Episode 83: Are You A Bad Boss?

Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!

In this week’s solo episode, I ask you to question what type of boss you are when running your author business. Are you a good boss, or are you a bad boss self-sabotaging your author success? The answer might surprise you!

Other episodes mentioned in this episode:

Episode 74: Go Creative Planning with Orna Ross 

Episode 75: The Sustainable Author Career with Claire Taylor 

Episode 58: Author Alignment & the Enneagram with Claire Taylor

Episode 20: Intuition and Success For Authors with Becca Syme 

Forbes Article: Why Your Bad Boss Could Literally Be Killing You by Caroline Castrillon

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Find the full transcript of this episode below.

Episode 83: Are You A Bad Boss?

Hello, my lovelies. Welcome to Episode 83 of Alchemy for Authors: Are You A Bad Boss?

Before we dive into today’s show, I just wanted to say a big thank you to all those people who reached out to me to say how much they enjoyed last week’s interview with Babette Hughes. It is always so nice to know that what resonates with me also resonates with other people out there. And I really enjoyed my conversation with Babette, and I felt so honoured that she was so willing to share her life experiences with us all, reminding us too that whatever your goal, your dream, whether you’re writing your book or still desire to do so, unless you’re literally six feet deep, it is never too late.

So special thanks goes out to one of our listeners, Dita, who was super generous in buying me some coffees to support this show after listening to Babette’s interview. And she left this lovely message. She wrote: Jo, you are absolutely amazing. Your podcast has meant so much to me as an author. I listen to every episode and can’t wait for a new one to drop. Your recent interview with Babette Hughes blew me away, leaving me in tears. I have never felt so inspired. She is a treasure, and so are you.

So that was just the most amazing message. So thank you so much, Dita, for that. That just made my day. It was just so super nice. I also had a lovely message from another listener, Alison, who also said that she really enjoyed the episode and she sent a timely reminder that with all of life’s challenges, this too shall pass, which is one of those things that is very, very true, and a very timely reminder on my end here. So thank you, Alison.

I had quite a few others reach out on social media as well, and I just wanted to let you know that I really am so grateful for all of you that choose to listen to this podcast and support this show and send me messages and just, yeah, share your support like that. It really, truly means the world to me, and I am so very thankful to share these conversations with you.

And so now I guess it is time to get on with today’s episode. So when you’re ready, grab a drink, find a comfy chair, sit back and enjoy the show.

So here we are, my friends, with the question for the day: Are you a bad boss? I don’t know about you, but I have had my fair share of bad and interesting bosses over my lifetime. Prior to landing in education over a decade ago, I had been employed in such a wide variety of jobs across two continents, both in New Zealand and in Canada. I have had various retail positions, management positions, I’ve worked in photography and interior design and skin care. You name it, I have probably done it. And during that time, I worked for a lot of really amazing people. But also, without a doubt, some whose leadership or management style left a lot to be desired.

For example, I had a woman once who was the manager of a very large company who thought that it would inspire better sales by gathering us all together for early morning meetings and yell obscenities at us and threaten unemployment. Did that boost sales? I don’t know that it really did. I have also worked under a sleazy old man who would take any opportunity to drape himself all over myself and my colleagues. There are other instances too where I have been the victim of or seen others bullied or harassed in the workplace. Or in more mundane ways, I’ve come across toxicity in management who had checked out mentally, really weren’t there and invested in the company, or who knew nothing about their job, let alone anybody else’s, or just found other ways to make the nine to five less than desirable.

Now, I read a Forbes article recently. It was not a recent article. It was written in 2019 by Caroline Castrillon. And it was called Why Your Bad Boss Could Literally Be Killing You. And this isn’t new to us, but I thought it kind of important to share some of these facts, just to remind us the impact of what a bad boss is like. And if you’re already wondering, what does this have to do with writing? Don’t worry, I will get there. I promise. So in this article, Why Your Bad Boss Could Literally Be Killing You, Caroline shared some statistics around how like 56 percent of American workers report having toxic managers. And a survey by the American Psychological Association found that 75 percent of Americans say their boss is the most stressful part of their work day. She also quotes a survey of over 3000 employees in Sweden who found that those who work for toxic bosses were 60 percent more likely to suffer a stroke, heart attack, or other life-threatening cardiac condition. Not to mention of course, what we already know about the impact of toxic workplaces and toxic management upon things like depression, stress, anxiety, and the inflammation in our body and the lowered immune system that they can also create.

Now, not to be all negative here, because I have also worked for some of the most amazing people on the planet, I’m sure, or it very much feels that way. I have worked for people who have shared my values, supported me both in my work life, but also in my personal life when they really didn’t have to, but they did. Who have been experts at what they do, but still show a real willingness to learn and grow, and that openness to listening and learning from others as well. I have been particularly lucky over the last couple of years in that I have worked with who I believe are some of the absolute best leaders out there. So I have been really, really blessed in that way.

But recently though, I’ve been watching people around me struggle with the opposite. My husband is presently searching for new employment, and so the topic of what makes a good boss has come up multiple times in conversation in our household lately. The adage that people don’t leave jobs, they leave bad bosses, rings very, very true. So of course, there’s always that cautiousness when searching for a new job, that you’re going to be a good fit for the jobs culture, and also whoever is leading the show. A couple of years ago, my dad retired after a really bumpy employment ride where the stress and the bullying caused by the leadership team severely impacted upon his physical and mental health. My mother is looking at retiring at the end of this year. And although she really likes her boss and has worked for her boss for a very long time, there are still things that really frustrate her. And I can see that retirement is looking more and more like the much-needed light at the end of the tunnel.

So finally, what does this all have to do with writing? Well, it got me thinking about as an author, more specifically an indie author, what kind of boss are we? What kind of boss do we want to be? Because we are our own boss.

For some of us, myself included, there’s this idealistic yearning to be your own boss. To make a living as an author, doing what you love, spending your time as you please, and answering to nobody. And I said it was idealistic, right? Because you talk to any full-time self-employed author, and they will tell you that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. There’re still deadlines to meet, changing technology to deal with, readers expectations, and inconsistent income. Yet the idea still remains: the grass is always greener.

So if you are like me, and you’re an author with a day job who still wants to treat their writing as a business, or maybe you do already have a full-time career as an author, then this is equally as important to you. Whenever we treat our writing as a business, when you’re churning out books, doing the marketing, you’ve set up your business bank accounts, it’s all go, you need to be aware of what type of boss you are. Because, yes, you may be the one person show, but that means that you are both employee and employer. So my question to you, and one worth doing a lot of reflection on, is what kind of boss are you? A good one or not so good? Really think about it. As an indie author, you are wearing the two hats of boss and employee. You’re a one-person business and there are some things I want you to reflect on in an endeavour to ensure that you are creating for yourself a sustainable author career that you love.

So first up, maybe this one isn’t as important for everybody, but it certainly is for me. Are you kind? Do you care? Do you treat your employees with respect and support them when they’re struggling? Now, if you’re like me and you’re a one-person author business, you might be thinking, what do you mean treat my employees with respect and support, like, I don’t have any. Well, you do. You are your employee. Think about how you would treat people who you’ve paid to work for you.

My thoughts are if you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re doing the work on mindset, and you care about manifestation and what energy you put out in the world you get back, then you’re probably a pretty damn nice person, right? You probably show a lot of respect to other people. You’re probably incredibly supportive of them and encouraging of them. You’re probably a very caring, empathetic person. However, how much of that do you share with yourself? Are you kind to yourself?

We all know or have heard horror stories about bad bosses who rule with an iron fist and lots of put downs and negativity and name calling. And I mean, my hope is that for you, you haven’t experienced that. I have experienced that. Let me tell you, it’s not so fun. Yet, how many times have you berated yourself for not meeting your own expectations, for not doing the things that you expected yourself to do, to not meet the sales numbers that you wanted, to not meet the deadline that you had planned for? How many times have you berated yourself during the process of writing that book that it’s not good enough? You don’t know what you’re doing. You are writing trash. You need to be better. Now, my thought is that has probably, that negative self-talk has probably crossed through your mind quite a bit, no matter who you are. And it would be nice to think that we treat each other as nice as we treat other people. But the truth of it is, that more often than not, we actually don’t. So let this be your reminder that you are your own boss right now. As an indie author, as an author, your words matter. We know that with writing, but they also matter in regards to what you say to yourself. Your words are the difference between achieving and not achieving. To being filled up by your author career or feeling like this is just another job, another form of drudgery that you need to get through, that you’re not good enough. And nobody is going to create to the best of their ability in that mindset.

So, think about how you treat other people and if you treat yourself in the same way. Think about what words you use. Are you kind to yourself? Do you care about yourself? Do you treat yourself with the respect and support that you need, particularly when you’re struggling? If you’re having an off day or you’re not feeling well, or something’s happened in your personal life, give yourself the grace that you know that you would give to anybody else going through that, because you deserve it.

A second consideration: Do you know your stuff? Maybe you have had the experience of working for somebody who really didn’t know what the heck they were doing. They didn’t know much about the company. They didn’t know much about the product. And yet they felt like they still had the authority to tell you what to do, and were not open to listening to otherwise. You may also have had the experience where somebody new did come on who was in a leadership position and they didn’t know much about the company, didn’t know much about the product, but they did everything in their power to learn, to listen to the employees, to listen to those people who’d been there longer than them, or being there before them. And they did everything in their power to learn. And that, that is a difference between a good manager, a good boss, and a bad boss, by a long shot – somebody who is willing to learn. So do you know your stuff?

As a one-person business, as many of us are in our writing careers, the industry is always changing and we’re not going to know everything about everything all the time, and that’s okay. But how are you upskilling? Are you reaching out to experts in the industry? Are you listening to others who might know a little bit more or been around for a little bit longer? Are you putting a time, energy and money investment into your professional development? If you’re not, how can you? You need to find ways to continuously be learning in this industry, or you will be left behind. And it’s not to say that you need to jump onto every bandwagon that comes around. Filter through and grab onto what really resonates with you. But the power that comes from learning and being willing to upskill and being willing to be a beginner and all of that, will keep you in really good stead for a successful author career where you’re not being left behind.

People who believe that they have learned everything that they need to know and know it all, quite often know very little. Don’t let that be you.

All right. My third reflection that I want you to think about is your expectations for yourself and what you can achieve. Are they realistic or unrealistic? A bad boss has unrealistic expectations. A bad boss is not so great with time management in that they expect you to be able to do something that might take a week in a couple of hours. And I have seen this play out in many, many areas of my life and the life of loved ones as well, where the expectations have just not even been in this universe of possibility. Now, this is one that I really struggle with for myself, because with ADHD, I often find myself having very unrealistic expectations of what I can achieve. Thinking I can meet deadlines that are really just not possible because I’m going through this superwoman kind of mood where I think I can do it all. Or expectations that even if I’ve got things going on in other areas of my life, that my mental capabilities and emotional capabilities are still going to be there to do the same quality of work than if things were a little less stressful in my life. So in this case, obviously that is not a possibility. Are there areas in your author career and your author business where you are putting the added stress of unrealistic expectations upon yourself? Are there some things that you might need to let go, or extend your deadlines for, or expand your expectations for? Don’t be that boss that drives yourself, your employee, into the ground by overworking with unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved.

And this really isn’t just about time management and the amount of time that we have, but also the amount of energy we have and what, maybe mental, physical, emotional drains that are going on in our life at the same time. We need to make space for those so that any deadlines we set for ourself, any expectations we have for ourself are aligned with the reality of our situation.

A fourth thing to consider: sick days, personal days, and vacations. Do you take them? Or do you work constant overtime? In my day job and my author career, I tend to be a little bit of a workaholic. This is another one, and you’ll see this theme, that many of the things I’m calling out here are things that pertain largely to myself. So in answer to the question, am I a bad boss? For myself, yes, I’m absolutely atrocious. Hence, we’re doing these questions to reflect on so that I, like maybe my listeners, can make some changes that are well needed.

Do you take sick days? If you are not feeling well, do you allow yourself the grace to get better? The time, the space, the kindness to allow yourself to rest? Or do you ignore your body and just push on through? And with that reflection, how has that been working for you? Do you take personal days? If you are feeling overwhelmed or have some family things going on, are you willing to push aside your schedule and make changes? Are you willing to sometimes say no to writing that book, meeting that deadline, doing the things that you feel that you have to do for your author career to ensure that you are also looking after yourself and your loved ones? And, spending your limited time here on earth in the ways that is really most important to you? Because sometimes, what is most important in the biggest scheme of things, is not meeting that writing deadline, but it is spending time with a loved one.

Do you allow yourself vacation times? This one hits me hard because, in all honesty, I don’t remember the last time I’ve really had proper, proper, proper downtime like a vacation. It has been a while. And let me tell you, as we are in the middle of winter, really, the colder seasons here in New Zealand, not taking a break is not working out well for me at the moment.

So, a bad boss is going to make you feel bad about taking sick days, or not let you take them. A bad boss is not really going to want you to take personal days, or vacations, or else they will interrupt your time away from the office with phone calls or emails or texts. So you need to be a good boss for yourself. You need to let yourself have those sick days, have those personal days, have those vacations. And when you do, you need to make sure that you’re being present for those days, that you are not allowing work to intrude on your personal life. Like, as much as we might love our author careers and writing and all the rest of it, if not for ourselves, then for our loved ones, sometimes we do just need to have days where it’s not interrupting our time through emails and texts and all the rest of it. Sometimes we just need space and a break, and our loved ones might appreciate that too.

Now, these are not in order. I should have probably said that at the beginning, but they’re not in any particular order. They are all, in my opinion, equally important. My fifth idea that I want you to reflect upon has to do with money. Are you getting paid? Now, I know already that people’s defences have probably just gone up with me saying that. If you’re new to writing and you’ve only got maybe a few books out and maybe you’re not making the big money, maybe you’re barely making any money, you’re going to be wondering, what am I talking about in regards to getting paid? So if we’re working for anybody else, we are going to want to be paid or compensated for the effort that we put in. Writing is a little bit different, in that sometimes it can take a while before we are compensated. And even then, we may not necessarily be fairly compensated for how much energy and time and investment we’ve put into our products. However, depending upon, of course, wherever you’re at in your author career, ideally, you should be at least thinking about how you can pay yourself. I really love Orna Ross’s ideas on pay yourself first as an indie author – of creating bank accounts, of working out how much you need to set aside from each payment or royalties and that for your personal account for taxes, for reinvesting into your author career, for savings, for all of that. And I would highly recommend rather than me going into it all, that you go check out Orna Ross and her conversations around paying yourself first. She sometimes has them on, or quite often has them on her Patreon, if you join that. Orna Ross also came on the show in Episode 74, where she talks about that a little bit as well, and the importance of getting into the routine early on of paying yourself first. Profit should be on your mind. If you want a proper author career, if you want to really create an author business for yourself, then profit needs to be part of this. Not many of us can afford to not make money and still live. And yeah, a lot of us have mortgages and all the rest of it. Hence a lot of us, like myself, have day jobs as well. But regardless of where you’re at in your author career, it is still important to make sure that you are paying yourself from any money that does come in. Get into that mindset early on so that you’re already there when that money does start rolling in. Treat your author business like a business.

Okay. Number six is one that is important to me and it’s a little bit of a funny one because different workplaces deal with this differently. I believe in celebrating people’s successes and it’s not always their work successes either. In fact, just celebrating people. The jobs and the managers that I have really loved working for have been those ones that at least acknowledged things like birthdays or celebrations and the employee’s personal life, whether they’re getting married or having a baby or any of that kind of thing. Those leaders, those managers, those bosses that showed that they cared and that their employees are more than just robots that come in day after day to do their job, those are the ones that, I don’t know about you but for me, I personally really love and appreciate. I like to be reminded that I am a person and not just a cog in a giant machine. What that means for you as an indie author or an author is just that reminder to celebrate your successes. Do you? Do you celebrate those things that are important? A little bit like giving yourself permission to take sick days and vacations and the rest of it. Do you take your birthday off? Do you celebrate when you launch a new book? Do you do something special? It doesn’t need to be big, but do you take a moment to marinate in the fact that you are human and you have done something awesome and that deserves a moment of taking notice and appreciating? Do you celebrate your successes and not just the big ones, the little ones too. If you get your first subscriber to a newsletter, what are you going to do to celebrate? A little bit of a happy dance in the kitchen? Good on ya. Whatever it takes to just keep those vibes high and make sure that employee you feels appreciated.

All right, boss person, here is number seven. Are you a professional? Do you act like a professional would act? Now I know already that some of you are like, Oh, that’s makes me think of dressing up in suits to go to my home office to work on my novel. Or, you know, just that yucky corporate sense of professionalism that we often think about, which is often the first thing that comes to mind when we think of it. A professional acting like a professional doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. But again, it does mean treating your author business like it is an author business, like it is the real deal. If you want to keep writing books to a hobby, that’s fine. Absolutely. That’s fine. This episode is more geared towards those people who want to move beyond it being a hobby, to earning some money, to maybe being full-time employed if they’re not already, as an author. This is about running your author business with professionalism. And so what that means is that as a professional, you’re going to have to do things like pay yourself first, like I talked about before. You’re going to have to cut yourself a pay cheque. You’re going to have to, when the time requires it, dress for success. Keep on brand with who you are and what feels comfortable for you, but if you’re going to a book signing, obviously, unless your books somehow resonate with that, don’t wear your pyjamas, right? Common sense stuff there. But it also means monitor what you say online and in emails, in podcasts, anything that might get back to people that does not align with your brand.

I think we’ve all known bosses who are not all that professional. I know I have. And look, I personally like to work for people who are a little bit more laid back, a little bit more human, not all perfect and by the book all the time. That is what I value. However, I still hold my leadership team to certain expectations around professionalism. I expect them to speak a different way in public settings when they’re representing the company or the products. I expect them to interact with people in a professional way, getting back to them in a timely fashion. Despite being quite a sweary person myself, I don’t really like being sworn at if I’m an employee, it doesn’t really make me feel very good there.

So as your own boss, do you act professional? Do you treat yourself in a professional manner? Are there things that you can do to up your game in this area? Maybe to feel like a professional, to feel like you really do have an author career and that potential and to make a full-time income. You need to use some of the manifestation principles of “act as if” in regards to how you dress, in regards to how you present yourself and how you speak about yourself and your products. It is so easy as authors to sometimes downplay our books and our products and the things that we create because we’re too close to them and we take them a little bit personally. However, if you were managing a bookstore, you would have no problem advertising and marketing somebody else’s book. You would have no problem encouraging customers to read your products and there would be no separation with that. So sometimes we need to step back a little bit and put ourselves in the realm of being the boss and not being the author, if that kind of makes sense. I hope it does anyway. Act professional, whatever that means to you.

Number eight: stay organized as much as you can. A bad manager, a bad boss is generally disorganised. They don’t know what’s happening, when it’s happening, when deadlines are missed, the deadlines, can’t find the important things they need to be able to find, cannot prioritise their focuses all over the show. For yourself, for your sanity, put some kind of organisation system in place, find ways to really hone in on what’s important to you and what you need to prioritise so that you can focus on what is most important. Part of that might be revamping your office so that it is decluttered and that you’ve got easy access to anything, to research or stationery, anything that will help you with your latest project. It might mean time blocking in your calendar when to answer emails, or reply to important communications, or scheduling social media content, whatever that means. I try to be organised, but I’m not a super organised person and so I can struggle with this, but I know that when I am on top of these kinds of things, my life moves a whole lot easier. Life is so much less stressful, and I start to see the results that I want to see when I have some plans in place.

Number nine rolls on really well from this, but a good boss will delegate. So if there are areas of your life or of your business that you are not enjoying or feeling overwhelmed by, then maybe it is time to outsource to delegate to somebody with the know-how, the time, the expertise to deal with those things. It might be also that maybe you’re not yet ready. Maybe you’re a bit of a baby-author like I am, and you’re not yet ready to hand over the reins of an area of your business yet to somebody else, but there are areas of your personal life that you could hand over, that you could outsource, that would allow you more time to focus on the things that are important to you as an indie author, or as an author.

One of the reasons that we get into writing is to create a life doing what we love. And so our author career really kind of permeates our personal life as well. So it might mean that you want to make more time in your personal life to reinvest into your writing or vice versa, so that you can create this one wonderful, happy, fantastic life where all the different cogs in the machine are working in synergy together, and you’re really feeling like you’ve created what you set out to create.

All right. Now, number 10, and this also tends to relate to delegating and organising yourself. Setting boundaries. Now there’s a couple of different ways of looking at this. A good manager will sometimes set boundaries for the whole team, for their employees. It might be no communications on weekends or outside of this timeframe in the hopes that it might help their employees retain some work-life balance. I mean, that’s a fantastic idea. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it’s a real good starting point. As an employee, sometimes we need to set boundaries with our leadership team, with our managers, with our boss, so that we can still maintain our personal lives and not all of our time is taken over by our job, by our employment. And, a good boss will respect that. So, think about areas in your life, areas maybe in your personal life or in your writing life, where you need to set down some boundaries, where you may need to say no more often, and where as your own boss, you need to respect the no’s that you say. You need to respect when you have put in those boundaries. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you have set a boundary and said “no” to taking on extra work or an extra role or something like that in your workplace, and your boss has sounded like, Oh yeah, no, that’s fine. That’s fine. But then they start wheedling you to change your mind, then, you know, that can sometimes cause a little bit of resentment towards your boss. You don’t want to be that person. If you’ve decided that you want to set boundaries and you are not going to be working on this particular day, or you’re not going to be doing something then, keep your integrity and follow through with that. Don’t give in just because that little voice, that chatter in your head is saying, oh yeah, but if you just did it this time… Don’t lose respect for yourself in that manner. That is being a bad boss. Don’t give in to the bad bosses.

Something I really respect in any kind of leadership are people who encourage their employees to work to their strengths. Not only that, I really appreciate bosses who notice other people’s strengths and allow them all the opportunity to grow in those areas, whether it’s undertaking extra professional development or whatever they need so that they can achieve to the best of their ability. Do you know what your strengths are? This is an interesting question because for most people they’re like, well, yeah, of course I know what my strengths are, but do you really? I have found that through my dabbling in things like the Enneagram and CliftonStrengths Finder that sometimes I’m actually a little bit oblivious to what my innate strengths are. When I’m aware of them and start putting them into practice, I can not only achieve so much more, my productivity increases, but I enjoy what I’m doing so much more as well. As your boss, as your own boss, make sure that you’re playing to your strengths, and that again, might give some clarity around what areas in your life, in your business, you might be better off delegating or outsourcing. If you want to learn more about the CliftonStrengths Finder and how it can be used in your author career, I think Becca Syme talks about it a little bit in Episode 20 of Alchemy for Authors. So you can go back and check that out, or you can check out Claire Taylor’s episodes on the Enneagram in Episode 58 and 75.

On a similar note, number twelve: do you share the same values as your boss? Because let me tell you, if you have different values than your boss, and it’s okay to have a few differences, but if the majority of what you value, what you think is important in life and business and what you do differs from your boss, you’re not going to be very aligned in very much, and you’re not going to probably enjoy working for that person. Now, I know this sounds a little bit weird, thinking of yourself as two different entities, employee and employer, but your boss-self might have values that actually oppose your personal employee values. As your boss-self, you might be looking at what other people are doing and listening to what people say is the thing to do to achieve success right now, to become a marketing pro, to sell all those books. This is what you do. This is what you do. This is what you do. However, if that is not aligned with who you are as a person and what really drives you and what you’re writing-why is, you’re not really going to achieve to your potential.

So again, Claire Taylor and her studies into the Enneagram and how you can utilise that to create a sustainable author career, is well worth an investigation if you haven’t already. And getting really clear on what some of your values are and your unique desires, that may not necessarily be aligned with what the loudest author guru is preaching out there in the world, and that your boss-self is also trying to encourage you to embrace. Her books, Reclaim Your Author Career, and The Sustainable Author Career, are well worth a read if you are unsure what I mean by this, and you need to get more clarity about how you can ensure that your boss’s values align with your own.

So after all of that, the question remains: Are you a bad boss? Hmm. Well, I know that putting together this episode, I have been mulling over these questions for, in all honesty, the last couple of months, and I have come to the conclusion that I have not been the best boss version of myself. Not by a long shot. I have a long way to go. How I treat others when I’m in a leadership position, is very different than how I treat myself. Therefore, there are some changes that I need to make to ensure that I am getting the best out of myself and creating the best, most sustainable version of my author career that I can create. That is also the most rewarding to myself.

The truth of it is that we often do treat others better than we treat ourselves. And so this is your reminder to be kind to yourself in all the ways that a good boss would be kind to others. If you want to thrive in your author career, or any career for that matter, then you need to be compatible with your boss’s leadership style. That is non-negotiable. As I talked about at the beginning of this episode, your health and your sanity depend upon it. So my call to action for you, and the one that I of course need to put into action myself, is go out there and be your best boss.

So there we have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and it got you thinking about the role you play in making your author career a success. Thrive or survive, my friend. What do you plan on doing? A good boss will always help us thrive.

If you enjoyed today’s show, please consider supporting it. Like I said, at the beginning of this episode, I really, really appreciate hearing from any of my listeners. You can connect with me via social media, send me an email, or you can buy me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. That donation helps to support the show. I am my own boss and employee for this podcast, as well as my books, as well as my author career, so it certainly helps me to keep things afloat. Let alone just how good it makes me feel to know that I am connecting with such amazing people, and that I’m in my own small way, giving something back to the world.

So there we have it. As always, you can visit my website https://jobuer.com if you want to look at the transcript of this episode, and there is also the option there to join my newsletter and grab your free PDF copy of Manifestation for Authors. All the links of course are always in the show notes. Again, I appreciate you tuning in this week, my friend, until next time, happy writing.

Author Career, author mindset, indie author, law of attraction, Mindset