The Authorpreneurial Mindset Behind Creative Success with Joanna Penn

[00:00:00] and I was like, what if I could create a career that works that way? So I started writing my first book, which became Career Change, which was obviously nonfiction. And in the process of writing that book, I discovered everything about the publishing industry and thus became the beginning of what is now sort of, you know, 40 plus books and various genres and all of that.

[00:00:22] So it was really taking a step towards changing my own career and writing a book to help other people that enabled me to change my own life, but also taking into account all the technological changes and just getting involved. Like I said, that bias for action, you know, you have your do point where you just have to give these things a try and they might not be amazing, but you have to give it a go.

[00:00:55] Welcome to The In Factor, conversations with entrepreneurs who started, stumbled and succeeded. I'm Dr. Rebecca White and I'm absolutely thrilled to be sharing this episode with you today. If you're an author, aspiring writer or simply fascinated by the creative entrepreneurial journey, you're in for a real treat.

[00:01:16] Today, I'm joined by someone who has been an incredible inspiration to me personally and has helped countless others in the publishing world, Ms. Joanna Penn. Joanna is not only a prolific book author, but she's also the host of the Creative Penn Podcast, which has been running since 2009.

[00:01:35] And she's been a pioneering force in the independent publishing movement, helping authors take control of their creative careers and teaching them how to successfully navigate the indie publishing landscape. I love listening to her stories and I love listening to her own journey, which she shares on each of her podcasts. I first discovered Joanna's work at a pivotal moment in my own publishing journey.

[00:02:01] After releasing my first non-academic, non-fiction book through a traditional publisher, I found myself searching for information about reclaiming full ownership of my work and selling directly to my audience. Joanna's encouraging voice and practical guidance, along with the valuable insights from her podcast guests, provided exactly the guidance I needed.

[00:02:24] I was particularly drawn to how she shares her own experiences so openly, including the tools and software she recommends to indie authors. A few months back, I was listening to one of her podcasts and she offered the opportunity to anyone who had a podcast that had been around for a while. I think she required 50 successful podcast episodes produced that she might be willing to be a guest on the podcast.

[00:02:53] So I reached out to her because I had taken a bit of a hiatus because of the storms, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton had flooded our home and kind of left us in a situation where I needed to take a break from podcasting. But I knew when I relaunched my podcast who I wanted to have as one of my first guests. And it was definitely Joanna Penn. So I reached out to her. I did my pitch and I was successful.

[00:03:22] And hence, she is now a guest on my podcast. And today you're going to get to hear more from her. But also, I'm really excited because you're also going to get a chance, if you want, to listen to my story on her podcast in a few months. And actually, when you listen to this, it may have already aired. So if so, I'd love for you to go check it out as well.

[00:03:45] But it's been a real treat to me, for me, to get to know her a little bit and to have her as a guest on my podcast and also to be a guest on hers. But I'm very excited also about the things that we're doing with the In Factor podcast. I've got one of the best teams I've ever had and we're really leveling it up. And I'm adding more of my own journey in the beginning before my guests' interviews. So I'm really excited to share all of that with you.

[00:04:13] One of the things that I'm really excited about as well is that I'm taking podcasting to a bit of a new level, even at my university, where I do my university work, where I'm a professor and also the chair of entrepreneurship and the director of the Lowe Center. We're going to be opening a new content creation studio soon. And I'm creating a course, Podcasting for Entrepreneurs. So I'm really excited about all things podcasting right now, as I mentioned before.

[00:04:43] But I'm also excited about my own journey and one of the newest things that I'm working on, which is a book entitled Choose Yourself Groups. I'm producing it with my team and we're going to be publishing it independently. But I'm approaching this product differently. I want to include my community, and that's you, in the creation process. I'll be sharing excerpts and chapters as I write them, giving you an unfiltered look at my thoughts before they're fully polished.

[00:05:12] It's really a bit intimidating to be this vulnerable, but I'm excited to ensure the book truly addresses the entrepreneurial challenges that you're facing, especially during these uncertain times. And this book is designed for just that, to help people with transitory and changing times, and especially help you apply an entrepreneurial mindset during those times. So if you'd like to be part of this journey, please check it out.

[00:05:42] Go to DrRebeccaWhite, D-R-RebeccaWhite.com, and click on Choose Yourself Groups to learn more. Now let's dive into my conversation with the amazing Joanna Penn. Welcome to the InFactor, conversations with entrepreneurs who started, stumbled, and succeeded.

[00:06:06] I'm Rebecca White, and I'm so excited today to welcome author and authorpreneur Joanna Penn to the show. As you will learn during this show, Joanna is a highly accomplished author, podcaster, and I would say educator, because she's helped so many writers improve their craft, and she's encouraged and inspired them to become business owners.

[00:06:29] Joanna writes nonfiction for authors and is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, I think almost 800 by now recordings, and a creative podcaster and international professional speaker. Joanna, thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Rebecca. I'm excited to talk to you.

[00:06:58] Yeah, well, I'm thrilled to have you. I think I expressed this to you maybe in my pitch when I invited you to come on the show, that I just feel like I know you already. I found your podcast when I was trying to figure out how to take my book, take back the rights to my book, so that I can move from traditional publishing to being an indie author. And I found your podcast and realized that I think by the time I found you,

[00:07:27] you were already almost 700 podcasts or 600 podcasts in. And so, you know, it's just been really exciting. And you've got to, you know, you put out a bit of a call on your podcast. I was driving around town and I heard you say if you have 50 or more podcasts that you would consider coming on the show because you've got, you've republished your book, How to Write Nonfiction. And so I jumped right on that because I'm so excited to talk to you today

[00:07:55] and hear more about what you're doing and sort of allow you to share your entrepreneurial story with our audience. So that's a long intro, but you can tell I'm excited. Thank you for coming on today. Yeah, well, I think it's a good fit. I think your see, do, repeat that you have in your book, I think is exactly what people need.

[00:08:17] It's what I've done in my career and modeling other people, putting that into practice, a bias for action, you know, and then just carrying on. And yes, I've been, just so people know, obviously you mentioned how many things I've got, but I started podcasting in 2009. I started writing in 2007. So yeah, it's been a few years now and a few books in for sure. That's so great. You know, yours might be one of the longest podcasts out there.

[00:08:45] It's certainly one of the longest podcasts for writers and in fact, indie authors. The term indie author was really only started to become used around 2009. People might know it used to be called vanity publishing in the old days. And then it became an entrepreneurial choice. And for me, I was always a business person. I ran my own businesses.

[00:09:09] So when I looked at self-publishing, as it was at the time, it just happened to coincide with when the Kindle and the iPhone launched in 2007, which was a sort of, it changed the game for authors. And you could suddenly be an independent author. You could run your own business as an author. I mean, speakers have been doing this for a long time, you know, printing books, selling them at the back of the room, but it wasn't easy. And you had to have that distribution mechanism.

[00:09:39] And then with the iPhone and the Kindle, suddenly as a British author living in Australia at the time, I could sell to Americans. And that was the game changer. And as we know, as entrepreneurs, you have to have people to buy your stuff. You have to be able to reach people with your stuff. And so suddenly it became affordable to do digital. And that was sort of the beginning for me. But yes, I was definitely one of the first and longest running still podcasters, I guess. It takes a lot of dedication.

[00:10:05] I know I recently had to take a little break from mine because we lost our home to the hurricane, which was kind of tough. But I'm back on it and excited about it. And I don't know, you seem to really love it as much as I do. It's so fun to meet people and to experience that. It is fun for sure. But since this is an entrepreneurial podcast, my podcast, the Creative Pen Podcast, is also a business.

[00:10:31] So I also make, I think I'm in about the top 1% of income for podcasters. So whether or not your audience want to hear about that as well, we can talk about how that can also become a business. Yeah, absolutely. I think all of that, you know, you bring such an interesting background in technology and you embrace all the new technologies. But let's go back. I really want our listeners to know a little bit about how you got to where you are today. And I was really interested.

[00:11:01] I loved your story in how to write nonfiction about how you got started on your writing career. Would you share that and maybe a little bit about your background with us? Yeah, sure. So my background, I actually have a master's in theology from the University of Oxford. So it's one of those degrees that you think, when am I ever going to use this? It turns out my fiction has a lot, you know, a lot of that. It comes into my fiction. But I went into management consultancy.

[00:11:26] So I spent almost 13 years implementing financial systems into corporations in Europe and Asia Pacific and here in the UK. And so I was doing a lot of technical work. My job was essentially writing specifications, being the person between the business and the programmers. So I wasn't a programmer, but I was somebody who sat between the programmers and the business people. So I had to learn to speak technical. And I also did a lot of software stuff.

[00:11:55] So I became very capable, I guess, with technology. So I've never been worried or scared about technology. I completely understood that most of the time it doesn't work and then you have to tweak things and then eventually it will work. So and I've used that all the way through my author career from those early days when, as a non-American, the only way to self-publish on the Kindle was through Smashwords. Smashwords later got bought by Draft2Digital. But essentially over the years, I've just moved with the times of technology.

[00:12:25] But the point, as you said, in the beginning of How to Write Nonfiction, back in 2005, it was around then, I was just miserable in my job. So I was very successful in all the ways you're meant to be. You know, I was earning good money. We had an investment property. You know, we had a house and a mortgage. And I was doing like a proper job. And you're meant to be happy with that. But I was just like crying at work every day. I was just like, oh, this is so pointless.

[00:12:53] Because the job of an IT consultant in that way, it was just one release after another, after another. You go into another company, you do the same thing. And, you know, it was good work. And it's led to a lot of good things in my author life. But I just thought it was so pointless. Everything I did got overwritten by some other technical thing. And so my wonderful husband said, well, why don't you do something else? And I was like, well, okay.

[00:13:18] And then it was around the time when Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Workweek came out, which is still a very good book. And it was this concept of lifestyle design. And so the sort of question is, well, what do you want to spend your time doing? And I really love reading. I love traveling. And I love writing. And I was writing just journals and stuff like that. And I'd done a few courses. And I was like, well, what if I could create a career that works that way?

[00:13:46] So I started writing my first book, which became Career Change, which was obviously nonfiction. And in the process of writing that book, I discovered everything about the publishing industry and thus became the beginning of what is now sort of, you know, 40 plus books and various genres and all of that.

[00:14:03] So it was really taking a step towards changing my own career and writing a book to help other people that enabled me to change my own life, but also taking into account all the technological changes and just getting involved. Like I said, that bias for action. You have your do point where you just have to give these things a try. And they might not be amazing, but you have to give it a go. Yeah. Well, first of all, I love that story. And I love that approach that you've taken.

[00:14:32] And it really is. Sometimes you just have to step out of your comfort zone. You know, you talk on and you, you know, one of the things I admire about your podcast is that you're very real and you're very, I just feel like before I even met you, that you were my friend and that we were sitting down to learn together. And I think that takes, I mean, I love that vulnerability, that realness. And I'm sure it's a lot of it is just who you are.

[00:14:59] But I think that takes some effort as well. Well, I think it's, it's comes from doing it for years. The earliest episodes are still there. My episode one from March, 2009 of the podcast is still there. And this is again, that in terms of trying new things, that episode, I phoned up someone on a phone, an actual landline phone, and I recorded it with a handheld recorder. Then I moved into Skype.

[00:15:26] And what's so funny is Skype, as we record this, Skype is, they've just announced Skype is ending. And I was like, oh my goodness, that really is a big shift. So, and of course we've moved and you and I were on Riverside now and we changed tools over time. But in terms of being vulnerable and open, it probably took five years of podcasting and blogging, actually blogging as well. Because as I said, I was, worked in IT. I was like, I'm boring and everything I do has to be business English, has to be proper sentences.

[00:15:56] I can't say, you know, I can't get it wrong. And so it was very difficult those first few years. But then eventually I kind of relaxed a bit as, you know, you have as well. And it just takes a bit of time to figure out how you can be. And what eventually I realized is that, yeah, people want to hear from real people. So I can share the difficult times and I have on the podcast and in my books. And I can just be normal.

[00:16:24] And people will think, okay, that's a normal person. And I could do that too, as opposed to hiding the mistakes. So yes, just to encourage people, you have to just practice this. I remember the first interview I ever did like this. My heart was hammering. I had notes everywhere so that I could look in any direction to be able to answer the question. And I was petrified. It took years before. And I still get heart palpitations sometimes before doing these things. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:54] I was nervous today because I just love your work so much. And it's interesting because I talked to my husband about it and he said, you do a great job. Don't worry about it. But like you, the video part has been harder for me. You know, I really embraced and in my earlier years of my podcast, didn't do any video. But now I'm working towards doing more video. And I still try to control that a lot, I think.

[00:17:22] But, you know, you've built a solo entrepreneur business. And a lot of that, you know, in my graduate entrepreneurship class last week, we actually were talking about all the technology, AI. And I know you're a big proponent of that. And I'd love to talk about that too. But the whole idea of building a business with tools. And I think it's fascinating. In the earlier part of your podcast, you always talk about what's on in the news.

[00:17:51] And then you promote and you have sponsorship on your podcast from a lot of the tools that you use to be a very successful solo entrepreneur, someone who can really make money using technology. So I'd love to hear a little bit more. You know, you've already alluded to how your business has changed through technology. But how do you think about technology? And as a book author, I'm sure you run into a lot of authors who are really

[00:18:19] afraid of technology or struggle with embracing it. Yeah, it's a big question because I feel like everything has a basis in technology. And a lot of what people are scared of is the more generative AI side of things. I mean, at the end of the day, if you want to sell books, whether you are a big publisher or an individual author, you're going to be using Amazon for a lot of that.

[00:18:45] And Amazon transformed the possibilities for international sales, as did then Kobo and Apple Books and all of these. And then, of course, audio, wherever people are listening to this, for example, if it's Spotify, if it's Audible, if it's through Alexa or on Amazon. So we are already using a ton of different tools in order to sell books. Probably most of us are on some form of social media, whether it's LinkedIn. I guess a lot of business people will be on LinkedIn or X or Instagram. These are all AI algorithms.

[00:19:15] Amazon's recommendation algorithm is one of the sort of, you know, long running AI tools, you could say, that we all use. So when people say they're worried about technology, I'm like, it's the stuff you've been using for many years. And, you know, they don't realize that that's AI. If you've Googled anything today, you're using AI. So there's a lot of technology that as it's come in, I've played with it. Some of it I've used, some of it I haven't used. But for example, I love Midjourney.

[00:19:41] So midjourney.com is generative AI for images. And I've just done a book trailer for Death Valley, which will be my next thriller. And back in the day, like back in 2010-ish, I would have paid a thousand US dollars to get a book trailer done. And now I can do it myself in sort of three to four hours. And it probably cost me 50, $50. And I love that side of it. So for me, technology is about amplifying my creative vision. So I'm not, the tools aren't telling me what to do.

[00:20:10] I'm using the tools to achieve my goals. And then they are a leverage. So as a single person, as you said, so I'm the only employee in my business and I can amplify everything I do and leverage my time by using AI tools. So let's take podcasting again. So I use a tool called Descript. I don't know, do you use Descript? I've heard of it, but I don't use it.

[00:20:36] So I was just looking at it online today, actually. Yeah, so I love Descript. I mean, obviously we're using Riverside, which has a lot of great tools as well. But I've been using Descript for a couple of years and you can put in a video and then it, or an audio and it generates the transcript within like a minute. And then you can edit the text and it will edit the audio or the video. There's also like a one click for show notes. It will do the transcript with the points. It will do a YouTube thing.

[00:21:05] With these tools, we can create content and then do all the things that would have cost a lot more money. Transcription, speech to text. A lot of authors write books with transcription. That's just super useful. And then I guess I think about all of my different business processes. It's about doing the things you love and then using the AI tools to help amplify you in different ways. So in fact, just before this, I was finishing off a pitch deck for a script.

[00:21:33] I've written a screenplay adaptation of one of my books. Now I'm able, I've done screenwriting courses and all that, but I wrote the script and then I uploaded it to ChatGPT. And I said, can you evaluate my script as a director of this type of thriller? Give me feedback on my script. And it gave me some amazing feedback. And then I said, tell me what makes me look like an amateur because I'm not a pro screenwriter. So I'm like, what can I improve that will make this really professional? Stuff like that is just super, super valuable.

[00:22:03] Now with book editing, I do have a human editor, Kristen, who is my book editor, but I also use ProWritingAid, which is an AI powered editing tool. And it is absolutely fantastic for doing all the things so that when Kristen gets the book, she doesn't have to fix all the little things, all the petty things that software managed to do. So I just, again, I mean, there's so many examples I could give you, but I just use these tools to amplify me.

[00:22:32] And as leverage, I still pay some humans, absolutely. But I can just do so much more with these tools. But the main thing is just keeping in mind that it is your creative direction. It is your intellectual property. You're just doing more with it, with these tools. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think is so important in what you're talking about there is the possibilities for us now. And, you know, for those of us who, you know, my age and you're younger than me, but our age,

[00:23:02] you know, we had to learn, I guess, the old school traditional way. And that was probably helpful for us because that still matters to understand all of that. But now we can build a business without a lot of other people. And for many entrepreneurs, that's one of the biggest challenges. They want to actually do their craft or their skill or whatever it is that they love in terms of developing a product for their customer.

[00:23:29] But the side, running the business side has been tough for them and especially hiring people and managing people. And, you know, I look at AI sometimes as having an amazing graduate assistant, you know, someone that can really smart, that can help me, but I know that they need direction. So I love where you're going with that. And, you know, I can't resist asking you about, you know, the future of AI.

[00:23:56] And, you know, in my thinking about some of the younger people that I work with, we've had change, we're changing completely the way that we have to evaluate student learning because of AI, which is not a bad thing. I think education is being disrupted, just like book publishing has been for the last 10, 15 years. But I do wonder sometimes about AI as a substitute versus a supplement.

[00:24:21] And, you know, I think about it the same way you do, but I don't know if you've had any discussions about that with people and what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I think in reality, everything changes and every generation learns and adapts in a different way. So, for example, Amazon has Alexa. And just this last week, they've introduced Alexa Plus, which is the Alexa, which now has Claude in.

[00:24:48] So Anthropics Claude, which is a chatbot that I use a lot as part of my writing process. And it writes all my sales descriptions. It is amazing at writing sales descriptions. So a marketing copy and all that. So I use that tool. And now it's going to be in Alexa. Now, my nieces, who are both under 10 years old, they've been using Alexa for a couple of years now. And they just talk to Alexa. Now, I don't talk to... And my husband does talk to chat GPT on his phone.

[00:25:16] I don't talk to the AIs because I'm not much of a talker. I'm a writer, you know, so I want to type to my chat bots. But my nieces are growing up in this world where they are just interacting with these tools. And as far as I can see, it makes them... They're faster than me. They're really fast. They adapt to new technologies really fast. But the thing is, they still know what they're interested in. And I think this is the point.

[00:25:42] I feel like because both of us, I mean, you know, I didn't have email until I left college. I still had to handwrite my essays. I imagine you did. Just absolutely. Absolutely. Handwriting. I mean, I don't know. It's just crazy. But now there's so much possibility. I think the most important thing with younger people and colleges and all this is that there has to be more of an emphasis on people's curiosity because you can learn so much.

[00:26:11] I mean, I know I can ask one of these machines to write a book, you know, on entrepreneurship, one of your books, or how to write nonfiction, one of my books. The AIs can write that. But that's not the point. We're interested enough to want to learn more. We want to do the intellectual activity of creating a book. Yes, we're going to use those AIs to help us. I use deep research all the time now. ChatGPT deep research is amazing.

[00:26:39] I love it because I'm curious and I want to learn that stuff. It doesn't matter to me that the AIs know everything or can create everything, or if they can't right now, they will do in the next year. It's that I'm interested as a human. And I actually think it's good that education is changing because most of us were forced to do a lot. Like, do you really need another essay on Romeo and Juliet? You know, as a teacher, is that really what you want to read?

[00:27:06] Whereas now it's like, well, don't just output that essay on Romeo and Juliet. You need to be able to think in a more critical way, go in the direction of your curiosity. So to me, curiosity is the superpower in the AI age. And we have to lean into that side of things. And we also have to just trust that people, people are people. Then they might be lazy about some things because they're not interested in that.

[00:27:36] Frankly, you and I are lazy about the things we're not interested in. And if we're forced to do something, we're like, yeah, I might as well use an AI for that. But like creating show notes for the podcast. I mean, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to get the AI to do that for me. But when it comes to, for example, this thriller Death Valley that I've just finished or my script for Ragnarok Rising, I'm like, I want to learn that. I want to do that.

[00:28:03] So I think at the end of the day, I know we all have to adjust, but we have to trust humans and human curiosity. That's not going away. You know, I love that. And you really led into a topic I want to talk about, creativity and innovative problem solving and opportunities. I think it was Sir Richard Branson when he was asked what separates entrepreneurs from others, he said curiosity.

[00:28:27] So I think curiosity, you know, for anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur has to be paramount. And so I'm curious about how you think about opportunities. Obviously, every book you write is a new opportunity. Every tool you take on, every project you pursue is a new opportunity. And that's, as you mentioned, that was one of the criteria that I identified as an entrepreneurial mindset.

[00:28:54] And so I'm very curious about opportunities and how you differentiate between those that you pursue and those that you don't. Because I am certain that you're faced with, as a curious person who has accomplished a lot, you have tons of opportunities. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's the difference between my own books and then like other business opportunities. So with my books, I'm pretty intuitive.

[00:29:22] So I'm a discovery writer. So I don't plot things or plan things. It's just like things will come up and they might have come up years and years before. So for example, I think the next book after Death Valley, which is done now, is going to be based on a trip I did in 1999 on a tall ship across the South Pacific. And that's been noodling around in my brain for a really long time. And I'm like, do you know, I think it might be the time to write that next.

[00:29:51] So that's kind of how I decide on the next book or this opportunity to write a script came up and I felt enthusiastic and interested. And to be fair, I got into screenwriting maybe eight years ago. And at that point, I thought this is too difficult. I want to write books because the business side of books is so much easier than the business side of script writing. So I'm going to focus on my books. But what happened was the change in technology.

[00:30:19] So what I know now is it's going to become cheaper and cheaper to make the expensive kind of movies that I write because of AI tools in the film industry. And also because I can use AI to help me write these drafts of my own work, that helps too. So the one thing is my own sort of intuition. And then when it comes to business stuff, so for example, like we're talking about the business of a podcast, for example, about in 2015.

[00:30:48] So I started the podcast in 2009. In 2015, I was like, this is taking too much time. I should just give this up. And because up until around 2014, podcasting had not really gone mainstream. Like you didn't have, not everyone had a smartphone. You had to download the audio and put it on your little iPod device and all this. And so I was like, okay, either I give up the podcast or I make it pay. I have to do one or the other.

[00:31:17] And so when it comes to entrepreneurial decisions, even if I like talking to people, I still have to make it a business. So at that point I started Patreon. So I have a Patreon for the podcast. And then I also started getting corporate sponsors, only companies I use myself and so can ethically recommend. So those two things made the podcast into a business. And then again, a couple of years ago, I was like, I'm quite bored with this. What should I give it up?

[00:31:47] And then I found a way to kind of re-amplify it. And also, again, change my Patreon into being much more of a sort of teaching people how to use AI as an author. So things, I just keep changing things up over time. But yes, business, for example, a lot of people ask me to speak in person at physical events, often in America. I'm in the UK, I get terrible jet lag.

[00:32:13] And unless they're paying me now, unless they're paying me a ton of money, or it's a conference I want to attend, then I will not do that. So I've got like a thing on my app, a things app, which is like my to-do list. And it's when I will speak and when I won't speak. So it has to meet these criteria. And that's just to remind me how to say no in those situations. Because as you know, saying no can be difficult. Oh, yeah. I struggle with that a lot.

[00:32:41] But I think, you know, one of the things I always remind myself is what's the highest and best use of my time. And so, you know, we have to, I guess there is a certain bit of self-awareness and understanding ourselves. And, you know, you mentioned jet lag, whatever it happens to be that will put, you know, basically take time away from writing books and doing some of the other things that are important to you.

[00:33:05] So a lot of what you talked about really requires a connection with and understanding your market. So you spent a number of years building up an audience or a community, I guess, through the podcast. And I know I've heard you talk about the importance of an email list as opposed to sort of being dependent upon one of the other social mediums. And I think you're an incredible marketer, by the way.

[00:33:33] I'm sure you've learned a lot of that. It seems to come naturally, but I'm sure that you've developed a lot. You know, you put effort into that. Let me put it that way. So I would love to know some of the things you've learned about marketing and about building your community. I know it's a huge question and we could probably talk all day on just that. But for me, that's, I think, one of the biggest challenges.

[00:33:58] I have a community of people that I know through a lot of my work that I do, but they're not always the people that necessarily are in the market for the new thing that I'm working on, if you will. So how do you build and maintain and meet the needs of your community and sort of know your community? Yes. So as you say, I'll take you back to one of my failures because you have stumbled, don't you? Entrepreneurs who started stumbled and succeeded.

[00:34:28] Everybody who succeeds has stumbled. I'll tell you my stumble. So back in 2007, 2008, so it would be the end of 2007. So I finished this first book. It was called How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One, which later I rewrote as Career Change. But I wrote this book and I printed 2,000 copies. So I paid to print 2,000 copies. And I have this photo that I love. This photo is me standing in front of all these boxes.

[00:34:56] And the look on my face is about three weeks before I realized that I knew nothing about book marketing. So on my face is this, I'm so proud of my book and I have 2,000. And I thought that those books would sell and I would make money and I would leave my job and it would all be amazing. And that's obviously not what happened because nobody knows that there are books in your house. And I was like, how do I tell people? I discovered marketing. And this is what happens to a lot of businesses.

[00:35:26] You think that if you build it, they will come or whatever. And then they don't. And then you have to figure out how to make them come. And so that is part of the reason I started the podcast. One, for people listening, you have to do something. That's like the fundamental principle. You have to do something. But the second principle is you have to do something that is sustainable for a long time. So what's really interesting is when it comes down to it, I still do exactly the same thing

[00:35:55] as I did from 2009. So I started my email list at the end of my website, thecreativepen.com and my email list for my author blueprint, which is essentially a free ebook with loads of stuff on how to self-publish and everything. I started that in 2000, end of 2008, started the podcast in 2009 with a call to action to get the blueprint. And that's still my call to action, thecreativepen.com forward slash blueprint.

[00:36:25] And then I just created content for, where are we now, like 16 years podcasting. And at the time I was blogging. So I was writing articles on the blog. I don't do that anymore. I don't know if that makes a difference anymore. But I've also emailed at least every second week since then. And of course, what you have to think is people come and people go. Some people join the podcast, then they leave the podcast. Some people join the email list, they leave the email list. Some of those people have been there since the beginning.

[00:36:54] But at the end of the day, I have literally just on the creative pen side, I have just shared the journey. And so it's like, this is what I've learned. Here it is. You can pay for it if you like a lot of it, you can get for free. But if you'd like to buy the book, how to write nonfiction, for example, that there's a lot of information there and it's not that much money. So over the time, it's literally just been creating stuff and having an email list. I have done social media on and off.

[00:37:22] I got onto what was Twitter back in 2009 and I'm still on X. I tried other platforms, but you know, I'm just not that interested. I don't do much video as you also don't. I try and do some like we're doing this, but I'm not massively fond of video. But what I've mainly done is write books, share my journey. So I haven't had to do anything fake or making it up. I've literally just been honest.

[00:37:48] And then what happens is you attract people who want what you're putting out. So you do have to be clear on your direction. So for example, what you've got here as an entrepreneurial podcast, a bit like me with The Creative Pen, you're attracting entrepreneurs. You may attract both women and men, but there's probably a higher percentage of women just because that's who we are. And then it's like when I decided to start writing fiction, I had to start another name.

[00:38:17] I had to start another website because it's a completely different offering. And as you said, the people who want information on how to write nonfiction don't care about my latest thriller for the most part. Some of them do, but most of them don't. So that's something for people to consider as well. But yes, I guess there's some tips there. But the point is everyone gets obsessed with tactics like, oh, now you need to do TikTok or whatever. But at the end of the day, you just need to think of more long term.

[00:38:46] And to me, email marketing is still the basis, really. And then you have to have at least one thing. And that one thing for me is podcasting. You know, I really like that. And one of the things I heard in there is the importance, I think, of defining what you're going to do. And I think the more specific about what you offer, the more likely you'll get that audience to follow. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I do have one thing on that, though.

[00:39:15] The Creative Pen was my third website because the thing was I thought too small at the beginning. So my first website was howtoenjoyyourjob.com to match with my book. And then what I realized was I was much bigger than that. So and I see people make this mistake. Yours, the end factor is, to be fair, it could be a lot of things. It could mean a lot of things. So I went with The Creative Pen.

[00:39:43] I could become a painter and it would still be appropriate. It encompasses a lot. And I know people who've put the word self-publishing in their podcast title who have had to wind it down because they don't want to talk about that anymore. So definitely you need a niche, but don't hem yourself in because if you are doing this for the next 15 years, you want to make sure you have room to grow. I like that a lot. I have something I call the Goldilocks Theory of Technology.

[00:40:12] I base it on experience I had with a technology company I started a number of years ago. But we built a technology platform to help universities reduce the risk on campus, mitigate risk. And I always say that the first platform we built was it just didn't do enough. The second one was overkill. The third one was just right, just like the three bears and Goldilocks. So, you know, I hear you with this.

[00:40:39] I think whatever you think your business is going to be when it starts, it's going to be different. And however long it takes, it's going to take longer, I think. And it's probably going to cost more. But I think that's really great advice in terms of time and resources. And I think also, I mean, when I started writing fiction, the first novel I kind of did more of a creative challenge.

[00:41:02] But when I started writing it, I didn't foresee that I could make decent money with fiction because, I mean, books is a hard business regardless. But fiction is even harder. And I was, but then I got into it and there is just things that you can do as a fiction author to make money as well. But the point is, I guess, and people listening are entrepreneurs. If you have an entrepreneurial mind, you will figure out how to make money from things.

[00:41:27] And so, for example, now I do Kickstarters and, you know, that's a big deal. I have a Shopify store. That's a big deal in terms of making money from different places as well as the big store like, you know, Amazon and all that. So I feel like you can move into other things over time, especially if you just like, yeah, I know, like the creative pen. I know what I'm doing. I can do it standing on my head.

[00:41:50] Whereas the fiction gives me something that I need as a sort of the more creative side of me. And I do nonfiction there too, like my pilgrimage memoir, for example. But I know that people will feel the need to move into other areas. The question is, do you need a completely separate brand like I've done as JF Penn? It does still tie in, but it's a different form of income. It's essentially a different business model to the nonfiction side.

[00:42:19] So that's something for people to consider. You can branch out into other things, but you may have to adjust your business model or have different income streams. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really great advice. You know, in your book, How to Write Nonfiction, you covered so many different topics. And I know for a lot of entrepreneurs, they think about writing a book as a book funnel, a marketing book funnel. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:42:45] I know you have some books and other products that you use to develop your marketing base. So, you know, can you talk a little bit about a few ideas out of your book, which I would highly recommend to anybody that is thinking about writing a nonfiction book? You know, what are a few things that maybe you could share with our audience from that book that would be probably the most important things to think about?

[00:43:11] Hmm. Well, certainly the business side, sticking on the business side as opposed to the craft side. We could do a whole thing on the craft of writing nonfiction. But on the business side, yeah, I think the most important thing is deciding what is your definition of success for this book. And I definitely think it can be a lead magnet for other things. But I do want to also remind people that you can make good money with a nonfiction book.

[00:43:36] And I hear too many nonfiction authors assume that it won't make any money, whereas nonfiction is great because you can charge more. So for a shorter nonfiction, you can charge like a $9.99 ebook. You can charge the same for audio. I mean, audio in nonfiction is fantastic. And I often say to people, you know, just upskill, narrate it yourself. That's what people want to hear a lot of the time. You can do workbooks. You can do courses. You can turn it into keynote speeches, all of that kind of thing.

[00:44:05] Now, if you have like a physical business or consulting business. Yeah. So if you have a physical business or a consulting business or something where you do just want a lead gen, then you need to make sure it's really hardcore focused on bringing in the people that you want to attract. You need to make sure your title and your subtitle and all your SEO and all of that is designed to bring people in to your business. It might be software business. It might be, you know, whatever it is.

[00:44:34] Don't try and do both. So if you're trying to get keynote speaking, for example, that's a slightly different book to something that is sort of bringing people into your dental surgery or something like that. So you really have to think strategically about what you want this book to do. And then for me, I have a whole suite of books for authors. I have like 13 different books for authors under Joanna Penn.

[00:45:00] And the business model there is you will want to buy more than one of my books. So you might buy How to Write Nonfiction and then you might read How to Market a Book or How to Make a Living with Your Writing. So I've really just gone with a very obvious title so you know what you're getting on the tin. And then if you want to do the more lead gen, so like I mentioned, my author blueprint, which I essentially rewrite every six months, completely rewrote the whole thing from the beginning last year. And there's also a paperback version for people who like that.

[00:45:30] But that basically is free. But in that, there are links to software where I'm an affiliate. So writing software, formatting software. So even and then obviously links to my other books. So even though that's free and people get a ton of value, it's like a 90 page book on everything you need. It also makes me money as well. So I just know that people come into that funnel every single day.

[00:45:56] If I look at my email dashboard, I can see people coming in every day, people who find it, and then they sign up for my email list. I don't know how many of those people go on and buy this, that and the other. I don't do all that detailed tracking. Some people do. But since the beginning, I mean, I'm a big fan of Seth Godin, who's a sort of marketing guru and author.

[00:46:18] And he's always talked about attraction marketing, about just being authentic and over time and being generous. And then over time, it works itself out. I guess I'm not sure if that helps. No, I think that's great. And by the way, I think I have Seth to thank for having you on this podcast because I think, wasn't it his book? That he went on like a huge number of podcasts.

[00:46:42] Yes, and that's why I said, yeah, I was like, if Seth Godin went on 80 podcasts to promote his book, I need to be better at getting on podcasts. No, you're right. And he's a great example of someone who's been doing this for decades and still puts out great content, puts out great books, is generous with his community, is adapting. He's put a lot of stuff up recently around using Claude, around using the AI tools, around how we can differentiate from AI.

[00:47:11] So, yeah, I feel like part of that, like you have your C side of things, like see someone who's doing something and model what they're doing. Seth Godin has definitely always been like a mentor from afar for me. Yeah, just like you are for so many people, I think. Oh, thank you. Yeah, of course. So I really, you know, I think it's wonderful to think about the whole marketing side of things. And you mentioned pricing.

[00:47:35] And I just wonder, did you struggle in the beginning with charging for what you do? Because I have both, I guess, the luxury and the challenge that what I'm doing is a kind of a side hustle because I'm still a professor. And so I'm not necessarily dependent on a lot of these things that I do.

[00:47:59] Kind of, I guess, where I'm going with this is it's kind of a fine line we walk to be generous and also recognizing the value that we're providing and charging. And I think sometimes unless you have to pay the rent and put food on your table, sometimes we don't. And maybe this is a women thing. I don't know. But sometimes we don't we don't put enough value on ourselves and what our time and what we have to offer. Do you ever run into that or have you ever experienced it? I have.

[00:48:28] But do you mean book pricing or things like consulting? Everything. Everything. Everything. Yeah. Yeah. So at the beginning, personally, books are a nightmare because when you self-publish, Amazon constrains the pricing. So you can only price up to $9.99 US dollars in order to get the 70% royalty.

[00:48:50] So that actually, as a non-fiction author, and I've only read a couple of chapters of your book, but you should be charging the highest for that. So that should be a $9.99. And then my pricing for physical books is I need to make at least two pounds. So that's like $3 profit on a physical book to make up for whatever else, you know. So I at least make two to three dollars pounds per book sale.

[00:49:19] And then when I do something like a Kickstarter and I do special editions on the video, like some of them behind me, they've got silver foil. They've got ribbons, sprayed edges. Then I can charge more because that's a bigger product. But it's still like 25 pounds, $30. Cannot charge much for a book. So no matter how much you want to, you actually can't, especially when it's an e-book, a paperback. And the problem with e-book and audio, of course, is it's streaming. So people can listen on Spotify, on Audible.

[00:49:49] So we don't have much control over that pricing. So I say put things up as to where is appropriate, which, yeah, like I said, people pay more for nonfiction as well. But you still, it's not like you can put your e-book at $100 like the academic press do. Right, right. So don't be an academic press is probably my biggest recommendation.

[00:50:11] But then on things like courses, consulting, speaking, yes, over the years, I have basically ratcheted up my prices based on my experience. And I started out something like $49 an hour for consulting. And now I'm at over $400 an hour. And I do very, very little. I sell it as part of my Kickstarter.

[00:50:40] Speaking, as I said, I'm quite elastic on speaking, but I only speak if it's something I want, really want to do because it's so tiring for me. So I think the main thing for people is, yes, you do need a period of either doing something for free. Sometimes free is better than cheap. So like my blueprint, as I said, is free. And Stone of Fire, the first novel in my thriller series, is free.

[00:51:04] That's actually better than 99 cents because there's no barrier to entry. And then it leads people in. So again, with pricing, it's like, who are you trying to attract? Who are you? Because if you don't, the problem with authors is people try and get us for free to do everything. They're like, oh, you get exposure. And I'm like, no, that's not good enough. So you have to decide again, what's your definition of success?

[00:51:31] If you're trying to build up a consulting or coaching business, you probably need to do a load of stuff for free to get enough testimonials, that kind of thing. So yeah, it depends where you are on the journey and how many years you've been doing this. But a tip I was given by a speaker early on is you need to do it in the mirror. So if someone says, so how much do you charge? You practice saying in the mirror and see where you flinch.

[00:51:58] So at least double your prices and see if you flinch in the mirror. See if you can like practice it. No, I'm $400 an hour. I have no problem being $400 an hour. I know I'm worth that. But $1,000 an hour, you know, I'm starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with that. So you have to kind of, you have to set your rates. But I would say the main thing is revisiting them every year. Yeah, I know on your podcast, you always talk about your goals for the year.

[00:52:27] And so you do a good job, I think, just from what you shared of revisiting everything that you do and remaking yourself over and over again. And there are so many questions I'd love to ask you about book publishing. But I know we don't have time for that. And I'm going to actually refer the audience to the Creative Pen because you can find everything that you want to find about book publishing. And there's just, you know, I think there's so much opportunity there.

[00:52:52] And you mentioned on one of your recent podcasts, Eleven Labs, and doing your own books, your own audiobooks. And there's so many, so many cool things there. But again, we don't really have time for that. But I do want to ask you a little bit more getting to the side of executing past failure. We talked about that a little bit. But on a recent podcast, you talked about burnout and author burnout. And you had your own story of burnout.

[00:53:22] And I'm just curious if you would share with our audience a little bit. I know there's, we live in a world where there's, you know, so much opportunity. All of these AI tools enable us to do so much more. It's harder and harder to say no, I think, in spite of all the things we've been talking about. So could you give just a few tips and maybe talk a little bit about burnout for yourself and just a few tips on that before we wrap up our conversation? Yeah, yeah.

[00:53:52] Yeah, well, my biggest experience of burnout was back in the year 2000. And when I just done the millennium bug, if people remember that. We, you know, I was in my 20s, but we were working like, you know, sleeping at the office. We were also drinking too much. We basically just worked, worked and worked and partied. And it was very hard. And I crashed so badly that I left the UK and went and sat in the desert in Western Australia for several months. And that was a feeling I never want to come back to, which is I cannot do anything.

[00:54:22] I have to leave, run away. And so I think once you've experienced that once, you can be more aware of it. So a big part of this is self-awareness. So I think the episode you're listening to was only a few weeks ago and I could feel, I could feel it coming. And it was my own fault because this opportunity to do a script came up and I jumped on it. I just felt I needed to do that. I had, I was trying to do a Kickstarter.

[00:54:51] I was trying to finish a book. My mum was moving and I actually ended up getting quite sick. I think it was COVID again. I didn't even test, but I've had COVID too many times. And I was like, everything was just coming to a head. And I knew I was, you know, having a problem because I kept cancelling my gym, going to the gym. I was like, oh no, I'm too busy. And once that starts, it's a downward spiral. So if you start putting aside your physical health for your work too much, I mean, obviously we all have to do it sometime.

[00:55:21] But when it's week after week, you need to like stop. And so what I did was I stopped. And as I talked about on the show, I just, I was like, who's the person driving me? It's only me. It's not like I do have an external thing here. So I just moved it all out. I spaced it out. I moved the Kickstarter another month. I, you know, I just moved what I could. And that just took the pressure off. And that made a big difference.

[00:55:48] So I think if you start, you have to tap into how you're feeling. That's the first thing. You don't want to wait until burnout to actually reorganize stuff. And then you have to look at what is in your control. So for example, your American political situation, which I know is very stressful for some people, that is not in people's control. Now that election has happened, no one can control that. So you have to kind of try and remove that stress from things and get on with what you can control.

[00:56:16] And so for me, it was, well, I can control the date of my Kickstarter. So I just moved it a month. I can control the fact that I want to finish the script, but it's not urgent. So I'm going to move that. And I said to my editor, I need to move that date. And so you just need to put things in place to give yourself more bandwidth. And then, as you said about saying no, partly it's saying no to yourself half the time.

[00:56:41] I'm glad I'm doing the script and I'm doing more of them, but I have had to say no to some other things in order to make the time. Yeah, I may have been on your podcast, but I heard somebody say every time you say no or yes to something, you're saying no to something else. And that's one thing to keep in mind. And I like your self-awareness about skipping your workouts because that's happened to me.

[00:57:07] And every time I'm at that point, I think that's because that's important to me personally and physically in so many ways. So that's great advice. Joanna, I would love to talk more because you have so much to offer and you're so fun and so real. But I know you've got things to do and I want to give your time back to you so you can get on with those. But I want to thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:57:34] Before I let you go, I always ask my guests if they had one piece of advice that they would share with entrepreneurs or even nascent entrepreneurs, what would that be? What would you like to have known before you started? Yeah, I think the main thing is to I would say it's a bit like skiing. So with skiing, it's not like here's the top of the hill and there's the bottom of the hill and you just go in a straight line. You have to zigzag around, you know, around the slope.

[00:58:02] And so I think it would be to remember that you have to take action. Like in order to ski, you have to be moving. So you do have to take some risk in a direction. You have to choose a direction and get moving. And then inevitably, you're going to change direction and that's going to keep happening. So I think when you start out as an entrepreneur or as an author, as I did, you go, this first thing I'm doing is going to be the success and everything will be perfect. And of course, that never I don't think it ever happens. Like I don't know anyone.

[00:58:32] It's like first thing works. So but you have to try and take that bias for action in order to just get going and then change direction along the way. So I guess the advice is, yeah, get moving, change direction and understand that this is this is also a lifetime thing. We're very, I guess, lucky in inverted commas or this is what the path we've chosen. You don't age out of being an entrepreneur. You know, I can write books until I die, basically.

[00:58:59] So there's no being forced out of this career. We have we have to look after ourselves along the way. But this is a long term thing. This is a lifestyle as much as a job. So, yeah, you will zigzag along the path. I love that. I love that. So to everybody listening out there, at least get on the ski lift, right? Get to the top of the hill and just go for it. So that's really great advice. Joanna, where can our listeners find your books, find out more about you, find your podcast? Yes.

[00:59:29] So the creative pen podcast, pen with a double N, the creative pen dot com. As I mentioned, you can get my free blueprint and then all my fiction, if people are interested, is JF pen. And that's on all the usual platforms or jfpen dot com. So, yeah, it's been lovely to talk to you. Thanks so much, Rebecca. Yeah. Thank you so much, Joanna.

[00:59:58] What an incredible conversation with Joanna. If you enjoyed this episode and want to check out more of Joanna's work, head on over to the creative pen dot com. Thank you for listening to the N Factor podcast today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and consider leaving us a review. Until next time, keep recognizing opportunities, taking action and persevering through challenges on your entrepreneurial journey.