead, we should be thinking about the "flywheel method" wherein things are almost impossible at first and then get progressively easier and easier over time.

The first push of a flywheel is so, so hard that it seems like nothing is happening for a long time, so people abandon it before it starts working.

I don’t blame them, either. If they don’t know what their building, how could they possibly know to stick with something? A flywheel doesn’t get easier until you’ve done a couple rotations, and it’s very, very hard to get there. So, of course everyone stops before they find success with it.

That said, over time a flywheel gets much, much easier. The main reason I can keep doing this work, even with several chronic illnesses that zap my energy, is that it’s easier to keep going than to stop because I’ve built so much momentum.

I am the king of leveraged actions. It’s so natural to me at this point that until recently I thought this was common knowledge, but what I’ve learned recently is nobody is doing this…or even knows it exists.

The first thing I think about when taking on a project is how I can use it again in multiple places and formats. This post will eventually be used in an article, and probably wind up in a book, or maybe even a course or at least a training in our community.

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Did you know that it took hours and hours to write this post? I originally was going to put this second half behind a paywall, but decided to give it away for free. I’m only able to do that because of the amazing paid members of our community. If you’d like me to continue thinking about stuff and writing about it like I do, consider becoming a paid member.

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What does this look like in practice?

We now have language to help us fight against the headwinds pushing against us, but how can we actually put this into practice?

It starts by prioritizing one asset first and building it to sustainability. Then, once it's humming along, we build a second one and a third once the first two are stable. Basically, we build systematically and with intention. As we build new assets, the ones we already built are getting easier and easier to manage, and integrating with each other to make you more powerful every day.

• We don't try to build 10 assets at once, which is what everyone is doing right now.

• We don’t abandon things after a week, which is what a lot of people are doing right now.

• We don’t keep doing things for years that never work, which is what the rest of the people are doing right now.

Instead, we prioritize one thing at a time and give it at least three months to catch. If it does, then we keep working on it. If it doesn’t, we jettison it.

Then, regardless of what we choose to focus on, we follow the best practices to succeed doing it. We don’t lone wolf it.

Instead, we follow best practices from people who know what they are doing and have built the exact thing we’re trying to build so we can tell if the most likely success path works for us.

Why?

Because our goal is to isolate and control, to the greatest extent possible, whether something works for us or not, in as short a timeframe as possible.

If you go out on your own, and you fail, it’s impossible to know whether your process failed or the methodology failed. If you find a good teacher and follow their advice, and it still doesn’t work, it’s probably not right for you.

Additionally, if you follow the methodology, have success, but hate it, you can at least find somebody to outsource the work to, and they have a guide to the process already.

Or you can abandon it.

In fact, you should abandon anything that either doesn’t work at all or makes you feel bad doing it.

So, at the start of every quarter, either pick something new or double down on the thing you prioritizes to make it work better.

If after three months your new process does work to help you create leverage and growth, then we double down on it. If it doesn't, abandon it for something else.

How long do you keep prioritizing that one action? Until it operates on its own with very little effort or it breaks down. Then, either you keep working on it or you hand it off to somebody.

(Ines Johnson is the queen of this, BTW. She sat me down once and taught me how she uses Vanessa Vale’s Box Method to systematize her publishing life and it’s brilliant.)

Most importantly, we pick one thing at a time. What we don't do is drag along a hundred things that can't or won't be leveraged.

In fact, we don’t drag along anything. Everything we carry forward should help us build leverage in our business.

It’s too much to expect a new process to build leverage at the beginning, but if after six months it’s dragging you down, cut it loose.

(If you need help learning how to prioritize things, then Sarra Cannon is the best human in the world to help you with that.)

Seriously, if y'all just abandoned the stuff that wasn't working in your business, you would be so much happier and more successful, but instead you hold out hope that maybe it's gonna be the secret weapon.

There is no secret weapon.

There are only leveraged and unleveraged assets.

Where do you start?

I’ve made some really, really broad statement so far about a concept you probably have never heard about before, or best case scenario seen and run away from, so let’s bring this back to a more granular level and talk about how to pick your priority.

I have never had a problem picking a priority because the thing that would move my business forward the most, take the least time to implement, and integrate easiest into my existing workflow was always glaringly obvious.

It’s probably obvious to you, too. You just need some space to figure it out. Here are some exercises I recommend.

• First, I recommend taking an hour and doing this exercise to help you visualize your money situation. To do this exercise, we start by figuring out how much money you can realistically make this year, and block it out in a calendar. So, if you want to make $100,000, but when you fill in all your launches you can't realistically make $25,000, that's a problem. If you want to make $100,000 and you can make $100k per launch...then you might be thinking too small. Literally get a calendar and put every launch into it with how much you think you will make. Don't worry about the total money yet, just plot out your next year of launches. Once they are plugged in, add in any recurring revenue or other ways you make money (consulting, ghostwriting, freelance writing, etc.). Then, add it all up and see how close you are...How can you get where you want to be? That's a good start to figuring out your priority.

• Once you have that overview, now it’s time to do this exercise based on a modified version of an Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful time management tool that helps you prioritize tasks by dividing them into four distinct quadrants: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important. Building one for yourself allows you to focus your energy on what truly matters, ensuring that essential tasks are addressed promptly while avoiding the trap of busywork that often feels pressing but yields little value. My process isn’t exactly an Eisenhower Matrix, but it’s very, very close. Basically, you make a grid and break it into four quadrants: Don't love but need, Love and need, Don't love and don't need, & Love but don't need. Then, put everything you do in your business into one of those four boxes. Now, you assess. What is in the top right quadrant? Those should be your core products and offerings. You might even find some new services you could offer that more align with your passions. What is in the bottom right quadrant? How can you make those more important to your business? What is in the top left quadrant? How can you outsource those, or change them so you love them? What ended up in the bottom left quadrant? Cut those things ASAP.

• After you finish those two exercises, the strengths and weaknesses of your business should become pretty apparent. If you’re still not sure, though, I recommend taking a few of your possible choices and running a SWOT analysis on their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Sarra Cannon

teaches a slightly different version of the Eisenhower Matrix than me. Here’s what she told me she uses in HB90.

In HB90, we use a version of the Eisenhower Matrix that's basically looking at two factors - Does this move me closer to my ideal vision for my career/life? and Does this have a high or low short-term impact? I call it our Priority Box.

1. Moves me toward my vision and has a high short-term impact tasks. These are essentially projects or tasks that will quickly show a result that leads you toward your goals. (By quickly, I usually mean in the next 90 days)

2. Moves me toward my vision and has a low short-term impact. These are tasks that are typically essential to growth but will take more of an investment in time.

3. Doesn't move me toward my vision but has a high short-term impact. I call this the danger zone, because a lot of people get stuck here. e.g. writing a genre or series they're so done with or doing certain social media tasks all day because it gets results. It's like focusing on putting out fires or getting quick wins while unintentionally sacrificing everything that truly matters.

4. Doesn't move me toward my vision and has a low short-term impact. Anything that falls in this zone should be eliminated ASAP.

Of course, this is just one piece of prioritizing and strategizing that's tailored toward looking at your next 90 days, but it's been super helpful for me in staying focused on both a) what's actually moving the needle and b) what do I really want from life?

Once you get through with those three exercises, the one you should focus on will almost definitely become apparent. If you’re still having trouble, then what we’re looking for is the one thing that will propel your business forward the most, giving you the most leverage.

This idea was popularized by The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The central idea is that by identifying and prioritizing the single most important task—the "One Thing"—you can make significant progress in your personal and professional life.

The book’s central conceit revolves around “The Domino Theory”. Since a domino can knock down another domino that is up to 1.5 times its size, a rather small domino can create a chain reaction wherein it eventually knocks down a massive domino that changes everything in your business.

However, you must choose your dominos intentional, and knock them down in the right order, if you want to cause this kind of reaction. Most people knock down dominos at random, causing chaos and getting no results.

If, instead, you use the exercises above to find your big domino, then you can work backwards to find the actions you need to complete, and in what order, to knock over progressively larger and larger dominos, until you finally knock that big one over.

Most people don’t have an execution problem. They have a prioritization problem.

They are trying to knock down a domino ten steps ahead of the action they should be working on, and not getting the results they need because it’s simply too big for them to push over.

Usually, what I chose to focus on was the thing that had consumed my mind the most for the previous couple of months, and something I hypothesized would clear the main block that impeded my business from moving forward.

Kevin McLaughlin’s Pro Scifi

notes that this process looks a lot like digging into the Pareto principle.

One way I look at this sort of thing is as a "multiple Pareto problem."

Most people know about the Pareto Principle: 80% of our results come from 20% of our activities. It's pretty well-known.

But what's interesting is what happens when you break it down deeper. OK, we're focusing on the 20% of our actions which drive 80% of our results - but INSIDE that?

There's a 20% of the 20%. That is, there's 4% of our actions which drive 64% of our results.

Inside that, there's 0.8% of our actions - I round this up to 1% - which drive 51.2% of our results.

Which, if you think about it, is what the "One Thing" bit is talking about: 1% of our actions drive about half of our results. Once we know what that 1% activity IS, then

I agree. This is like a systematized way to find those things that move you forward the most. It’s very hard to just magic your way to that answer, though, but if you can do that, you’ll probably get to the same place in the end.

A personal example

Here’s how this looks in my business. I’ve been consumed with building a membership for years. Moreso, I’ve been looking for a way to build sustainable revenue and growth into my business.

So, most of my prioritization decisions have revolved around bringing more recurring revenue into my business, focused mainly on recurring revenue. This has been my focus since 2020, and I still haven’t fully cracked it, but I’m way closer than I have ever been before.

Since I started doing this exercise after meeting Sarra at RAM 2024 and being introduced to her HB90 method, my quarters have been:

• Q1 2023 - Circle. Finding a way to building a community off Facebook was the #1 thing I thought could move my business forward. It bombed, and it was very easy to see it was incongruent. However, it led me realize I was a better part of a community than a leader of it.

• Q2 2023 - Substack. This one easily succeeded my expectation because I was getting bonkers organic growth and enjoying it. I started doing it because Monica was doing it and said it was better than Circle. It also allowed me to become a part of a community without leading it, which was one of my big revelations the previous quarter.

• Q3 2023 - I doubled down on Substack because it was working. I really want you to do it for 6 months if it's working even a little bit. Substack was working well, but I also comped everyone on my list three months access so I kind of had to double down on it through at least August. I’m glad I did because revenue started to pick up after then and into September.

• Q4 2023 - Again, I kept going on Substack. We started making some decent money on Substack. However, I found the ROI was decreasing drastically from where I needed it to be and where it had been the previous two quarters, so I had to figure some way to supercharge growth.

• Q1 2024 -Ads. Ads were the easy next step after Substack growth slowed since I found several ways to test them without a lot of expense. I tested a ton of platforms, and hired a growth team to help me.

• Q2 2024 - Ads still. I probably would have ended this earlier and picked a different priority for Q2, but I had an ad team that was contracted through May, so I kept this quarter focused on ads. It was a bloodbath, but I learned enough doing them that I thought the next step would be a daily newsletter. Again it was clearly the next place to test b/c I needed a way to sustain ad growth, and I decided to try it through an ad supported daily.

• Q3 2024 - Daily newsletter. This is where we are now, and it's a struggle, honestly. I am having a lot of problems with ads, and it's just not doing what I need it to do to keep running ads, which is why I did the daily. That said, I'll probably keep going with it through Q4 because I have nothing else.

As you can see, almost all of them revolved either tangentially or intrinsically around this idea of subscription/membership revenue and sustainability. Additionally, they each dovetailed into the next based on what I learned during my tests.

If you’re still having problems figuring it out, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the thing consuming your business and holding it back?

• What is either something you are already doing but not enough or that you aren't doing but can augment your business do you think you want to test in the near future?

• What hypothesis can you measure in the next three months that could bear fruit?

In my experience, there's always been one standout thing that I thought would move my business forward the most and the quickest.

Like with Circle, we were already doing it with Writer MBA, and I've been searching for a community thing with Wannabe Press, so it made sense to try it.

Then, when that failed, it was pretty obvious the best next step was Substack since Monica was already there and we wanted to give more value to people in the Writer MBA community. Plus, I could try another subscription platform.

Throughout this process, it was pretty obvious the things that failed were failing and the things that succeeded were succeeding. If the thing you are testing is either holding you back or barely worth it, then you should probably try something else.

We are looking for sails, not anchors.

It's only something like this daily newsletter that's limping along where I would have any question as to whether to continue it or not, and really I would probably say if it's working even a little bit give it three more months.

From everything I’ve read and everything I know, these things really need six months to prove out or not.

And still, I’m getting such great responses from people who read the daily, and people coming out of the woodwork with such nice things to say that it’s not like nobody is reading and it’s not working at all.

It’s doing everything I want it to do except book sponsors to fund continued growth. Aside from that, there’s been nothing but positive growth.

If I wasn’t having people reach out so often to talk about it, I probably wouldn’t keep going with it after next month, but having those other metrics allows me to see there might be value from doubling down on it.

I would say if you’re enjoying it but it’s limping along, maybe give it another shot and try some different things. However, if you’re not enjoying it, it’s probably best to not reup for another three months of torture.

I really enjoy doing this daily. It might be the most enjoyable single thing I’ve ever done, and I do overindex for enjoyment. It’s probably not a bad idea for you to do the same.

Finally, I want you to remember this bit. You wrote something with your name on it, or at least your words in it.

It's okay to want people to read it. It's okay to want money for it. It's okay that you want fans to obsess over it.

Money flows with your energy and is blocked by your blocks.

You are not bad for wanting attention. You are not bad for wanting money. You are not bad for seeking notoriety.

If you have a negative view of money, then it won't flow toward you. If you are hostile toward attention, then it won't come to you. If you can't accept having fans, then they won't accept you.

The biggest thing you can do is clear those blocks before they hold you back for one second longer.

So, what do you think?

• Do you have any leveraged assets?

• Can you think of a better name for this term so I don’t gag every time I think about it?

• What is your next priority.

Let me know in the comments.

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