Richard Lowe- Why Creative Entrepreneurs Undercharge Without Knowing It

Why do so many creative entrepreneurs undercharge for work a client would gladly pay double for? Richard Lowe spent 33 years running the invisible systems behind one of America's most beloved grocery chains before walking away to build a publishing empire, and something was waiting for him the moment he stepped into unfamiliar territory.

In this episode of Gamify Business Tavern Tales, host Paul Pape sits down with Richard as he names a monster most creative entrepreneurs don't even know has moved in. Cheaplings don't attack. They infest. They slip into a creative's workspace whispering with the confidence of market wisdom what the work is worth, what the market will bear, why it's smart to start low. Richard believed them, until a client didn't blink at a number that made him flinch to say out loud. That was the moment the operator in him woke back up and asked why something that small was running his pricing. He exterminated the Cheaplings, rebuilt the whole operation, and now has 54 ghostwritten books and 113 under his own name to show for it.

This conversation explores how to recognize a Cheapling's whisper before it sets your prices, what it actually looks like to run a creative business like a real operation, and why raising your rates changes who shows up, not just what you earn. If a number you quote makes you flinch before you say it out loud, this episode is for you.

🍺 CONNECT WITH RICHARD:
 Book a free consultation: https://contact.thewritingking.com

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📚 PAUL'S BOOKS:
 The Creative Player's Handbook to Business- https://gamifybusiness.com/handbook
The Creative Player's Workbook- https://gamifybusiness.com/workbook
The Game Master's Guide to Business- https://gamifybusiness.com/game-masters-guide
Quit Selling Your Shit!- https://gamifybusiness.com/quit-selling
The Bard's Guide to Storycraft- https://gamifybusiness.com/storycraft

Business is an adventure. Don't be an NPC.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome, fellow adventurer, to Gamify Business Tavern Tales, a place to discover the roads less traveled on your creative journey. Welcome back to the Tavern Fellow Adventurers. I'm Paul Pape, your barkeep and game master. So tonight's guest spent 33 years building and maintaining the invisible systems that kept one of America's most beloved grocery chains running. Data centers, supply chains, cybersecurity. He rose to director of computer operations at Trader Joe's, and then walked away to write books. What he discovered when he got there nearly cost him everything. It wasn't a dragon, it wasn't a dungeon, something smaller, something that had already moved into his workshop before he unpacked his tools. Cheaplings. These creatures don't attack, they infest. They slip into a creative's workspace the moment they step into unfamiliar territory. A new lane, a new identity, a new way of valuing what they make, and begin their quiet work. They don't steal your money. Instead, they stop it from ever arriving. Every project, every proposal, every number you consider, the cheaplings whisper what it's worth. Not dramatically, not obviously, just a quiet, authoritative murmur that sounds exactly like market wisdom. This is what people pay for this kind of work. Don't push it or they'll leave. Hey, you're new here. Start low and earn the right to charge more later. Now, cheaplings don't have any actual knowledge of what your work is worth. They just sound like they do. And in the discomfort of a new creative identity, that confidence is enough. Richard Lowe stepped out of Trader Joe's and into ghostwriting, and the cheaplings were waiting. They told him what ghostwriters earn. They told him what the market would bear. They whispered that creative work doesn't pay like corporate work, and that he should temper his expectations accordingly. And he believed it, because they sounded like they knew. But then a client didn't blink at a number that made Richard flinch to say out loud. He said he would have paid double. That was the moment the operator woke back up, the same brain that had spent two decades running enterprise systems, and asked a simple question, why are you letting something that small run your pricing? So he exterminated the cheaplings. Then he rebuilt the whole operation. Real pricing, real production pipeline, custom software underneath. And then he got to work. Fifty-four books ghostwritten and counting, 113 books under his own name, a publishing operation that treats creative work the way Trader Joe's treats supply chain. Systematically, deliberately, and at scale. Tonight he's here to share how the cheaplings infest a creative workshop, how he discovered they were there, and what it actually looks like to run a creative business once the scale is finally set right. Richard, welcome to the tavern. So what did that client's face look like when he didn't blink?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Um it looked like that I'd underbid. It had that look. It was very interesting to realize that. You've got to understand that before that I'd really been hit by the cheaplings. I worked at a small ghostwriting company before I became went freelance. So I moved from Trader Joe's. And by the way, I was there for 20 years and in tech for 33. So I wasn't in Trader Joe's for 33 years. Um but I moved here, moved to Florida, loved Florida, and got a got a um a job at a LinkedIn service that did that, and then got a job as a ghostwriting company. And he paid me a whole $980 for a book. Which when you add it up, works out to about five cents a word, you know. I mean, it's if I've it's pitiful. I mean, hourly rates probably under 50 cents. But I needed to get in. I I justified it, you know, I need to break into the business and stuff. It was a book about um pub uh property management, uh and another one about dentistry, and then um then finally one about an Afghan person. That one was an interesting book because he didn't speak English and not not very well. I don't speak Afghan, I'm not Muslim, I never don't know any Afghan culture, so I had to learn all that stuff. Started writing the book, and he got it, and um, it wasn't what he wanted. And I spent 16 hours doing interviews to find to re understand what he wanted through an interpreter, his wife, and then he flew off to Afghanistan and I never heard from him again. So that book was over and done. Wow. And then my boss and I got into it because I was like, this is not enough money, and he said, Well, you know, whatever. Uh you know, you can always go somewhere else, and I started my own company. The very next day after I quit, the very next day, I got a contract for $10,000. The day after that, I got a contract for $15. And it was the 15 who didn't blink. Uh he said, oh sure, that's that sounds like a good price. And I realized at that moment I could have asked for a lot more. Um that's one of the ones that I could name. Um, it's a company called No Before. They do security, cybersecurity, and I wrote their or actually updated their existing book twice. Uh it's called Cyberheist. And the first one was an update. The second one was mostly it was called a developmental edit. It went through and basically completely rewrote it. And after that, it was all over. I was I was just I was having fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Excellent. So you stepped out of a director level role at Trader Joe's and into ghostwriting, and something was waiting for you. A quiet voice that sounded exactly like market wisdom, telling you that creative work is worth what the market would bear and why you should start low. Actually, it sounds like you worked for that guy. So when you first realized that voice wasn't, when did you first realize that voice wasn't giving you the real data and that your workshop had been infested by these cheap ones?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

The the when I got those two contracts, I didn't expect them. They just came into my lap. I didn't have to work for them. Uh and it just it became it was like, wow, uh, I just made $25,000 and it came to me, and they paid in advance. Wow. And I mean that they kept a small amount for the end, but most of it they paid in advance. So I just I was thinking somebody just dropped that I barely know dropped um a ton of money in my account and he trusted me. And that was that was a big thing, and it is a big thing in ghostwriting, uh, and probably any freelancer field. You get trusted, and you never break that trust. That's an important thing. You have to keep the trust. Yeah. And uh it's it's can be difficult to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

It absolutely can. And my entire my other business is palpape designs, and I it's completely freelance design work. And those moments are good. I've had the exact experience whereas they're like, oh, name your price. I named the price. They're like, sure, yeah, yeah, let's do that. And you're like, man, alive. Throwing the money on the table that could have gone for. So fortunately, I've had the opportunity to work with them long enough uh that I can now ask them. I said, So what's the what's the ceiling here? And I'll stay underneath it so that they keep me around. But I'm like, you know, because when you're starting out, you know, I was doing the same thing at $500, $100, you know, $800, just in when they came back to me and they said, uh, she actually pulled me aside. She's like, it should be like $3,500, Paul, or it should be $5,000, or should be quoting a lot more, you know. And I was like, people pay that because it had never been my experience, much like you when you got into ghostwriting. It's like to have that opportunity, and you're like, wow, there is there is so much more that can be there. And you know, it all depends on where they're coming from. You know, like you said, those companies, they're like, Yeah, here you go, and they drop that money into you. But for some people, when you're making, you know, 900 bucks a book, you know, when somebody's like, yeah, it's gonna cost you fifteen thousand dollars, you're gonna hold back. You're gonna be like, ah, that's that's too much. So you're afraid to step into that. But to fully recognize that those people are out there, those companies are out there that are willing to pay that amount, and it doesn't really matter to them. It's like it's not that huge of a difference, even though it might be to you, is something that we have to grow and get used to as we're uh moving into the entrepreneur business.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Well, actually, let's step back just a little bit and I'll tell you my first experience at that. Please. Was um, I was a photographer also before, while I was at Trader Joe's. I picked that up because my wife passed away, and um, I wanted to get rid of the grief, and photography helped do that. So I photographed Renaissance fairs and and um belly dancers of all things. Uh they go together well. And while I was at the fair dressed in my my costume, um photographing the whole fair, and I'd usually take thousands of photographs at a single fair, somebody approached me, uh, one of the dancers, and she said, Um, I am having a wedding tonight. Um, would you like to photograph it? And I'd never photographed a wedding before, and I said, sure. And she said, Well, I'll give you 150 bucks. So I thought, okay, that sounds fair, naive me. And got my camera and went out there and took some pictures. It turned out to be a pagan wedding. Wiccan. Um, very interesting um background to pagan weddings and and Wiccan weddings that I didn't did not understand. It was a little shocking. And definitely not uh something this little bit more conservative person had experienced before, but it was fine. It was fine. I mean, I was surrounded by beautiful women, and I didn't care, all in costume, all having a good time. And she was a singer, she's a fairly famous singer, you know, low-level famous singer, and uh in addition to being a dancer. And then I told my photographer friend I was so happy I got $150 for her after the wedding, and she said, dude, wedding started at $5,000. You got ripped off.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, yeah, how do you how do you like when your friend told you that, what's the reaction? Like what what's happening internally? Because we we've all been there at some point. So what's that internal reaction?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Considering that she couldn't stop laughing for about four minutes, um, she said, You got away lucky because you you sound like it was a good experience. And I said, Yeah, it was a good experience. She said, Normally weddings are the biggest pain in the butt that you've ever seen because everybody's all stressed, you've got to get the perfect picture. If you happen to miss and miss the big one, the kissing picture, um, you're dead meat. And uh they don't want to pay fifty five thousand dollars, they want to pay more like five hundred, if that. You got people standing up, shooting pictures with their cameras now. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And I said, Yeah, none of that really happened except for you know, they were all singing and dancing and having a good time and doing funny stuff that I didn't that was shocking to me. And wicked stuff. Probably not what you're picturing, different stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

I don't know. I mean, I come from this world here, so you're like, I probably have a good pretty good idea, but I'm sure my listening audience doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

You probably do. Just just like for the wedding, they they bound themselves with vines, stuff like that. Not as mild, they had a uh concrete pad with eight pentacles with eight little statues at each end and stuff, and it was permanent. And all kinds of stuff like that. Um it's okay. But that's what that's where I really learned. First of all, test your market.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Absolutely, yeah. And second, when they come to key with the number, yeah. That's that's something you gotta question right off the bat.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Start high and work low instead of start low, work high. Yeah, that never works. I had it work once. I had one project, I walked in, calls me up January 4th. Uh I was off, no, January 1st, excuse me. It was January 1st. He calls me up in the morning, two in the morning. I pick up the phone. I happen to be awake because I'm that kind of guy. And I pick up the phone and he says, Um, I gotta, I gotta, I've done work for him before. I said, I got a project for you. And I said, Oh, that that's good, because he kind of dropped the one before that, COVID. And uh he was terrified of COVID. And um I said, sure, um, what kind of project? He said, Well, I got this and this and this. And I was thinking in my head, uh, you know, that's that's that's a $5,000 project. And he kept outlining it. And then he said, and I want to pay um how much will that cost? And I said, uh. And he said, Well, don't tell me. Um, why don't I just give you um sixty thousand dollars for it? And I I didn't, I was shocked, so I didn't say anything. He says, Okay, 75. He's going like, well, this has never happened before. I wound up making over a hundred on it.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Wow. And and that I think there's a valuable lesson in that that a lot of people don't recognize is that while you were uh silent in stupefication, that silence is actually a learned trait. If if you can learn it, it works to your advantage. I had a good medical friend of mine who did the exact same thing. She just knew to stay quiet, and they just did everything in their power to sweeten the pot. And eventually she was like, Yeah, sure. Why? You know, she would have said yes at the very beginning, but she just knows to stay quiet. So it's it's it's something you really should learn to not just jump at the first thing, to you know, to let them sweat a little bit rather than you getting a nice fever sweat because that number sounded great.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Well, most of my clients they're paying for it with their own money, so they do negotiate. This one was paying for it with company money. So so it was a little, but I didn't find that out for a long time, so it was a little bit different. And for those listeners who are shocked at those prices for writing a book, that's good ghostwriting. Yeah, even today with AI and all that stuff. AI doesn't write good books, people write good books. Correct, correct. A good book, you know, a nice book um of you know this size is probably gonna run you 30 to 40,000. And you before you go die in shock, that's six to eight months of my life. Sure. And I'll overlap two of them at a time, maybe three, and I'll get maybe you know, four of those a year. So it's a good living. I'm not getting rich from it. Right. Um that's what you're after. I'm comfortable. I'm you know, it it's it pays the bills and the cat gets fed. There you go. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

All right, so you quoted a number originally that made you flinch, certain that it was too high, but that client didn't blink. So he said he would have paid double. So walk me through that moment. What happened that uh when you realized how much you had left on the table? And what did that moment tell you about how long the chieflings had been adjusting your scale?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

All my life. I I realized at that moment I had one of those moments where I look back on the past for when I first got a job when I was 17 up till now, or actually before that, when I was like five, everybody gave me what the least they could get away with. And I didn't think I had much to say about it. But now it's like I don't have to put up with it. I've got savings, I've got you know emergency funds, I've got investments, I've got all kinds of stuff. If I don't get your gig, I'm not gonna die. I want your gig, you know, it sounds like a great book, you're a nice person and stuff, but you're gonna pay me fairly. And the fairly is what I just said, because it is a lot of work. It's not even even with AI in there, it's and I don't write books with AI. I read I use AI as a tool to help me with certain just like I would hire a VA for it, a virtual assistant for it, right hire artificial intelligence to do certain things. Um it was it was like, oh, for my entire life I've been underselling myself. I've been taking less pay than I should have at my jobs. I've been boss would say we don't have the money for for promoting, you know, to give you a raise this year, yet the company profits increase by 20% or whatever, etc. And it was like my whole life just went, I gotta change.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's good to have that wake-up call. I mean, depending on where you're at in your life, but I mean, at some point we all have it, and it is good to have it to have that wake-up moment. And some people they they fall into a pit of despair because of it, because they look at they have that reflection moment and they think that's where they have to live. And it sounds like you had that moment, but then you're like, okay, going forward now, I now know to correct. And so you you actually learn from that as opposed to held yourself back because of the however you felt about it when that came up.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Well, I've this I don't know if this is scientifically true, but it's true for me. Depression is keeping your focus on the past for me. Anxiety is keeping my focus on the future. So you get anxious about things that it might happen and blah blah blah blah blah. For me, the more calm place is wearing being worried, being concerned with right now, and that seems to work very well. Yeah, I've got enough to pay the bills, I've got enough in the bank, I'm not worried about it. Um, I got you know a comfortable place. Um, I actually live inside a nature preserve, which is interesting because there are bobcats and alligators. It's Florida after all. Yeah. I'm on the shores of a lake, it's 20 feet outside my door, my window, it's actually in a swamp. And there are alligators. Um it's best not to be walking out there at night and don't let the cat out unless you don't like the cat.

unknown 17:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Absolutely. So the same brain that ran enterprise systems for Trader Joe's eventually looked at your creative business and asked, why are you letting something that small set your prices? So, what does it take for creative entrepreneurs to wake up the operator's brain? So, how do you start running a creative business like a real operation instead of a wing and a prayer?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

You treat it. You have to treat it as a profession. You have to be professional, and that's a whole set of things. Um, come up with a brand. That brand Hawaiian shirts are part of my brand. It means that I'm because I want to be easy to communicate with. It's a lot easier to communicate with somebody in Hawaiian shirt than it is with somebody in a suit. Uh at the customers that I have. Now, if I was in a lawyer business or something, I'd probably wear a suit. Specifically, a blue suit is what I'm told lawyers wear. There's actually a code almost. Um I haven't done a lawyer book yet. That'd be and uh hey, people out there, if you're a lawyer, you need a book. There you go. I gotta write it. Um where was I? Um you gotta treat it as a business.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

And you have to separate the business from the personal. So I have a space in here, in my I I converted my dining room because I live alone, I don't need a dining room, um, to my office. And when I'm in my office, I'm working. When I'm not in my office, I'm not working. And it's a good separation. There's a there's not a door, but there's a big space there, and then I got books behind me, I got butterflies above me, so if I get depressed, I can just look up at the butterflies. Literally, butterflies, you know, big ones in cases that are from a butterfly farm in South South America. Legal butterflies, you know. They didn't butterflies only live a week anyway, so it's not really bad to kill them, but they're in plastic and they're in acrylics and things. It's all set up for me to be a writer. Got my writing books right here in a circular shelf. And everything's professional. And that's that's the key, is you you have to realize you're not an amateur. You're professional. And if you're not, if you don't feel like you're a professional, then what's what's going on to cause you to feel that in your life? Do you are you are you not dressing right? Do you not have your brand set up? Are you not asking high enough prices? Are you um not achieving your goals? I mean, whatever the problem is, debug it and fix it, debug it. I'm a computer guy if it's the best, fix it.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's and that's that's brilliant advice. Uh, and I love the idea of uh setting up a sanctuary and not it doesn't have to be in a closed room or anything like that. A place that says I am at work versus I am at rest or I'm at play. And then also like doing that introspection to look at what you're doing and saying, you know, am I taking this seriously? Do I feel like a professional? And if not, what steps do I need to make to get myself there? It's all brilliant advice.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

It's also important not to take not you said take it seriously. That's different than hurting yourself with anxiety and stuff over it. You want to treat it seriously, but not necessarily take it seriously as in internalize it. There you go. Because then you're gonna give yourself um uh uh you know stomach problems and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Money's always gonna be an issue for freelancers because it's a feast or famine. Yep. And and very few freelancers solve that. Usually they solve it by turning turning their business into something more than just them. And then even then it becomes feast or famine.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Especially if you're feasting famine on a different scale. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Exactly. Because then you then you got people to worry about.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Right, right. And that's a different kind of stress altogether. Oh, yeah. So most creative entrepreneurs will tell you that their work can't be systematized, that writing, designing, or making is inherently unpredictable and personal. But you built custom software for your production pipeline. You're 160 books in. So what do you say to a creative who insists their work is different? That systems will kill the soul of what they make?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

That they're looking at it wrong. They're looking at the creation, which is something that is personal and introspective and important to them, but they're expanding that through the whole business. So you want to you want to um you want to have a lead generation pipeline. So you want to have leads coming in. That certainly can be systemized. That's no creativity there at all. That's just finding out how you get leads and getting them in. You want to have a checklist for when I finish a book or when I'm working through a book, did I meet milestone one? What are the goals for meeting one, two, three, four, five? Because I get paid by milestone. So I want to make sure I meet those milestones and do them on time because I want the money. And you know, have I submitted the invoice? Have I finished the book? Have I all these things? So you systemize systematize things. Yeah, the book is creative, but all the systems around it aren't. And just build those properly. I can't use a CRM. I've never been able to use a CRM. A customer something management. Let's you manage your custom customer database. Yes. Um I can't. I've just never been able to do it. But if you can, use one. If you can't, I I use uh use Excel. I'm an old-fashioned dude. It works. But then but then I have a hundred or two leads, you know. I don't have a lot of leads. I don't need a lot of leads.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

I mean, right. Yeah, and I think that's an important thing for a lot of people. And I and I say it I think on every single time I'm on air, is that you don't need millions of people. You need enough to keep you busy and enough to keep you comfortable. If you're charging right and you're comfortable, you've got that, then you don't need a ton of leads to to make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Well, and you got to choose your business right. Are you gonna be on Fiverr and are you gonna be making $10 per gig? That's gonna take you a long time to make a lot of money, and you're gonna be working your ass off all the time. Probably gonna have a little staff that you you know you subcontract to, probably contractors, and you're gonna be really busy because they're little leads. Me, I I only need you know, four to six of those contracts a year, and I'm doing pretty damn well. Yeah. And it's just as much work to get a $50 lead as it is to get a $50,000 lead. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Absolutely. Close them and stuff. So that actually leads into this perfect lead into the next question, which is you said that raising your prices changed who showed up, not just what you earn, but who the clients were. So for creative entrepreneurs who are terrified that charging more will drive people away, what actually happens on the other side of that price increase? Who leaves and who arrives?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Well, it changes who you're looking for. If I was doing $500 books, I would be out on Facebook and Fiverr and things getting $500 books. And it'd be an entirely different kind of Legion and an entirely different kind of process. And those for a $500 book, I'm gonna write it with AI because I can't write a $500 book in any respectable amount of time. Sure. That's one reason why I don't do it, because I don't like writing with AI because it makes crappy books. I mean really crappy books. Um, but when you have a higher price, you start it and you start pitching to those people, you start attracting people who have money and who are willing to spend it. Now, when you put together your um your ideal customer, there's several things, there's there's a concept called the ideal customer in sales, and you you you build that. Okay, who's my ideal customer? Well, it's it's somebody who's well, I'm just making this up, who's male and conservative or female and liberal or whatever, and who wears green pants and you know, whatever. One of those criteria has to be, and has the money for my services and is willing to spend it. So if you're going after a market that doesn't have the money, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Right. Yeah, yeah. And it's a hard lesson to learn because it, you know, at when when you're first starting out, you want to help every anybody who would want your services. You're like, I I want to be useful, I want to be helpful, I want to help everyone. But then you get the $500 jobs, you get the hundred dollar jobs, and you're like, I I feel like I'm giving it away for free, even though I know making something, but it's not enough is definitely not all you know what my time is worth. And you start to get embittered by it, uh, as opposed to you know like changing gears and then trying to make that adjustment from going from you know charging $100,000, $500,000 to try and then try to find completely different people that may not even be in the circles that you're familiar with. So you're like, how do I entice those people when I'm a $500 person? How do I find that $50,000 person? And creating that character sheet and really digging into like who are my ideal clients? And it's it's uh I think the best advice I ever got was your ideal client, when you're thinking about your ideal client, picture that they have kidnapped your children. Like, what lengths would you go to to find out everything you need to know about that person to get your kid back? That's how you should approach it. So if you are unfamiliar with who your ideal client should be, if you're unfamiliar with that lifestyle, whatever, research. Dig into it. You know, the information is out there.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

There's a book by a guy named Larry Wingett, and he's called The Pitbill of Coaches or something like that. And he writes books that are in your face. Oh, he curses in there, it's all good. I mean, they're they're if you do if you if you get hurt, your feelings hurt easily, don't read his books. And one of them is time, and you can tell from the title, one of them's called People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It. And one of the things he says in there is if you want to make it, you want to be rich, stop hanging out with people who aren't rich. Hang out with rich people. They will pull you up. Yep. It's like um if you're an alcoholic and trying to get over being an alcoholic, you don't hang out with alcoholics. Right. If you're a smoker and you're trying to get rid of kick the habit of smoking, you certainly don't hang out with smokers. You cannot quit smoking if you're hanging out with smokers. I know my wife was a smoker, so it's crabs in a pot.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

I don't know if you're it's the same analogy. You know, if there's a crab, if a bunch of crabs in the pot, one's trying to crawl out, the other ones will pull it back in. And it's the exact same same situation. If you're in that, if you're a smoker, if you're a drinker, if whatever you're into, if you're if you're around people who can't afford your services, and you keep surrounding yourself with those people, they're going to keep you there. And they're gonna do it. And unfortunately, humans are the worst, they're worse than crabs. Crabs just grab you and throw you back in, but people are worse because they'll start to like defame you, they'll start to put you down, they'll do everything that they can to keep you in your place, and that place is amongst them. So, yes. Uh, had a band instructor when I was young. He used to say that doctors hang out with doctors, and I was like, we didn't understand what that meant. And he's like, Well, this drug runner just went to jail. He was a student that was in the band and he's gone because he was hanging out with drug runners. He wouldn't have that problem if you hung out with band kids. Like, oh, that makes more sense.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Right. So if you want to, if you want to be richer, you want to have a better business, hang out with people who will pull you up. Hang out with people that you feel like I'm less than everybody in this room. Not people like, oh yeah, I'm better than anybody in this room, or I'm not equal with anybody in this room. You wanted them to be better than you because they'll pull you up if you can survive.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Right. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, don't get me wrong. It is uncomfortable. But you'll get used to it, you know. And it's uh, what do they say? That you know, your your floor used to be your ceiling, your glass ceiling. You broke through that that ceiling. Now you're standing on that floor. So the next one, there's gonna be a level of um of being uncomfortable when you elevate to that next level. And but eventually it becomes your new floor, and you'll just keep growing that way.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

My next book that I'm gonna write is gonna be called it's I don't have a title yet, but the concept is we're all in a box. Everybody has a box around them. And my the it the concept is why get rid of the box. You shouldn't you should why are you building these boxes? Just get rid of it and go out and do stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I mean I think that's how I live my life. It's boxless. So I understand.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah, but even you got a box. There's places you won't go, there's things you won't do. And you know, there's there's of course the reasonable stuff. I'm not gonna go hang out on a street corner where I'm likely to get mugged. That's that's just stupid. But that's part of my box. Right. I also tend to be a bit of a hermit because I'm a writer and I'm very I'm I'm introverted but not shy. Does that make sense?

unknown 31:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

So extroverted, introvert. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah, yeah. So it it uh also severely ADHD. So it makes that's a very interesting story, by the way, being ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Yeah, feel free to explain.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

I learned I was 97 percentile ADHD when I was 64. Wow. Which is last year. And my my whole concept of my entire life, as soon as I found that went, oh yeah, that makes sense. Because the pattern, you remember one of those things where you learn it and the whole pattern goes. And that was one. I was like, oh yeah, that explains everything. The scatter, you know, why I can work on 50,000 things at once and and so scattered and everything.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

And which is interesting, it actually that does lead into my next question.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Yeah, don't read my don't read my don't read mine.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

So you're go you've ghostwritten over 54 books and published over 113 under your own name, and that is staggering output. So for creative entrepreneurs who struggle to finish one project, who start strong and abandon, what does your production discipline actually look like? And what's the system that keeps the work moving when the cheaplings are gone and the real work begins?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Focus. Um ADHDs have something called hyperfocus. So, like after this, I have to work on a client and I have to finish two chapters, which is 7,000 words by Friday night. I haven't started yet. And that's normal. So I will I will turn out the lights, turn on some music, sit down and just focus on it. And I'll bang those out in the first draft in probably six hours. Then I'll do a second draft and a third draft and send it off to the client and he'll rip it to shreds because he's like that. Send it back to me. He's fine with it too, because he's he's he's realized that I'm the writer, he's this he's the knowledge expert, he knows the subject. I don't. So of course I'm gonna write it wrong. But I put in the scaffolding for him so he can write the story around it. So we have a pretty good working relationship. And uh that hyperfocus really pays off.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, absolutely. I I was diagnosed at 50 with ADHD, and again, all those bricks kind of fell into place.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Ah, that makes sense. You know the feelings.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Uh yeah, it I always tell people, you know, I work six times faster than most people, and they're like, we don't understand how that's possible. My wife says it all the time, nobody works at the speed of Paul. And it's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

I understand that too.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

I mean, I can hyperfocus.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

I'll bang out a full novel, a hundred thousand-word novel in a week. The first draft. And then I'll go through and I'll I'll edit it and stuff, and then two weeks have gone by and it's done. And and then it goes out on Ingram. I don't publish on Amazon, it goes out to Ingram Spark, which then puts it on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Yeah, but then you're going through Ingram. Then you can get into bookstores, then you can do other things with it. You know, Ingram's a better way to go.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Well, Amazon publishes through Ingram anyway. Oh. All of its paperbacks go through Ingram. Interesting. Yeah, so why not just why not just go to Ingram to begin with? Ingram's a much less hostile place anyway.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Ingram is Ingram is a publisher. Amazon is a platform, and Amazon is an advertising platform. Ingram doesn't have any real advertising.

unknown 34:43

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Look at those pearls of wisdom that came out of nowhere. That's wonderful. Great.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I've published over 160 books. They're all sell well three of them were traditional published. All the rest were self-published.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Nice, nice. And you found obviously you found success with that. And so that's in so if you're listening, follow the advice. Literally leaving breadcrumbs for breadcrumbs for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Three of my clients did traditional. The problem with traditional is it take that's the one of the big five publishing houses, is they take a long time. That's a multi-year long process, and you by their rules, you get lower royalties, but you will get more sales. But if you do if you do self-publishing, you can publish it today, no matter how crappy it is. And you'll get less sales unless you promote it. My biggest bestseller got 15,000 copies and sold in three days.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

That was a difficult task, but I wanted to prove I could do it. Um, I don't really bother now because that's not really my job, my what I do. I write these books, I put them out there, people buy them, they buy them. It's more fun. One of the ones I'm polishing up now is called Collision with Andromeda. It postulates um intelligent galaxies are intelligent. And of course, Milky Way is gonna collide with Andromeda in two and a half million years. Well, what if Milky Way doesn't want to? Interesting. So it has a kind of a war. Huh. Humans are stuck in the middle. Of course. Yeah, it's like just finishing it up. It's gonna probably go on sale this this weekend.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Oh, really? Like just finishing it up. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, it's going to save it. We'll make sure that we put that into links there.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

The last edit, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah, and then I'm I'm publishing another one this weekend. Uh what I what I do is I work on several things at once, and then they all go published all at the same time. It's um it's called the death of your website is dead. Um the the death of your website and the um how to use AEO to improve your your traffic. You know what AEO is.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

I do not, actually. What is AEO?

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Well, SEO is the search engines.

unknown 37:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

AEO is the artificial intelligence engines. Ah, okay. Who are scrolling, scanning through your site, so what do they want to see?

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Right. And this and anymore, that's where they're going. That's everything is going that way.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

So 6040 now.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Is it?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yeah, and it's it's increasing rapidly. Yeah. Um the SEO is basically you gotta have SEO before you can have AEO. Because the certain the crawler's got to find you. Right. But it doesn't have you're not, you don't need to worry about the search engine so much anymore. Now you need to get the goo the um Chat GPT and Claude engines over to you so that you can answer questions. And I've read a whole book on it.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Excellent. And we'll check that out. So and if it's coming out this weekend, that'll be great because by the time this airs, it'll be available. So I'll send you links as well. Excellent, excellent. So for adventurers listening who want to work with you or explore your books or learn more about what you built with the Writing King, where should they go?

SPEAKER_00 38:03

They could go to theridingking.com. That's my website. For my ghostwriting business. If they weren't interested in my books, they can go to masterofworlds.com. So masterofworlds.com or the writingking.com. Um, I also have a series of eight books that I wrote on geopolitics called enemiesofy.com. And that that's eight books about things like um what the Russians are doing to us now and and uh who our real enemies are. And they're different than you think.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Perfect. Perfect. I will have all of Richard's links in the show notes, including theridingking.com, where you can book a free consultation. So if the cheaplings have been adjusting the scale in your workshop, tonight's conversation is how you find out. So I want to thank Richard for pulling up a chair tonight and naming a monster most creative entrepreneurs don't even know has moved in. Those darn chain cheaplings. They're small, cunning creatures that infest your workshop and adjust the scale. Whispering with the confidence of market wisdom what your work is worth, what people will pay, why you should start low and earn the right to charge more later. But they have no actual knowledge of what your work is worth. They just sound like they do. And in the discomfort of a new creative identity, when you're new to the lane and you don't yet have that real data, that confidence is enough. So here's what I want you to take away from tonight. Cheaplings lose their power the moment you stop mistaking its confidence for knowledge. The client who didn't blink wasn't unusual. You was calibrated correctly. Richard was the one with the infested scale. So check your workshop. If the numbers you quote make you flinch before you say it out loud, cheaplings might already be there. And the operator's question is a simple one. Where did that number actually come from? So if Richard's message resonated, find the writing king in the show notes. And if you've been thinking about writing a book, book the free consultation. It's a conversation, not a pitch. And before you go, head over to gamifybusiness.com forward slash quiz and take the tavern personality quiz. Find out your class, your strengths, your blind spots, and how your brain approaches the adventure. You'll get a free 11-page deep dive into your business personality at no cost, no catch, just clarity about the adventurer that you already are. So until next time, remember business is an adventure. Don't be an NPC. And Richard, it sounds like you have one more thing to add to this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah, I also I also have coaching service. So if you have if you want to get, if you just need, I I just want to get some advice on how to price or something, you can come to my website, send me a message, and we can set up an hour-long coaching thing so that you don't have to it's not necessarily buy a book, but I'll also coach you. That that's at cost. There's a cost for that, but but uh if you need some help, you know, you can get a couple hours, chat on we can chat on Zoom and maybe I can solve your problem.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Excellent, excellent. He'll include those notes as well in the show notes. So thank you so much again for joining me, Richard. I do appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

My pleasure. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Thank you.