Posted on March 10, 2023.
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In our most personal podcast yet, Emilia and Michael talk about the 5 habits that successful subscription authors have to keep them grounded, happy, and their publishing business growing. We dive deep into the mental health behind being a subscription author and some of the common problems we all face, such as comparisonitis and *trying* to be nice to ourselves.
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#28 Episode Outline:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:00:50 First Habit: Avoiding Comparisonitis
0:14:21 Second Habit: Being Kind to Yourself
0:23:34 Third Habit: Discipline and Consistency
0:32:19 Fourth Habit: Grounding Yourself in the Present
0:40:41 Fifth Habit: Long-Term vs. Short-Term Thinking
#28 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone. and welcome back to another episode of Descriptions for Author’s podcast. If you’re watching the video, this is like our first time in person recording. Yeah, like in the same room. Yeah, so that’s a milestone. And . We also have a very setting episode. Today we’re gonna be talking about the five habits of six figure subscription.
[00:00:17] Michael Evans: And you might be asking what kind of habits are these? Are you talking about marketing? You’re talking about? No, No. We’re talking about how to live your life, how to approach the process of descriptions and being an author. We’ll be talking about comparisonitis that term. Something that we probably all experience.
[00:00:30] Michael Evans: The struggle that we have in being nice to ourself, discipline, long-term thinking, a lot of different just mindset and really strategy, how you can approach being an author and specifically things that we’ve. Some very successful description authors tend to do well,
[00:00:45] Michael Evans: I think the first big habit we wanted to cover is trying not to compare yourself all the time and trying to just be happy with where you’re at.
[00:00:53] Michael Evans: Not saying that you don’t look at people around you, but really trying to not fall prey to viewing other [00:01:00] authors as competition, but instead viewing other authors as collaborators because subscription’s all about community.
[00:01:06] Michael Evans: What would you say if I had to tell you like what has been a time that you’ve struggled with the competitive versus collaborative aspect? Do you see yourself in some moments being like, I’m feeling like I’m looking at the rankings or feeling this type of thing.
[00:01:18] Emilia Rose: Yeah, so as a wide author, comparison happens for me like almost every single day because I’m constantly flooded with friends who are in KU and they’re always talking about their rankings or they’re always talking about how many patriots they have. And I’m just like, as a white author, I’m seeing this and I’m like, oh my gosh.
[00:01:36] Emilia Rose: They’re making so much money, I should join ku. Like they’re further ahead of me, and I feel like all this pressure to be better and do more and more. It’s completely fine if you’re in ku. But that’s not something I wanna do.
[00:01:49] Emilia Rose: And I have to constantly remind myself , no, I don’t wanna be in ku. I don’t wanna have the stress. F being number one in the store or having to like, try to race there or even spend money on ads and [00:02:00] it’s just something I do daily is try not to compare, but it’s really hard.
[00:02:04] Emilia Rose: I feel like, especially being an author in a bunch of Facebook groups and seeing all these success stories
[00:02:10] Michael Evans: Yeah. Sad part about it is, Rankings are like really fun like we can say, oh, we don’t like rankings. But yeah, they are fun people like being number one. I like being number one.
[00:02:21] Michael Evans: I’ll just say, I’ll be honest. It’s fun to be number one. It’s fun to get the best seller tag. It’s fun to see your ranking go up. It’s actually super addicting. I remember when I was in. and on the Amazon author Central. This was like before they made a bunch of changes to Amazon author Central . But I would like refresh that thing and be like, where’s that ranking at?
[00:02:38] Michael Evans: Where’s that ranking at ? And I would really want to see a high ranking. And I remember the first time I hit like 10,000 in the store, it was like a huge moment for me. And then what was the first thing I did when I hit 10,000 in the store? Let me go. Go. How many books exist on Amazon, right? Oh, many.
[00:02:51] Michael Evans: So then I Google how many books exist on Amazon. It’s okay, so I have 10,000 books in the store and there’s 10 million books on Amazon. That means. I’m and one of the top, like whatever name, like [00:03:00] 1% books, power trip. Woo. Yeah. This is amazing. And then you started to realize I spent a good amount of promotion to get me 10,000 in the store.
[00:03:07] Michael Evans: It didn’t just happen randomly. I was running Facebook ads too, and I spent some good money. I’m not like making a ton of money at 10,000 in the store. Full transparency. And then you realize, okay, I’m here now. My ranks have plateaued. Yeah.
[00:03:19] Emilia Rose: and you wanna just keep chasing and keep chasing. Yeah. Because 10,000 is not good enough anymore.
[00:03:23] Emilia Rose: Yeah. And it’s a constant wheel of comparison when you look at rankings and you compare your, compare yourself to the people who are higher than you and you wanna get there, but you don’t know what it ta you might not know how much those authors are spending in ads or spending in promotion or just how much they work to get to that point.
[00:03:42] Emilia Rose: And you can be working just as hard. and spending just as much on ads. But you might not get to that point in the store because there’s so many other factors that go into it and it’s just so hard not to be like, wow, I’m not doing anything. Like I’m doing so much. Yeah. But it’s not getting me [00:04:00] anywhere.
[00:04:00] Emilia Rose: These other authors must be doing a lot more, they must be doing X, Y, and Z and it’s just a constant cycle.
[00:04:06] Michael Evans: It’s, I think sometimes called the Hedonic Treadmill because we Oh, hi. Hi Kitty. You’re coming in for Elani. You wanna be Pet ? We have friends also visiting us for the podcast, but
[00:04:20] Michael Evans: funny, show it off. I, it’s called typically the hedonic treadmill and I don’t wanna bring things back to. Dopamine, but dopamine is something that is released and when we hit this high, eventually that high doesn’t do it for us anymore. It’s almost like we become addicts and I felt this in two distinct areas of my life.
[00:04:40] Michael Evans: I think two areas that will all relate to one of them was in school. I used to do this with GPA where I was like, I needed to be number one. Yeah, the gray needed to be higher. Yeah. It was really toxic. I’m someone who loved learning, but it totally sucked, all the fun outta school for me. And then it got competitive and [00:05:00] stuff where I had one person tell me that his father, worked for the cia.
[00:05:04] Michael Evans: And Michael, sometimes people kill people ahead of them in the class, become number one. And when he said that, I’m like, that’s a weird set of sentences. Your father works to the cia. You want to kill people ahead of you in the. All right. That’s a little awkward. And then we had another kid who told me like, you can’t trust people who are higher than you in the rankings.
[00:05:26] Michael Evans: And I, if I could just cheat to get ahead, I would do it. And that’s like the mindset of a lot of people, and don’t get me wrong, like in that culture, I wanted to be number one, too. So it was competitive high school. It was something where instead, being friends and really feeling like we were in this together ex during this hard time of our lives.
[00:05:45] Michael Evans: It felt like we were competing for a limited number of spots in colleges, which is somewhat of a, not fictitious in a sense, right? Which is just like on Amazon. You somewhat are competing for a limited number of spots on the top of the store. [00:06:00] But then I had to turn around and realize that’s not really what life’s about anyways, and I wasted all this time and all this.
[00:06:06] Michael Evans: stress. Fighting for a number that when I got there, I didn’t feel any better about myself. Yeah. I had to still wake up and say, oh, I’m me. Oh, I’m number one. But that means nothing. But I don’t think I ever really learned that lesson. I’ll, yeah. You can share the second story too. Yeah, you can. No you go first.
[00:06:24] Michael Evans: I want to share the second
[00:06:25] Emilia Rose: part to it though. I was just gonna say, yeah, once you get into that cycle, it’s really hard to get out of I find myself in that cycle all the. . So I understand ,
[00:06:34] Michael Evans: it’s part of our nature. Like I’m not saying you’re wrong to feel it. I don’t think you’re wrong to feel it.
[00:06:39] Michael Evans: Cause I don’t know a single person who hasn’t felt it. But at the same time it’s really dangerous. And I knew when I graduated high school, I was like, okay, this isn’t, the school game isn’t the game I want to play. But I still felt like I wanted to play a game that had winners and losers and obviously it’s nice to win.
[00:06:55] Michael Evans: So we wanted to be winners and the next game for me was being an author, [00:07:00] being Andy. and that game really didn’t spiral a lot of control for me until about a year in and I don’t know if you’ve ever like running Facebook or Amazon ads. Aren’t those dashboards toxic sometimes? Oh, I don’t look at that.
[00:07:13] Michael Evans: They’re toxic. I don’t, I can’t. I would get stressed out. I may have told this story in the podcast for, so I’ll be brief about it, but I stupidly decide to spend. $5 a day. In the beginning I was, any Facebook ads? Smart. That’s how it all starts. Smart. Yeah. $5. Small. Good idea. And I saw this is going well. My ranking went up and I was so over the moon about it.
[00:07:32] Michael Evans: Slime was like, what if I opened up to 10? That’s fine. And remember, I’m not getting paid for three months from this because Amazon. And I was like okay, $10. Yeah, this is going. , I wanna get my ranking up higher. Like right now. What if I just started spending $80 a day? So I did that.
[00:07:48] Michael Evans: Oh my goodness. Horrible idea. First of all, it’s not how you should scale Facebook ads, and I learned pretty quickly. But second of all, I like got into this treadmill where I felt like I needed to be spending [00:08:00] money to keep the same rank in the store, to make me feel good about myself, but I was barely breaking even on the money I was spending.
[00:08:07] Michael Evans: High key was also like technically losing money in the short run because cash flow wise, I wasn’t getting paid from Amazon until in the end of the calendar month, two months from then. So it was gonna be like 90 days until I was getting money from Amazon. I was putting it on a cash like a credit card, the actual expenses, but I was still missing out on 30 days.
[00:08:25] Michael Evans: So I was thinking thousands of dollars into ads, but I felt so, so good that I wasn’t even able to focus on. Oh my god. . Yeah, I couldn’t focus on writing anymore cause I was focused on the ads. I was like, what? The ads to do well, and then I would start to get into the book, get to the flow and I’d be like, wait, the ad?
[00:08:43] Michael Evans: Is the ad doing well? Yeah. What’s the Ccpc app? It better be okay. Oh, okay, good. The CBC is like 11 cents. We’re doing okay. Go back to the book. Go back to the book. Okay. Oh, 30 minutes in. What’s the ads? What’s the ads app? Oh, and then, oh, the ads went wrong. It’s at 20 cents. I gotta go make new creatives now.
[00:08:58] Michael Evans: Oh my God. And then you spent all the day in [00:09:00] Canva tweaking around 10 times, tweaking this, tweaking that. And I was like, okay. Back to the writing. Back to the writing. And it’s just this constant terrible
[00:09:06] Emilia Rose: raise. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, that’s rough. That’s really rough. It was rough. Yeah. I think like at least with subscriptions, there’s not much of a rank system right now where subscriptions are ranked, like how many people, how many followers people have, or how much money they’re making.
[00:09:26] Emilia Rose: So I don’t think comparison, at least in the subscription world, is as bad as , like publishing on a retailer right now. But I do sometimes find myself falling into that comparison with other people and I’m like, oh my gosh, this person did X, Y, and Z and they got this many followers. I need to do that too.
[00:09:45] Emilia Rose: And then I just think, like I’m doing good. I don’t need to do all this extra stuff. Or do certain things just to get more followers. I can just focus on my fans. Really enjoy myself.[00:10:00]
[00:10:00] Michael Evans: That’s such a freeing mindset. And it’s one also you were saying n not right now in terms of description rankings, since me and Amelia run Reem and Reem was the description of black fiction authors, I should probably say I don’t think we’re thinking about implementing our own rankings.
[00:10:15] Michael Evans: Oh no. We’re not planning on doing this. We don’t know what, we don’t know what’ll happen, broadly, but on Ream and I think just in general, what I think the beauty of memberships is. , the ethos for membership as an author is that you’re collaborating in a sense with your readers to try and create better experiences, better stories, and better relationships with your audience.
[00:10:32] Michael Evans: And hopefully in that you can live a better life, hopefully make some more money from your work, and your readers can be happier. But that’s like the ethos of a membership. And the interesting part about, a subscription, so on KU, you get this paid this same amount per page rent, same amount per page red, which is totally fine.
[00:10:48] Michael Evans: It’s a valid business. On Amazon, you roughly get similar amounts paid per ebook. There’s definitely a big difference between 99 cents and 9 99, but in subscriptions, there’s some readers that pay their authors $3 a month and some of that pay their authors $150 a month. Okay. [00:11:00] I don’t wanna pretend that authors keep all the money when they make a hundred dollars a month.
[00:11:03] Michael Evans: There’s usually fiscal good expenses in there, but still it’s a huge difference the amount the readers paying. And then money isn’t the only thing that quantifies how great a fandom is. Like your readers may support you in other ways that have halo effects across. They may share because they love your community so much.
[00:11:19] Michael Evans: They may share it in other places. They may also just go and still talk about your books to their family all the time. Whatever they do to support you. The subscriptions, it’s the idea that membership in and of itself, Isn’t a ranking. You can’t just look, oh, this community has a thousand members. It must be better than the community has a hundred members.
[00:11:37] Michael Evans: That author has 10,000 readers Must be better than the cuny With a thousand thousand reader. It’s no. Sometimes the membership and the author in subscriptions with a hundred readers is making more money than the author with a thousand readers. Yeah. We’ve literally seen examples of that. Yeah,
[00:11:50] Emilia Rose: I agree.
[00:11:51] Emilia Rose: Yeah. So one of the things you can do to one habit that you can form. Focusing on your fans and focusing on building the best experience [00:12:00] for them and not worrying about what any other author is doing, especially in subscriptions because every subscription is set up differently with regards to tier and with regards to rewards as well and price points.
[00:12:13] Emilia Rose: Oh, but one, one last thing I wanna add. to this. We’re talking broadly about being an author and comparison to other authors and I just wanna say it’s completely fine if you’re in a really bad mental state and you constantly see this one author that you know, you’re like very envious of, it’s completely fine to unfollow them for a bit and just give yourself that space to.
[00:12:37] Emilia Rose: not compare yourself to them. And I know I’ve done that for a few people that I compare myself to a lot. And so don’t feel bad about doing it. Cause I know I did for a while. I was like, Ugh, I shouldn’t have to do this, but I just need to take a break. And
[00:12:53] Michael Evans: yeah, if I’m being honest too, like in the beginning a lot of it was like very inspirational for me.
[00:12:57] Michael Evans: Yeah. Because I needed to know that it was possible. [00:13:00] So authors sharing accessories, I don’t want anyone to ever feel bad about. Stories. , we share success stories in the podcast. It’s supposed to be inspiring, it’s supposed to even be enlightening, but depending on where you’re at, like you were saying, and also how the success story is shared it might be toxic for you in a moment and that’s like a good thing to step away from it.
[00:13:16] Michael Evans: I know that I myself don’t interact actually all that much in any of the Facebook groups besides descriptions for authors. And it’s not because I don’t think some of the Facebook groups are wonderful. I think there’s a lot of wonderful Facebook groups. For me, it’s not always even a healthy space for myself to get caught up in.
[00:13:31] Michael Evans: I always sometimes see too, people with new ideas and new ways, they’re making money as an author and I instantly feel pressure to be like, oh, I should try this. Yeah, I should do it. And this is one thing me and Amelia talk about a lot, and this is gonna sound ironic because we built green to help authors make money with the.
[00:13:47] Michael Evans: Way of running your business in subscriptions. So when we think we would love authors exploring new ways and we do, but at the same time, I always caution authors against thinking you need to start a subscription tomorrow cause it’s gonna change your life. And this is gonna be the thing it’s okay, [00:14:00] your friends might be starting a subscription.
[00:14:01] Michael Evans: You might listen to a success story of one subscription. You might be comparing yourself to them. You might wanna be part of what they’re doing, but you don’t need to try and feel like you have all this pressure and need to. And I think this leads perfectly Yeah. Into our second habit , which is be nice
[00:14:16] Emilia Rose: to yourself.
[00:14:17] Emilia Rose: Yeah. I agree as creative people, one of the things me and Michael talk about a lot is we always feel we have to be working, we have to be doing something to get to that next level, to reach those goals. And so like sometimes it’s really great to. Slow down and realize Hey I’ve done all of these.
[00:14:36] Emilia Rose: I’ve achieved all of these goals and I can just relax for a little bit. And I know, like I get caught up so much in, okay, I achieved this goal and I don’t even celebrate it. I’m just like, okay, that’s cool. Let’s go into the next thing. Let’s go into the next thing. What else can I do? I wanna get bigger, I wanna have more fans.
[00:14:52] Emilia Rose: And, I took the time, this year, decide that I want to celebrate. Every one of my book [00:15:00] releases, every one of my translations that I have because those are huge accomplishments. And I, last year and the year before, I was not celebrating them and I was just like, the day came and went and I was like, oh, it’s just another day, another book’s release.
[00:15:13] Emilia Rose: And it was very toxic at least for me. And so it’s really nice to just slow down. Celebrate those little things. Even if it’s just like going out and getting like a cupcake at the store and just be like, yeah, I did this. It’s really
[00:15:27] Michael Evans: cool. I agree. It’s the little things too, like a celebration does not have to mean a trip to Disney World or Vegas, although if you promise your kids a trip to Disney World, I can tell you from talking to multiple authors that you probably have to follow through on that.
[00:15:39] Michael Evans: They definitely will hold you to it, but small celebrations, but might feel like not a big deal taking the. to step back and recognize yourself and what you’ve accomplished and your readers and what you’re doing is super important. I am personally always trying to get better at this.
[00:15:55] Michael Evans: Always. It’s something that when we write one [00:16:00] book, never have I ever felt the feeling of that was it. We’ve got nothing else left in me. Yeah, we’re always ready for the next one. We always have the next book in the series, the next series, the spinoff series, the world that we. , and I’ve talked to so many authors and this makes me feel like I’m not alone in this, which thank you for making me feel like I’m not alone, am I insanity?
[00:16:17] Michael Evans: You have a three year plan with all these books. You wanna write, written on a whiteboard and month by month you’ve got this and this one, and this series, and this year it’s just, I’ve been there before, been there. But that’s something that you could get lost in because then it’s oh, I finished one book, but like the three year.
[00:16:30] Michael Evans: Still has to go, but then it’s like, what happens in three years? You still have a three year plan because then you could always have a three year plan. And then, this sounds morbid, but sometimes, you go to the story world forever what happens then? Oh, that’s morbid. But that’s where did you take the time to realize that?
[00:16:43] Michael Evans: At some point it’s not always gonna keep going forward. Yeah, it’s really sad, but yeah,
[00:16:49] Emilia Rose: I know. Oh, that’s rough .
[00:16:51] Michael Evans: It’s something really important for us. to think about, to ground ourselves in that, every moment is something that’s meaningful and we’re not taking the time to, to [00:17:00] be nice to ourselves to be grateful.
[00:17:02] Michael Evans: What is life if you’re always working?
[00:17:04] Emilia Rose: Yeah. That’s deep, but yeah, that’s very true. . That’s actually one of the things, one of my goals this year is to get. to where I felt like this was a hobby rather than it being work. Because when I started writing, it was just a hobby and I loved it.
[00:17:22] Emilia Rose: I loved sitting down. I loved just diving into a story. But now it’s become harder and harder because I view it as work. And it’s not that , I’m not I’m very passionate about what I do, but I’m not as excited about having to produce another chapter or another story because it’s gonna make me more money.
[00:17:41] Emilia Rose: And it’s really hard sometimes to get out of that mindset. Like money isn’t everything. And it’s more important for you to be nice to yourself and be happy because you’re right, you don’t wanna work forever and. Writing feels like work and it becomes work. You’re not going to be happy [00:18:00] in some instances.
[00:18:02] Michael Evans: Yeah, definitely. It depends on your nature, like , I don’t want to sit here and say you have to work. A 40 hour week, nine to five every day. And that’s what balance is. It is balanced for a lot of people and that’s great. It’s not for me. I’m not that kind of person. You could definitely test that we’re both outta that kind of person or we’re recording this podcast at seven 30 and a Friday night, so we’re both not that kind of person.
[00:18:21] Michael Evans: Just being up upfront but I will say that, , you aren’t watching yourself and giving yourself breaks when you need it on the schedule, you need it because this is titled Five Habits, but we’re not giving you an instruction manual of wake up at 8:00 AM each morning, get your 30 minutes of writing in.
[00:18:35] Michael Evans: Like we’re trying to give you a mindset so you can develop your own habits. So it was a simple title to get you in. We’re glad you’re here. But I know I felt this for the first time in my life where I really realized, wow. , what am I doing? When I was in, it’s so stereotypical. I was in Los Angeles, with the palm trees.
[00:18:52] Michael Evans: But no. It was a moment in my life when I, for the first time was making up full-time living as a creative person and it was been my goal forever and it didn’t come in the way that I [00:19:00] expected, like it happens for many creative people. I started off as a science fiction author and then was live streaming and was making a full-time living live streaming, which.
[00:19:07] Michael Evans: I say it now cause like I don’t livestream anymore. It’s a whole other world that I had for an era of my life. But at that time I was working on livestream and just like creative people, we do many things at once. I was working on a creator discovery startup, so I was trying to build a created platform where basically people create their own profiles of what they love online and share with other people.
[00:19:27] Michael Evans: So we’re doing. , I had a YouTube channel and I was still in school I low-key kind of took a break of school that semester. There was a lot going on and we were tr road tripping the country all at meanwhile, and we had taken like a couple weeks to live in Los Angeles and I remember thinking like this has it, like this has been my dream forever.
[00:19:43] Michael Evans: Like I’m working with creative people. I’m meeting like some of the coolest creative people on the planet. I had gotten into meeting famous people by I brought beer to the Sway boys house. Can’t like advocate showing up celebrities houses with kegs, but they were happy about it.
[00:19:58] Michael Evans: I had [00:20:00] met the executive assistant of Elon Musk in a hotel lobby and we gave her pizza. It was very fun. So we were like creating all these videos that we were like really passionate about. We’re like young kids, like living our lives, trying to make our dreams come true. But in reality, we’re actually taking time to live those dreams and.
[00:20:14] Michael Evans: I should have been so happy during that period of my life. And in many ways I was, but I was also super stressed. I felt so much pressure on myself and I felt like I always wasn’t doing enough. I would wake up every day with a long list of things to do and I’d go to bed with half of it done feeling like I was exhausted and tired and like I just was not enough as a person deep down inside.
[00:20:36] Michael Evans: And that was a really dark place to be in. And I ultimately got myself into this feedback loop. , validating who I was based off of a to-do list in a day based off an adventure. Based off the next hi for the next video, just the next book release been there too. And I just had to realize I am also outside of my creative work too.
[00:20:55] Michael Evans: Not only do I have to be nice to myself as a creative person, but me, Michael is not just [00:21:00] Michael the author. I’m also something else. I need to give myself time to be that.
[00:21:03] Emilia Rose: Yeah. I don’t have a similar story, but I do have a story that kind of goes off of that. And it’s actually being nice to yourself when your fans aren’t nice to you.
[00:21:13] Emilia Rose: And , this is a rough one for me because in the beginning of my career I really loved reading all the reviews. And one thing I’ve had to do is stop reading negative. But I still read the comments I get on my serial fiction and on my subscription. And some of those comments are really not nice sometimes.
[00:21:35] Emilia Rose: And I remember we were recording a podcast a while ago and I had been reading through really nasty comments about one of my stories. I think it was either you, I think it was Al Griffin. And why is she’s so sweet. And one of you guys asked me like, how are you? And I just broke down in tears because I was so upset.
[00:21:56] Emilia Rose: Oh my God, I’m gonna cry now. I was like so upset because [00:22:00] these are my fans that are supporting me and they’re hating my content or this specific book. And so one of the things. Did, because I didn’t wanna deal with it, is I just pulled the book down and I was like, you guys just kept telling me you didn’t like it.
[00:22:12] Emilia Rose: And so I can’t continue to update this story for my own personal, mental health because I’m relating these comments to like who I am as a person. And I can’t deal with that. That’s gonna hurt me it was rough
[00:22:27] Michael Evans: that first of all, I really Sorry about that.
[00:22:30] Michael Evans: I You’re, do I remember that day? Yeah. and Al, if you’re listening, thank you for being, such a great friend and so understanding, and that’s the thing too, is that if you have a good group of author friends when something like this happens, they’re a good group of people to turn to. Cause from experience, I don’t know if your family will understand it.
[00:22:45] Michael Evans: I don’t wanna say they. But a lot of people just, it’s very tough to relate to. Yeah. If you’re not someone who’s creative putting your work out in the world, because they’ll just say move on. But it’s , no, wait for a second. Because as much as I just said earlier, like you need to give yourself space to be yourself outside of your creative [00:23:00] work, that’s not just like a cool, I understand that.
[00:23:03] Michael Evans: Thanks Michael. I’m gonna walk away. I’m here to tell you that it’ll be a constant struggle, a constant battle, and I know we both. You listening? Probably phase and a habit is just to be aware of it and to try and manage it and give yourself the space when you need it. And be constantly, okay, I need to take some space.
[00:23:21] Michael Evans: Okay. I’m actually gonna lean into my creativity now I’m gonna lean into putting my heart into this. But then at some point you have to be like, I also have a heart too.
[00:23:29] Emilia Rose: Yeah. And I think that kind of leads into the third habit we. Which is discipline, and consistency, and one of the habits is time blocking for certain things.
[00:23:39] Emilia Rose: And we put this down to relate to time blocking, in your work. But I also think it is really beneficial to block out time for yourself and that’s something I’m working on this year. To just be able to block a couple hours of your day and say, Hey, I’m going to go like to the gym at this time and I’m gonna do that every single day and I’m not going to feel bad about [00:24:00] it.
[00:24:00] Emilia Rose: I’m not gonna feel like, Hey, I should be working on my business during this time. No, I’m taking time. I’m blocking this time out to work on me. Which I think is very
[00:24:09] Michael Evans: important. Yeah, it’s so important. I had a class, in school that I’m in, I had an entrepreneur come in, she. A social impact ceo. She runs a company that is called Access Tracks.
[00:24:20] Michael Evans: So it helps people who have trouble maybe navigating over terrain, like maybe sand on the beach, especially people who are on wheelchairs. It helps ’em navigate over that through these polygon play tracks that you can place down. So it’s a really great product. She’s passionate about it cuz her mom growing up had a really horrible seizure and.
[00:24:37] Michael Evans: Was really in a tough spot mobility wise for many years. And where I really related to her story was not only the passion behind what she’s doing, what she’s building. Cause I’m like, yeah, I feel that as an author and my stories. I also feel that as running re like I’m someone who’s faced these problems.
[00:24:52] Michael Evans: An author knows, like the dark side of like really the mental health behind it, which we’re talking about today and how we wanted to try and crazily that could be [00:25:00] a bit nicer to you all. in the process of that we’re always nice to ourselves, and I felt this myself. And she came in and just was like, I was working every second of the day.
[00:25:09] Michael Evans: I had a full-time job. And then I’d get home and I’d be working every minute on this. And I eventually realized I can’t keep doing this every moment of every day. And she finally just said, I gave myself four hours of my calendar. Where I would just do something for me, whether it was like going on a hike, she lives in sunny east, southern California, jealous.
[00:25:30] Michael Evans: But wherever you live whatever you like to do, whatever you’re able to do to give yourself that space is important. It’s honestly something I’m not great at, I don’t do very well at all, but I’m trying, I definitely do working out pretty well. I try and do that very regularly and I also try and.
[00:25:45] Michael Evans: Really get outside a lot, but I don’t often do the guilt thing. Like you were saying, like not guilting myself into it. I also feel like I don’t need to do this, but I’m still guilty about it. Yeah. That I’m really working on.
[00:25:58] Emilia Rose: Yeah. It’s hard because [00:26:00] because when you’re like a business owner and you run any business, even creative or not, you feel like I should be working on this all the time.
[00:26:07] Emilia Rose: Like I wanna get to the next level. And the only way to get to the next level is constantly working on the specific thing. But that’s where like burnout starts. And when you don’t give yourself time to just do stuff for yourself, you’re going to start like experiencing. that kind of burnout or a decrease in passion about what you’re doing or Yeah.
[00:26:29] Emilia Rose: All these other
[00:26:29] Michael Evans: things. No, it’s beyond true. I had this problem really bad about two years ago now. I was just coming off of the YouTube and live streaming and also working on a company and I was exhausted. I was at the point. , I would just was like running on fumes and didn’t realize it and it took my grandma dying for me to take a step back and realize trying to process that I am moving away [00:27:00] too quickly and I am not giving myself the space to just rest.
[00:27:05] Michael Evans: And I should have, in hindsight, did a much better job at setting rules for. I’m not just committing to my work, but committing to doing the things I need to do to be the best version of myself. And we’ll talk actually a little bit more about some of the things I typically do in a bit. But I do want to just mention when it comes to working and saying rules around working consistently, one thing that I personally have found from me, this is personal advice, is.
[00:27:33] Michael Evans: the advice of setting consistent rules every day in a consistent schedule every day doesn’t always work for me. Waking up and going to bed at the same time definitely is a good idea. That’s changed my life. Totally changed my life. , I need to take that. Yeah. It’s it’s the best I, I’m like not tired anymore, like very rarely tired cause I just wake up.
[00:27:49] Michael Evans: Usually I get a bed around 11. I wake up around seven every day. That like really helps me. Some nights I’m more like 12. Some nights I’m more like 10. , you don’t want to be within two hours of that. So if you’re like [00:28:00] regularly going to bed at 11, then we’ll gonna bed at 3:00 AM That’s bad. And I used to always use this excuse as I’m feeling creative right now, so I will stay up till 3:00 AM.
[00:28:07] Michael Evans: But what I realized is like over the long term arc of my creativity, I was actually hampering myself because although I would have these bursts of creativity, those bursts would come and go, and then I would flame out and it would be really difficult to get back to really feeling good. . What you’ll find in a subscription with consistency is if you’re flaming out and unable to be there for your readers in community for three months at a time every year that’s going to that may be a little bit detrimental to what you’re doing Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t take breaks.
[00:28:35] Michael Evans: Doesn’t mean you can’t go on vacation, but it’s not good in anything to be out of practice for three months and feel so bad, or even three days being on and three days off. It’s a weird lifestyle that I got myself. For years. And then I ultimately ended up being motivated by deadlines. That’s where it ended up coming down to that really, the creativity eventually wasn’t the thing that was really sparking this.
[00:28:55] Michael Evans: It was the deadline keeping me up till 3:00 AM that I became creative. Four, and [00:29:00] then, and then you get into the cycle, the next deadline. And I cautioned people around doing that because it can feel like you’re setting rules with deadlines and you’re holding yourself accountable, but in your reality, you’re not.
[00:29:12] Michael Evans: setting rules for your lifestyle. I didn’t do that and it definitely hurt me. That’s interesting
[00:29:16] Emilia Rose: because a lot of times I’m, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about before and me wanting to get back to where it feels like a hobby and not work. But right now I am motivated by deadlines and I write the stories I need to write to get them out on serial fiction platforms in.
[00:29:32] Emilia Rose: But I’ve been finding more recently, like those stories that I’m writing like that I’m not as passionate about as the stories I’m just writing. Whenever I feel creative and whenever I feel like it is a hobby. Do you know what I
[00:29:49] Michael Evans: mean? I do what you mean. I don’t wanna also say deadlines aren’t important.
[00:29:52] Michael Evans: I have deadlines I constantly put deadlines in myself. It helps me, but it’s, my main point was like, don’t constantly. Forsake your [00:30:00] sleep, specifically your sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Because of a deadline I, that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should work at the same hours every day.
[00:30:05] Michael Evans: You might be inspired, you might have a deadline one day where you’re gonna write six or seven hours a day, where you’re gonna do this marketing thing six hours a day because that’s what your deadline is. But I do caution against, oh, I have a deadline, so I’m gonna stay up till 3:00 AM because I have this thing that’s so important to get done like that over the long.
[00:30:21] Michael Evans: It decreases the years that you live sleeping like that. It’s like very big deal. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna say that, but I, some of the classes I take in college are around neuroscience, so I’m very interested in the brain, and that is just something I want to say, like this semester specifically.
[00:30:33] Michael Evans: I have a Croatia medical student who he studies sleep, so I’ve just absorbed the things you’re saying about sleep, and I’m like, woo. Okay. Okay. All right, man. I understand what you’re saying. I’m gonna, I’m gonna take this one. And I can say that the sleep thing has been important about other things.
[00:30:46] Michael Evans: I’m the head person who goes all in on what I do, so I wanna obsess about a project over two or three days, then I’ll move on to the next project. So definitely not suggesting deadlines aren’t important. Those deadlines often tell me, obsess about this thing right now, but don’t obsess about that thing until [00:31:00] 5:00 AM and then wake up at noon and be like, whoa, yeah, new day.
[00:31:05] Michael Evans: I think that can be hard for a lot of people. Yeah. I. . That is rough. . Oh, I’ve done, it sounds rough. I’ve done it. Y’all have seen my posts at late hours in the Facebook room. Don’t think this was like a past Michael in another generation like, old wise Michael speaking. These are things I still struggle with for the record and things I’ve done actively.
[00:31:22] Michael Evans: Like these are things like you could just go check the face history.
[00:31:25] Emilia Rose: I was gonna say, sometimes I get a text at like super late at night and I’m like, oh my God, he’s
[00:31:29] Michael Evans: still up. This happens. It will still happen. Don’t get me wrong. Like I’ll get excited about something. I’ll need to research.
[00:31:35] Michael Evans: Get my answers. So yeah, take what I say with a grain of salt. I’m speaking from struggle, not from the perfection. I’m not speaking from perfection. But I think this goes on to our fourth rule, which we’ve talked a lot about, but I want to reiterate this, which is grounding yourself in the moment being present.
[00:31:53] Michael Evans: That is a habit of Cecil description. , and I think there’s a lot that we could talk about off this. And the thing that I wanted [00:32:00] to ask you about Amelia, is have you found a difference in when you’re able to be present for your fans? What does that mean to you being present for your readers?
[00:32:07] Michael Evans: Oh, when you’re even reading their comments and being like, I’m in the moment here. I’m really paying attention. I’m listening to ’em, I’m empathizing with ’em.
[00:32:14] Emilia Rose: Yeah. Yeah. , to me that’s the best feeling in the world. And I, for the longest time, especially last year, I got away from doing that.
[00:32:23] Emilia Rose: I didn’t do that every single day. I stopped reading the comments and it was all about work. I need to write more. Forget about the comments, forget about people loving the story. I’m just going to write more. And I was, to get back into this feels like a hobby rather than work.
[00:32:39] Emilia Rose: Every day I’ve been reading all the comments I got on the previous chapter that I just wrote and published on serial fiction websites like Rappa and Radish and Ink It, and I really am trying to become like more in the moment with them and respond to them. And I even like, Goals for them.
[00:32:58] Emilia Rose: So if we reach, just [00:33:00] recently we reached 500,000 views on one of my updating stories on Webpa. And I was like, the week before we were at like 400,000 and I was like, if we can, whenever we get to 500,000, I’m gonna do a double update that day. And it was so cool to just be in that moment and just watch the views like we shouldn’t look at the views, but it was so fun to.
[00:33:21] Emilia Rose: See how excited other people were to get that double update and to get that kind of reward and it just brought me back. I was like, this is what I love doing. I love seeing how happy people are and the comments and just living in the moment of I wrote this story. Other people are loving it too.
[00:33:39] Michael Evans: Yes. Alright, I’m with you. I also wanna just highlight something you said. You said don’t focus on views or don’t, that shouldn’t be the thing, but I wanna. , especially cuz this podcast, our advice may have come up on the other end. I wanna add nuance to that. In saying that it’s just not about going to anyone extreme.
[00:33:52] Michael Evans: Ignoring the views as a author creator is probably a bad idea. If you’re not getting views on what you’re doing, it’s a good indication that maybe you should switch [00:34:00] around. Maybe you should adjust, right? But then the other end of things is we’re not media companies. We’re not media conglomerates that have to pump out content incessantly and have to just obsess over the views because of an ad.
[00:34:09] Michael Evans: Or a publisher’s check, like we’re doing this somewhere in the middle. And the answer is not to go to one extreme or the other. Although in some moments we might be closer to one extreme and other moments closer to the other extreme. I get that’s part of human nature. But I do think that part of being an independent author and author creator is being able to find that middle ground between views do matter, because that’s how we get paid ultimately from readers reading our work.
[00:34:32] Michael Evans: And even if it’s something like subscriptions where you don’t have to get a certain number of page writes because you. More money from certain readers because your super fans are willing to support you more. That’s great, but you still need people reading at work, right? That’s still what this all goes back to.
[00:34:43] Michael Evans: It still goes back to you need someone’s attention to be able to garner trust. And with that trust, we’re teaching you how to build worlds around that and build incredible businesses. That’s what we do here. Description for authors, but that’s numbers we’re still matter a bit. So I definitely want to tell people don’t view it as one extreme or the other.
[00:34:59] Michael Evans: So I love that [00:35:00] you
[00:35:00] Emilia Rose: have that balance right now. Yeah it’s really nice because that’s what I used to do, when I first started publishing and it wasn’t a business. It’s really hard, but this is probably going back to a few previous points, but it’s really hard ,
[00:35:14] Emilia Rose: Once you get trapped in a cycle of this is a business, I need to make more money, I need to find more fans. It’s really hard to get out of, and it’s really hard to I don’t know the word, but to backtrack and go back to the roots. That kind of grounded you in the beginning and
[00:35:30] Michael Evans: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Michael Evans: What made you feel so magical as a real Yeah. What? You feel like I need to keep reading this book. And then you read the next book, and then you eventually start to be like, I wanna write a book. What possessed you to do that? Which is amazing. It’s a beautiful thing, but being able step back and put yourself in those shoes is really important.
[00:35:48] Michael Evans: I know that when I didn’t do this and I just focused on numbers, I immediately started to see over a longer period of time things drop off. This happened in YouTube. I was able to get up to 30,000 views a day at my [00:36:00] peak on long form content, which I was very excited about. But then I started focusing on what was getting the most clip through rate, what was getting those views and creating more of that when if I put myself into the shoes of the viewer, I would’ve created completely different content.
[00:36:12] Michael Evans: And ultimately, there was people who were loving when I was watching, weren’t watching as much of it because it wasn’t connecting with them the way it was because I lost connection with it. That’s like a scary thing. But I’ve seen it happen to authors before. I’ve seen authors almost become detached from what they’re doing because it becomes a business.
[00:36:26] Michael Evans: And then the other extreme is, how do I make this a business? I want to feel that just to, I wanna have that problem. That sounds like such a good problem to have and I understand that as well. And I would just tell you that what’s gonna give your readers that feeling is probably tapping into more of that feeling for yourself as well.
[00:36:40] Michael Evans: So it can’t hurt to try be more. . Yeah.
[00:36:43] Emilia Rose: Oh, that was really deep. I don’t know. , that
[00:36:46] Michael Evans: was, yeah. Emilia, you know this, we’ve talked to authors who make like amounts of money that is unbelievable. Yeah. Like unbelievable amounts of money. They could live unbelievable lifestyles and I’m not always convinced they’re happy.
[00:36:57] Michael Evans: Yeah. I, not all of them. There’s some very special [00:37:00] authors who are unbelievably happy and I love you and I know many of you too, but there’s some authors who really aren’t.
[00:37:05] Emilia Rose: and I think it’s that constant feeling like it’s a business. It is a business, but sometimes when you get caught up in it, you lose the passion for it, which is really sad.
[00:37:15] Michael Evans: But yeah it’s the difference between again, you’re not a media person and also, I don’t think many people listen to this podcast who we are like very focused on the business of publishing. So I don’t think we attract many of the people who are. Publishing shouldn’t be business, it’s just the arts.
[00:37:29] Michael Evans: But we all know like the literary folk, which I love you literary fiction’s great. But it’s also something too where it’s you don’t wanna go to that extreme either necessarily if you’re looking to be an independent author and technically run it as a business. But two things that I’ve found that have really helped me as a creative person and also really helped people that I admire is meditation.
[00:37:46] Michael Evans: I do that almost every day. Whether I go on a walk and meditate while I’m. I’ll sometimes, meditate. When I wake up in my room, it’s something very important to me. And then another thing I do every week is I go to [00:38:00] therapy. That might not be something that you want to do. You might wanna do something in another outlet that’s similar to you, but doing something therapeutic in your life every week is important for me.
[00:38:09] Michael Evans: I found that having the accountability of needing to show up at a specific time to talk to. and have no expectation other than just talking about what’s on my mind and what I’m going through and not feeling like I’m dumping on a friend. Because you can feel that way if you’re just talking about an hour a week with someone to your problems.
[00:38:26] Michael Evans: And you might also feel the people in your family, even if someone is there like that for you, which not everyone has people in their family like that there for them, and I’m aware of that, but you might not wanna put them through that. Like they’re also supporting you in a very particular,
[00:38:40] Michael Evans: So for me, therapy’s been helpful and just me able to ground myself for a week to be able to go, okay, let me be more present. Let me really think about what’s going on inside of here. Said hopefully I can be a better version of myself, live a better life, be happier. And I started growing to therapy, I think 18 months ago.
[00:38:56] Michael Evans: Totally has changed my life. Meditating, I think I started right around the same time [00:39:00] 18 months ago. Totally changed my life again. I still have all the same problems that I had before, but. . I deal with them a bit better now. I’m a bit happier now. And that’s progress.
[00:39:08] Emilia Rose: That’s really awesome. I love that. I don’t do meditation, but every night where depending on the time of day, it just, it doesn’t really matter what time of day it is, but I spend about two hours, two to three hours, literally just walking around.
[00:39:23] Emilia Rose: I have this like huge room. And I just walk around it pace back and forth and listen to music and it’s just like the most calming thing in the world for me. That’s
[00:39:33] Michael Evans: therapeutic. That’s definitely the . Yeah,
[00:39:35] Emilia Rose: and it’s I love it. It’s crazy cuz it, I’m not doing anything, but it’s just brings me back, back down and I’m just like I can do this.
[00:39:43] Emilia Rose: It’s very grounding. So
[00:39:44] Michael Evans: I love that we all have our own personal habits. We just shared ours. We’d love to hear yours. Maybe we’ll start. Someone should do this. If like you’re listening to this podcast, you’re like, wow, you like this, first of all, let us know because we have no idea what podcast episodes you like unless you tell us.
[00:39:57] Michael Evans: Just like it’s important to have your readers let you know what [00:40:00] they like. And if you like this episode, maybe we start a thread in the Facebook group. I’ll let one of y’all start it. Make a post about, Hey, what are our habits that we do to maintain our wellness? I’d love to hear what some of y’all do. A lot of times it just takes realizing what other people are doing to realize, one, we’re not alone.
[00:40:14] Michael Evans: And two, maybe there’s something that someone. Does, it helps them. That can also inspire someone else to help themselves. I leave it to y’all and whoever does it, I love you. But we will, we’ll move on to our last habit here, which is habit number five, long term over short term thinking as one of the tenants of being a subscription author, one of the habits of a assessed subscription author, which this one is easy at.
[00:40:37] Michael Evans: it’s like easy to talk about, think long term or short term, but that doesn’t do much. I feel like it’s a constant pressure that I always feel between short term and long term and trying to balance that.
[00:40:46] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I agree. I’ve been thinking subscriptions are built off of long term thinking and relationships with your fans.
[00:40:53] Emilia Rose: But it’s, again, it is really hard when you’re caught up in such a, a. [00:41:00] Business growing mindset, and it’s hard to see, me doing the community stuff, like talking to fans and hosting live events online and doing all this, like little stuff. It’s hard to see in the moment how much of an impact it really makes on your business.
[00:41:19] Emilia Rose: Every time I do community stuff, I’m like, Ugh. Like I don’t know if this is going to do anything, but it really helps me get closer to my fans. And when you’re really close to your fans, especially in a subscription business, it’s really beneficial for you.
[00:41:33] Michael Evans: Yeah, no that’s a really interesting thing too.
[00:41:35] Michael Evans: It’s so much easier to tell when your books are selling well rather than when your community is going well. Yeah, and a lot of times, we say the word cuny and it’s really, I. , but I feel like it’s really hard to conceptualize what it is because I don’t necessarily mean that your community is a Facebook group.
[00:41:52] Michael Evans: I don’t necessarily mean that your community is on rem, although it could be. I don’t necessarily mean that your community is a specific newsletter. Your community is just all [00:42:00] the different ways that you interact with your fans. Your fans interact with each other and not one platform or one thing could encapsulate that.
[00:42:04] Michael Evans: Your readers probably talk about your books elsewhere, like in I R L, we’ll never track that. Thank God. I don’t want to know what your readers talk about in their private times, but they only talk about your books. That’s great. . The tough part about this is you don’t get a measurement of that.
[00:42:16] Michael Evans: That doesn’t just lead to a direct sale or you go, woo, that was fun, right? All the things we were talking about earlier. There’s something that at least gives us direction. And I talk to a lot of authors who go, no one responds to my newsletters. Am I doing this all for nothing? And it’s really hard to know because you’re trying to think long term, but you.
[00:42:34] Michael Evans: if this is going nowhere in the short term, is this gonna even get anywhere in the long term? It’s a really tough paradox to be in
[00:42:41] Emilia Rose: and it’s really hard to make business decisions based on that. Yeah, it’s really hard ,
[00:42:46] Michael Evans: it’s something that I’ve been struggling and been communicating to people who are outside of the book industry about how.
[00:42:53] Michael Evans: little metrics there are that are reliable, like outside of book sales, it’s hard to know how the next book is going to sell.[00:43:00] Very difficult to predict that. If someone could have predicted it, first of all, I want you on the podcast, all you probably wouldn’t even share it because that’s like such great formula.
[00:43:09] Michael Evans: There really isn’t one. So it’s really hard to tell what’s gonna hit, what’s gonna do well, and ultimately, . It comes down to the thing where most of your fans will actually never tell you. Oh yes. And it’s this. It’s of a truism in customer service, but people usually only tell you when something’s wrong.
[00:43:26] Michael Evans: Yeah. And it’s very easy then to think when you get those one star reviews. You hear about the typo, you hear about this, that my book stinks. But what you didn’t hear was that 10 times more people than. Who thought, wow, this was great, and didn’t share anything.
[00:43:41] Emilia Rose: Kind of actually going back to that story I shared earlier where everyone was like attacking my story and I took it down so I was receiving nothing but negative comments on that story.
[00:43:52] Emilia Rose: And I guess a bunch of people were reading it, but all I saw were negative comments. And so I was like, these people hate it. I’m just gonna take it [00:44:00] down cause I can’t deal with it anymore. But as soon as I took it, I got tons of messages. They were like, oh my gosh, I love that story so much.
[00:44:06] Emilia Rose: It was my favorite one of yours. And it just goes to show people are very opinionated when they don’t love something, but when they love something, they might not tell you about it. And it’s really hard to get your readers to, to say sometimes it’s really hard to say oh my gosh, I love the story.
[00:44:23] Emilia Rose: Keep writing. Because especially when you see a bunch of negative comments, you might not be sure as a reader, your reader might not , be comfortable saying, oh hey, I actually really like this. And it becomes the negative part of having a community too, because people I don’t know the right word for it.
[00:44:39] Emilia Rose: It’s not creep thing, but
[00:44:40] Michael Evans: yeah, no, there is an aspect of that for sure. And it’s I’m forgetting the exact psychological term, but it’s the exact thing. When the first two people in a room raise their head and they like something, the next people, whether they like it or not, are much more likely to start raising their hands and say, yes, I like it.
[00:44:54] Michael Evans: Or the opposite. So that can be really challenging, but when thinking [00:45:00] about the long term kind of point in this, it’s that I think we have been lied to for such a long. by the systems that rule are publishing. Yeah. And you’ve been lied to in such a big way because publishers do well off of, and platforms as well do well off of squeezing you, the author, the vendor, and trying to maximize the value that they can get from the work that you are created. Now, there’s a symbiotic relationship because they can create value for you. Maybe they can help you find new fans. Maybe they can distribute your work. Maybe they can help people access it in a way. It’s a symbiotic relationship, right?
[00:45:36] Michael Evans: But ultimately, that’s what a lot of these platforms try and do. That’s what their business models as a publisher, they make money off doing that. Now, the flip side of things is that they can win together. The mindset could be different. The mindset could be, let’s help the author. Let’s empower. And let’s do that.
[00:45:50] Michael Evans: But I think this is why they haven’t done that. This is why they haven’t done that. Because if we actually banded together as authors, going back to our first habit, that it’s all [00:46:00] about collaboration. If we really collaborate together as authors, we control this industry. We have the ip, the readers, the trust.
[00:46:07] Michael Evans: We have everything. We have everything. There does not need to be any platform publisher. We are the ones who have the hearts of the. That’s why we like to say that storytellers rule the world. But if that is true, and it is, we so deeply believe that, then the people who want to rule your world have to be telling you another story.
[00:46:27] Michael Evans: The story that just this one advance is gonna change your life. The story of spend all this money on the ads, run this promo, the algorithm’s gonna shoot you up, and you’ll get that long tail and you’ll finally be able to make a living as an author and quit your job, right? Whatever that thing is, that story.
[00:46:41] Michael Evans: Usually it’s based around short term success, right? Yeah. It’s that goal that they can hold in front of you, do this thing that makes our business better and gives us more control for you because you’re gonna be successful in the next 90 days. Oh, that’s so is based off, I’ve felt that so deeply before, so deeply, but it’s a lot because at the end of the day, you do not [00:47:00] need anything but your stories.
[00:47:02] Michael Evans: Yeah. To take over the world. It’s why a story tellers all over the world and I just think it’s such a. Deep embedded lie in this industry, and I think well subscriptions is by thinking long term, by giving you the power to set your prices, have that platform of your readers, not another, not be ruled by a platform, but create your own platform.
[00:47:21] Michael Evans: Tries to undermine that. Yeah. Tries to give you the power.
[00:47:25] Emilia Rose: Yeah. I completely. . I don’t even have any other points to make on that because I agree completely.,
[00:47:31] Michael Evans: That was a resounding I’m very grateful for you all listening and this podcast will notice if you listen to our other podcasts.
[00:47:38] Michael Evans: We’re at about 30 episodes now. , we think awesome. But they’re also very much focused on the business. They’re talking to amazing people like y’all out there. And we definitely get personal, some of the podcasts, but we’ve never just dedicated a podcast to getting more personal, and we wanna do more of these.
[00:47:53] Michael Evans: We figured we’d start with these habits, these big kind of topics, but we’d love to dive deep into any one of these. [00:48:00] We’d love to talk about things and share stories from our lives as authors behind the curtain that’ll help you out. So please let us know. What you’ll think about this episode, please let us know things that you’d be interested in hearing us, because I know at some point there’s enough tactics, there’s enough strategies, the things that can really help times help push you forward.
[00:48:19] Michael Evans: It’s just a new way of thinking about things. It’s just being able relate to something in a new way. We hope we can give you that. Either way, we’re very grateful for you giving us your time. Definitely be sure to check out the Facebook group. It’s length of the description. It’s facebook.com/subscriptions For authors.
[00:48:32] Michael Evans: It’s an amazing C. You can join and we also. A free book that you can download. It’s called Descriptions for Author Starter Guide. And if you sign up for our mailing list you’ll get sent a copy. So you could check that out in the description below. And then we’ve mentioned a few times, but we’re really excited for the launch of something pretty big coming up.
[00:48:51] Michael Evans: That’s all I’ll say. I hope y’all have an amazing rest of your day. And don’t forget, storytellers Will the World.