Natalie Saar: 3 Books a Year, 1 Day Job, Zero Excuses

Natalie Saar joins Mookie for another episode of Ink vs Algorithm to share how she writes three books a year while also working, starting with the story of how her first published novel came out of a panic attack. She wrote her way through the anxiety, read back what came out afterward, and realized there was a psychological thriller in it: a stalker with OCD so compulsive about order that he fills exactly one notebook per victim and physically cannot bring himself to write a second page, no matter what he witnesses. That's the origin story for a career that's since spanned psychological thrillers and personal-development nonfiction, self-published since 2012 — most recently Fake It Till You Make It: The Science of Feeling Rich, with Let It Be Easy next.

Mookie and Natalie discuss how the comparison trap and a lack of "time affluence" is what truly makes people feel poor, wealth instead described as the freedom to spend your hours how you want. Natalie unpacks a genuinely useful reframe: satisfaction is a cheap emotion (a candy bar gives you satisfaction), but excitement is the signal worth chasing, and she now protects a chunk of every weekend for decisions based purely on what excites her, not what's productive. They dig into resistance, too — not as a signal to quit, but as something to interrogate honestly: is this hard because you're avoiding growth, or because it's genuinely wrong for you?

The back half turns into one of the more candid conversations about writerly voice this show has had. Natalie has ghostwritten for celebrities, written financial marketing copy, and wandered through enough professional "voices" that she now deliberately writes throwaway pages — sometimes just to delete them at the end of the day — purely to stay in touch with what she actually sounds like underneath all the client work. Her own friends, when asked, consistently prefer her earliest, least-polished books, because they sound the most like her.

That sets up the AI conversation. Natalie's framework is sharp and specific: she'll let AI handle anything a computer reads — SEO headers, metadata, GEO optimization — but nothing a human reads. Research, yes, with primary sources double-checked by hand, because in her experience it's right maybe 40% of the time. Actual prose, never. Her broader bet is genuinely optimistic: because readers invest real hours in a book, they're better judges of quality than viewers or listeners skimming video or music, and as AI slop floods every category, human voice becomes the differentiator, not a liability.

They close out with hard-won, unglamorous marketing tactics: Goodreads giveaways, BookBub ads, reverse giveaways, and Natalie's own backlink-building site for indie authors, plus a real warning about the increasingly sophisticated scam emails targeting self-published writers with fake agents, fake award nominations, and fake TV deals. Instead: be real, and keep writing! 

The Guest

Natalie Saar is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles, California. She has been telling stories to anyone who will listen since she was able to talk. After years of consuming true crime content, she developed a love of thrillers. Her stories feature everyday situations — but with an added twist. “Becoming 1% Better” is her first work of nonfiction, born out of a love of general curiosity about how we can better ourselves and treat those around us better. It's a finalist in the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) for Mind and Spirit Non-fiction.  By day, she works as a marketing writer and content strategist; she also runs The Indie Authors, a site built to help self-published writers get discovered. 

Her Websites & Books

https://nataliesaar.com/

The Indie Authors Project

 https://www.theindieauthors.com/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to Inc. First Algorithm, the Writer's Pod, and I'm thrilled to have Natalie Starr in the odd today. Welcome aboard, Natalie. I'm happy to have you. You are an LA-based journalist. You've got a bunch of books published, both fiction and nonfiction. You have been self-published since 2012, I understand. So you've been cooking for a while, and our listeners and viewers would love to hear from you. How'd you start penning and publishing and writing across all these different topics? And right now, your latest book is one about being your better self. It's about ambition and making it happen. Do I got that right?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yes, you've got that. That's great. Um, thank you again for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I think as a writer, there's I it sounds cliche. I think it ironically, a lot of things about writers sound cliche, the things that we say, but there is truly almost no greater pleasure than getting to talk to other writers because I feel like we're kind of the ones pumping each other up all the time. It's quite a lonely um profession and a lonely passion in life. And so it's nice when we get to talk to and hear from each other. So just thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

My pleasure. And it's particularly lonely when we're everyone's bombed with AI slop. Oh so we we we could talk, we could talk about that too, which is like really being an actual human.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I'm happy, I am happy to talk about that as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Let's first talk about you. Forget the bots. Let's hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Uh well, I'll try to talk about me and make it useful to other people as well. So I started writing, I think as soon as I could pick up a pencil, right? So as soon as I could write, I was writing, even if it didn't make any sense and I didn't know what the words were saying, but I was writing. Um, I would put on puppet shows for my parents and make them watch me and like all of the stories that little three-year-olds and four-year-olds do, and they were probably garbage because I was a tiny child.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

You were cranking at a at a young age. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I don't have a choice in this life. That is what I was born to do, was tell stories. And uh so in 2012, I published my first book through Create Space, which back then was Amazon's um it's what it was called back then. Amazon still has it, but just not under that name. Um, but their self-publishing platform made my cover in Photoshop. It was terrible, and it has a new cover now, which I also didn't know what I was doing when I made the second cover, but it's slightly better. So I did that, and then I just loved it, and I loved the process of writing, and so since then I've just continued to write, and I I would say every year I've written more and more books, but I think right now I'm capped off at three. I don't think I can do more than three a year. Um, but I'm still pretty proud of that. So um, yeah, that's kind of it. I just I loved it and I kind of got addicted to it, and I just the more I leaned into it and the the more I, you know, it's easy to be like it's really hard. There's all these little things that are hard about it. You you're it, you're the publishing house from start to finish, and it gets exhausting, and you don't always get all good reviews, and so you have to be also your own motivator, and it's just in me. I just have to keep writing books, and so my books have got I they I think they get better and better as I learn more and more. Um, and I just love it. So that's that's kind of it, and then a longish nutshell, maybe like a walnut versus an almond. Well, almonds don't have nutshells, but you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Absolutely, and to get to get to the heart of it, it's about your passion for writing. What about the the content itself? You gave us context. What kind of topics and subjects do you zero in and and how does that erupt out of your passion for expressing yourself?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I love this, and I love the way you asked it because I've actually I haven't gotten to talk about this yet, but I my first book was actually written in the middle of an anxiety attack, and I didn't really know what to do with my anxiety, and so I just wrote my way through it, and then at the end of it, I was like, oh, like you feel better, right? Like at the end of an anxiety attack, you feel better, and you're like back on planet Earth, and you're like, I think, I think I'm okay now. And then I read it, and I'm because you know, you you go back and you read whatever you wrote a lot of the time, and I was like, maybe there is a story here, like maybe I can do something with this, and so it's about a stalker, but he's a man who's kind of like an innocent stalker, if you will. Like he has OCD, and so he has this compulsion to just like know more about people, and so he follows them, and like he completes one notebook about their life, and that's it. Like he's not he he himself will not allow himself to follow more, no matter what stage in the life. Like he might, his last page might be a huge fight that the person's had with their significant other, and he truly cannot bring himself to continue to do more because of his compulsions. Um, and so it all started from that, and um it it I just loved it and I loved writing it. And so then my next two books were also psychological thrillers. Um, look thankfully, those were not born out of anxiety attacks, they were more thought out. And then I pivoted into nonfiction because I have always just kind of been a seeker of knowledge. I'm just interested. And um I thought, let me just write this substack about how to become 1% better every day because it's something that had truly like healed my perfectionism and my desire. Well, I don't know that you heal from perfectionism, but had been helpful in it, and my desire to be better was just 1%. I don't need to be 10%, I don't need to be so much better in any certain area of my life, just 1% at one part of my life every day, I would like to be better. So I wrote a Substack about that, and that got really good feedback, and I thought, let me just turn it into a book, and the book has more than what was on the Substack, but um I it has been so rewarding to see how many people have like found that to be useful. Like they I have had people text me or call me and be like, I I I did this the other day and I said it, and then I thought I hadn't thought of it that way. I shouldn't have said it, I don't need to do this anymore. Here it is. So I just I'm so grateful that I've been able to go on this journey because it has like branched out in so many different ways. And I think as a reader or as a writer, right, like all we want is to connect with people in kind of like a non-spoken way, like it's still verbal, but it's non-spoken, and it just feels so special, and I'm so grateful.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

We're grateful to have you. I really enjoy talking one-on-one with writers too, because when you read a writer, you get the map of their ideas, and even when you're doom scrolling online, you see memes and posts from people. But actually, talking to writers is really enriching for me, and talking to you is fun, and I want to hear more about the 1%. What kind of practical advice do you give without too many spoilers? Because I love that idea about relentlessly pursuing okay, like we're all we're all under the gun. We all have to be rich, we all have to be famous. When we're looking at social media, everyone's like having a uh a Chocolottini on their yacht, and everyone looks so beautiful, and then we feel like shit. And then we all feel so much pressure in this consumer-driven society to be all that, to be 120% at everything, which is just unrealistic. And it's refreshing to hear that you know, just do your 1% or just do enough to get you through your day, I'm assuming, and tell us more about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Oh, I'd be happy to. I mean, I even just love how you framed it. Like, I think what you said is a lot of what I would say, right? Like, that is that is kind of the problem. It's it's actually interesting. So I published a book in May called Fake It Till You Make It, The Science of Feeling Rich. And um, it talks a lot about that because it, whether it's with regards to money or whatever it is, I truly think like one of the big things that keeps us from feeling better about ourselves is what's called the comparison trap. And the comparison trap is everywhere. Like you said, like you can't sign into anything without us feeling bad about ourselves. And it's difficult. And I think it's so simple, whether it's comparison or anxiety, depression. Um I can't think, I mean, those are like the three big things that plague society today, right? But what whatever it is that you're feeling bad about, whatever it stems from, I just really want people to know that noticing it is being 1% better. If you take the time to consciously notice that that's what's happening to you, that's 1% more than you've been doing before. And I think that's really important. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for that. Um, it just, it's really we we we are better a lot of the time than we think we are, and we just don't give ourselves the credit for. Like I was talking to a friend today, I just texted, how was your day today? And he said, Well, I got a lot of stuff done for work, I got stuff done around the house, but I just feel like I didn't accomplish anything. And I was like, that's okay, that's normal. That's because like you don't get positive feedback from doing chores. Like you don't you don't get positive feedback from having to do the things that you have to do anyway in order to survive. And that just feels like I have to do this for the rest of my life. Are you kidding me? So if we can just like flip that and be like, I did all the things I had to do today to stay alive, that is so exciting for me. And it's really just a mindset. But truly, first, all you have to do is be aware of it and just awareness and mindfulness of how you're thinking about it is like the basis of how to be 1% better.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Great sense of awareness because we're on autopilot, we're reactive for most of the time. So if you could just stop, put your phone down, take a breath, and realize you know what? I'm down the doom scroll hole again, and I'm falling into those same patterns. So that precipitates productive behaviors that you could think about doing. Because once you realize that you're doom scrolling yourself into oblivion, for example, and that you're making these comparisons between yourself and other people that you have nothing to do with, and you're really just seeing the tip of the iceberg because that's what they're showing you, and that's what they want you to see. And then you don't see when they're sitting on the toilet, you don't see when they're when they're bouncing their credit card payment to afford, you know, whatever it is they're doing, then that's the first step to just taking it easy and then being all you can be in your own way, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Totally. And the other thing that people don't like think about also is to your point, you're seeing what they want you to see of their life. You're not seeing what their life is actually like, which whether it's the bouncing payments or maybe it is like a maybe they are stable, but they have to put their whole life online. And like I think about this sometimes, and it feels it feels dirty of me. Like it feels gross that I think this way. But it is true that sometimes, like, if there's a celebrity where I wasn't super interested in them, and then they like get into a relationship with someone who I was sort of interested in, like celebrity-wise, I'm like, oh my gosh, these two people are together. I didn't even know one of them existed before, and now I know the other one ex like now I know about them, but then they break up. And I'm like, well, I was only interested in you because of your relationship. I need some information here. You can't just say, I am I'm broken up, please respect my privacy because we're all interested because you gave up your privacy. And I think that that's what a lot of people don't understand is that everything's a trade-off, everything is a sacrifice. If you want these types of things in your life, if you want a type of life, you want to be an influencer, whatever it is, you do have to sacrifice some stuff, and that's not easy. And it's that's the comparison trap. It looks, they they give you a picture of what things look like, and they want you to think that's what it looks like, but you don't think about what they're what they give up and what they have to do to maintain that attention.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

There's a paradox here too, which is on the one hand, no pain, no gain, right? You gotta work for it, and you don't show all that blood, sweat, and tears because you want to come across this. I'm a natural, look at me. And on the flip side to that, fake it till you make it, which is like, don't be too hard on yourself because you just don't know yet. Build it as you fly it. And if you're a perfectionist, if you want everything to be checked off and perfect, you're never really gonna make progress. So, on the one hand, stop being so entitled and accept that you need to work hard. And on the other hand, though, don't work harder than you need to because it'll happen or it won't.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah, I love that. It's I think don't work harder than you need to is an undersold principle, right? Like there is, so I do write in the book, uh, figured till you make it, about there's a diminishing point of returns in terms of um so basically what makes us feel rich is not money, it's time affluence. So it's the freedom to do what we want with our time. And because we go to jobs, we have commutes, we have obligations, whether it's social, family, whatever it is, we don't have a huge affluence of time for most of us. And so that is actually what makes us feel very poor. Because when we see to call back to the beginning of this chat, our friends with their uh Choco Tinis on their yachts, we're like, look at all this freedom that they have. It's not about how no one's like, how much did that yacht cost? How much was that Choco Tini? It's in the back of our minds, but really what we're thinking about is the freedom that they have. And so that is actually what a lot of us are chasing. And what happens is that we think it's about money and it's not. And so we have to just start rewiring our brains to think in terms of like, what are the experiences that I'm having in my life right now? Like, what are the things that are bringing me joy? How do I bring more of that into my life right now? Um, and that's it's it requires effort and you have to do it. But there, to your point that you were just making, there is a point of diminishing returns between having too much time and feeling bad. If we have too much time, like too much downtime, science does back it up that people tend to feel almost as depressed as they do when you don't have any time at all. And so what we need to do is we need to, and it's individual for everyone, and that's why life is a great journey and a great experiment, is we all get to try and figure out what this sweet spot is between what is the right amount of me resting and recharging, because as humans, we were not meant to go, go, go all the time. That is not what we were meant to do. That's that's why we have machines, that's what the machines are supposed to do for us. They're doing a bad job right now, and I'm sorry to the machines that are listening to this because they're listening all the time now. I'm very nice to all my AIs. I say my pleas and thank yous. Don't be mean to your bot. But I'm also I also try to be nice to the crows in case the machines turn against us. I try to cover my bases.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

I love those points, and I think part of faking it till you're making it is that focus on the real goal, which is time and freedom. But there's also the freedom that comes with doing what you want to be doing in the future, and by doing it, you actually make it happen. So I want to be a podcaster. Well, all right, you start with zero followers and no gear and just an enthusiasm for yakking it up. Well, plug in the mic and start making podcasts. Now, that's the first step, and it won't necessarily guarantee that you're gonna be Joe Rogan, but you you gotta get going and you gotta picture it. And any goal that you have, you need to start acting like you're the thing that you wanna be, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Yeah, this is totally true. I mean, I think this is the thing that people struggle with the most when it comes to manifestation, which is everywhere, but I think you know, manifestation has unfortunately become sort of a charged word, and I don't think it should be. It's just exactly as simple as what you're saying. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? Like, I am a normal person with a day job who would love to make a living being an author. I would love that. And through that path, if I can help nurture other authors and inspire them, because sometimes the hardest part is just getting started. Like, there's so many authors who could be bestsellers and they just won't be because they never started, and that's heartbreaking to know that. And same for you. There's so many podcasters like yourself who can be wonderful superstar podcasters, and unlike yourself, they never started because you've started, and you just it's not a magical thing, and some things are magical, but this is not it. You just start doing it, and if you don't just start, you're never gonna get anywhere. And that's that's just the truth. You have to start trying to, if you want to be a healthier person, just start being healthier. Like it takes time, everything takes time, and not every road is linear, and if it is linear, it's kind of not worth it.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

I've had a full range of writers on the podcast across multiple genres too. I've got my science fiction and fantasy show, and I've had Nebula award-winning writers with reviews in the Wall Street Journal, and I've had people just starting out. Like I met them on Substack, and they're like, hey Mookie, I liked your podcast. I go, come on board, we'll talk. I go, Well, I don't got creds yet. I have only one book published, but you published a book. You have a vision, let's let's go for it. And I've talked to writers who have a career of writing, but they're exactly like you. They started with a vision of success and application and working hard and and going for it. And in a sense, we're all imposters until we actually do what we want to do. Think of anyone who's top, like you know, Taylor and Travis are getting married in Madison Square Garden. Well, she's she started plucking her guitar and singing, and he started in you know, football camp or wherever. It's like we see celebrities and huge success stories for who they are now, and then we tacitly assume that retrospectively they've always been great and they've always been worshiped and they've always been kicking ass. When the reality is they're just people and they stuck to it, and they might have had that dash of luck, but it's mostly relentless determination with that vision that that's what I want to be, that's what I want to do. I'm gonna start doing it, and let's see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I love that. I mean, you said it, you said it perfect. I think, I think everything takes a little bit of luck, but most of it just takes just relentless determination and consistency and showing up. And I mean, I struggle with this, you know, I think a lot of us do, because it's like, especially right now in the like the social media online world that we all live in. It's like if you we all have to have a brand. And if you brand yourself too early, then you're pigeonholed into this brand. And it's like, what do I do now? Like my career, I was supposed to be a sports journalist. That's what I started out wanting to do. That's what I went to college for. That's what I wanted to do was be on the sidelines talking about sports. Back when I was trying to do it, it was one of those situations where there truly were, it's not like this in a lot of industries anymore, but back then there truly were only a few slots for women in that industry. And the best women got it, and I'm so pleased with all the women that we have out there doing that job. And I uh I look at my peers who we were going for the same assignments and they got it and I didn't, and their life has turned out the way it has, which is wonderful in the way that they wanted it to. But I look at some of them now and they're like sideline reporters in Cleveland, and so much respect to Cleveland. I'm from Southern California. I cannot, I cannot do that. Like my life turned out the way it was supposed to. And so I think it's important to have these goals, but also listen to gentle nudges from the universe when you aren't getting the things that you want. And I would not be where I am if I didn't have the skills that I built during that time to continue leveraging those into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So there is a bit of luck, right? Like those women got those assignments when I didn't, and and it all worked out perfect because they got to have that career. I love my I'm a marketing writer, a content strategist, and then on the side I get to write books, and I couldn't be happier about that. I love it. So I think that's the thing, too, is we all just want this big success, but we don't think about what does success look like to me, though? Like if I'm really thinking about it. I mean, for me, I can I can be very honest. My version of success is time affluence. Like, I want time to wake up, write for four hours, go to the beach for a few hours, go to the gym, come home, read a book, go to bed. Like that sounds very boring, but that would be my version of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I'm not too far from you. Same thing. It's luxurious.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah. And some people want they want accolades, they want attention, they want all this stuff, and that's wonderful too. Like, that's what makes the world go round is all types of people. I've talked to other writers before, and I love this one. I was on a writing panel, and one of the writers on it was like, I'll be really honest, I only wanted an agent. I did not want to self-publish. I only wanted an agent because I wanted to see my book in bookstores. That's what I wanted. It was not about money, it was not about making a living. I wanted to see my book in bookstores. I wanted people to come to my booth at book fairs. I wanted that. And that is great. That is what you, that person wants in their life. Could not be further from the truth for me, but that that's why the world's wonderful, right? Like that's why you can't compare to what other people have because it might not be what you actually want when you think about it.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

And that's one of the toughest challenges, right? Mike Tyson has a great quote, and it's everyone's gotta plan until they're punched in the face. And then and then the question becomes all right, you're punched in the face, and then you're knocked down, and then you get up. And then to your point, you're gonna get punched in the face again. So, how do you interpret these attacks from the universe? Do you learn from them and do you adjust? And and is the resistance from the universe telling you that you're on the wrong path and you should change? Or is that resistance a message that you just need to try harder? That's tricky. I'm published too. And I'm like, and I went the indie route just like you, because I don't really care about an agent, and having the logo from a publishing house that's gonna expect me to market my book as much as I'm marketing it right now, anyway, is not worth waiting three years and having a developmental editor shit all over what I want to write. I'm just gonna publish. And that's the decision that I've made. And I get little punches in the face, just like everyone else, but I'm confident that I'm in the right ring, playing the right game and having a blast. So I think the the road to making that personal happiness come alive and having that quality time for yourself is figuring out what you really want. You're you're always gonna be punching, right? That's you, yeah, it's life. You wake up and there's always gonna be conflict, and everyone's got an opinion. But what counts is your opinion about your own life and if you're comfortable with it.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yeah, I just again like love how you said all of that. I think um it's so interesting that you brought up resistance because the next book I'm publishing is called uh Let It Be Easy. And it's all about releasing resistance in your life because you know, I think of resistance a lot in terms of resistance training, in terms of fitness, right? Like we need resistance to be stronger. We are just little noodles without resistance training. And the same is true for our spirit, the same is true for our creativity, it's the same for everything. But I think the way that you move through resistance is to just be really honest with yourself in a non-judg, non-judgmental way and ask, like, am I feeling resistance because I'm being stubborn? Am I feeling resistance because I know this is gonna be good for me, but I just don't want to do it. Well, why don't you want to do it? Well, I just don't want to. Like, I don't, it's hard. It's hard and I don't want to do it. And so I think sometimes that that is what it is, right? Like for me, I am not good at doing lunges at the gym. Like I am, I'm not great at them. I'm great at all the other leg things, but lunges, I don't like them. They're they require a lot of range of motion and a lot of strength, and I am not a fan of them. So lately I've always avoided them, but lately I've been like, Natalie, just do 10 lunges on each leg every time you go. Turns into 20 really quick, and then 20 isn't hard, and 10 isn't hard, and I'm not scared of the lunges anymore. When they show up on my workout plan, I'm not scared of them anymore because I just released the resistance around them and I just said, just do the lunges, just try. And so I think it's the same with life, right? Like one thing I try, a big principle that I try to employ as much as I consciously can is we are constantly faced with choices all day long. We're faced with thousands of little micro choices all day long. Which of those choices will bring you excitement? Not like satisfaction. Satisfaction is like a cheap emotion, right? Like you get satisfaction from a candy bar, you get satisfaction from binge watching a show. That's not what I'm talking about. What gets you excited? Like, if you could, when we hang up off of this call, when listeners are done with this podcast, what would they be excited to do next? That's the thing you should do. And so I've tried to start at least for half a day on one day every weekend. I try to just have like four to six hours of just like what would make me excited? And I only make decisions based on what we what would make me excited to do next, and I only follow those. And I tend to find that those are some of my most productive and joyful moments because I'm just doing stuff. Like maybe I only write for 30 minutes. Maybe it's not a big writing session, maybe it is cleaning my closet because that will make me feel really good to fit to clean my closet. So I do go do it. But I think by the two things that I'm getting at is number one, understanding where your resistance is coming from. Is it coming out of like an internal, like your brain trying to keep you safe? Like, no, let's not do that. That's hard. We don't want to do that right now. And so you don't do it, or is it coming out of you wanting to be excited and wanting to try something hard? Because hard things can be fun, because then you know you can do them, and that's a wonderful thing to know about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

They say that talent is a combination of aptitude, you're good at it, but also appetite, you're you're hungry for it. And I love what you're saying about filling your day not with just candy and porn and bullshit, but things that actually trigger dopamine in a way that sustains itself and grows and is meaningful to you as a person and is productive and gets you one step closer to this vision of yourself in that ideal goal-setting way. And if you can match this up, then you're building instead of just tearing down. So if you could find things that you're naturally good at, and then you get hyped and pumped about doing them, and if you could wrap these two into something that's practical enough to become or sustain or even grow your career, your connection with other people in the world, to me, that's that's the road to happiness. And I think you've identified these really well, where you need the time to be able to explore this and do that. That's what real freedom is, and then you need the self-awareness to understand and differentiate the things that count from the things that don't. And the last step is that sense of grit that you describe. I hate those lunges, but I'm at the gym. It's not that big a deal. Do the grind, push yourself a little bit, get out of your comfort zone within this realm of physical fitness, within another realm of indie publishing, within another realm of doing whatever it is that you do, either as a hobby or as a trajectory to something that's more career-driven or practical. And really, it can't go wrong. You can have good days and bad days, to your point. Sometimes you feel like doing this and sometimes not. But to me, happiness is locking in these few things in a way that's really self-reinforcing. And then a lot of the problems that you identified just when we started, the anxiety of our society, comparing yourself to others, getting into these head trips that don't really go anywhere and are just end up being so destructive, you're not even there. You don't have time or energy for that kind of nonsense because you're too busy doing fun stuff that is also really productive and makes you feel good about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Totally, totally. And I think the point about productivity is so important too, because we live in a society where we're supposed to commoditize all of our productivity now. And it's like learning a skill is not commoditizable. Like, unless you want to be the person who's like, look at my journey to get from A to Z. You know what I mean? And that puts pressure on the journey and it makes it not, I mean, in my opinion, it makes it not as much fun because a journey requires detours, it requires setbacks, it requires the ability to learn. And it is, it takes a very special person to be able to put all of that out online if they're trying to commoditize that journey. And sometimes we just want to learn a skill. We just want to, like, as humans, like we just want to get good at stuff. That's what our brains like to do. That's what we want to do is get good at something. I mean, I think everybody's heard about the flow state. Like, all of us just want to find ways to be in the flow state. And it looks different for everybody, but I think a very simple example a lot of people can relate to is like, I think most of us would like to be good at drawing, right? Like most of us would like to be able to just like draw a nice picture. Like if someone was like, draw a dolphin, like I couldn't draw a dolphin to save my life. Like, and they're like, shade it. And I'm like, I can't shade this. And I think most people are probably in that same boat. But if I truly, if I spent 30 minutes a day for a week learning to draw a shaded dolphin, I'm pretty sure I could get a remedial version of it done. And the thing is though, I would be spending that time doing that in a non-commoditizable way. I would be doing it just for me. And we think a lot of the time that we need to do things for money, for a purpose, towards an end. And the end is just learning sometimes. Like it is just learning. And I think that's a trap that writers fall into a lot. Um, like I'll be honest, like I write about three books a year. The vast majority of my writing is just on a document that I delete at the end of the day. Like it is just getting back in touch with my voice because we have to talk in, we do have to like do identity switches. We have to talk in certain voices to fit certain scenarios, and that's just the way that the world works. But our inside voice is very different often than the one that we're putting out there. And you have to, I have so many times in my career, because I'm I'm very lucky and very blessed that my career has been writing for all of my career, but it's been writing in a lot of different voices, right? Like I was a celebrity ghostwriter, I've been a financial marketer, I have done every range of vo voices that you could imagine. None of them are mine. So I very often fall out of touch with what I actually sound like. Um, and so I go into months worth of work that just gets deleted at the end of it, and it's purposeless. There's no storyline, there's nothing to it. It's just simply me trying to remember what I sound like in the midst of all the noise that's around me and all of the noise of what I need to do to make a living. And I think that that's something that writers struggle with, is they're like, we have to be writing for a purpose, and you absolutely don't. You can write just for the love of writing and just because your voice matters and it deserves to continue to be like nurtured.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

You bring up a fantastic point, and I've had so many writers, and now that I look back at like a hundred episodes with like over a hundred writers, congratulations. Very, very few have talked about the voice, which is just so central to what we do, and how elusive it is, and what a struggle it is to cut through all of these personas that we've we've hooked into. And the biggest temptation is you're writing marketing materials, and I could totally relate to your whole trajectory. I've done medical editing, I've done marketing writing, I've done healthcare writing, all of these mookies are out there, and it's taken me really a long time and a lot of struggle to your point. I've got like thousands of pages of just me banging away on the keyboard just to let it out and to get into that zone. But once you get it, it's like bing! It's amazing when you find your voice, when you're not emulating a writer you admire, you're not taking on the persona of a ghostwriter or a marketing writer or a science writer, and it's really coming from here, and then you've got your own style, and it's distinctive and it's natural, and then it's like the damn bursts, all of a sudden everything starts rushing out because you know it's you, and you worked so damn hard to get there. That's what a lot of people don't appreciate, too, which is like, oh, I'm gonna write everyone's got their book as the bucket list that they're gonna do, and I'm gonna finally sit down and you know, type or write it, and bam, that's me. But there's so many obstacles to get to the point, ironically enough, where you are able to eliminate those obstacles, and you could just truly express yourself. It's it's miraculous when it happens, and it's so worth it.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

It's so worth it, and it's I think the hard, I mean, yes, to all of that. And I think the hardest part in writing a book is maintaining that voice through the whole thing, right? Like, I I have I recently and coincidentally have had some really great compliments from friends, but it's been so interesting because their favorite books of the books that I've written are my early ones because they sound the most like me. It was back when I was very early in my career, so I hadn't had to be 17 different people at that point in my life. And so now my voice is more polished, but it's not as much of me, you know what I mean? And so I had a friend text me the other day and say, like, oh, I'm reading it, it's my second book, and he was like, Oh, I'm reading your book right now. And um, I like I it feels so nice, it feels like you're like telling me a bedtime story. Like, I just I love it so much. And I was talking to another friend and she was asking, which of your books should I get for one of my friends? Like, which do you think is your best? I was like, Well, I think like my latest cozy mystery is like technically my best writing, but I think like this other one is my favorite for these reasons. And I was like, which one of yours is my favorite? And she was like, I think it's your first one, to be honest with you. So it's so interesting. And I, you know, I hope I can get back to that version of my voice someday because it was my most authentic voice, and I know I can get there, but that's why I do so much throwaway writing. Like, because I have to to stay in touch with at least a small piece of what I sound like. And then at some point in my life, I'll have that time affluence and I'll be able to engage with my own voice much more than seven clients' voices every day. But in the meantime, that's why it's so important when people say to do the work. And I I don't think of it as work because I like writing, but I think it's just so important. It doesn't have to be again, it doesn't have to be a journal, it doesn't have to be anything official. I I I delete it, or if it's on a piece of paper, if I cannot fathom looking at a computer any more hours of the day, not even a single minute more, I'll just write it on a piece of paper, crumple it up, and toss it away. It's just important for me to write my thoughts in my own voice.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

You gotta do the work if you're if you're gonna get there. And the opposite of it is what you just brought up a little bit earlier, which is transactional and commoditized writing. And there's nothing more transactional and commoditized now than drum roll AI. And AI is the zero effort in and often garbage out writing process that is a boon and a burden. Uh what's your attitude about this AI revolution? It's only about three years old formally. It was November of 2022 when OpenAI launched the beta version of Chat GPT. I had been reading about and I heard about the GPT for years before. I knew it was a big Google project for chopping up the internet. But I I shouldn't feel too bad for not anticipating what actually happened because almost nobody anticipated, including the people at OpenAI who didn't even want to release ChatGPT because they thought it sucked. And and it's just wow, here we are. And there's there's good stuff with it, it's like an amazing research tool, and it connects the world and its ideas in very interesting ways. It's doing interesting things for medical science, and and there's a lot of great things with AI. And at the same time, from a creative vantage point, I think for every 10 AI slop novels, there's one actually written by you and me. So it's contentious, it's a mess. I have the illustrator of the new Aquaman and Superman on my pod, Don Aguilio. And he's he's got he's got like he's he put his hoodie on and he's like talking about AI because it's the bots are knocking on his door, right? He's like, I'm I'm working, I'm drawing, and some moron prompt jockey can put you know, have Superman flying in this style, and it'll steal his style. And boom, there it is. So I know that that's a big intro, but but but what how do you feel about this? Because you've been publishing for a long time, we're all getting crowded out, and and and how do you use it if you use it at all? What's what's your overall attitude about this?

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Yeah, I mean, it's an inevitable conversation point these days, right? Like it's something we have to talk about, it's not going anywhere. And I think we all have to get very comfortable with the fact that it's not going anywhere, and we have to make personal decisions about how we interact with it in that way, right? So for me personally, the way that I interact with AI is, as you mentioned, incredible research tools. So for me, when I was writing my first book, Becoming 1% Better, I didn't use AI for research. It took hundreds of hours to get through all of the I only use primary source documents. That's all that I use. It is so difficult to slog through Google search results to get to those results. So I prefer to use Claude to link me to those. I can read it, can give me a summary, but then I always go read it and make sure it is saying what it says it says because it is going to elusionate. I don't care how powerful it is, it doesn't get it right. I would say it only gets it right 40% of the time. Only 40% of the time in my experience, because I do use it in my daily profession as well. So it is wrong a lot of the time. So I always go double check its work and then uh I make my own thoughts from there. And I everything I write is written by me. Nothing I write, if whether it's on my blog or whatever it is, it's all written by me. Um, and then the other way that I use it is as writers, we're constantly promoting ourselves. We are responsible to ourselves to do that. So I do use it to help me come up with headers and subheads for AEO and GEO optimized headers, but I don't use it to write it. So I will say, give me these headers. This is my topic, this is what I'm writing about. Give me these headers that are gonna be the most relevant for it. Give me my metadata, give me these things. I will have it do those things for me. But the things that I mean, I don't think readers are particularly interested in what my metadata description is. So I'm I'm comfortable letting the computer take care of that because the ones reading it are the computers. So to me, the way it's very simple. It's I use it for research to help cut through all of the SEO uh things that I can't get through fast enough on my own to give me the primary sources of like actual research papers and things like that. And then I use it to help me optimize things that are read by computers, right? So readers don't really care what my headers are, they just care about the content after the headers. So those are the two ways that I use it. I don't use it in any way for writing books. Um I do, I will say I do use it if I can tell I'm self-censoring. So I think sometimes it's helpful in writing bios because I like I'm a little too humble and that's like not what you're supposed to do in a bio, but that's how I was raised. So I'm I'm like, oh, I'm a humble writer from Los Angeles. And it's like, say that you're an internationally award-nominated author. Like, and I'm I wouldn't have said that, you know what I mean? So I do find that it helps me find some blind spots when it comes to descriptions. Um, but that said, like when it comes to the books crowding us out and things like that, I believe, I truly believe the same way that there are readers who only like specific types of genres, specific types of writers, there are readers who also only specifically like indie authors. I found a lot of them on TikTok. I think TikTok has a wonderful book talk community. Um, and I like I left it because I was upset about their terms and conditions and their their new algorithm, but I honestly missed it so much that I couldn't help but go back because you just find so many good indie authors that you would have never found otherwise on there. And so I think that the writing finds the reader, and I think that the reader conversely finds the writing. And if readers read an AI slot book and they liked it, they're going to just get recommended more AI slot books, and that's unfortunate. But I do think that of all of the like areas of consumer, like all the areas of consumption, right? Like whether it's uh TV watchers, movie watchers, music listeners, I think readers, because you have to invest so many hours into a book, I think we're pretty good judges of what we're spending our time on. And so I think that readers can cut through that pretty quickly and they can find the books and authors that they like. And then I do believe, and I I mean I have to, but I do believe that the algorithm then serves us writers that are genuine writers better than the uh the AI writers. So I don't know if I could say one more thing too. My other thought on it is I do believe there's a point of diminishing returns, and we are quickly approaching it. I think just as fast as companies were to fire all of their writers, I think they're hiring them back because they realized every single brand sounds the same now. And that is going to cause a huge backlash. No one's going to be able to tell one brand apart from the other, and you need a human being to do that. So it's just that simple.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

I'm aligned with all your points. Uh, it's like a cat chasing its own tail. We we forget that AI is fed by human content.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

When the human content starts running out and the AI is eating its own shit, literally and figuratively, then it's gonna be that point of diminishing return, even in terms of content. And then when people notice the difference between something that's heartfelt and human and truly creative in a sense of being a unique situation, a unique scenario, it's not just a randomly cobbled together mishmash of tokens that are weighted with math, then uh then then there's gonna be hope. And there's already hope to your point. So, what you're pointing at in general is it's uh it's it's a jungle out there, but it's survival of the most truly creative, and it's Darwinian in a sense where it's self-regulating. Slop is slop. If you like slop, you'll get more slop and you'll read more slop. And as the slop gets sloppier, you're gonna notice and you're gonna get frustrated. And if you're an actual human doing the writing, you're gonna be increasingly more differentiated from the bots that are trying to catch up. And just do what you love, and the readers will find you. And one silver lining to all of this is you mentioned how you're using AI to help you with your SEO, with your geo, which is the generative optimization. And you know, when you make a post, then there's meta tags associated with so the spiders and the bots can better identify your content. Now, I'm Pollyanna about a lot of this because I think the bots are gonna automatically start doing that if they haven't really already. So the bots are really, really good at analyzing content, they're less good at writing original stories that are human and heartfelt. But what they're really, really good at is taking a ton of content and identifying what that content is best about and matching that with billions of potential readers and consumers, of which they've already got digital profiles. So I think we're right at the cusp where even doing SEO is becoming stupid. Like my YouTube channel, I get like three emails a day, half of them from scammers, and they say, you know, your Mookie, your YouTube channel, SEO sucks. And I'll be like, you know, you're right, it does. But I'm not gonna sit there and meta tag every damn video. I spend all this time creating the content. So I really think the bots are gonna start optimizing creators with audiences in ways we've never seen before. And then it's gonna beg the question of this whole problem, which is I know you're human, I can tell. And guess what? That reader, that reader prefers an actual human writer rather than you know one of my bot bros. So I think we both agree, don't panic, you know, he's don't freak out. We're at this weird transitional moment where where it kind of sucks, where we're getting crowded out by AI, where a lot of the AI slop sucks and is is doing its thing. But I think it's gonna balance out, and I think we're as writers, we're actually gonna benefit from this.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

I hope you're right. And I I fully agree. And I think as far as transitions go, like transition time, this is gonna be a short one, right? Like transitions typically take like five to ten years to happen, if if not longer. And because so because this is tech based, it's a tech-based transition and it's AI and it's learning. I mean, what do we only have like a couple years before uh what's it called when the uh the uh AI's like be like gain sentence? I can't remember what it's called, but uh yeah, AGI. The brain of a so the transitions are happening very quickly in the scope of transitions, and it's uh frustrating, and it's I mean it is hard for writers, but truly the ones I feel worse for are musicians because their work is so uh difficult to discern because there's so much music out there. And I realize it's it's similar for writers, but it's just so much easier to but uh music at its core is math, it's math, right? Like it's mathematical, it's progressions, it's chords, it's it's pretty mathematical.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

A human voice can be emulated so well, increasingly well, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:12

Oh, absolutely. But a written voice, not quite the same. And and and when it comes down to like the nuts and bolts, right? Like of punctuation, like how are you spacing your paragraphs, like any of that kind of stuff. So I do think, like in the scope of not who has it hardest in the the war of AI, I don't want it to sound like that, but I do think writers should feel the most hopeful.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

And that's again very Pollyanna and contrarian to a lot of writers who are like, oh my god, you know, and then and then I like how you embrace some of it. Like, why be a Luddite? Why why resist the whole inevitability of it just taking over when you get some benefit from it too? So let's see how it shakes out. And talking about benefits, what kind of inspiration can you give writers, especially with all this AI noise going on? Where you started really young and you're very productive. You're cranking out three books a year in addition to your day job, where you're also writing, and a lot of your writing is never seen by the light of day because you're crafting and honing your voice. Uh what how how do you how do you how do you motivate yourself? Do you they they say that writers are like panters or pacers, where you know the panters sit down and they outline their book, they know exactly A, B, C, D, character X, Y, Z. And then they sit down, I got, you know, an hour and you know, 2,000 words a day, and then they go fill in the blanks. That's the extreme. And then you got the pacer, and they'd sip the coffee, and you know, they're wandering around their apartment, or they're walking their dog in the park, and they're their head is just all over the place where they just see things. Where where are you in that spectrum? And then how do you actually write?

SPEAKER_01 54:14

I think I fall pretty somewhere in the middle. Um, I'm pretty organized. I have to be in order to get everything done that I want to get done. But what I like to do is I will time box whatever amount of time I have: 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30, an hour, whatever it is, I'll time box that. And then within that time, I'll be a pacer. I mean a pa uh is the pantzer the one who's wandering around.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Um, the pantzer, I think, is the one sitting in their pants.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

Whichever's the one wandering around. I will like organize the the pacer.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

The pacer. The pacer or the prancer or pacer, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

Whoever they whoever they are, I will box the time and then just kind of like wander around in the time. And sometimes, you know, I've assigned a deadline to myself. I try to publish most of my books before spring break every year because then you kind of have the rest of the year to market them, and that's just normally a good time for books to come out, is around March and April. So I usually will start in earnest working on books around like October, September, October. Um I like to finish that. I like to not work through December because it's just too difficult. And then uh there's just too much going on. And I again, Southern California, I get depressed in winter. I don't like winter.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

So I feel motive. It's so weird to hear because I grew up in Chicago and it's still beautiful in Southern California, even if it's a little rainier, which is ironic.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Okay, I'm I am aware of that. I I went to undergrad in Maryland for a year and I only lasted one year. I was like, I can't do this anymore. I don't like this version of myself. So I am because of that, I'm like deeply appreciative of how much better it is here in December. But for me, I'm still for me, it's like more like sunshine-based. It's like, well, I've been in an office the entirety of the daylight hours, and I am not motivated to do a single thing now.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

It's like it's like you're a coal miner, you're coming out.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

A corporate coal miner.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah, totally. You mentioned marketing. You mentioned, okay, so you hunker down and you're pantsing and prancing in equal measure, and you concentrate your efforts towards the end of the year, and then you you leave it open for the beginning of next year so you can market. That's another big challenge for writers, especially indie writers. And frankly, you can have the best you know, book deal on the planet with the most high-profile Madison Avenue publisher, and you still need to hustle, you still need to self-promote. So, what kind of things are you doing? Because my viewers and listeners are acutely interested in best practices, not just getting the book done, which is actually the funnest part, if you ask me, but then going out and trying to sell it, getting people to want to read it.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult, right? Like, I don't have I don't have any um soup, like I don't have any tips that have been so successful that I'm saying you should do this, it's so successful. I think it's kind of just unfortunately, because a lot of us are probably introverted for the most part, or we don't want to put ourselves out there as much as we have to. We just you just have to. And so I think it's just making sure your social brand is uh associated with you being a writer. And for a long time my was mine wasn't, and so I've been working on that lately. Um I this this is not a good answer, but it's my answer is that I think what's been helpful for me is trying to find more indie writers. So I like to find indie writers, and then I just go buy their books, and then I'm like, you know what? This feels good. Like it makes me feel good knowing there are people like me out there. And so that's helpful. What I also like to do on my social media channels, which helps sometimes, is I do reverse giveaways, which is where people comment their books and then you pick one and you buy it. You can pick your own parameters for that. It could be random, it could be just one that you uh there's one creator that I really like where he does them and he says, um, put your book here. I'm gonna read what they're about and pick one that sounds interesting. And there's like no pressure because no one's gonna ever know which one I picked. You know what I mean? Like no one feels bad, there's no winners, there's no losers, at least publicly. Like it's just you have nothing to lose by commenting on that. So if you don't want to put yourself out there on social media, at the very least, comment on stuff like that, go look for those types of opportunities. Um, I also like because I want to be the change that I want to see in the world, like as totally cliche as that sounds. I also made a website called the Indie Authors, where because my background is web development and marketing, I uh content, web, marketing, every I mean, I graduated college in 2009, so I've been doing this from the beginning of the internet basically. So um, what I wanted to do was SEO is one of my specialties, so I know that it's important to have things you can backlink to and things that link to you. So um people can go fill out a form there and then I'll just write an article about them. Like it's just it's just what their answers are. I just fill it in and then post it, but then they can link back to it, and then like hopefully over time they get more coverage or whatever. And when people search for their books, it just it helps you in Google. So I I don't have a great answer other than like be the reader that you hope other readers won will be as a writer.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

I love that, and I do a lot of that, not all of it. And I just throw stuff out there, so I'm I'm very prolific on Substack. You know, every day I'm I'm sending off this this pod will be on Substack, so we could cross link these others, we could restack ourselves and celebrate that, and share it amongst our own minions of and then connect your writer group with mine, which is great. Like build up the network of indie writers, which would be fun, and then uh you know, I use Medium almost as an archive. I just and it's Google searchable better than even Substack is. Yes. And I and I just and on X, I'm tweeting my last novel in reverse on X entire thing. Yeah, so it's like a lighthouse blasting it out there every day, and that's that's super fun. So I do knick knacks like that, and I've got friends on Substack, many of whom I've talked to on the pod, and they do book book funnel, and they they're they're like religious about the written word marketing engine, and they and they plug into these promotional campaigns as well, and that's another angle that writers can take and often do. Yeah. But at the heart of it is really networking and connecting with other writers and people, and that's one reason I love these one-on-ones even more, because we can share best practices and we're growing our network with every podcast and every share.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

Totally. I love that. The uh the the one thing I will say that has I if you're gonna spend money on anything, the two things that have been helpful are Goodreads giveaways and bookbub ads. Um, I do find that I've gotten a good amount of pre-orders from them, a good which a good amount. I'm talking like, I don't know, 10 or like not a ton, but like that's more, it's 10 more than it was before. And the Goodreads um giveaways, you can give away like a hundred ebooks and people sign up for those. I will say those reviews tend to be the harsher ones if they come in at all, but it's kind of it's just what you're saying. It's getting your name out there, it's getting your product out there. Even if the good the giveaway winners don't read your book, it's in their Kindle. They can read it one day if they want to, even if the the reviews are one of the Mike Tyson punches, right? Like someone read your book. That's incredible. Like, I think on TikTok, when people complain about being in like 200 view jail or whatever it is, that's 200 people that saw your video about your book. That's amazing. Like, don't be scared to say you want to be a writer, just put yourself out there. If you wrote a book and you want to write more books, or you want to just sell a million copies of that one book. If that's the one story that you had in you, that's all you have to do. Just continue to put it out there. I love your idea of putting it in reverse. That's very, very clever.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Yeah, it's been super fun. I'll I'll share that with you. I would love that. The protagonist is Johnny Fizzulli, and he's got his own Twitter profile and have his little image with his cat, and uh the whole book is you gotta have fun with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

You have to have fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

It's super fun every day. I automated it for a while, and then the bot choked because there's a few, there's a cat, and he meows, and if it repeats, then the algorithm, then Twitter will shut you down, X will shut you down because it's like a repeat. So now I manually post every day I spend. Oh, it's only like five, ten minutes. Yeah, and it builds up. I'm about a third of the way through the book.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

Are you doing it like by chat? Like how how much text are you putting in?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:42

All of it. So I I I converted the entire book into an Excel spreadsheet. And and the whole book is written in three-line paragraphs, which is another quirky thing, so it's kind of like lyric poetry almost.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:55

I am excited to read this book.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

And they're like tweets. So I'm just going backwards. So if you go to at Johnny Fizzuli, then from the top you can read the whole the whole novel.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:05

Oh, I'm so looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

And one thing I do want to point out to everyone who's viewing and watching, watch out for indie writer scams.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

There's not there's not a single day where I don't get half a dozen emails, and they're getting better and better thanks to the bots. I get I get awards that I've been nominated for. Um, a Netflix mini-series is dying to be made about my book because it's so good. And I even have scams that go to my LinkedIn profile and tie it to potential jobs with the logo of like Audi and uh, you know, and and PlayStation and whatever. So the scammers are getting more sophisticated with AI, they're targeting us better. And anytime you see any email that comes from at gmail.com, immediately in the garbage, folks. And this could be a purported agent. Agents are always reaching out. Mookie, I read your book and I know it'll be a hit.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

I uh I couldn't agree more. I responded to one of them, the first one that I got, just to be like, hey, I look because again, the internet is my profession. This is what I do. And so I was like, hey, I looked you up, I looked your site up, and you don't exist. And they even have good responses to that. It was like, well, you caught me. Um, I'm working on it right now. I'm really looking for my first few clients to try and be able to have the money to set up my business, and that's why I thought you seemed so promising, like whatever it is. But um yeah, a great, a great warning.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Yeah, don't don't do it. And like I said, they're getting more and more sophisticated. So be cautious. And you know, you could respond out of curiosity and see how far down the rabbit hole, and then you can go tell them to F themselves. But every time you even respond to them, then it's you're you've confirmed that you're a legit email address, and then you go on to another scammer list. It's a hundred percent true. So be careful, and we will share and restack and substack and tweet and do that, and let's keep the conversation going. It's absolutely delightful talking to you, Natalie.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

You too, Mookie. I've had the best time.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

Let's keep in touch. We could pick this back up six months or years, see how things are going. Let's do it and let's connect on all the social medias. Let's do that. So that way we can we could doom scroll and I'll see. Oh, there's Natalie. Oh, she must have gotten that that Netflix deal because I see her on a yacht with the Chapel Tini now.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

Or likewise, or likewise, it sounds like you're setting yourself up very well on Twitter.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

You're the first one invited. Come on over.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:00

We'll be there. The headquarters is actually not far away, so I will be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

That's right, that's right. We're both in the Southern California area. There you go. Like, comment, share, everybody. Incverse algorithm, the writer's pod. It's been wonderful having the writer, Natalie Saar, on the pod. And all the links to all her goodies are in the description. So whether you're on YouTube watching the video or video clip, you're on Substack. I'll have her link in there. Stack her up. And uh, and also on Spotify, Apple, etc., wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.