096: Book Sales Stats—One Month Post-Launch 🎉

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host, Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello. Hello my friends. I am recording this on Wednesday, May 11th and the clock just struck 11:11. So I'm going to take it as a good sign for recording this intro. Thank you so much for being here, being part of the launch. Here comes my pup, Ryder, tired from playing the balloon game. If you have a dog that has a lot of energy, blow up balloons and have them try to catch them. It's endlessly entertaining. Oh my goodness. Okay, how did I get on that? Well, I guess you'll have to forgive me if a dog is panting, but it's very cute. He's sitting right behind my big medicine ball. That's what I sit on to work. So now the ball is shaking. He's so out of breath from playing the balloon game. The cutest thing is that now we can just look at him and say, want to play balloon? And then his big German shepherd ears perk up and his head tilts to the side and he gets so excited. I'm telling you, it's cheap entertainment and really gets them wiped out. So you heard it here first. Or maybe not. Maybe you already know this. Maybe this is something all dog owners know, dog guardians rather. And I'm late to the game. But alas, I am here recording an intro because I decided to release one of the launch team calls here to the pod. It's the one that we did one month after the book launched for free time. Lose the busy work. Love your business. And I went through it was the first time that I was really looking at all the stats and all the different platforms like Amazon's, author central, Amazon ads, Goodreads, even podcast growth. And I sort of take the community through everybody who had signed up to be part of the launch team and took them through one by one by one. We just looked at the stats together and I answered a few questions at the end. At the time I probably would have been too nervous and too tired to record that as an official podcast. I debated whether I should just look at all the stats that I could and rerecord something fresh now that we're here two months out. But I actually decided maybe it would be fun for you to hear where I was at and where the stats were at without any gloss or anything. The audio's not that great because this is a group call that we did on Zoom and I will say I usually feel a little safer to talk about things in my BFF community and in private calls like for the launch team. I usually have more courage for those than sometimes I do to just come here for the podcast. This one takes me a little more courage to work up to what I want to share and how. And I don't know, I put pressure on myself to make it feel more polished and tight somehow. So this is one where you'll have to kind of forgive the audio quality in order to get some of the one month post debrief stats and conversation. I share at the very end how I was really hitting a lull of energy as well. The Furry Rest Monster is real and in one of my time well spent newsletters I said the biggest win this week is that I just wrote this newsletter and now I'm heading straight back to the couch. I can tell you now, two months out, it feels really good to not have a huge project on my plate to be doing lots of podcast interviews which I'm having so much fun with those, and I continue to have so much fun with those and my focus continues to be here on conducting great interviews and conversations for this show, going to Gotham Podcast Studios in New York, recording a bunch of solos. I'm getting into a groove with it and it's really exciting. So my mission now for the year ahead is to grow the show and grow the listenership so that I can keep doing this and if you enjoy the show, so I can keep bringing it to you with the highest possible quality. With the delightfully tiny team of one stone creative behind it. This is now my number one mission. So if you do enjoy the show, you could do a huge favor if you're willing, share an episode that you really enjoyed with a friend or two. In fact, the way that I've been doing this, the tool that I use is Pod Link. It makes it easy for you to send a link to a podcast episode and then your friend can open it in whatever app that they prefer. So if you go to Pod Link freetime, then you can find the episode and send them the link. Because what happens is if you listen in Apple Podcasts but they listen in Overcast, you get this weird platform glitch where it's not that easy to share episodes and get those links. So I use Pod Link again. You can go to Pod Link freetime or if you want to share an episode of the Pivot podcast, I'd be grateful for that as well. That one's at Pod Link pivotmethod. So anytime you hear an episode that you love, but particularly I would love to try a word of mouth experiment right now. Find an episode from the archives of this show that you love. And hey, if you even have a newsletter or a community where you can reference an episode or two using Pod Link freetime, I will be so, so so grateful because I am now determined to crack this nut of how on earth to grow this show. Everybody says it's hard, but you know how I write in free time. I'm still open to a nonlinear breakthrough, and I do still believe that creating great content is the number one thing that motivates people to share, and that when content is exceptional, you don't even need to ask because people will naturally want to share something. Just a few more announcements and we'll get into the show. If you happen to be listening to this before Thursday, June 9th I'm super excited to be partnering with Cave Day. They're featured on page 266 of Free Time. Thanks to an intro from my friend Monica. We're doing a deep dive conversation about Free time followed by a guided work sprint that is our specialty. And I even wrote the little anecdote about Cave Day or while in a virtual cave. So to get really meta with it, think of this like virtual coworking. It's aimed at helping you make meaningful progress on one of your deep work projects. So again, you can join us. It's Thursday, June 9th at 11am and just go to caveday.org freetime to register in this launch team call. You're also going to hear me talk about the BFF community. I would love for you to join us there. Go to itsfreetime.com BFF and in fact, if you want to use the promo code JBFRIEND, you'll get 50% off your first month's enrollment as a thank you for being here listening to this show. That's itsfreetime.com BFF. You'll also hear me mention the Freetime Operations Dashboard that is ready now. It's live. So I talk about it with a little bit of uncertainty in the one month debrief call. But now it's live, it's rolling. It's really exciting. People are already getting their business operations dialed in organized. Their team members are saying thank you so much. You're the most organized client I have. It's been really exciting. You can learn more about that@itsfreetime.com dashboard and then you're going to hear from some people on this call because some of our launch team members were generous enough to chime in. You'll hear from Courtney Kenney, who's the incredible book launch consultant that I met through Jonathan and Stephanie Fields as they were launching Sparked. You will hear me talk about Stephanie and Haley Houston. They're a power duo that helped on the social media side. Haley is the Community director for bff. You'll also hear from some community members from the launch team and from BFF Peggy and Jessica, as well as Dan Blank who run their own communities for and with other writers. And then you'll hear me mention my two friend tours where we really helped each other get through the book writing, editing and launching process. So those are Sarah Young, she wrote a book called Expansive Impact. That's fantastic. And my longtime friendor mbs whose new book how to Begin and his podcast Two Pages with MBS are ones that we were essentially incubating and co creating together at exactly the same time. So I just wanted to give you that context because once we get into the show, you're just going to hear all these names and voices and may not know where they're coming from. Also, just to update you on actual stats, now that we're two months out, the free time continues to hover right at the top of the sales rank, although it didn't make any lists. In fact, it took a big dip in the ranking. With Amazon, it's hard to tell exact sales. My publisher, Idea Press is going to pull some of those stats soon. I want to say we're at about 5,000 hardcover sales and some of that is Amazon buffer, because they always like to have two or three times the quantity that they need to just have in stock in their warehouses. But right now, as of today at this time of recording, the book is ranked about 80,000 in all of Amazon out of 1.75 million books. So it's up there. It's in the first tranche, if you will, but it's not currently topping any charts other than the top of my heart chart. As you'll hear me say in this episode, we have about 387 audiobook sales and then about 4,500 people have added free time to their shelves on Goodreads. And that's thanks to two giveaways that I ran with Courtney's input. You'll hear a ton more detail and stats on all this in the episode itself. But remember, we're going a month back in time to where we were one month post book launch of free time. Lose the busy work. Love your business. Oh, and what I didn't share in there was that I did about 25 to 30 podcast interviews, so I didn't kill myself. I'm trying to keep in the spirit of free time, but I would say that was a good number. It was with a lot of friends, people I love. And now in the month of May, I'm focusing on the next wave because the best case scenario is that people listen to Wave, one of the shows, some podcasters are listening, they invite me to their show. So then that starts the next wave of interviews and that's the phase we're in now. Thanks again everybody who's here for listening. Thank you to the 74 people who have left reviews on Amazon. I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Let's try to Tip it over 100 if we can. You can go to itsfreetime.com Amazon if you want to go. Leave your review and help us hit that last major milestone for this big first initial launch push. Thanks again everybody. And now I bring you the Launch Team Q and A call number four from one month post launch.

Free time has been out in the world for exactly one month. Time is indeed flying. Time flies when you're having fun. And it has been such a fun launch. Stephanie and Haley were magicians on the social media side. When we did our post launch debrief, they said that fun was the word they had decided and we didn't even necessarily consciously decide that together, but that word emerged and they used it as this orienting compass. In fact, I just got back from the TED conference and my favorite talk of the entire one was Katherine Price and she talked about fun, fun as the ultimate flow state. And I realized that in hindsight I had an aha moment while I was sitting there in the session that actually having fun, be the orienting word for the launch, was indeed totally magical because it just meant that we only did what was fun. And that even gave Stephanie and Haley permission to not worry so much about the numbers and the metrics and who was sharing what and how big their platform. It was just having fun, posting fun things, writing in a fun, transparent way. I want to share a lot of the metrics with you because I think it's just fascinating we can all be looking together because I've barely collected myself from this launch. But the number one metric of fun and the number two or tied for first of serendipity are off the charts. You know, like those machines they have at the movies. Like I do think creating one or two of those bigger popcorn popping machines around a launch is a good idea. So is there one conference you can go to? Is there one or two in person events that you could host or attend? Because they have been incredible. Wade asked how I felt being an introvert in that space. Much more overwhelmed than in the past. I think coming out of the pandemic at South By, I needed to have a lot of breaks where I would just go back to my hotel room. And in fact a lot of people at TED described as well that they would just take breaks in their hotel room, close all the blinds. I found myself tired but energized. So I guess tired and wired, tired and overwhelmed, but also so energized and excited by what was going on that I was able to rally for it. It wasn't the kind of draining that I sometimes feel with too much peopling where I just don't want to be there at all. But I noticed I get more cranky with late night events so I didn't stick around too long. I also found it a relief to be attending and not speaking, let's say, at the TED conference at South By, I shipped two boxes of books to my hotel room. So it was my goal to give away over a hundred books at ted. I brought ten or twelve. And so I did give away twelve books. I felt a little self conscious because you're not supposed to be too self promotey at a conference like ted. So I'm not sure it was the right move. I'm not sure it was the right thing to do to foist my book on people. But I did it. So that was also stretching out of my comfort zone to try to give books away because it involves trying to talk to somebody, introduce myself, you know, tell them about the book, give them a copy. But it also got me out of my shell. So I think that's one thing I appreciate about a book and why I do think it's so worth putting in the time and energy into writing and launching is they become these little ambassadors out into the world. And having books in my pocket is a good excuse to talk to people. Also knowing that the books, putting them on tables, watching people take them by surprise, you know, this is really fun. And I just love knowing that the books go out and they tell people about the ideas and then people tell each other without me being present. So I think it's the ultimate getting out of the way of the bottleneck of a message to create a book and of course, even something like a podcast. I want to share some actual numbers. You know that I'm not super obsessed with numbers, but in honor of this call, let's go through them together. We had 97 members on the launch team and that included BFFs and anybody from my list, Pivot or free time, who wanted to just be on the launch team. And not all 97 were active as part of the launch team. I think that we really had a core launch team of probably 30 to 40 people who were really engaged. And that's cool. Some of these that you see of 97 members actually joined BFF right around the time of the launch. So I wanted to show you we had our best enrollment ever for this community, my private community that was originally named BrillianceMarter back in 2013 and 14. Then it was called Momentum. Now it's called BFF. But it's essentially the same community that has evolved over time. And you can see a big spike right around the time of the launch of new members joining. So we actually doubled the size of BFF from about 35 people to 75 or 80 now. And that was completely organic. I did run some promos on the podcast, but upon reflection, this was the first time that let's call it in biz speak, product market fit was so aligned heart based business. The book is directly related to the podcast, and the podcast in the book are directly related to the community. It's super clear this is for small, heart based business owners. And for the first time, it all just ties so directly together. Whereas with Pivot, yes, you could read Pivot, but then you'd have to consider whether you want to join Momentum. Momentum wasn't for career changers. It was for creatives, side hustlers, solopreneurs. It was not that focused the way that it is now. So over the years, I mean, over a decade of honing and refining, I'm just noticing in hindsight how helpful it is if you actually do have a path for people that's directly aligned because we had so many new BFFs joining us really without even trying. And that was the first time it's ever happened like that with a book. I'm very conscious about what will people do? What will your raving fans and I never use the word fans, but someone who finishes reading a book, the raving readers, let's call them what can they do with you? You don't want them to read the book, Absolutely love it. And then there's nothing to do with so I like having the community because a it's so fun, it's my favorite place on the Internet, but B it's monthly recurring revenues. So it's also that all the effort of generating interest and creating a community over time the value of the community builds and as part of the business model it's so rewarding. Like the people who resonate most with the message get to stick around and hang out. And so it's like the book comes to life and then as a business owner, monthly recurring revenue is really nice. So communities can be a lot of work, but I think it's worth it. I love having this book to podcast to community Virtuous circle happening.

We'll be right back just after this.

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The dashboard is still in beta. We did run a beta VIP group. I'm still figuring out pricing, timing, format, but I would also think about what is a next level way that people could engage. So free time coaching. We don't have many clients but it exists. The systems are set up that's 9 97amonth on retainer and then the dashboard product without any bells and whistles will be 9:97 and then all the way up to 10,000 for some kind of like VIP day with me. I don't know. Still cooking it up. I also wanted to show you opt ins to my list in the last 30 days. 720. This is not totally the best snapshot because a lot of the big podcasts went live in the last 60 days. But I started the free time mailing list in March of 2021 or thereabouts and it has grown quite a lot. I think the list, it's not quite 1500. This is we're in Kajabi now that we're looking in about a year between the podcast and the book launch, it's now up to 1500 for free time, whereas Pivot has 15,000. Not that all of those people read or open the emails, but the free time world is slowly and steadily growing. Let's talk about Amazon author page. Let's look at some sales stats so you can see a nice big spike here. And then I'll show you Amazon ads. Next I look at sales rank. So we're at a peak today. We're at 8,000. I think this is the highest it's been, which is very exciting. In honor of our call today, the pre order push really started with the Cal Newport podcast in December. And so it's hovering up there in terms of over almost 3 million books. It's right up there in the top bracket and you can see with all the launch activity that that line, it really gets up there. So the highest that it reached is about 10,000 in the top 10,000 books. So this was not enough to make any of the official lists other than the list of the chart topping My Heart and the Best, Most Fun, Fun Lunch and Serendipity, I think we would win. But yeah, here it is, it's hovering and I think Audible sales, I looked yesterday, I've sold about 280. So that's times five. Author royalty of $5 is like $1,500. You know, it's not going to pay for the printing costs, but it's exciting. Here we have the ad campaign that Courtney ran. So Courtney ran Amazon ads. You can come off mute if you want, Courtney, tell me what I should be showing.

With a total ad spend of 419 that grossed 859 in sales. So that's the total sale price. So if it was so all the hardcovers that sold. So that's really quite good for launch as far as roi. However, when you factor in the ad spend it earned, I think that was 25 sales, 25 total. So if you divide 419 by that, that's about $16 per book sold. So that's not really a sustainable strategy for advertising. But I really recommend Amazon ads during this launch window because so great. When the book is on sale for people, not during the preorder phase, but once the book's on sale, people can click on it and it just gets the engine of Amazon's algorithms working. So people who heard Jenny on Cal Newport's podcast, if they like books by him, they may start seeing her book. So it just really helps give your launch that extra oomph. And so I highly recommend it. But then shutting it off if it can't get to a more sustainable level and it's a little different. So if for self published authors you have a little more leeway, if you're in say Kindle Direct Publishing or if you are in Kindle Unlimited, you have more. I guess there's a way to make it more profitable because you're getting a higher royalty percentage. So you can kind of look at that and factor in whether it's worth doing it for you. One thing that's important to know about this is that while this data tracks hardcover sales, people could have been buying the Audible, they could be buying the ebook, but it's just not tracked as a direct hit on that ad. So while the ads aren't necessarily converting to track sales, there are a lot of impressions. You can see 700, 7,000 impressions with almost 400 clicks. So that could have contributed to the Audible sales and all that. Good stuff.

Thank you, Courtney. I will add it's cool to see 700,000 impressions because this is probably the one thing we did this and LinkedIn ads that Stephanie ran through a friend who helped set those up. That is kind of just the brand awareness that, okay, people are just vaguely seeing and hearing about this thing called free time, even if they don't buy it right away. And for $400 it just felt like, why not? I also think that running the ads did help us land. We're still number one and two in time management. So you can write to Amazon through Author Central and update the categories that your book is in. And I don't know if there's anything you want to say about that, Courtney, but as a result of Courtney helping me do that, and I do think the ads helped tip it over to get on some of these new release charts, I somehow feel that even though I'm not a hundred percent sure because the best performing ad ran in the time management category, that's why we were guessing that it helped here.

Yes. So yeah, I highly recommend anyone who's launching a book, whether you're self publishing or working with a publisher, is make sure you a set up your Amazon Author Central account so you can see all that good data that Jenny has and that's a way that you can get in to run Amazon ads. If you choose, you set up your bio and then also you can request these additional categories which are huge because when you first set up the book or your publisher sets up the book, you can only add two and then Amazon usually tacks on a third, but you can add up to eight total. So you can actually get more specific categories where you'll have a likelier chance to rise to the top and you just have to be very sure they're relevant. Sometimes, you know, you don't want to put a book in a category that is like gardening or something that really makes no sense because that's not going to help your book reach the right people.

Awesome. Thank you, Courtney. Yes. That's why we have geeky categories like Business Structural Adjustment.

And Office Automation Business. Who knows who's searching those categories directly. But it's still fun to land on some of these sub lists and the nerdy ones just make me happy as well. So I feel really good about that. We were successful in getting 70 reviews. Our goal is still over a hundred, but I feel super thrilled. And they're such beautiful reviews. Something different from when Pivot launched videos. Just encouraging people to post a video and a photo is helpful, especially if the book is well designed. And now I'm helping do this for a friend. We also successfully got our first two star review. It's not a one star yet and they didn't say why. So, you know, I'm losing only a little bit of sleep over why the two stars. But what can I say? I don't know. I can't only guess. Maybe the book arrived dented again or their finger slipped. You know, they actually meant to vote 5 in terms of Goodreads, about 4,000 people add the book. So Courtney helped me run a contest. We're running two contests. One contest was to give away 10 hardcover signed hardcover books. And that contest generated 3, 800 people who added free time to their wish list or want to read list in Goodreads. So that was, I think a big success. And then we're also now running a giveaway of a hundred ebooks. So hopefully that will generate even more interest in terms of audiobook sales. I sold in a month 287 and the author royalty for being non exclusive with Audible, meaning I can sell the audiobook elsewhere, is about $5 per. The last thing I want to show you is podcast stats. If we look at the podcast of, let's say the last 90 days, it's really exciting. And I think what's so fun about a launch is if different business areas tie together. Jessica was asking about business model. It's just so fun to see growth overall. And that's really the Flywheel. There's a great book called the Flywheel Monograph. It's a virtuous circle of or cycle of promoting. The book also helps grow the podcast and growing the podcast in the book helps grow bff. So it becomes this virtuous circle of momentum. The the podcast this year the last 90 days is up 118%, which is great. And let's see if we look by month, you can just see a steady climb from. And again, part of this is not from the book itself, but just being on other people's podcasts. So with or without a book, doing a podcast tour has grown my own podcast. Cal Newport was the first big thing to hit and that was December 20th. So my podcast is up 200% since then. But you can see that early December I had about 3,500 downloads total and it doubled thanks to Cal Newport. I like owe him my life basically. And then went back down a little bit and then as the podcast tour ramped up about 9,000 downloads. And you know, here's hoping to keep that momentum up and to the right. In case you have a podcast or you want to know of a show you're going to be on. Listen Notes is really interesting. I just learned about this at south by Southwest. It's very, very hard to get download numbers, but ListenNotes.com will show you a score, the higher the better. And also the global rank. So of all podcasts, freetime is in the top 3%. And then the other tool that I use that doesn't work on mobile is called podscribe AI. This is a secret hack because it's just not meant for this purpose. But the stat happens to be there. It can give you a somewhat estimate of how many subscribers a show has, not how many downloads. Those are two different things. Number of subscribers is different, whereas downloads. Somebody could go binge 10 episodes and your show gets to count 10 downloads even though it's one person. So I wanted to give you the tour of the numbers and like what is trackable during the launch. There's so much more there's all the social stats and LinkedIn a traditional publisher. When they give the author an advance, the advance can go towards some of the branding and marketing. And a lot of people I know, even if they get a mid six figure advance, they spend it entirely back on the book. So they spend it on hiring the team. People like Courtney, people like Stephanie and Haley, and designers, graphics people who help with the ad campaigns. You pay 15% to the agent, you pay 30% to taxes, and then the rest of the gets reinvested into the project. Wade asked if podcast ads are helping right now. Well, right now I spend about a little over 2,000 on the production team a month and the ads are earning about 150. Like the ads basically pay for the software, not even the team. But when I promote things like BFF on the podcast, I see good return on that. So it means I need to promote my own programs through the podcast. My goal though, my dream in life, is that the podcast has 10,000 subscribers or even a hundred thousand, to where the ad revenue is substantial recurring revenue every month. That is the dream. The last thing was Peggy had asked about writers group or you mentioned that you were in a writers group. I have not been part of official writers group. However, I had two friends. My friend Sarah who wrote Expansive Impact and MBS who was writing how to Begin. Not together, just me to MBS and me to Sarah and vice versa, would trade Polos almost every day. Like, I'm stuck on this. What do you think about this? Ooh, that's a good word for that. Or with mbs, did you do your writing today? How are you doing at this stage? Oh, we'd send each other titles. So I definitely think buddying up with a friend or two who are also working on a book project or writing project is a great idea. And trading Polos or Voxers, something asynchronous, was really helpful because when you're in a writing mode or deep editing, you don't really want to be on a lot of calls. It's just a different brain space. So with Marco Polo or Voxer, it's easy to just trade messages back and forth and get support and friendor coaching. And then Sarah and I would schedule ASGs. So that's our author support group. These were like emergency meetings where we're like, oh, I need an asg. Do you have time this week? And we would, as I've often talked about, 30, 30 or 60, 60. But we would show up with a Google Doc of all the questions we wanted to ask. The other person, like how could I restate this? I even pulled out all of the end chapter summaries and put em in a Google Doc and asked Sarah and Marisol on my team to like help tighten them up and just copy edit just those alone. So yeah, I had a ton of support on that front. Is there anything, Peggy, you want to share about writers groups that have been helpful for you or even Jessica since you do so much coaching with writers?

This is Peggy and I can add that when I lived in Colorado and Fort Collins after that was when I was publishing books. I was invited to a really intense critique group that had met for years. Everybody was published and it was very specific about the format. There was about six, seven women in the group at that time. I was in my early 40s and they were all more seasoned. It was really helpful. It was very intimidating as well. The group that I'm in now is More Writing Tribe where we do six weeks on and we have the woman who kind of teaches it and guides it. We do 13 minute writes but we just give feedback and we've learned each other's styles and I'm finding my new voice. Not new voice, but what's emerged now is I'm working through that group but it's not a critique group at all in the same way that the prior one was that I did years ago. So as I get closer, a couple of us have talked about just partnering up because we're all close and they're really good writers and we know each other really well and we know where we want to go as well with our writing. So that's really helpful. But it's not structured yet. So I liked your asg, the author support group id and those are just some thoughts that I have and from my own experiences. But people are talking about having a writing coach and getting more specific. I don't think I want a critique group like I had years ago at this point in my writing, but maybe in the future. Again.

Awesome. Thank you. I know our very own Mary Bernstein is a writing coach. Azul Tirones. I was on his podcast Authors who Lead. He I've heard phenomenal things about as well. So yeah, that's a great point, Peggy. There are people I know who actually partner with a writing coach the whole way through of like ideating and just the moral support. You know, I don't like to complain about anything, any step in the process, but it can be totally overwhelming. It can call forth all your gremlins, all your inadequacy feelings all your imposter syndrome. And so I do love the idea of having a coach or a friend who is just there saying, you're not crazy, keep going. It becomes so necessary. And I think what you had said, Peggy, is self is different than hybrid because hybrid you still have the whole infrastructure behind you. But with self publishing, yes, most books are not edited nearly enough times. I don't think people realize that. You can go through one or two developmental editors, you can go through one or two or three copy editors, you can go through one and two or three proofreaders, including the author. And the number of times that I've actually read the book is over 20. I mean it gets exhausting, but that's, I think, how to really do it right. And then even the typesetting. The typesetting is so nerve wracking because once it's out of a Google Doc, you don't have control anymore. Now it's in indesign, it's in this big file and you have to trust someone else to take the editing wheels and introduce new mistakes. Now there are hyphenated words that shouldn't be and now paragraphs are breaking in the wrong way. And now the justified text is spreading out in a strange way. And now the sidebar spills over by one paragraph, but it probably shouldn't. So it's like the typesetting is its own gauntlet that introduces so many new mistakes and typos. It's just mind boggling. Found that I had a very patient typesetter because we went back and forth like 20 rounds and many, many zoom calls getting that right. So I think just people you don't quite realize. It's just such a heavy lift.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I want to give Jessica a chance if you want to share anything about writers groups.

I have a patreon and I have a couple different tiers on it. But one of the most popular things I do is I hold a co working session once a week and it's all kinds of different times. I run em anywhere from 6am to 7pm Eastern Time and I have a lot of people show up and I don't hear from them, I don't see them otherwise. But it's 90 minutes. We check in for like the first five minutes we all say what we're going to work on and then everybody just mutes and gets to work. And I like seeing people come in and do it. I'll have people who will just message me out of the blue and say hey, do you have time to start one? And so I'll do like a pop up session. And I think that helps because like you said, this is so lonely. Everyone's just sitting in their house in front of their computer that a lot of times just knowing that other people are on the zoom. Even if everybody's cameras are off and everybody's muted, I always keep my camera on so you know that I'm there. But I think that helps keep people motivated and on track. Like I haven't worked on my book in three weeks but I also haven't shown up to any co working so.

Maybe that's why I love that. Thank you for sharing and I love the idea of yes, office hours co working just that side by side accountability. Dan, is there anything you want to add? Because I just totally blanked to use your last name that you were here while I was talking. But I know you do a ton of this as well.

I just want to say thank you for being so transparent in sharing all of this. This is the kind of stuff that nobody talks about unless it's sort of like you're at south by and you're having a drink and it's like private. So I think you're being extraordinarily generous and I appreciate that.

Thank you so much for saying that. And there were more stats before you joined so you'll get the recording.

I know, I'm excited. I know.

I mean I'm like, I don't even obsess over this stuff but it is fascinating to peek over into someone else's world or just like how did it really go? What's going on over.

It's so relevant oh, that's a good question.

I mean, I think that it's funny so much of what your book is about and how you're sharing here, it sparks that thing in me, which is I'm doing this for 12 years and I work with writers and we focus on sharing and launching and platform and all that. And it's always at this cusp of what is that next level? How do I help more people, how do I collaborate in different ways? And you have all these examples in here, but it just sparks all that business y stuff of not just here's an analysis I've done. It's like you're on the line, like you're putting it out there. And again, that speaks to me in so many different ways.

I also find this launch team, I usually feel more comfortable talking about this kind of stuff with people who've self selected in. Peggy was saying, it seems that authors need to be so much more engaged nowadays with a launch. And yes, what's nice about the launch team is it feels like a safe space, but also mutually beneficial. So I try to imagine what could be incredibly valuable for anyone who wants to join it. And Instead of doing one live Q&A with me, I put five because that just also felt fun. Let's talk about the three months leading up to the launch and the two months after and have a little circle page that people could interact in between. And that way I wasn't just blasting my whole list. I don't mind sharing some of this. Who knows, I could release this as a podcast episode, but I also like knowing that for anybody who raises their hand and says yes, I want to be on the inside. Yes, I'll help with the launch and leave a review and spread the word. It feels so good to just be open and transparent and have a conversation. And so I think that's a really nice thing to have if you're an author and you're launching as well. I'm really happy to have done it and I would absolutely do it again, even though it is so much more involved. What else? Oh, oh, Let me also just get this on the record. Speaking of transparency, I am indeed exhausted. Okay, So.

I might look happy now and people make fun of me. Even on a recent podcast interview of like, why are you always smiling? I'm smiling because I get so much joy from being here with all of you and doing these calls. But let's not get it twisted that when the book finally launched, it was as if two years of the entire pandemic were all the Stress of the lost business, all the shuffling, all the personal drama that was inevitable. Michael's home country in complete and absolute collapse and turmoil. Then writing, editing, launching, free time was the one light that was my 2021 and the podcast. The launch of the three months, but really three months building the business backend after I sent the book to the printer. Three months on the business backend and then as soon as the hardcovers were actually at the warehouse in January, it was three months of just hardcore website flow email. The number of emails that need to be sent out during a launch is just mind boggling. How many times you have to mention it to how many lists and groups and like the launch team, the BFFs, the pivot list, the free time, the friends who I'm asking for help. Just a phenomenally mind blowing amount of email that I never want to do again. At least for the next five years. And then the travel, then the number of eyeballs. Stephanie and Haley were so amazing on social media and it really turned the spotlight on me. I would rather it be on the book, but it ends up on both of us and like that's overwhelming. Even energetically of just like, wow, we were in a pandemic and I was in my sweats every day for two years and now there's like all this attention and energy and it was so good. It's so good but just so incredibly intense to the point where now one month out, like I just can't wait to do nothing. Like I'm already looking on June, July, August, how can I schedule nothing? I'll do a second podcast tour in the fall, but I'm not gonna say yes to too much. Even now I don't even care. Oh, the book just launched. What I recommend to every author that I didn't do well enough for myself. I had a week off for Ted, about eight days, but fully block off two weeks, if not three, where the nothing is on the calendar. And I even had hired two additional team members in Q1 from a service that I realized I don't have the energy. I didn't have the energy to properly onboard them, train them, answer questions. The irony of it isn't lost on me that free time is about lively, tiny teams. I actually scaled back. I'm saying no to a lot. I pulled out of a group that would have helped me sell licensing because I just really realized I need to simplify, I need to recoup, I need to now let people read the book, tell their friends I just can't push More than what I did. Now I'm gonna like sit back again, let people enjoy the book, see where organically it starts to go and then when I can recharge, put my energy back. So I really wanted to share that because it's also shocking to me how tired I am. And I'm always talking about burnout, ease, joy, fun, all of it. It's so great. And yet still launching, I think, takes a very special something out of the energy reserves of the energy bank account. It's like no matter how fun, it's something I talked on the podcast about wanting to sprint through the finish line and that's it. It's a marathon, if not an iron. I would say Iron man, but Iron Person. It's like you still want to sprint to the finish, but that doesn't mean that when you're done running the 26 or 50 miles, you don't just want to go collapse and eat a hamburger. Also, in my case, I was building a whole new business behind Free time. Parallel to Pivot I sort of stumbled into. Didn't really do it on purpose, but I realized they're two kind of separate but with related audiences. And so I think if you're not having to build your business from scratch in a way, it wouldn't be quite as much work. Like if you already had email sequences and a community and a backend product and everything was well oiled and now you're just crystallizing it all into a book that might be a different experience than me, which was like launch the podcast, write the book, create the backend. You know, all of that. So no complaints, just a reminder to all of us to build in rest and recovery after a launch and double what you think. So we'll see where we are two months from now. It's like I sent a little baby calf. You know how they come out walking, but it's so awkward. That's how I feel like, okay, go check out some grass book and we'll regroup in a month. Thank you all so much for being here. It's really great to see all of you and just warms my heart and you should all know each other. So I hope that we will share out in the chat and in circle. Like you all have so much in common. It's just funny for me seeing you in gallery view. Let's all be BFFs. Okay, thanks everybody. See you later. Thanks for everything. Bye.

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Thank you.

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