Posted on March 12, 2024
How to take advantage of your strengths as an author, shoot for your dreams, and live the life you want. P.S. So sorry about some audio issues here. This won’t be happening again!
#73 Transcript:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of this subscriptions for authors podcast. So today I want to talk about something. That first came up in December. It was a post I made on the newsletter. It’s a blog. I linked to it down below. It was about. Yet. Your weirdness makes you beautiful, essentially. What makes you different? Makes you beautiful as a creative, as an author and his person. And it was about my story of my own differences in how I’ve come to grow and awareness about what makes me different and embracing that and leaning into it. And just sharing with you all, what. That journey and process was like, And in today’s podcast. I want to share with you three really important things. First. I want to share with you. How I’ve learned to be more self-aware and how having an awareness of what makes me different. Is really important. The second thing. Is having awareness of what I desire, what my core desire is. And we’re going to dive really deep into this. Almost as if we’re a main character in our life. Don’t worry. We won’t go MC syndrome too hard, so that is our goal to accomplish this in the next, roughly 20 ish minutes. At first. I want to share. Some changes coming to the podcast, some changes that actually have to do with us being on this own journey. Figuring out what we’re good at, what makes us different. Leaning into that. And, bridging that gap. Over here at a time. And. In terms of, I think what makes this podcast different? We’re now over 70 episodes in, and if you’ve been listening to this podcast or any amount of time, whether this is your first episode here, Or whether you’ve been here for 70 plus, I just want to say thank you. It has been so fun creating this for most of the last two years and actually a huge dream of mine. I actually have had a podcast before this. It’s called young eager writers. I coasted it with Deseret. Renata also coasted with me. I don’t. A bunch of people there. And loved it. It was an amazing time. And that actually stemmed from when I used to run. With desert. I founded the organization. I helped him volunteered to help on a conference for young writers called young eager writers. And this was back when I was first getting into publishing. Back when I was at. Teen quote unquote, author myself. I know as a team, but it just feels weird to call yourself a teen author. And. Since then started descriptions for authors about two years ago. It’s been so exciting to see where this podcast goes and. I can’t wait to keep creating episodes that we get to episode a hundred. 200 and well beyond that, but. I think the format is going to change. I think it’s going to get better. I think it’s going to get more useful for all of you. And it comes from what we’ve learned after 70 episodes during this podcast, what I’ve learned about myself and what I want in the future. I’ll be honest. One thing I really want is to be more consistent. But I’m just not very good at being consistent. Like even if I mark out my calendar, I’m going to record a podcast on this set day. You might be this way with writing too. I’m going to write it this at time. It’s a day. If I don’t have something holding me accountable. Like other people typically. It’s tough. So if it’s like a live stream, if we’re doing like a fireside chat, Yeah I’ll show up to that. There’s 20 fireside chats you can see on this list. And most of them are really good, helpful webinars. If I have the pressure. I need to show up at this time. I will almost always show up on time. On schedule and perform. This is why actually sprinting groups. Right now spring into cereals. It’s an event going on. That we’re putting on to help authors be able to basically participate in sprinting groups. To write more episodes of our cereals. And it’s been a ton of fun, but it just got me thinking, right? Like I love sprinting. And why do I love sprinting is because I it’s the pressure to show up with other people. Like I do well under pressure. So how can we change the show? So that we can be more consistent for you all. But in a way that plays to my strengths and suddenly it all clicked. If I’m recording. And you all are invited to the time that I’m recording. It’s a live show. I’m going to make sure I show up at that time every week. And I’m going to make sure it’s as awesome as possible. And that’s why we’re actually rebranding. And we’re moving beyond just subscriptions. And then descriptions, fathers podcast. What we really think this is all about. Which is helping you all rule the world as storytellers, you able to further your business. You want to live your dream life and ultimately be able to take control of your creative career. And that’s why we’re going to be rebranding this in June, in the next three months to storytellers in the world show. I will be graduating college in may. So I’ll actually be able to have a little bit of a more studio setup so that. I’m not like in random places like I’m outside right now, recording this episode. And I’ll also be able to do it at a consistent time each week. Cause I don’t need to worry about like classes popping up. Next semester, et cetera. So we’ll be able to have this live show. But also ties into a second string. Which is more strength around the unique insight that we want to provide you all. Which is that up until this point? Most of our episodes, not all, but most represents have been interview episodes. But actually the most popular episodes are their solo episodes of just me or me and Amelia talking. We’ve had some great interviews and we’ve actually had some incredible credible guests you’ve had on. This isn’t to ever downplay them. They are incredible people, incredible authors, but. These authors can go on other podcasts. I think could be guest on those podcasts. And a lot of these authors you’ve heard their stories before, or maybe you’ve heard SIM so stories similar to theirs. And I love that and we still will be doing interviews in the future. There’ll be an interview portion of the live show. But what I want to make a more focal point of this podcast. Are these more monologue episodes? Me sharing our journey of building rain, our journey of helping authors succeed in subscriptions and beyond and publishing. We have unique insight. There’s very few other people who run platforms, where they actively see the data, see the stories and are working every day to help. At this point, we have thousands of authors in the platform making well over a million dollars a year and growing quickly each month. This is a hotbed of data and experience and insight that we now have to share with you all. And when we first started the podcast, we didn’t have this insight. It’s been two years of building up towards this, but now it’s every week. It feels like we live it here. Like I could literally the Mount that we’re learning the week is insane. And now to have like the accountability to share that with you all and document in real time, what we’re learning, I think it’s so exciting. The truth is that I’m not an expert. I barely know what we’re doing. We’re helping authors make over a million dollars a year, but others are making billions dollars a year in publishing, but. As time goes on, author’s gonna be making more and more money on reading. We’re going to learn more and more, and we want to share that with all of you all to hopefully help you all succeed, whether it’s on Rheem. Wherever it is that you’re doing in your author career. That is the next steps that we’re taking in this podcast and where I want to go with it personally. So I hope you all enjoy that. And I hope you all enjoy this format of me taking a lesson that we’ve learned over, whether it’s the last week or the last month that’s been building the last year, taking these stories that we have these really unique experiences and sharing it with you all because we have a really unique privilege and be able to work with so many incredible authors. And being able to be at this nexus of like where publishing is going. And I want to share that perspective and. The truth is that. I don’t at the end of the day, know the singular way to be a great author. In fact, there isn’t. But I do know what’s working for other people. I do know what’s working for us on the platform. And I want to share those stories with you and hope that it helps you get to the next level. So that’s where this podcast is shifting. We’ll upload the episodes after the live recording here. And we’ll invite you all to live recording each week, so that it’s not just me talking at you guys, but a conversation that we get to participate in a conversation that we get to have together, that we then get to share on the storytellers with the world show, because. It’s not storyteller ruled the world. It’s to retell it. We want to invite you all as storytellers into that conversation with us. So with this said with these exciting changes coming up. It’s going to take us some time. I don’t anticipate the believe in really gets our like actual grounding until July. And between now and July, we still have plenty of episodes to release. So don’t worry. We still have some amazing interviews. Amazing episodes. And we have some exciting stuff to share prescription podcasts just this week alone. But today. First thing I want to share is just developing awareness of yourself. And ultimately this is about embracing who you are. Unashamedly and leaning into your strengths and recognizing those strengths. And the thing about it is that the things that we think are strengths about ourselves, we actually. Might also think there are flaws and we might actually hate the things that are the best about us and. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself here, but I know I felt this way for a really long time. One of my biggest strengths is living in the future. I’m not the best at living in the moment. Anyone can say that. And to be honest, it brings it struggles. I have trouble making friends a lot of times. I have trouble and, close relationships. I have. And, staying grounded in the moment, it can be something very challenging for me. I’m someone who thrives under pressure, but that almost constantly means that I’m, creating new pressures in my life, whether it’s deadlines, new launches, new things, I thrive under that. But. For a long time. I thought that I should not want that, that, that stress. Wasn’t a good thing. But. Again, I thrive under it. I’m very obsessive. When I love something, I don’t let it go pretty much ever. And now my obsessions it’s been this obsession for a long time is making the world better for storytellers and. Again, At the surface. I actually hated myself for these things. I thought that, I. Was actually. Crazy for putting so much pressure on myself. I thought that living in the future was was a bad thing largely. And then, although I almost couldn’t control it. It was something that like would damage me and that it made me less desirable to be around less desirable, to be friends with. And I thought that, my desire To just go all in on something to have my passion lead my life. Actually didn’t make me as balanced. And as quote unquote well-rounded. And that was like a huge negative thing. Okay. But the truth is that, you know what. These can be flaws in moments, but these are also the best things about me. That’s what allows me to write my science fiction worlds and get absorbed in them. It’s what allows me to, take risks and to, I thrive on the pressure of deadlines, thrive in the pressure of releases, driving the pressure of product launches. And. And love it. And it’s what makes me a leader because I’m someone who can see if the future and I can be a leader. At least a dream and help lead the team. And. Help lead this CUNY into hopefully a better future for storytellers. For so long, I try to avoid these things. I didn’t lean into them. I didn’t even necessarily recognize about myself. And I would always feel bad about myself because it felt like I wasn’t good enough because. Although I had these things about myself. I also wanted to constantly be grounded. I also wanted to, not put too much pressure on myself. I also wanted to, Be well-rounded. So it constantly felt like I was working against myself to be something that I wasn’t, because that’s what society wanted. And. If you’ve ever felt this way, that you have to be something that you aren’t. Then I just want to tell you. The things that are different about you are what makes you beautiful. And as creative people, most of us are different. Different beautiful waves. Some people might consider these differences. To be. Neurodivergent some even say, people like me might have what we consider to be ADHD. I prefer not to use. I prefer instead to just say, these are the differences about me specifically as an individual person. And if labels help you, if these sorts of frameworks and things help you, I think that’s actually beautiful. But the important thing is just to recognize your differences. And to embrace yourself for it. And embrace the people around you for their differences. And to actually lean into it. And if there’s anything I want you to take away from this podcast is that I don’t want anyone not feeling good enough because of who they are. And for so long, I didn’t feel good enough. Because of who I was, and I thought that I needed to be something. Or become something different. And part of this is recognizing who you are and part of this. Is giving yourself the space and time and the permission to become who you want to be, and that it’s not going to happen overnight. But it is a long game. But now we get into takeaway number two, which is what is your core desire? And I’m going to admit this one is uncomfortable. For a lot of people. And for so many of us were conditioned. To say and think we’re doing things for specific reasons that actually are in one of our core desires. I want to recommend a good book to everyone that talks about the eight life forces it’s called Cashvertising. Yes, Cashvertising. It’s a book about advertising. And ultimately it’s teaching you the psychology. How to run a great ad and some specific tactics that Madison avenue and the other big outage is used to get consumers, to buy things pretty useful for all of us who are trying to run businesses and get people to hopefully love our things. Fall in love with them. But before they actually fall in love with the thing, they have to be convinced to actually use the thing. So it’s a good, it’s a good book. But the eight. Desires that someone has like the eight life forces really stuck out to me because when I read through them, I was thinking to myself, So many of these things we wouldn’t openly admit actually wanting, but these are the only things these eight verses are the only true things that actually motivate us as humans. So I want to do a share those eight life forces. And then what I want to do. His share what actually probably is motivating me the most right now with ring. And then from those eight life forces, you can hopefully reflect on which ones motivate you most in your writing career and lean into it. And I think what you’ll find is that there’s these more secondary forces that aren’t actually as powerful, that are more socially ingrained into us, that you’re actually probably shooting for. And when you actually shift your life. Towards going for the core desire. And not the secondary desires. You might open up new pathways to achieving your true goal, which actually might be a beautiful thing because it might allow you to lean into your strengths more, be who you are. And live a life better suited to your process in nature. And achieving what you want to be. Because again, you actually realize what your core desire is. So what are these eight core desires? These eight core desires. Our first. Sexual companionship. And I’ll be honest that’s not my reason. For wanting to ring but if that’s your reason to want it right, that’s beautiful. All these are great eight core desires. We all have them in different areas of our life. So just important to think about like, where does writing fit in? Survival enjoyment of life extension, going to be honest, this one is probably one always. I think we all have a motivation to want to survive and to enjoy our lives. And to extend our lives. Their social approval. This one is, seems uncomfortable. But. It’s also one that we have to recognize if it’s there for us. Maybe part of us wants to become a best-selling author. He wants to climb to the top of the charts. So that our family and friends can actually recognize us and treat this. Like it’s a serious thing. And not just be like, oh, there she is. With her little hobbies no. Guys, this is freaking serious. Look at me right. The next one is to be superior winning or keeping up with the Joneses. This largely goes into the bucket of self-improvement. But. This is where the competitive aspect of human nature comes in. Then there’s enjoyment of food and beverages. I will admit. Nice coffee while riding some nice hot cocoa or more hot cocoa kind of guy. That’s nice. But to me that’s not the core. And a desire for Rheem. Probably might not be your course, I have a writing, but again, if it is, this is beautiful. Then the last one is freedom. From fear, pain and danger. Which for me, I’m a huge risk taking kind of guy. I love actually I’m putting myself on the edge. So I wouldn’t say this is one of my core motivators, but to have a secure life as a writer could totally one of yours. And I actually think one of my core desires is that. At least a mission statement would be like, we really do want to help riders. Be free from the fear, pain and danger of being on platform that they don’t control. That’s what story tells the world is all about. But I myself love taking risks. I myself my core desire is actually different. My core desire of these core eight. Is definitely to be superior and winning. It’s not in a materialistic sense. I could care less about that. But it’s about, this game of building a publishing platform. Helping authors succeed. Like how much can we, when can we be. The platform that really helps authors. Sell directly to their audience and helps them build a CUNY. Like I want to win in that game. And ultimately what’s so much fun is that. Winning this game means winning for you all. It means winning for all of us. It’s creating this future where stories of the world. So it’s this passion. Coalescing with this core desire. Social approval. Isn’t that important to me? The survival and enjoyment that life extension, I think that’s super important to me. But that’s not the thing that’s motivating me the most right now. If I was to get sick, if some of my family was to get sick, I think that would immediately become like the core eight that’s driving me. But at least this is the problem that like working on ream is solving my life. Like the core desire that working on ream fulfills is to like, want to win and to really go for that. And that it’s so much fun to win at this game and to really go for it. You have to think what. Core desire, what life. Force of these eight life forces is writing for filling in you. And. The ultimate goal then is to bridge the gap between what writing is doing for you today. And then actually bring it to a place where it fulfills one of these core eight. These life forces. Interestingly, not you’ll notice that money. Isn’t part of this. And it’s because money is a social. Lee trained thing money. Isn’t actually something that we are born wanting as humans. Like money is not wired into our brains. But there are these nine secondary life forces that can be just as strong. Not always as strong as the quarry, the Korean are much stronger. But the secondary nine forces are interesting. It’s convenience. Efficiency. Curiosity. Cleanliness to the body and surrounding is dependability or quality. Expression of beauty and style economy or profit. This is where money comes in. Bargains. So this is like getting deals, which this is probably not going to influence you as a writer, but this could influence again, readers influencing. And, or to be informed. And again, I. I think that these are interesting and we have to remember, this was con a book Cashvertising and these eight life forces were actually made in terms of how consumers. Influenced their buying decisions. But in reality, I actually think these eight life forces map on really well to some of the eight core desires we have as humans. And. You have to be open with yourself. Do you want to win? Do you want to climb to the top of the charts? Do you want social approval? Do you want. Two. Be free from fear, pain and dangerous security. What is it that you’re going for? I know you probably want all of these things, so don’t get me wrong. We probably all want all these things to a certain degree. But what is it that you really wants to fulfill with your writing journey and specific parts of your writing journey? Is your subscription for social approval or is it for sustainability? Freedom from fear, pain and danger is. It’s your subscription to be superior and win, or is it to get maybe social proof from your fans? Is. Selling direct, is it to climb to the top of the charts or is it to maybe have, survival joining of life and life extension, because you’re able to, maybe increase your revenue. Have a more senior business. Again, this is up to you like how you choose these things, and what your eight life or star, but I think it’s really good to be completely open with ourselves about what we’re doing and why. So now hopefully we know what we’re doing and why. In addition to that. Hopefully we know. A bit more about ourselves and we’ve embraced that. So now it comes the last part, which is like putting it into action. It’s like actually going out and living that life. And look. This isn’t easy. This isn’t something you just can do overnight. If you have. For me, I think it’s been now like seven years. Seven years that I started writing. Books back. Yeah, that’d be being a high school. When I started publishing. Now I’m graduating college and it’s finally okay. I can do this thing full time and do what I love just about seven and a half years into this. And. No matter what your age is. I think it takes a long time to actually bridge the gap between your life is playing to your strengths. Now. If I’m being honest. School is never like a huge strength of mine and actually goes against a lot of like my natural instincts. I’m very impulsive. I cave into my impulsive DS, and that’s often where my creativity comes from. So I’m not actually all that good at like structured learning. I’m more of the kind of person who will read two or three books in a weekend for fun about a random topic that I want to do a deep dive into, but that deep dive passion, doesn’t always correlate to what the syllabus says. I need to do that week. So I just sucked it up and did it because I had to. And because, I want to design my life in a way in which I could. Go for the things that really matter to me fulfill these eight life forces, but do so in a way in which it plays to my strengths and, really embraces who I am. But it wasn’t overnight process. And what I want you all to realize is that if you realize upon reflecting about who you are, who your processes, what your strengths are and then where you’re going and what you want to be, if you realize like there’s a gap here. And it’s not something I can like fulfill tomorrow because I have a day job and it requires this many hours and I can’t just quit it or whatever your situation is. Just know that, like I get that. No, that I’ve been in that situation and know that As my life continues to evolve. And who I am evolves. And even these core desires. My relationship between, what I’m doing and what desire it’s failing. As that changes as well. I’m going to be in a constant state of evolving of. Reflecting on this. And you’re changing things about me and my life to hopefully be better aligned with this, but it’s taken me a really long time to even have what I’d call like decent to good, or maybe even really good alignment. A lot with these things. I’m not even there yet. As I’m saying this, I’m still a couple months away from really being there. And. It might take you a while to get there for yourself, but this is a great thing to reflect on, in the Facebook group, and the script shots, Facebook group, we can help you. If you’re in a situation. Where you want to. You’ve learned these things about your process. You’ve learned these things about your, what your core desires for writing. We can all brainstorm on how to get there. We can all brainstorm different pathways because you might realize what you fought you needed to do to achieve that. Actually you can do something totally else. That’s more achievable today. That’s more realistic that can get you there sooner that can get you there in a way that’s better, even more fun, right? I hope this podcast is helpful. I know it’s a little different, the themes, a little bit different, but I thought it was like a good way to announce, like the change that we have coming up in the podcast. And hopefully give you some lessons around like the things that we’re thinking about, because I want this podcast to work with us, not against us work with our nature as a team, with my nature individually. As the main host of the podcast. And I also want. It to work with what you all are searching for. Which is all about, how do we bring this closer together to what we uniquely can provide to the industry and what we uniquely can provide to all of you and helping you progress in your journey. And this is just what, some of what I’ve learned over the last. A couple of years. Here’s some of the things that I wish I had this perspective earlier on, it would have helped me through a lot of these harder days. We’ve helped me. Be easier on myself because for so long, I was so frustrated at myself between the gap between where I want it to be. I wanted to become. But I wanted my life to look like. These core desires. I want to have a field. And then where I actually was. And I secretly hated myself for it. I was super, super tough on myself. And. Even if. I can’t accelerate your pathway to achieving your best life. Even if I can’t. Actually, give you that core desire. I hope that I make you be a little bit easier on yourself. And midnight process. Maybe I make the journey of getting there. And the journey of forever getting there and that forever evolution. Be a little bit more enjoyable. Because I wish it did that for myself. And I’m doing that now, working on it. And it’s made my life a lot better. And I hope I can help that for all of you. But that said that’s it for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it as always. If you want another episode, just subscribe. If it’s on the YouTube channel, follow this podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, recommend this to a friend. If this was helpful. The only way this podcast grows is y’all sharing it with other folks. And if you think authors could benefit from this. I would love you to share this with a friend. Because maybe it helps them out just like it helped you out. And. In the meantime. You all are awesome. Check out our website. If you want some free books and free resources on how to grow your subscription. Just go to subscriptions for authors.com. And as always, don’t forget storytellers roll. The world.