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The Daring Author
The Daring Author
Add your Spice - When Cookie-Cutter Business Plans Fall Flat
Have you ever diligently followed someone's "foolproof" business strategy only to watch it fail spectacularly? The problem might not be the strategy itself, but whether your soul was truly in it.
Strategies won't work if they don't align with who you are at your core. That constriction you feel in your body when considering certain approaches isn't random – it's your internal guidance system sending a critical message. The best marketing formulas, email sequences, and publishing schedules in the world can't overcome misalignment with your authentic self.
Think of business strategies like recipes. You can follow someone else's exactly, but the magic happens when you take what resonates and add your own unique spice. When you create from a place of genuine alignment, that energy transfers to your readers. They feel your passion, your purpose, and they connect with it in ways they never could with content created from burnout or obligation.
I've learned to embrace messy action over perfect planning. We don't need rigid formulas about book length, genre conventions, or publication schedules. True creative success comes from breaking free of these constraints and taking inspired, passionate action that might look chaotic from the outside but feels deeply right within. The books I wrote while exhausted and pushing through never connected with readers the way I hoped, because that low energy was embedded in every word.
The most powerful shift in my creative business came when I committed to only pursuing paths that light my soul on fire. When you write in that flow state – where you later wonder "Did I really write that?" – you're creating work that will genuinely resonate with your ideal readers.
Ready to find your own soul-aligned approach? Reach out via DMs at the Daring Press and share your thoughts or revelations. Your authentic creative voice is waiting to be unleashed.
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Website: https://thedaringpress.com/
hello and welcome back to another chapter of the daring author podcast. Now I'm going to share something that one of one of the people that I follow, that I truly connect with every word that she says, and she's just like that, one of those activators where you resonate so much with or at least I do with where I'm at in business in life, and something that she said in this podcast that I was listening to and I wanted to share more on this today is strategies won't do shit if your soul isn't in it, if your soul isn't in it. And ain't that the truth? Like, I don't know about you, but I have gone through. I've been in business full-time now for, I think, coming up six years, five years, I can't even remember, but a long time.
Speaker 1:I've been running not only full-time in business, but I have been running businesses for a very, very long time and I have taken on so many different strategies on how you should do business. Or it's always that clickbait post of, oh, follow this 10-step thing and you will have success to this, you got to follow my blueprint because this will allow you to make 100K in revenue, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know what. I have followed so many of them and so many haven't worked and I never knew why. And you're probably wondering why as well of oh, I've tried this strategy that this six-figure author put out there and it's her roadmap, exactly what she did, and she made six figures from this. Why aren't I making that? I followed every single step. Why is it not working? Oh my god, panic mode, I'm not good enough. All these thoughts come, been there and, oh my God, it's not only till recently that I had this like light bulb moment and I sort of knew it I had talked to this on the podcast before of like if a strategy doesn't work, like some strategies aren't for everyone and I never knew why they weren't.
Speaker 1:And now, hearing that like if your soul isn't in it, if, if you see a strategy online, if you see something that somebody's promoting and you feel that sensation in your body that's just like restriction and oh no it. And oh no, it doesn't feel right. And you'll know if you connect into your body and the more that you build a relationship with yourself, the more that you connect with yourself, you'll know that feeling, you'll know that constriction feeling inside of you. That's just like, oh, that might've worked for her, but it just doesn't feel right for me and my journey and who I am and how I work and what my soul is here to do and who you are in your essence. That's the red flag number one.
Speaker 1:Don't go into a strategy if it doesn't feel good, if you're just feeling something's just not right about it, because that's your sign it's not right and it won't work. It won't work and that's the hard truth. But on the flip side, if you do see a strategy and you see something so say, for example, you see a strategy by an author that has had really great success in email marketing and you really love you really love writing emails, you really love connecting with your audience in that way and you see their strategy and you're like oh, that feels really good for me, that feels really, you feel really connected to it and you feel aligned to it, and so that is the sign that that's the right path to go. And you might go through the strategy and you might pick it apart, like there might be parts in there that you're just like no, I don't want to do it that way, that doesn't feel right, but I'm going to flip it to this way Like that's completely fine, do it that way. That doesn't feel right. But I'm going to flip it to this way, like that's completely fine. But the key here is is no one has an exact magic sauce. It's like I always used to think like business coaches had them. You know, certain business coaches had the magic sauce and they do sometimes.
Speaker 1:But it comes back to that If it's not aligned to yourself and doesn't feel right, don't ignore that. You know there's been moments where it felt so aligned and that's what you want to feel like when it feels that alignment and if it doesn't, then it's not your path. And I think something that has really helped me. It's like when you go shopping and you're looking for ingredients and it's like the recipe says these particular ingredients have to go in it and you know when you start. You cook it once and you use the set ingredients and my partner does this a lot, so he'll follow the recipe exactly to a tee.
Speaker 1:But then the second time he'll be like oh no, I'm gonna swap this out. He, he knows his food, he knows what he's doing, he's loves all that. Like he knows his spices, he knows the extra ingredients, and he's like um, second time round, I'm gonna add in this spice. I'm gonna add in my. I'm going to add in this spice, I'm going to add in my magic sauce, I'm going to add in this particular thing that feels more aligned, that I feel would taste a lot better.
Speaker 1:And that analogy goes back to this of like, yeah, taking a strategy that does feel aligned, that you're like yep, I love email marketing, I want to really excel in email marketing and I want to, yeah, learn a few little tips from this person because it feels really good, I really connect with them, I really connect with what they're sharing, I really connect with who they are and that's a good sign. I'm going to do this formula, but then I'm going to add my spice to it, and we all love a little bit of spice in our romance, in our books. So it's like adding that spice and your flavor to it, which is really cool. And then you can create so much magic from that You're going to create when you feel aligned, when it all connects, when it feels fucking good, feels so good. You're like you're in that feeling where it's just like everything around you disappears and you're just. You know, when you write a book, you're just in that momentum and it's just like out of this world. That's how you want to feel when you're doing a marketing strategy. That's how you want to feel because that're doing a marketing strategy. That's how you want to feel because that energy that you're putting into it, when you send out that email, when you create that email funnel automation that's working in the back end, through somebody signs up to your website and they go through to the welcome series and through different funnels, they're going to feel that. They're going to feel that and they're going to feel that and they're going to be activated by that because you were activated by it, you felt really good in doing it, and they're going to feel that in return. And ain't that? Ain't that beautiful, ain't that beautiful?
Speaker 1:And another thing on this, and something I have been leaning more into, is messy action. It doesn't need to make sense, it doesn't need to follow the rule book, it doesn't need to look perfect. Take messy action. We are all creatives, all writers are creative. Take that messy action. I think we've got so in this like formula of like.
Speaker 1:Okay, a book should be 70,000 words, a book should be in this way. A dark romance should have this. You know, a dark romance should have this. You know, a dark romance should have a stalker and this and that, and it's like we've got so like. Or it's like, oh, you've got to write a book a month to have success, or whatever. It is Like, let's just take that, scrunch it all up, throw it away and start again. Be messy, have fun with it, because what is the point? What is the point if you are not enjoying it? And let me tell you, that is probably why your sales aren't where they're at, aren't where you want them to be at, and that's the truth.
Speaker 1:If you are not feeling lit up, if you are not following your passion, your purpose in a way that just lights your soul on fire, and you're feeling so good about it, then you're going to be in a burnout stage. You can even talk about burnout. There's so much I'm learning from that as a thing that I'm in a deep way that I don't even believe burnout exists, and I will talk to that another day. And this is my you know what? In a way of like being seen, being heard. I am sharing so much now that I, past me, would have been so afraid of sharing this, so afraid of being judged, so afraid of somebody not agreeing with me that I wouldn't have posted it, that I wouldn't have shared this on the podcast. And now I am so confident in myself, in my voice, in my thoughts, in what I share will connect with the people that it needs to be shared with.
Speaker 1:And that all comes back to that being yourself being massive, going like taking that inspired action, moving from passion. And you know, when you create something and you go back and you're just like I don't even know how I did this, and it goes back to like writing a book. Sometimes I'm like holy shit, like I was just in this whole vortex and now I'm coming out of it and I'm reading back like whoa, did I even write that? Like that is what we want. And that is the thing is, is you're not gonna.
Speaker 1:If, if you're writing a book a month and you are hustling the shit out of it, you are not feeling good. You're just feeling like everything is really hard. You're feeling so your energy is just so low red flag, the passion is gone, the creativity is gone. Your energy, what you're putting into that book is not going to connect to your readers. And this might be woo-woo for some people, and that's okay. If you're not ready for it and you're not at that stage to accept this, then that's okay.
Speaker 1:It took me a long time to get to this place and now I'm here. It's just like it makes sense why the books didn't hit that I thought would hit because of how I was feeling when I was in that writing state and pushing and pushing and pushing through the exhaustion, pushing through this and that, like through this and that, like, yeah, I'm not here for it, I am not here for it, I am not. My passion is writing. My passion is expressing myself in that way. My passion is being creative and being messy as fuck like, and taking messy action every day, taking inspired action, and I'm so over and I will not do things that don't light my soul on fire, that don't make me feel good, because I know that it's not going to work, because that energy that's in it isn't going to connect with the readers, isn't going to connect with anybody.
Speaker 1:It might connect with the people that are on that same energy wave and the people that are on that same level, but they're not the. They're not my ideal readers, they're not the people that I really want reading that book. Yeah, this is huge. There's a lot in here, so I'm going to leave it at that and, if you feel called, reach out via DMs at the Daring Press and share your thoughts, share any lightbulb moments, share anything that is on your heart. Yeah, and I would love to hear from you and sending you so, so much love.