Lee Savino and Russell Nohelty on Thriving During Change, Collaboration, and Repurposing Your Backlist (Part II)

290 / If you missed the first part of our interview with Lee and Russell, scroll back to the previous episode in your podcast feed and catch up. Part II of our conversation with Russell and Lee continues in this episode as we talk about money mindset, sustainability, collaboration, and more. 

Lee Savino, seven-figure romance author and mastermind founder, and Russell Nolte, USA Today bestselling fantasy author and co-host of the Six Figure Author Experiment podcast, discuss the realities of building and maintaining an author business.

• Redefining "hard" and "ease" in writing and business
• Choosing the right kind of hard—and what to walk away from
• Letting go of past successes and recalibrating your goals
• Collaboration, co-creation, and building creative partnerships
• Structuring your business for happiness and sustainability

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Transcript

Sara 0:04

Welcome to the Wish I Know Then podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette and I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Lee Savino and Russell Noty Part two. That's right.

Jami 0:17

I think this is our first part one and part two. I think it is too.

Sara 0:21

I got in there to edit it and it had so many good ideas and so much good conversation about mindset and then just ideas about new ways to do things and to think about your content. And I just thought, you know what? We need to break this into two. It was a good call. It was a good call. Yeah. So stay tuned. Listen for more of that. Yeah. Let's see. We don't have any new supporters this week, but we did want to say up top thank you to everyone who is supporting us and so faithful. We'd appreciate it. And it really, really encourages us.

Jami 0:52

Yeah, it does. It it really does. I mean, you know, it's like you're not shouting into the void. We appreciate it. If you've left a review on Apple Podcast, but haven't left a review on Spotify because you know now we can be we're on Spotify. It would be great if you went over if went over and left us a review. Even if you just leave us a star rating, it really helps us, it helps our visibility. And you know, the more people that hear us, the more people we can help. And we just love that. Yeah.

Sara 1:26

And speaking of supporters, we have a message that came in. It's from Princeton, New Jersey. I won't read the whole thing, but the comment says, I consider the two of you and Doug and Nick to be mentors, even if y'all don't know it. Your shows are incredibly helpful for those of us new to publishing. I listen faithfully to your show as well as to Doug and Nick's. And we appreciate that, and we're glad it's helpful. That's the main reason we do this is because we learned a lot from podcasts. And podcasts are fun and get us a chance to talk to each other and to talk to people in the industry and other writers. And we just love doing that. So thank you for that and for letting us know.

Jami 2:06

And Doug and Nick's podcast is the two authors podcast, and it's great. And they've had some kind of big names, I think. Yeah, I do too. I do too. So you guys can check that out. So, what's been going on with you, Sarah?

Sara 2:22

Well, we went out of town this week. We took a couple of days and went over to Fredericksburg, which is in the hill country of Texas, if you're not familiar with that, which is beautiful, kind of rolling hill landscape with lots of wineries and good food. So it's a little town. I told my kids I said it's a Hallmark-esque type town, you know, where you just go and hang out in the little downtown area. And I loved it. I just wandered around and saw the shops and bought some stuff and ate a lot of food, had a great time. That's great. And I debated, I don't know, should we do this? And I thought, yes, we should, because if I can't take a break for a couple days, what am I doing? Right. Right. You know, why are you doing this? I might as well be, you know, punching the clock at the office. If I don't have an office job, I should be able to just go. And it was great. I'm really glad I did. Yeah. And so we just got back yesterday, and so now today is like recoup, do laundry, and catch up on everything, email and stuff. So but it was great. I enjoyed it. That's awesome. And then I'm working on the letters. I'm almost ready to launch. I've been doing email. I've caught a landing page set up for people to join the wait list. I have emails to keep those people interested for a couple of weeks, you know, send out those. And I'm just deciding on timing and how I want to do everything. And we before we got on the call, I was saying, I'm just a little bit scared because you know it's something new. Yeah. Right. And for the people who don't know, explain what the letters are. Okay. It's a story told and installments. So there will be 24 letters mailed over 12 months, two letters a month, and they're physical letters that are printed and mailed to you. And it's just something different. I did it with my Kickstarters a couple of years ago. People love them. And so I enjoy doing them because it's very collaborative working with the artist to create the design, you know, write the story and then create this design that gives it a visual element. And it's physical, whereas a lot of the stuff we do is digital. Love that. Yeah. It's it's fun. It's so I've been working on that. And this has been a long process. It's taken me pretty much all year to figure out how to do it. But I've been working on it while doing other things. But I think it's about ready. I think it's about time to ship.

Jami 4:40

I think yeah, I think so too. Because it has been a while. Yeah. You got to pull the trigger.

Sara 4:45

Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't do it because I had the new release, which I did the launch on my store with a new release. And now I'm doing the retailer launch. And then next up is a letter. So I was trying to space things out so I didn't overwhelm everyone. Right. Exactly.

Jami 5:01

Well, I am writing. When I wrote the first draft, I just sort of zoomed through it. And it was hard. You know, I was crying in Starbucks the whole bit. But as we've established. But and I did make a TikTok today because I'm sure people are thinking, Jamie, why don't you just stay home and write? So you're not out in public crying. But I can't write at home. And I'm superstitious. And I'm writing at Starbucks. So I'm not going to start doing that. Stick with it, right? Yeah. Exactly. So now I'm at a really hard point. I mean, like yesterday, well, Wednesday was super was really hard. It's really hard. And yesterday I just didn't, I just was like, I gotta have a break. I can't, I don't think I can jump back in that story right now. So then this morning was hard, but I I mean it has to be done. So I've got to do it. And because I have a date with a developmental editor, woo! In 10, 11 days. So it's plenty of time. I mean, this is even if I didn't get through with like this pass of revisions, the book is at this point put together well enough that she's gonna be able to give me her opinion. Give me thoughts. Yeah, yeah. But I I am, I'm gonna continue on through it. I have thought very hard about my issue of also bots and when I release this book and stuff. And at this moment, my thinking is a couple of things. One, so also I'd love your opinion if you're listening and you have a thought. Send us a text, send us an email, whatever. But I think I'm gonna start putting books that are similar to this to the book that I think I'm writing in my newsletter and see who clicks on it. Like who clicks on that book to buy it? I mean, whether they buy it or not, but at least they've clicked on it. They should they have an interest. And then I'm gonna segment those people into another list. I think that's really smart. And then that Deanna Roy gave me that idea. So I I wish I were that smart on my own, but I'm not. And then I'm also going to sell it on pre-sell it on my website to my current KU list. Um my KU readers who don't they don't read this genre, but they want the book. So I'm gonna do that, and then to incentivize them, I'm gonna do the story behind the story in the back of that book with some photos. And I feel that's that gives them something extra. It's also an incentive to go. And then I'll take that story behind the story and use it as an email newsletter builder at the back of the book to get it. They have to go and sign up for my newsletter to get it. Okay. So yeah, I mean maybe I may not give I may not give that out to the general public because it is personal. So, but right now I was thinking, well, that's material that I can use, and you know, everything's content.

Sara 8:23

So we use well, and it's such a personal story, and your readers have met you through this, and I think they would like to see yeah, photos. And there's always that thing about well, how much of this is real and how much of this is made up, and kind of you can kind of tease that out and say, okay, this yeah, not too much detail, but you can say, you know, this kind of inspired these things. Yeah, and that's kind of what people want to know. I mean, that's what I want to know when I read a book. I'm like, especially if it's sort of based on something that happened, I want to know how that impacted the writing of the story.

Jami 8:59

Right. And two of my sisters for sure would like to write something just like a memory or something, you know, about Joni. And my third sister, I doubt she will, but she might. I don't know. But and my mom would like to, my dad's not gonna, but my mom would like to write something, so I can put that in there, you know. I mean, just something that is personal and intimate with my list, who has been so faithful, you know, they've been really, really great. So that's my thought right now. There are a couple of other things I might try. Uh, you know, the pen name thing has been brought up several times by people. I don't want to do a pen name, but I could use I could. I could do a pen name and then later just say, you know, writing as Jamie Albert, writing as so and so.

Sara 9:56

But but I don't know if a pen name is worth it for one book because you don't know that you're consistent. And I don't know.

Jami 10:03

Yeah, see, I don't know. That's part of the problem too. I I don't know. But anyway, that's that. And then I have my launch workshop that on the 23rd. So this is gonna go out on the 22nd. On the 23rd, I have it, it's at 6 p.m. You get a replay, but I'm offering to our listeners a $20 coupon. So all you have to do is put Jamie20 in when you go to sign up. We'll have the link when you go to check out it as for the coupon. And you put Jamie20 and you get the you get the discount. If you're interested, I'd love to do that for our listeners. And that's all I have. I kind of went on.

Sara 10:45

Yeah, that's good. We'll I'll put those links in the show notes. Those will be in there. And then I thought I should mention to you uh really quickly that Flowdesk, we have the 50% off coupon if somebody wants to sign up with Flowdesk, but you have to do that by uh November 28th, and you get unlimited emails and subscribers. And I use Flowdesk along with Convert Kit. I have different things that I do with each of those. So those that will link will also be in the show notes. And we just have a ton of information. Oh, the other thing I was gonna say is the anthropic settlement apparently has gone forward, and now there is an actual list. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Now there is a list. This is probably old news for most people, but if you haven't heard, you can go to the website if you just search for the attorneys who are handling the class action students. Right. You can go there, click the link, and you can search and find out if your books are in the settlement. And if they are, you can sign up to be part of the class. Right. And if they are not, you are not alone. There's it's a percentage of people who are included in it, really.

Jami 11:51

Right. And if you are not, don't fret because I think that there will be other lawsuits coming up that are for authors who didn't do their copyright, which y'all's truly did not, because I was told I didn't have to, you know.

Sara 12:09

Well, you don't have to. You already have a copyright, you're just registering it, but I didn't do a lot of mine in a timely manner either. And those are not included. I like saying we need to wrap it up. Is it time? It's time. We have gone on quite a long time on this one.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

So here are Lee and Russell. What I would also add is you're looking for gaps. So, okay, so in this example, Renee Rose like dominates social media or Twitter at least. Like maybe you find something that has you need to really have an asset list of things. It's and I I get pitched collaborations a lot, and I'm like, I don't see where I've like you're also a fantasy author and more successful than me. Like we have roughly the same audience, like doing roughly the same thing. Like, where is the that actually is how I started working with Melissa Storm. We met and I was like, I don't, like, I don't see where the thing is. And then she's at the very end, she's like, I kind of want to make this thing into a comic. I was like, that is a thing. That is an access that like you are a seven-figure author who like has Facebook, all the things on lock, but like you do not know how to make a comic. And I have had a lot of success in comics, so there is a thing that we could do together that I thought was so I didn't tell her to let's go climb a mountain because that is so far out of both her wheelhouse. But like a comic is a publishing project that gets bound in book form and has art. And so all of those are elements that like could be explained to somebody else. But yeah, it's like all of this stuff is is like where is the gap? That's another great co-creation thing that I'm always looking for. Is and maybe it's just both of us have small audiences and we want a bigger audience. It's like a great reason to do an anthology is hey, if all 20 of us all talk to our small audiences, we make one big audience.

Jami 13:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's why Sarah and I, I think that's why things work so well with Sarah and I, because we do fill in the gaps for each other. 100%. Yeah.

Sara 14:10

And I know, oh, I don't have to worry about that because I know Jamie's gonna do that. And it's the same thing with Sarah.

Jami 14:15

Yeah. Anything that makes this podcast run, it's because of Sarah. And anyone who knows about it is because of Jamie.

unknown 14:22

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

That's weird. It's like you're like fueling a rocket ship, but you also have this giant safety net because I'm like, oh, Russell will know somebody, or Russell's got it. Russell won't let me go off the rails and make pipe jokes for too long after.

Jami 14:38

I know I I've had to keep my mouth shut on the podcast. I'm gonna we're gonna back off on that real quick.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. But it can be very freeing and it is very fun. And thank you, Russell, for saying this on a recording. That what I really love is the collaboration and not necessarily the money. And I have gone for the money, but when I sounded my values, I was like, this is your life. This is it. If you want money, go be a stockbroker, go downgrade. Yeah. But you want to be delusional and live in creativity. It's like live in the forest.

Jami 15:16

And one of the things that in having the space of three years now where I haven't really been making any money because I haven't been riding, the space to look back, because we do look back on those for me, those were the good times. Those are, but if I'm honest, I was very stressed out during that time that those kind of two and a half, three years that I was really making money because I was afraid it was gonna go away. I was afraid I wasn't gonna live up to things. I was chasing other people. And I remember when my sister first got sick, I I remember telling my group of friends that I was I was like, could y'all share my book? I don't ever ask, and we don't, that's not the kind of thing we have. But the fact is, I don't have to make all the money, but I do need to make some money. But I just realized, yeah, that that statement is so true. I don't have to make all the money. That's not what's important. I want to keep doing this, so making some money does help, but yeah, just that whole romanticizing things that happened before, and it's not really true now.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

It's like when you remember fondly having a baby, yeah, yeah.

Jami 16:31

It's not like I was gonna say high school, maybe like high school, yeah. But it's also that Ben diagram, too. You've got your thing and I've got my thing, and then where can we come together? The things that like the values and the goals and where you can trust someone and things like that. That's super important.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

So I I will say that this is maybe too esoteric for this podcast, it's not too esoteric for the six-figure author experiment. Is you can always collaborate with your past self who you trust implicitly because you know what they can do because they've done it. And this is where I think we there's a the people don't even think about it. I don't even know if I've made the connection to now, but every time you go to your backlist, you're like really collaborating with your past self. Like every time you bring something out of like old emails, old projects, old things, it's like you are not that human. If I told someone recently, I was like, it's really interesting to be my first year after my seventh existence, into my seventh existence, because like you shed your skin, every cell in your body replicates every seven years. So, like literally, if you've everything more everything before seven years ago was like an entirely different person. So it really is like collaborating with yourself. And you there's a lot of fun that can be had by going back to old projects, being like, Oh my god, look at this wild thing that I thought back then. This is look at this scene that I like forgot about. But look at just there's you could spend an entire year just like pulling out fun things from an old series that you have that's not been selling, but maybe sold before. Like something I think that's what we're trying to do when we recover something or reformat something, bring back that magic. But it's like that is like one percent, that is the first layer of like topsoil, and there's so many other things that you can do. Lee actually, if you look at Lee's career, it actually unlocked a big thing for me when I did it because she's okay, she had sold to the Berserker series. That was her six-figure series. Like, she learned a lot about how to make a series, but that proved that she was marketable, and then she did a series with Stasia Black, and that was like way more successful because she learned all the stuff from her first series, and then she went to the second series and made more money. And from that series, she started working with Renee down here. And so at every stage, you learn to do it yourself. You learn that people are looking at you and being like, okay, like she's not gonna fall apart when you're a partner. Look at this is a long series, it can do, and then it's like you set up all of these things in like stages, but like we are just chaos generally, and we're not looking at it as okay, I want to do collabs. So if you're sitting here being like, I've only written two books, how do I do these collaborations with big authors? It's like one, you do all the work, absolutely, yeah. Two, like maybe you have to prove that you're marketable. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I will tell you that I got into zero anthologies before I ran my own. Then I my first one hit like twenty-seven thousand dollars, and suddenly I was accepted to all of the anthologies, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Yeah, nothing succeeds like success. You show you can do it, and then everybody wants to do it too.

Jami 19:42

Lee, I wanted to talk about the million-dollar mindset Facebook group, what just that whole, even though we've talked about how money's not important now, but it is important. But what do you see people struggle with the most? I know you do a lot of mindset work and stuff, but and I will tell you that I was just on your seducing money call with Renee. And one of the big things that I took away from that was how the mindset, just having this positive mindset and this growth mindset and this money mindset and all this stuff, but we're not always like that and wired that way. We haven't grown up that way, we're not wired that way. And I always feel guilty when I catch myself not having this kind of growth, money, positive mindset. And one of the things that I think it was Renee that said was just forgive yourself for that. Like you can forgive yourself for that and then move on. And I thought that was really interesting. And anyway, I just do you have anything to add to that or any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, I started the millionaire author mastermind group because I was bullied a little. And I thought it was because I had shared about making money, and I said, I'll just start a group or talk about being an author plus making money and hold the space for that. And I didn't care if people joined it or not, it was just where it was gonna be. And I'm learning now that we heal each other. Community is healing, and we we cannot heal ourselves. I'm taking a nervous system regulation class. You have to have someone help you regulate. Like you you end up mirroring them. So in the group, I hope to hold a space where if you're going for money and you're writing books or somehow writing, I guess. Somehow using books and publishing and writing in there, then you're welcome to come and ask questions and troubleshoot problems and stuff. And I really think that I for me, what I've been wrestling with lately is so often we have goals, but we're actually not going towards something, we're running from something. Jamie, you said I was. Successful and you are a successful author, you always will be a successful, yeah.

Jami 22:05

But we don't feel we don't always no, I I don't feel that way, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

I don't feel that way right now either. Yeah, which is weird, but it is what it is. And I think so many authors feel that way. They hurt like that, and it takes community to heal. It takes me showing up to with Russell, and he's you gotta be nice to my friend Lee. She's awesome. I'm like, Thank you, Russell. We heal each other. Yeah. But when I sat with my values, I realized I was starting to set a goal where I wasn't like running from being broke or running from this feeling of feeling like a failure, like feeling like a real failure, which is it's a nothing burger. It's my nervous system freaking out. It's it's what is failure? What is success? We talk about that on our podcast all the time. It gets very esoteric, as Russell said. But really, there's a feeling, and I'm trying to outrun it. So I try to sit and go, what are you running towards? Because then, and it's always love. It's all what you love. I don't know if any of that made sense, but no, it does make sense.

Jami 23:09

It does. Yeah. It's taking your eye, it's keeps you from looking behind you and looking ahead of you. And I've had to do that. I've had to let go of wanting that because it was good. I liked who I was back then. I liked everything about me. And right now I don't because, and it's not really because I'm not making money, it's because I'm such a mess. I feel like such a mess. And the truth is, I'm probably no more of a mess now than I was then. But I was gonna say you're no more mess than the rest of us. I'm all a mess. It is true, and but it's that changing your focus from looking behind you to look. What are you running to? I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

What are you running to and really allowing yourself to feel what you feel and let it out? It takes 30 seconds to let the emotion out.

Jami 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Figure out what you love, run towards that, and then come and share in the millionaire author mastermind what's working for you because we all need help. I think we go to social media for that dopamine hit, and so often we open it. And if there was just a cute kitten picture waiting for us, right? A nice quote from Russell or some art, we would feel it, we would get it, we would feel the connection, we'd feel the community, but we've learned the algorithm pushes the anger. And so very quickly we're reaching out for community, and then we get the exact opposite of what we want. So I don't even know if having a Facebook group is a good idea anymore, but I started it so long ago, it is what it is. I am learning that community is healing. So if I can and right now I don't even want to be the main voice in there, like I really just want to hold the space, and that's enough. I hope we can all heal together because when we uh I think that we are always a mess, but when we allow ourselves to love what we love, we unlock something so beautiful. It blesses everyone, it heals everyone, it excites everyone, it gives us all the dopamine we need and the connection we need. And that's the space I want to be in as much as possible. It's not gonna be 100%, but that's where I want to be.

Sara 25:18

I feel like a group is different from just general social media because you're it's more intentional. You're making a choice to go in and talk to these people and see what they're doing. Whereas if you're just on social media just scrolling, you're at the mercy of whatever it shows you. But a group or a forum or I don't know what other like this a text group or something.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah, like Capitalist, which is a course. What's the platform, Russell?

SPEAKER_04 25:44

We do it all on Substack. So my big community is called Hapitalist. It's we do the big community part is every month we have two breakthrough sessions. So we meet and we break up into groups of three to five, and then everyone has 10 minutes to talk about their biggest block in their group, and it rotates around the group, and it's lovely. And we've only been doing it for a couple of months. But then my job in Hapitalist is to provide the resources that are going to get you through the block once you know what your block is. I define if you go to the author stack, the article that I did today about the seven pillars of are like where we want you to be thinking about, like aside from mindset, they are every quarter, you get one. You have to, it's really important that you pick one and you stick with it for a quarter because I want you to pick better. We're very bad at picking. No, we're terrible pickers, and also we're bad at staying with a thing, which is weird because we're authors. Like, we are we want to stay with a thing, but we're told we like have these squirrel brains move to everything. So you get one, you get to choose one of seven pillars aside from mindset because there's mindset blocks and everything. So one is writing, two is retailers, and then there's conventions, subscriptions, crowdfunding, direct sales, special offers, like landing page stuff, or web stores. And those are like the seven biggest areas that are going to give you success in your business. And then we call I call it the four pillars of prioritization. So that's pillars one, and then you pick a platform. So let's say you pick subscriptions Patreon and Shopify and Substack and Ream and Podcast. There's those are five different platforms that are within the this category of subscriptions, and the approach you're going to take to each one is going to be very different. By by by intentionally saying the platform you're going to be sticking with for a quarter or at least a month, but really a quarter, unless it's dire, is I am going to reject all of the information that isn't about reaching this platform better. So you're not going to be on Substack No Substack Notes if you're starting a Patreon, because like why would you? Meanwhile, if you're starting a TikTok shop, you're probably going to be on TikTok. Like it's probably right in there. And so then you pick a product, and products change at maximum once a month. And that is because you can have special offers that happen every month. We talked about that earlier. And then you have pathways, and pathways are the channels that lead to money. Notice the first three of these were not about money or about audience, those were just what is the best platform to sell this thing? Where can I set it up the most that feels the best for me so that it is optimized? The only part of this that is about money or or audience is pathways. And yet we say, and so pathway is like TikTok is good for TikTok shops, obviously. You don't Substack Notes is good for Substack. Patreon is a terrible pathway for itself, though, because especially if you do spicy, you can't do spicy on and get any discoverability. Has had a constant issue with like discoverability, but that does not mean that Ream is bad as a pillar, a platform, or a product. And it also means that if you pick Patreon and your subscription is not working, it might be because the platform is wrong, it could be because you were not optimized for that platform, or it could be because your product is not. And so it gives you all of these, or it could mean your pathways are bad. I met with curios the other day. I don't know if you know this, it's like a direct, and they for years for this whole year, they were a sponsor of our show. They said, I thought that they were like Amazon, a marketplace, but like with direct sales, you get to keep the sales. And they told me they were a direct sales platform that and the marketplace was secondary. And I was like, that is not anything that I have ever heard you say at all, and also none of your website material makes it seem. So we have this expectation that like if we have a Patreon, suddenly like all of the other product and pathways and all of these other things are gonna fall into place, but you can then cut all of these three things and still have a subscription be your focus. It just means like you're or you could be like, I gotta get a different pathway. So what we end up doing is cutting them all. Of course, oh, your Kickstarter didn't work? Like your page sucks, your emails stink, your audience is non existent. So yeah, your Kickstarter failed. But which of these things is actually is crowdfunding the problem? Is Kickstarter the problem, or is the product, the sales page, how you present it the problem, or is how you funnel information there the problem? And unless if you are doing, if you're not doing, you pick one of those in Hapitalists, then I say, here's how to do it. And if you do it that way, then I know that it's not the platform necessarily, it's like a pathway. But if you but what we're doing is where I'm as I'm as guilty of this as the as other people as is we will buy like a course, and then we'll be like, I don't care what that course says, I'm gonna do it my way. I'm gonna do it my and who had the most success? Sarah had one of the most successful Kickstarters of the first part of our cohorts, and she emailed me and she said, I just did exactly what you said.

Sara 31:43

I did, I can follow instructions really well.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

And that ends, it is if you join Hapitalist, you should then do the things that I say, unless like you have a guru who does it better. Ends up happening is you hire somebody and you're like, fix my thing, and you're like, okay, do these things. They're like, I'm like, they're like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I don't know you didn't do it my way. There's a reason why I have a process because like I know that if you do it my way, I can tripleshoot my way. I can't troubleshoot Joe's way or Jamie's way or Sarah's way or Lee's way. I can only troubleshoot if you do it my way. I've seen all of the things. So what I told people at the end, because that would I went very esoteric in our last uh breakthrough session, is if you believe in capitalist, do it the capitalist way. If you don't, that's okay. Do it your own way, but you can't then expect to have success. In I can't help you. And then I also have a chat, a digital brain that I trained on all six like six million words of our stuff that can personalize it. Because these are the things that I saw. People were doing things that were against their natural success path. They were doing things all over the place, they hadn't just chaos everywhere, and they weren't like lined up properly. So we have what's called a happy compass. And then you have the material, and then the problem is but this is my situation. You three will have very different Kickstarter campaigns. And I know two of you had them, and they were very different from each other. So it's like, how do you individualize that? And we individualize that through the brain, and then we also individualize that through having these breakthrough sessions where you come, and then we also have these transformational workbooks. So it's a whole thing.

Sara 33:28

That's amazing. That's amazing. I love it. I love it because it feels like it's it creates a framework and a structure. Yeah. And but it's not super simple, it's very complex, actually. And a lot of our problems, I think we're looking for the simple fix, and it's not just do this and you'll be fine, and everything will work. You need to work through some of these things. So that sounds really good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:52

Yeah, I'm hopeful. And it's been a lot of Lee, like I've modeled a lot of this on what I've learned from Lee and what I've learned from other you two also over the years. Just it's it was really interesting to come into this indie publishing thing with so much other stuff, like five years ago with Monica. Because Monica was like, This is how it works. And I believe Monica, because Monica knows everything. And so I was like, but why if that is how it works? Like, that's not optimized. This is not how you should be doing, like, you should just be using Kickstarter because, like, you'll make 10 times more money. Like, why are you all trying to scale? There's a finite number of people reading a finite number of books that and and one of the things that is really interesting is like most readers are not whale readers, and yet we're optimizing books, we're optimizing everything for what is a smaller part of the readership. And so, what ends up happening, what ended up happening to me is a lot of people bought all of my books that I put out in 12 books in a year. They were like, Oh my god, these books are so dense and heavy. Stop putting out books I can't follow along because hey you yeah, it's like those pulp books, the ones that like are easy reading, like there's a rhythm, there's a run, right? Writing those books. And so if you're not reading those books, you shouldn't be marketing books that way, right either.

Jami 35:07

Exactly. That is very good. That is this has been so great, and we appreciate it so much. We could talk for another hour. I'm sure you guys have things to do. But tell everyone where they can find out, like about your stuff, Lee and your stuff, Russell. And we would love the podcast. And the podcast, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

When you've caught up on all the episodes of I Wish I Knew Then, hop on over to the six figure author experiment. We have a website and everything. Thank you, Russell.

SPEAKER_04 35:38

It's just six figure authorexperiment.com. It's very easy to and then uh mine is the authorstack.com. That's where all my writing and everything else is, or just my name.com, but really the author stacks raw. I put out a new methodology. What's the name of your Facebook group? One more time.

Jami 35:53

Yes, your Facebook group one more time.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Come and join us in the Millionaire Author Mastermind. I'm getting everyone to write good educational posts. You can ask questions, you can troubleshoot issues, and we all are gonna be creative and successful together.

Jami 36:07

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That is awesome. Thank you so much.

Sara 36:12

We're so glad you guys can be here. And we'll have all those links in the show notes, and they will be at wish I done for writers.com. And if you've gotten value from the podcast and would like to support us, we would appreciate it. And you can support us at that same link slash support. And we will see everybody next week. Bye.