#203: Joanna Penn on How to Leverage Your Writing Skills to Develop Multiple Streams of Income

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 203. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mention during the episode. If you've been listening to my show for a while, you've been reading my stuff, you've been following my advice, you already know that when you play your cards right, you can earn more as a writer than many doctors and lawyers do. And that's crazy, isn't it? But if all you're doing is providing services to clients, doesn't matter what kind of services. If you're providing services, you're still trading hours for money, even when you boost your internal hourly rate to astronomical levels. Which means that if you decide to take some time off, you're not going to be generating an income. I mean, there are some ways you can, but for the most part, if you take time off, you're not generating an income while you're away from work. My guest today, Joanna Penn, has built a very lucrative business using her writing skills. It includes multiple income streams that feed off each other to create a huge compounding effect and that's enabled her to double her income two times already in the past few years, all without having to write for clients. Joanna is an award nominated New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers under the J.F. penn name and she also writes nonfiction for authors. She's a podcaster and an award winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, thecreativepenn.com has been voted in the top 100 sites for writers by Writers Digest. She's the real deal. So I'm very excited to share this conversation with you. I think it's going to open your mind, expand your thinking about how to create passive income streams and give you several ideas for creating assets that pay you dividends for, get this, not years, but decades. So here we go. I hope you enjoy my discussion with Joanna Penn. Joanna, welcome to the show. Great to have you here.

Oh, thanks for having me on, Ed. It's great to be here.

Well, this is going to be a, this is a popular topic and one that I'm excited to talk to you about what I'd like to do though is if you could give us just kind of a brief explanation of who you are, what you do. And I'd also love to hear a little bit about how you got here because I know that's, you know, that's never a clear linear path.

Oh, absolutely. Sure. So I'm British, obviously. Hopefully people can tell by my accent.

And I thought you were from Omaha.

I live in Bath in the southwest of England, so lovely. Roman Spa, Bath town. So basically I used to be an IT consultant. I used to implement accounts payable into large corporates. So I was a corporate cubicle slave for 13 years. And then I just was so miserable. I used to be crying in my job every day. I was paid, you know, the golden handcuffs. I had, the six figure income and all that. But I was so miserable. So I started writing books in 2006 and in 2011 I left that day job to start my business as a writer. And we're going to talk about some of the things I've done, but essentially, you know, I did speaking and consulting and services. And then over time I've moved into very much a scalable model. So right Now I have 32 books out. Fiction as JF Penn, I write thrillers and also nonfiction as Joanna Penn. I have two podcasts and I also have a website, the creative pen.com which is powered by content marketing. And I know how much you love the writing side and that drives course sales, affiliate marketing and other income streams. So it's essentially as we speak. I've been full time for eight years. But yeah, coming from corporate side, coming from a non creative side. So it's been a bit of a journey for sure.

Yeah. Many of my listeners have gone through that path to the corporate side instead of the journalism side. So they can definitely relate. Now I'm curious about something. You said 2006, you write your first book, right? And what was that about? What was your first book on? Was it fiction, nonfiction? What was the topic?

If you remember, it was around the time of the four hour workweek. So this was big time in sort of the entrepreneurship world. Sort of read Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk around that time put out Crush It. And I was kind of learning that you could do things that weren't just the corporate world. So I started researching all this stuff and Americans, you Americans are brilliant. I started reading a lot of self help books by Americans and decided to write a self help book which actually I later rewrote. It's called Career Change. And essentially I wanted to figure out how to change my own career. And in the process of writing that book, I learned about publishing. I learned about writing and kind of decided that I really enjoyed that, so I would go down that route. But I started writing it in 2006 and I actually published it in 2008 and I went down the independent publishing route. And we can talk about that as well, if you like. But that was before the Kindle. So it was in the early days of some of the technology that is now I use as the baseline of my business.

Yeah, very early days, for sure. I definitely want to come back to that. And I want to come back to something you just said. In terms of the fact that you did a lot of this research, it sounds like a lot of it was just for your own knowledge. So you're very interested in the topic. But this wasn't necessarily 100% from personal experience and knowledge. You went out and filled the gaps doing the research.

Oh yeah. For writing nonfiction books, you absolutely have to do that. And a lot of freelance writers, that's part of the job is the research. And I think that's some of what we enjoy in the business of writing. And for sure, I read a lot of books. But then it's turning, you know, no writing is truly original. We fill our brains with all the stuff that we learn and then we turn that into something new. But always, you know, building on the shoulders of giants and all that type of thing, quoting people. So all of those things were really useful. Obviously, because I come from corporate, I used to writing things. But turning it into a book is quite a different situation. But in learning how to structure a book length project, that is the thing that really changed my life. And what I would also say is many people are. So was that book a success? And it wasn't a commercial success in that, but I learned a lot from it. And it was that book that really changed my life because I learned how to write a book basically.

Wonderful. Yeah. Rarely is that first one going to be a huge success. Right. That's where the learning happens. So let's talk a little bit about this core idea and then we can maybe start drilling into some details. One of your core ideas that you're really big on is this concept of instead of trading your time for dollars is creating assets, intellectual property that generate income 24,7 and developing a variety of income streams like that, so you don't have to trade your time for money. Even if we're not charging by the hour as Freelance writers and copywriters, we're still typically only earning when we're out there working. And. And if we take a week off or a couple of weeks off, you know, typically there's nothing. Nothing coming in. So I know this is not a foreign idea for my listeners, but can you maybe explain your thinking behind that and why you're so passionate about it?

Yeah, sure. So basically, I, in my last sort of five years of IT consulting, I was a contractor. So I was paid for the hours that I worked, and I was very highly paid because I was at kind of the top of my industry. But what I realized was even though I was getting premium money for those hours, I would never get those hours back. And what I started to learn with writing books, I started reading about copyright law, and obviously copyright spelled differently to copywriting for your audience. So copyright law, which says that, you know, you can earn money on what you create for your lifetime and up to 70 years after you die. And this concept blew my mind. Like, when I discovered this, I was like, oh, my goodness, there is a way to create these intellectual property assets. So books, you know, classic example where you can earn money on this, you know, for. Well, I'm 45, so I expect at least another 50 years, and then my heirs and successes, you know, so like over 100 years worth of income if you manage that IP properly. And that's very important. Whereas what I was doing as a contractor and what freelance writing can sometimes be, is you are spending your time creating intellectual property assets for other people. And I realized that I'd spent 13 years building someone else's business and not my own. And this is why I'm a very passionate, independent creator as well, because most book authors do the same as freelance writers. They'll sign away all of their copyrights for a couple of grand and will never necessarily earn any more money back. So it will depend on the contract you sign. But I know a lot of writers, and many writers don't delve into copyright law as much as possibly they should do. So when I discovered that this was a viable business model, and this is why I'm an independent author as well, I saw that by writing books and by setting up my own publishing company and by distributing through the networks that we have globally now, and I have ebooks, print books, workbooks, audio books, all kinds of different books selling all over the world, that I could create these recurring streams of income, and that would mean I could stop working. Now, of course, we all love this, and I love my work, but it does mean that every year since. Well, not every year. So I left in 2011, in 2015, my income surpassed my day job. And then it's doubled again and doubled again, basically because, and this is the key, it's scalable income. So a book, you can create it once and then it will sell again and again and again. You don't have to do that work again. And that's what kind of makes it magic. And then every book I put out helps sell the backlist. And this is why publishing houses have offices in New York and stuff like that is a very, very powerful business model. But you have to see it as that, which is the hard mindset shift.

Wow, man, I love the sound of this. This is definitely the dream of any creative professional who is again only earning when they're out there slaving away, even if they love the work they're doing while they're slaving away. Can you maybe talk to us about. I know that the first question that comes to mind is, listen, I love the idea whether it's going to be a book, some kind of information product or a course, but how do you find the topic? What do I write about? I'm so caught up in the day to day of working for my clients, I'm not really sure what I would write. And should it be fiction, nonfiction? How do you walk people through that process, making that decision?

Well, this is where you. I would say the first thing, like I know a lot of freelance writers, like someone gives you a task, you'll go write it. I mean, you guys write fast, you create content fast, but this is where you need to stop and actually think. So don't start writing a book straight away. You actually want to think more strategically about it. And I know this is hard because, you know, and I try and persuade my friends to do this all the time, but you actually have to put aside a chunk of time for asset building rather than cash flow. So it's almost like you have to separate your world into cash flow and asset building. Now cash flow money and can be books too. So I've got a book called Successful Self Publishing that is a cash flow book because that is not going to last 70 years after I die, right? Because it will go out of date. I have to keep rewriting that every couple of years. But it is a cash flow book. It makes me some money. I know you've got a book, the Wealthy Freelancer, which you co wrote. I'm sure that brings you lead gen that looks like that book is for lead generation. Would that be.

It's the sole purpose. Correct. It was traditionally published, but yeah, it's strictly a business building book.

Exactly. So that is another reason to write a book. So you people listening, you have to decide what is the reason you are doing this book? So as you've done, you could write a book for lead gen to bring you more clients. That is one way. But then you also have to look at, alright, so what is an asset for my business? What will bring me income for the long term? And so I have a mix of different books. So my nonfiction very much is focused on cash flow. And then I have a couple of nonfiction which are true long term assets. For example, the successful author mindset. Now anything around mindset for nonfiction or kind of anything evergreen. And we all know about evergreen, right? It's stuff that will not go out of date. So that to me is a true asset. And then fiction is actually a very, very different business model, but it really is the truly evergreen asset because stories do not go out of date. And many of my fiction writer friends, it might be 10 years later that it gets turned into a film or, you know, we're in the golden age of TV right now. So the market for both fiction and nonfiction is growing and growing. But I can't tell you what to create first. You have to put that time aside. And then I would say spend some real thinking time, strategic time, figuring out what you want to achieve and then you set aside a chunk for asset building and work on it that way. So I know that's not too prescriptive, but hopefully it gives people a start.

No, it absolutely gives a start. So let me add something to it and tell me what you think. If you think this idea has legs, maybe the solution is to allocate a certain percentage of your work week. That way, if a certain work week is going to be a little bit lighter, then you adjust those hours anyway because it's a percentage. And when you do it that way, you have a rule you can follow a system where there's no guessing, there's no emotion involved. So for instance, taking 10% or 20% of my work week, or even starting at 5% if you can't find it right, and saying I'm going to dedicate and commit that time to this asset building, to really figuring this out and then working that side of my business, which is not going to pay off tomorrow, but it's going to start building some assets that will kind of like in a retirement account.

Yes. And that's exactly how I want people to think about it. And I like that what you're saying. And I do this with my JF pen as my fiction self. I schedule time blocks every morning. So between 7 and 9am, for example, is my JF pen. Now I know I can make more money if I get online and do some stuff with my podcast or whatever, I'll make more money right now. But I know what happens with fiction, that it builds and builds and builds over time. So I know I have to allocate that period of time. And again, when I had a day job, I went to four days a week at my consulting job in order to have the fifth day to work on creating this business that I now have. So that was a 20%, you know, I gave up 20% of my old income to create this new business. So yeah, I totally agree with you. And if people are still struggling with that, like literally, you have to think, what if you get sick? You know, as we discuss this, there's been a law change, hasn't there, in California, around freelance writing?

Yeah, there's some.

Yeah. So stuff like that, you know, stuff happens in life and it's like, well, what if I had baseline income coming in from other things? What I'd also say is you can turn much of your nonfiction content into other assets. So your website, for example, instead of your book, to put that on your own website to bring you traffic, that then you can sell other things. So courses, affiliate income, that type of stuff. And I do that with all my nonfiction books.

Love the repurposing. Let me ask you about fiction for a bit. Again, everyone's going to be different, so they need to decide, okay, which route am I going to pursue? But fiction seems to me, I've never written a fiction book, but it seems to me that that could be a tough road, even if you're self publish. Am I misinformed? I mean, what is the path for success there? It seems like it's. I don't know, it just seems like it could go anywhere. A lot of people have these dreams of creating and writing the great American novel, but they spend forever and then they don't make a dime on it.

Yeah. And again, this is like your definition of success. So if you do want to write the great American novel and win the Pulitzer, then yeah, you do have to spend most of your life working on one book. But most of us who are actually making, you know, let's say even like five figures a year with, you know, high five figures, six figures, I know Some seven figure authors, but I know a lot of six figure indie authors. And that's kind of the main route is that as independents you can put out books whenever you like. And one of the main things with traditional publishing is how long it takes to put a book out. So, you know, I can finish a book, I can get it, I know I use professional editors, use professional cover designers, but then I can put my book out straight away and start earning money straight away. Now I might not get, you know, a massive advance, but advances are very small now anyway. But what it does is add more money to my baseline and if you add it up, an extra 200 bucks a month for the rest of your life can end up being a. Yeah, it makes a huge difference. So again, you have to start shifting your definition of success when it comes to what is a professional writer, you know, and I'm a professional writer just like you guys. It's just I spend my time professionally writing for my own company. And so I, you know, as I said, I've written what, this is my 18th novel, I'm writing right now, 19th, something like that. And I've, you know, once you know how to do these things, you have a process and you follow that process. So I know it will take me about three months to write a novel, whereas my first novel obviously took me what, nearly two years. So again, you get better at doing this stuff over time and you become a better fiction writer the more fiction you write. And again, this is what you love. I always loved writing fiction as well as trying to help people with my non fiction. So you have to follow what you love, but also have a business model. And this is why I'm still an independent author, because I'm a businesswoman, I like money. And by professionally self publishing or independently publishing, I essentially can make 70%, 7 0% of my royalties. Whereas many authors through a traditional publisher might get 10%, 20%. So you have to do your own marketing, but so do most authors anyway. It's the same with the freelancer, right? We all have to run our own business. Yeah.

And what I'm hearing there and that sound advice is, look, don't just do this for the money. There is a passion there, there is a desire to write fiction. You have that story in you, you've been trying to then pursue it. But there's also the business side that you have to be smart about. What I'm getting the sense of is that even when that happens, what really brought you the success when you started getting critical mass is when you had a few books, fiction books to your name because like you said, you were able to now introduce people to the catalog. So maybe they come in through book number four, but now they find out about all these other stories that you have. And now you're able to get a compounding effect, if you will. In fact, maybe that's a good way to think about it. You create this compounding interest which you didn't have at first with your first book. Is that accurate?

Yes, and that's exactly right. And that's why this is a longer term business model. But as again, we all know a longer term business model can face the challenges of the market. Whereas if you're just writing for cash flow, and it's like, right, you know, here's my $250 piece of writing for this week or whatever, you know, this is a very different business model, but you can combine them both, as we've talked about, and this idea of an ecosystem. You're exactly right. So my nonfiction books, you know, also feed into my fiction. My podcasts feed into my books, and the website feeds in. And I now have the second podcast, Books and Travel, which is about the travel side, which is the research that underpins my fiction. So and then, you know, everything just comes together to create this web. And it takes time. So again, I started, you know, my first novel was 2009. So I've been writing novels now for a decade. And you're right, every time I put a book out now, I can guarantee that I will make several thousand dollars in week one. And then I know how much I'm going to make over time. Whereas when I started out, you know, it's kind of tumbleweed. But then it's the same with any business, isn't it? And I always say to people, you know, when you started at any job, how valuable are you in year one of any job? But after a decade, then you are super valuable. But what you don't want to do is end up in a decade stage time, still only making money off your time. Because, you know, as we said, your idea of this kind of future, I don't like the word pension, but this kind of, let's say, financial independence, that's what excites me. I love financial independence. I'm on my way. And that is due to having these intellectual property assets which I also call my employees, you know, my books and my employees, they're out there making money for me so I don't have to do it myself.

I think I love the Mindset in language that you've developed around this because it's so exciting. It's this idea that you have that financial independence, this recurring revenue, that no matter what, you have a family emergency, you have to go take care of something personally, where you need to take some time off or a sabbatical, you could do that without sacrificing income. Now, anyone can build some savings, but you will deplete those savings, which is at least it didn't suffer. But you deplete your savings in that model. Your model is the money's coming in no matter what, and you're going to keep doing what you're doing. But if something were to happen, you have that flexibility.

Yeah, you have that baseline coming in. And you're right about it being exciting. I mean, it really is the best time in history to be a writer and to be a creative entrepreneur as well, because we have the ecosystem to be able to sell books, you know, around the world. So, you know, I've actually sold books in 86 countries, which is, yeah, far more than most traditionally published authors because I have the global worldwide rights and I do license my books. So, you know, I've licensed books in Korean and French and German and, you know, I've done those things. But because I run own publishing company, I can take advantage of the new developments. So as we speak, for example, I've just used AI translation technology plus human editors to create some books in German. And I'm using AI voice synth to work out licensing my voice for audiobook narration, for example. So I'm always trying to think about how do we use technology to make us more scalable? So, again, how can I create something here and how can that reach many more people in the world, help more people, entertain more people, but also, let's face it, make us more money? Because that is fun.

Yeah, absolutely. You found, and you continue to find great ways to leverage yourself better. Leverage is another good word because it's a chain reaction when this feeds this other thing and then that feeds this other thing, and then it just creates this amazing feedback loop that allows you to spend less time while making more.

Exactly.

That's wonderful. And by the way, something that came to mind when you were talking a minute ago is what's the best time to start doing this? It's 10 years ago. The next best time is now. Exactly. Because this is going to take time. And I appreciate the fact that you keep bringing this up, which is, look, this is not an overnight thing. It sounds like the past three years have really, two or three years have been the biggest. Even though you started this journey, really, in 2006. Right. So I don't want anyone to think, oh, this is amazing. I can start making serious money next week, or to be jaded by this, because this is a process. It's not going to happen overnight. It takes patience, but it takes a dedication and commitment to the process.

What I would also say is you've got to figure out what you want to do with your life. I've always been a businesswoman. I started a scuba diving company in New Zealand. I did property investment. You know, I was an IT consultant. So I've done a lot of different things for trying to earn more money. But when I looked at, you know, how miserable I was, making a lot of money doing something I didn't enjoy, that's when I said, well, what do I actually want to do with my life? And what I wrote down in the end was reading, traveling, and writing. Those are the things I enjoy doing with my time. So. And then it was about, how do I design a business? And this is where the whole Tim Ferriss kind of lifestyle design thing came in. How do I design a business that supports the lifestyle I want to live? And so that's the other thing. I mean, if you're a writer, if you're freelance writing, as the listeners are, then what else do you want to do with your life and with your time? And that's how I've ended up with the business I've done. Because every time I come up with, okay, how do I want to live my life? Coming up with writing is just fantastic because it gives us that time, we can be flexible and that type of thing. So, yeah, definitely think about what you want to do with your life. But if you love writing and if you love creating, then this type of business can be very powerful, more and more. And as you say, because it's an ecosystem that keeps growing, that's why the money gets better every year. But at the beginning, it can feel a bit like howling into the wind, like podcasting. I started podcasting in 2009, and there were very few listeners back then.

Yeah, I know that. Early, early days for sure. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about. We've talked a lot about books. Okay. But I want to. I don't want to dig too deep into this. It's a huge topic. But info, products and courses, you know, is there still a market for that? One of the concerns that I hear from a lot of my listeners is you know, that market seems so crowded and maybe they feel that way because there are so many coaches and teachers out there teaching their system for creating and marketing courses and info products. What are your thoughts on that? Because you have quite a few of them out there.

Yes. So I've done courses again for a decade. Every time I've learned something new, I've made a course on it as well as a book. And I think courses are brilliant because you can repurpose, again, you can repurpose the same information just in a different way. So I have a book called how to write Nonfiction, which is also a course called how to write Nonfiction. So in that way, some people want the $10 book and some people want the $300 course, you know, because that's like how they like to learn. So I think courses are brilliant. But. And there's a big but. You have to have an audience. And again, this is where freelance writers can fall down because if you spend your time building someone else's asset, so writing for someone else's business, you don't have a voice, you don't have your own audience. And you can only sell courses if you have an audience to sell them to, which is why many people create them and then realize they have no one to sell to. So I recommend it. If you have an audience. I also recommend, and this is actually, I make far more money now from selling other people's courses, is that I only create evergreen things. And my courses on how to write nonfiction, how to write a novel, these are evergreen, right? These. And I've kept them not technical. And there's a bit on Scrivener and stuff, but mainly non technical. Whereas one of the best selling courses that I market is a friend of mine's on advertising for authors. And this guy Mark re records like twice a year how to do Facebook advertising and Amazon advertising and all of that. And I don't want to.

It changes so much, right?

Exactly. It changes so much. And that to me, I mean, it's very, very good revenue, but it's not, you know, for me as a affiliate as well as him, but it's not something I want to spend my time on. So this is my other tip. You can do affiliate sales, which is. And it has to be from an ethical viewpoint and it has to be from the place of service. But if you truly have promoting those, it can be really good. So I do a lot of webinars with very specific people whose courses I use and recommend myself, as well as recommending services like editors Book cover designers, website hosting, things that my audience would find useful. And my nonfiction books are filled with affiliate links. So I know that I'll get book sales revenue, but also these other streams of revenue as well. So that's another form of ecosystem way of looking at courses. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. I like your thinking around that. So let me ask you a follow up question then you talked about the fact that you need an audience to sell it to or couldn't agree more. It wouldn't the same apply to your books? Right. Because you write your book.

Absolutely.

Who do you sell it to? You know, you're an unknown. So thoughts around that, building an audience for your books, especially fiction?

Well, okay. So. Well, just on nonfiction, I know you've done stuff on attraction marketing and obviously we're podcasting. Podcasting is a great way to build an audience for nonfiction fiction. That is why I mentioned the advertising there. What you can may have a business model with fiction by writing a number of books and using something like Amazon advertising, Facebook advertising to drive readers to those books and then build an email, a list of readers, and that then builds over time. It's a proven business model for fiction, but you definitely need to write books generally in a series and generally in a popular genre. So for example, I have 10 books in my arcane thriller series, which is kind of Dan Brownie, Dan Brown meets Lara Croft, Tomb Raider style. So that's got 10 books. So as you say, if someone discovers them, discovers the books at book 4, book 5 or book 11, then they can go back and read the backlist. But yeah, there is a proven model for fiction, but it does involve creating lots of content in the same way that nonfiction does and kind of linking it together. But you can definitely make more money with an ecosystem with nonfiction because it feeds into all these other things, fiction. You definitely need a big backlist to make decent money.

Yeah, I can absolutely see that. But then part of it involves building an email list as well. So you have that asset internally as opposed to depending on Amazon and Facebook forever.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. And building that email list, as we know, in any business these days, you need an email list.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about some interesting things here. Are there any income streams that you've talked about in the past or that you've tried that you recommend, maybe freelance writers stay away from? Or maybe just a warning, hey, look, this particular one has some challenges that you need to consider and be mindful of. And maybe I don't recommend for everybody.

Well, I think this is where it comes down to knowing your personality and working that out over time. So, for example, at the beginning, because I didn't have a backlist of assets, I did do more professional speaking. I did paid consulting over Skype and I did some freelance writing. Now, those three things obviously are time for money. Speaking particularly, I find very draining. I'm definitely an introvert. I really value my alone time, and I found traveling for speaking just exhausted me. So over time, I've wound down my speaking and now I pretty much only do it a couple of times a year. And that was just mainly because even though I could get good money for it, it just killed me. So. So that would be one, you know, a tip for people is, sure, try these things, but if you hate it, hate it, then don't do it. So, for example, video. I do still have a YouTube channel, but I did a lot of video in the, you know, a couple of years ago. But video is really not my thing. You know, I love audio. We're on audio only right now, and this is my natural environment. Yeah, exactly. I love audio and I listen to audio. I don't watch YouTube, so why would I try do YouTube? Just because people tell you you should do YouTube, and this is super important. So you need to trust your feelings around what is good for you. Even if people are telling you, oh, you should be on TikTok, whatever. I'm not good for you. Even if people are telling you, oh, you should be on TikTok, whatever. I'm like, yeah, too old for TikTok.

I just found out about TikTok two weeks ago.

Oh, there you go.

No idea what it was.

We're also old. We are old people because we only just found out about it.

If you're in your 40s, you're old.

Yeah, totally. But I still love Twitter, you know, so for me, I do the things I love audio. You know, creating audiobooks is something that I've done a lot more of this year and really just doubling down on what you love and trying to do less of what you super hate. Those are things that I would suggest for people and that'll be different for everyone. And that's why it's great to bring up fiction in this environment. Because, you know, for some people, freelance writers can write books really fast if they get the bug for it. So you guys are in a very powerful position. I know some ex journalists who are just killing it.

Yeah, yeah. This is not an issue. It's not as intimidating as it is for so many other people who don't do this whole thing.

Words are not an issue for you guys. It's like, well, okay, but you only have a limited life, so what words are you going to create and for who and what are you going to do with them?

Yeah, it's kind of like the chef who was cooking all day, and now she's got to cook for her family, or he's got to cook for his family. It's like, there's got to be, I think, a passion there, a true reason for doing this, a big why. But I want to come back to this we said earlier. I just can't emphasize this enough. This is not a. I'm going to wait until I can dedicate a week or two to just kind of get started. That week or two will never happen. It will never materialize. The only way, and I hope you agree with me, Joanna, is a little bit of time every week that you dedicate and commit to. And you do religiously.

Yeah, definitely. And that's why sometimes choosing something quite different. So I know a freelance writer who writes for a finance blog. So her main work income is from writing these finance blogs. So they're very, you know, very technical, very dry, you know, and then she writes fantasy novels in her other percentage time, and another friend who does something similar and writes children's books and does illustration and stuff like that. So building up that backlist of creative assets, maybe do something that just is completely different to the day job writing, so that, you know, like, you do a lot of marketing stuff, right? With your stuff. So maybe doing something completely different, like it could still be nonfiction. Like, I think, well, you have lots of things that you do.

I don't really like. I don't like the fiction, but I love the marketing. To me, the biggest, the most fun aspect of writing is the marketing piece.

It is the marketing. And also on your bio, you say you like hiking and golf. So, you know, maybe you end up writing another nonfiction book on golf or hiking or something about your. The town you live in and Atlanta. Right. So this kind of thing, like, just pick something that is not necessarily your day job writing to be the thing that you start growing and just see how it turns out. The other thing I'm doing is my books and travel podcast. I'm actually writing a travel memoir, like, in real time. So I write the episode and then I record it. And I haven't put it out as a book, and I will probably do that in the next couple of years. So I'm creating another asset in a different way first, and then I will turn it into a book later, but I will build an audience along the way as well. So you can. Yeah, there are no rules, people. You can just be creative and then turn it into these multiple products. Very exciting.

It's a lot easier to be creative when you have the mental and creative bandwidth to really create that space for yourself. Right. And it sounds like you've gotten to a place where you can do that. I mean, I know you're busy, I know you're not sitting around just lounging in a hammock, but you've got this dialed in and I love it. Joanna, this is extremely inspiring. I mean, you've opened up my eyes to some possibilities that I never considered. Before we leave, a couple of things. Can you tell us a little bit about your book, how to make a living with your writing, and maybe anything else you think would be appropriate for our audience that would be helpful for them if they want to pursue this, if this is something they want to look into.

Yes. So how to make a living with your writing is actually my. It's my best selling book. And there's a good tip here, which is have a book title that makes people want to buy the book. Yeah, it is. I mean, because I actually wrote a much bigger book called Business for Authors and that book wasn't selling very well. And I'm like, this is a great book, what's wrong? And then I made a smaller version called you know how to make a living with your writing, and that sells tons. So there's a good tip for you in terms of writing nonfiction books. Think about a title. But yes, in it, I mean, it really is. The aim is to try and dispel the myth that you can write one book and then make a million, you know, and in the same way that you can't just write one freelance article and expect to have an income. So, yeah, it really, it covers a lot of the things we've talked about. And just to give you more ideas, really, it also has a bit about how to self publish, although there's also a free ebook called Successful self publishing which is available in all the usual places if people want the practicalities of what self publishing is now. So that might be useful as well.

Yeah, perfect. And where can listeners learn more about you, your resources, what you're up to? Where should I send them?

Sure. So come on over to thecreativepenn.compen with a double N. And of course, I have a podcast for writers, which is the Creative Pen podcast. And yeah, that's been going a decade now, so lots of good stuff on there. And I'm on Twitter hecreative pen with a double N if anyone has any questions.

And on TikTok.

Just kidding, I am not there.

I don't even know if that's a thing where you can give people your TikTok handle or whatever.

We are sharing our age. It's enough already.

Yes, these young kids. Well, Joanna, thank you so much again. I appreciate you sharing your insights and ideas with us. And it's just also been, again, very inspiring. So thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Ed the High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.