Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
In this week’s episode, I chat with best-selling author and Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, Becca Syme. We discuss some of the common causes of overwhelm and burnout for authors and what we can do to minimise their impact and set ourselves up for success. Some of the other topics we discuss include:
- The role of “expectation” in causing burnout.
- Why lack of sales doesn’t mean you’re failing as an author.
- How to know when you’re out of the Research & Development Phase of your author career.
- The role of Energy Pennies in creating a sustainable author career.
- What are Author Success Archetypes and how they can be identified and harnessed for success.
- Why it’s important to remember that anything can change for the better!
If you’re in need of a pep talk – whether in your author career or life in general – this is the episode for you!
Visit Becca’s website here: https://betterfasteracademy.com/
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Episode 93: Energy Pennies & Author Success Archetypes for a Sustainable Author Career with Becca Syme
Jo: Hello, hello. Welcome to Episode 93 of Alchemy for Authors. Today’s episode’s title is a bit of a mouthful, but it is called Energy Pennies & Author Success Archetypes for a Sustainable Author Career with Becca Syme.
Now I have been lucky enough to have had Becca on the show before. Becca was on the show back in Episode 20 where we talked about intuition and success for authors. So if you’re new to Becca, I suggest maybe you want to go back and listen to that episode. She gives a little bit more of a background as to how she came to be the best-selling author that she is, and a certified Gallup Strengths coach as well. I am a huge fan of Becca’s for all that she does really around the idea that all authors are different. We have different paths available to us for success when we align ourselves with our innate strengths. So rather than listening to the people who tend to always be on the stage, always have a podium, always preaching that there is one way and this is the right way to write your books, publish your books, write to market, market your books, Becca is really about us getting clear on who we are, what drives us, and how we can use those strengths to navigate our author careers. So this is a really fun episode.
I was so excited to have Becca back on the show and it was kind of perfect timing too, because we had this lined up for much earlier in the year and then things kept coming up where either Becca or myself had to cancel and reschedule. When we sat down to do this interview, it was, I think, only a couple of days after the US election. I know, not just in the USA, but around the world, even here in New Zealand, emotions ran high with different people with different feelings around this and how that might impact lives all around the world really. And so talking with Becca was kind of the pep talk that I think I needed to hear not just about my author career but in life in general. And I hope that whatever is going on for you in your life, you also get that same sense of being lifted up that I got from this episode.
On a bit of a side note, I’m always so excited to be able to share these episodes with you, to have listeners out there who tune in for this and for you choosing to spend some of your time here with me and my wonderful guests. And I did want to say that I really do have some amazing guests lined up. I’ve had amazing guests in the past, and if you’re new to this podcast, then maybe go back and see some of the earlier episodes and check them out. Something to look forward to is, as I’m finalising up this episode which I’m excited to share with you, I’ve also just interviewed Renee Rose again. You might have heard me talk about her quite a bit on this show as I adore her book on manifestation for authors, called Write to Riches, and I’m presently going through her course by the same name. So we have got that episode coming up in a few weeks as well. And I’m just buzzing because I have some really wonderful guests lined up for December as well. So we’ll be seeing 2024 out really well on Alchemy for Authors.
Right, but for today, like I said, I’ve got Becca Syme on the show. We are going to be talking about burnout and overwhelm and what contributes to that, some of the core factors behind that, and how we can navigate that and actually track how we’re using our energy to create for ourselves a more sustainable author career. I know the sustainable author career is a bit of a buzzword at the moment, but I’m okay with that because I think it is really essential. Most of us that decide to take this career path want to be in it for the long haul, and with all the other pressures going on, not just the pressure of being an indie author and doing all the things at once, but our other, you know, sometimes it’s our, pressure from family, or from friends, or from day jobs, or from politics, or everything else weighing on us as well. It can get harder and harder to keep that balance to actually see us through to having a long-term career, particularly if maybe we’re not seeing the results that we want as fast as we want. So we talk about that quite a bit in this episode as well. We also touch on something called the Author Success Archetypes as that reminder again that we are all different and there are many paths to success no matter what anyone tells you.
So if you’re as excited as I am to get on with the show, then grab your favourite drink, find a comfy chair, sit back and enjoy the show.
Hello, my lovelies. Welcome back to another episode of Alchemy for Authors. This week, I have the wonderful Becca Syme back on the show. Becca is a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach and has been coaching Success Alignment for more than a decade. She is the author of the QuickBooks for Writers series and the popular Write Better Faster course. She also writes mystery novels in her spare time and lives on one of the thousand lakes in Minnesota. Welcome back to the show Becca. I am so excited to have you here.
Becca: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. And I love listening to you read that bio. That was perfect. I love your accent. I just want to I want you to exclusively introduce me at every speaking engagement from here on out.
Jo: Thank you.
Becca: I love that.
Jo: Oh, well, thank you. I’m just so excited to have you here. And I think this is a really, really timely episode. It was about, I think a year ago that you put out a Kickstarter for gamifying sustainability with energy penny cards and a book called Antidote to Overwhelm. But it is still so relevant today and probably will always be super relevant. So I really do want to chat about overwhelm and energy pennies for those who maybe haven’t heard of the energy penny concept before, or didn’t know about your Kickstarter and that in the past. So first, I was hoping you could just share some of your background as to how you came to focus in on helping writers with burnout and overwhelm.
Becca: Yeah, I started off just coaching, you know, people in their strengths. And specifically in doing, like, non-profit work and doing non-profit turnover or change management and stuff. Just because that was always something I was interested in. I was working in a lot of non-profits at the time. And so I had all of these skills in helping people understand themselves and helping people align with what’s good about themselves, when I started taking off as a writer. And so when I had a bunch of friends who all needed these questions answered, I was like, well, I’ve been coaching something that I think would help you. What if I just gave you the strengths test and then we talked about your results? And I just kept doing it and doing it. And then eventually it was like, Oh, well, there’s some patterns that I see here. Let’s talk about those. So it just kind of turned into this, like, I had a, I joke about the Liam Neeson, like, I had a very particular set of skills, right? Like at a time when they were really needed. And so I just did what I could to help people in that.
And because I have burned out myself, multiple times. In the burnout book, I talk about the really bad burnout that I went through when I was leading a non-profit. That was just, I mean, it wrecked my whole life, that burnout. And so, I started being interested in burnout because of that, but it was more that we would go through these cycles in different organizations that I was in or in different arenas that I was in, right, where it would feel like everybody was kind of burning out at the same time, or there was a lot of burnout talk happening.
So when I got into the writing community and I started seeing the indie kind of gold rush happening, right, it was like, oh, we are primed for a bunch of burnout to happen, because we can’t sustain, you know, working like this. Because of course, you know, I’ve been in an industry that is famous, there’s a whole organization dedicated to basically studying burnout in non-profits and churches. So I was in a place where I had a lot of experience with it and could be helpful. And then people again, just started asking me questions and I would help.
And the upside of doing it that way is every kind of segment of society, so like writers are a creative segment of society. They kind of experience burnout slightly differently. And there are different kind of qualities to different types of burnout as well. So like you have caregiver burnout, you have teacher burnout, you have creative burnout, like there’s all these different types of burnout that you can experience. And so I just, I got a lot of experience working with people. I wrote a book about it. I did a bunch of podcast episodes. And then all of a sudden 2020 and sort of the combination of the pandemic, and then also the indie publishing gold rush started ending and we started transitioning into this more rules oriented, no longer the wild west feeling of publishing, where it was more pay to play, a lot more competitive, you know, and so we were just naturally going to burn out.
And so I feel like a lot of what I have done is take personal experience, combined with psychology, combined with personality stuff, combined with sociology, and just say here’s what I can do to help. If you need the tools here they are. So yeah that was a little longer winded answer than I expected to give.
Jo: No, but I think it’s so interesting because it is something that people talk about all the time, feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, and I am absolutely one of the worst for that. I feel like between, um, it’s actually, it’s not so much in my writing, it’s I’m also a teacher, you know, it’s my day job, and ADHD. So I am like on a daily basis. So I love it that you kind of look at it from this, you know, from all these different, multiple avenues of looking at it, from Strengths and from the different segments of society and everything, I think is really good.
When it comes to writers and authors in particular, are there some common kind of symptoms or signs that you see that may indicate before they even realize that they are heading towards that burnout?
Becca: Yeah, almost 100 percent of the people that I coach in burnout have had an expectation change. So what they expected to happen and what actually happens, there’s a differentiation between those two things, right? So I expected that if I wrote 12 books a year that I would make a certain amount of money because that’s what, quote, unquote, everyone said you should do. So when I wrote 12 books and I made $1,000 a book or I wrote, you know, I’m I didn’t net any money because I may have made money, but I spent more money than I made, right? Then that differentiation between what I expected to happen as an outcome of the work and what actually happened is just not sustainable. So if I don’t reset my expectations to say it’s not a danger zone when you are not making money, it’s just you need to reduce your expenses. You need to make sure you do research and development correctly and I don’t mean market research. I mean just the R& D phase of a business, right?
Author businesses have five phases. The first phase is research and development. The only way, you know, you’re out of R and D is when you start to make more than a hundred percent profit and a hundred percent profit is the baseline expenses, right? So if I’m spending $4,000 to make a book happen and I’m not making $8,000 per book, I’m still not really out of R and D yet. You could probably make, um, if you were doing a ton of like, well I went to a bunch of conferences, and I took a bunch of classes but in advertising and editing, I’m spending $4,000 and making $8,000. Then I’d be like, okay, so we’ll take that other $10,000 you spend on other stuff and just call it good for the time being because the market is telling us that it wants your product.
And so a lot of the reason that authors burn out is that they don’t realize that author businesses have a research and development phase. They think all phases of business are about growth and that all business should grow equally. No matter whether the market wants the product or not. It’s like the fundamentals of organizational growth is if there isn’t a demand for the product, the product won’t grow, right? Like you can’t make money on if there isn’t a demand. And so because we don’t often talk in those terms, in the author community, a lot of authors burn out because they put all of their time and money into a business, assuming that it’s going to make them money. And then when it doesn’t, they can’t sustain that output either in time or in expense. And that is a huge portion of the burnout that I see.
A small portion of the burnout I see is from people who have taken off too quickly, right? Where they got, you know, I’ve coached people who had TikToks that took off and all of a sudden they’re making, you know, five and six and seven times what their corporate job had made and then they can’t write the next book and so they burn out. So like there’s always a portion of people who do burnout from having too much work or from working too much, but usually the burnout happens because I expected that I would be supported. I expected that I would make money. I expected that this would be easier. I expected, you know, like, whatever the expectation is where I’m putting the work in, but I’m not seeing the return the way that I expected to see the return, and then I burn out because I can’t continue to keep that up.
Jo: Yeah, I really like that. That’s a different way of, um, like I don’t often hear of people talking about burnout in that way of that need to kind of temper our expectations, or just be a little bit more realistic. Now because you’ve got this background in strengths as well and Strengths for writers, is there a way like, um, cause I know for every different Strength, there’ll be a different way at tuning into, you know, getting more aligned with what your expectations are based on your Strengths, and I guess your weaknesses and that too, but just as a more generalized thing, because that would take us forever to go through, but more of a generalised thing. Is there something that we can do in general to be more realistic with our expectations or to tune into being a little bit more self-aware?
Becca: Yeah. So I would say two things. One is there’s a segment of people and usually we see it in Positivity, in Futuristic, just from the Clifton strengths. And those two Strengths should be pretty self-evident what those mean, but in Positivity, in Futuristic, and then in, well, let me just deal with those two first, where unrealistic expectations are actually what you need. Like, you don’t need to have more realistic expectations. Those people tend to burn out from other purposes. But generally speaking, the unrealistic expectations, there are some people who should have them to a point where realistic expectations will demotivate you and that your burnout will happen because you undershot what you can do, and now you’re not excited to do the thing anymore, because thinking about being more realistic actually demotivates you and steals your energy. So again, it’s an energy imbalance in that way. It’s just the energy imbalance happens because the way you’re motivated is not by reality, it’s by possibility, and not everybody’s motivated by a possibility.So that’s kind of one set, right?
The other set is for people who need to explain why what has happened has happened, right? That’s usually when I talk about realistic expectations, it’s not about the future. It’s about the past. So in realistic expectations, it’s what I did not yield me the results that I want, and instead of feeling like, well, now I’m going to have to work 10 times harder, spend 10 times more money, or et cetera, et cetera, it’s no, the goal is just to not quit. So the goal is to reduce your output to whatever level you have to, reduce your spending to whatever level you have to, get whatever level of support you have to get, uh, motivate yourself in whatever way is the most sustainable for you. And that might mean some alignment with like Claire Taylor’s Enneagram work or something like that, right? Where you’re doing the things that are going to support you staying in this business, because the research and development phase, which is the 1st phase of the author business, and by the way, it’s not just author. This is a model that is applied to every single business in industrial and organisational leadership. And most MBA programs also use the same model for organisational growth. The research and development phase of organisational growth can last for years, it can last sometimes for I know people who spent 20 years in the research and development phase, trying to get a product that the market wants. And if you understand that research and development is not a punishment. It is not a, it’s not bad luck on your part, although luck may be involved in some of the good luck stuff, right? But it’s not a negative, it’s not a signal that you can’t do this, it’s not a sign that you should quit, it is a sign probably that you should spend less money on your infrastructure, right? And don’t make infrastructure decisions if you’re not making money from the products themselves. Like, those are the kinds of realistic things that we can do in aligning ourselves with the expectations. And then just knowing I’m not failing if I’m not selling, I’m just still in R and D. I’m still trying to respawn and respawn and respawn. And I may be staying in the same genre. I may be writing for the same readers. I may just not have written the book that the market wants in the way that it needs to be discovered currently. It’s all about the way that we interpret the data that we’re getting.
So there’s one set of interpretations, which is we’re playing by New York rules, which is if your debut doesn’t take off, you’re a failure. Nobody’s going to give you a contract again, et cetera. Those are not the rules we’re playing by anymore. We’re playing by the indie publishing rules, which is guess what? You get to try as many times as you want. As long as you can keep publishing yourself. So then the goal becomes longevity and sustainability in the research and development phase, rather than assuming that if I don’t make $50,000 a year, or $100,000 or $200,000 a year, that I’m somehow a failure, or that if I publish 50 books, and they’re only making a total of $5,000 a year, that somehow that makes me a failure. Nope, it just means you’re still in the research and development phase.
At any point, if you either learn the right thing, get the right opportunity, or have the right luck, at any point, you can change the trajectory of your career in an upward direction, but you can’t do that if you overspend out, you know, create infrastructure that your business doesn’t need. So, like, just as a, for instance, people who are putting their books into audio or into translations, assuming that they will sell, because of course everything sells in audio or everything sells in translations. Don’t put your books into formats unless you can afford to do it, because the creating of infrastructure around books that aren’t selling is a very quick way to create an upside down organisation that’s not making money, right?
So again, this is, we’re doing the Author Business Phase Summit in November. I’ll just say, I think that it would be worthwhile for anybody who’s in the R and D phase to probably take a look at that, which is on our website. Because I don’t want to spend too much time talking about this, but, for me, the key of those early phases is so many people burn out because they treat this business like they only get one shot, or like if they don’t do it right now, they’re going to fail. Or if they don’t take off immediately that they’ve done it wrong, or if they would just kill themselves working that somehow they’re going to take off. And then they don’t write like that’s the carnage of the indie publishing community. And that’s what I’m trying to kind of stave off for people.
Jo: Do you know what? I think that just what you have said, that alone is just the gold from this entire interview. Like, there are just so many truth bombs there. And listening to you, I’m like, Oh yeah, like feeling a little bit called out, like with the infrastructure and probably overspending, but also everything you’ve said I’ve found so incredibly motivating as well, because I think just that reminder that it doesn’t mean that this is the end of your author career. It doesn’t mean that at all.
Becca: Yes, it’s what point in the timeline you see yourself in, right? I always think about the Freddie Mercury timeline where it’s like, if you were to ask Freddie Mercury, well, he had a self-belief that’s different, right. But if you were to ask Freddie Mercury, like, what has your life told you, looking backwards, before he took off, he’d be like, everybody hates me, nobody thinks I can sing, everything’s a failure, blah, blah, blah. A year later, he’s, you know, Madison Square Garden sold out. So like, it’s just what point in the timeline are you makes a really big difference. And I feel like so much of what happens to us when we get too focused on our failure or on how everything’s going wrong or on, you know, everything that’s negative that’s happening and I’m not selling and nothing’s working and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, okay, my dear, look up at the horizon though. Like, everything can change. Anything can change. Anything could change for the better. Anything can change. Yeah, some things can change for the worst, for sure. I’m not going to argue with the yes, there can there can be change for the worst. But so much of what we need to remember about the author career and just about life in general is that the horizon is always going to be there. There is no place that you can get to where we can’t go up from here.
And I’m not, and I’m not trying to, if people feel like I need to quit being an author, I’m, you know, done with this. I burnt out too many times. I’ve overspent, et cetera. In the back of my mind, I’m like, yes, you do that if that’s what you need to do right now. Because in 2 years, if you recover from this, then you may come back to it. Versus if you stay in it right now, it might kill you. Okay, great. Take the break. You call it quitting. I’m fine with that. But I see so many people who make the decision they need to make in the moment and then turn it back around at some point in the future. I even think sometimes quitting isn’t the end. Right? So like, I really just feel like there’s so much more hope than we think there is if we just look at, we may just be looking at the wrong point in the timeline. And do I care enough about my experience as a creative, as a storyteller, as somebody who has inspiration in my blood, like, do I care enough about that to think that it might be possible that I could do this differently? Maybe I need to rearrange some things. Maybe I need some time off. Maybe I need some self-care. Maybe I need a cocoon for a little bit, right? Like, absolutely any of those things are possible. But if we don’t acknowledge that there could still be hope in the future, we can’t live like that. We cannot live. We just can’t live like that.
Jo: Oh my gosh. This is like, honestly, you’re just delivering the pep talk that I think we all need to hear at the moment. Not just authors and writers, but everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I appreciate it. So I want to just move a little bit sideways, to talk about energy pennies. Because this was a thing that you brought out, like, I’ve got your cards here, Energy Penny cards, and I’ve heard you talk about them and I, yeah, I love them. I’ve got, you know, like I absolutely love them and I love the concept around it. And I think it’s so essential for the sustainability that you talk about that we all really want from our author careers. Can you just for those people who are new to the idea, can you talk a little bit about the concept of what Energy Pennies are and how they can be an important tool for us as authors?
Becca: Yeah, so energy is a bank. You know, like a resource, like a gas tank, basically, right? And you can spend out everything that’s in the bank, and then, at some point, when you outspend everything that’s there, you burn out, right? And then you have to make the ladder out of the burnout pit, so that you can start making energy pennies again, essentially, right? Like, that’s kind of the metaphor that I use for burnout. And when you are in sort of normal day to day life or if you’re in burnout recovery, if you’re on recovery road, energy pennies are for me are a way to track, like I would track a bank account, to make sure that I’m doing what I can to increase the likelihood that I will have a sustainable energy source or renewable energy source. And I made it specifically gamification and to me gamification has multiple different layers to it.
So I made the Energy Pennies game a game in particular so that it could be winnable. So that it would make me kind of feel like every day I had a goal to shoot for and that I had some really specific tasks that I could do that I had predetermined were things that give me energy. And then it would give me a way to keep track of the stuff that I do that takes energy away from me in a really big way, especially the stuff that, like, really takes energy away from me. And it would encourage me to compensate for that stuff that takes energy away, by doing things that really sustained me or helped me.
And so the game itself, the intention was to hit a dollar in energy pennies every day. And then each of the activities has a different denomination associated with it, like one cent, two cent, five cent, 10 cent, 25, 50, and 99, I think, right? And you can do either negative or positive. And then the goal is to track what you’ve done and see if you can win every day and get like, you know, 100 pennies every day. And because you’ll do some stuff that’s negative, you have to count all the negative stuff as well, and then you intentionally try to compensate with the positive stuff.
And so that was at least that was the goal of the game. The way some people play it is just to track positive or negative, right? Like just am I doing more things that are positive than negative? Or to specifically take all the positive cards, because you get to assign your own cards and put, you know, like all the positive cards that you can flip through for yourself to remind yourself to do it. But the goal was really to give us something that was like gameable so that you could, you felt like you could win.
Jo: Yeah. And so I really love it. I don’t use it necessarily to track my energy pennies, but it brings my awareness to when my energy is dipping, when I’m too stuck in the things that I don’t enjoy that do kind of bleed my energy a little bit. And so what I really love about them is they’re a quick, easy tool that I’m like, all right, I need an energy boost. But sometimes, you know, when you’re really kind of drained or burned out, you can’t think of the things that bring you joy. The cards though, because I’ve already set them up with my denominations and everything of what gives me the most kind of energy boost, I can just grab some cards and go, all right, yeah. Remember? You enjoy this. This is good. Let’s go spend some time in the garden. Let’s go spend some time with the cats. Let’s learn something new, you know? So yeah, yeah, so I really like it for that.
Becca: Yeah, I definitely made it so that it could be used at a time when you couldn’t be thinking, right? Because that so often happens. We have a Stuck List deck that is very similar, where it’s whenever you’re stuck in your manuscript, here’s some stuff that you can, you know, ask yourself to do that will help you get unstuck. Because in the moment, we’re just like, why am I stuck? What’s going on? What’s wrong? And we can’t always, you know, think on a meta level about it. So the cards replace a little bit of that meta thinking. But then additionally, I think part of the goal, at least for me, was to say, Hey, there’s a possibility here that this could really be draining you. Like those 99 cent drains, those 50 cent drains, if you do too much of that in a day, there’s no compensating for that, right? Like if you have to do all of these things that just are like so stressful and so painful, and you have to do a lot of them, you’re probably not going to write that day. You’re probably not going to be able to function very well. You’re probably going to lay on the couch and play Animal Crossings and watch Persuasion. Ask me how I know.
Jo: I love it. I love it. I think they’re just such a great tool for their awareness because if we do not have that awareness that we’re actually not in a place where we’re going to be bringing our best to our writing, then, you know, we’re doing ourselves wrong.
So, with the energy pennies and that, how does it really help with bringing more of that joy? And those activities that kind of bring us energy are almost kind of restful as well because they replenish us. How does that overall play into a sustainable author career?
Becca: Yeah, I mean, everything in the human psyche and the human body and the human biology is seasonal. Everything. There’s a season for rest, there’s a season for work, right? Like, you have to sleep, you have to eat, you have to, you know, go to the bathroom, you have to drop, like, there are all these things that you have to do, because in order to just maintain humanity, there are some baseline, like, biological things that you can’t be ignoring, right? And so in a sense of we are a very rhythmic kind of human animal. And if we don’t take into consideration that everything we do is rhythmic, then we’re going to end up in burnout. And so my goal, I think, in, you know, you can’t have only all of just one thing. You have to have some element of a lot of different activities, inputs, outputs, right? Like you need, I think in the Energy Pennies, there’s 6 different forms of energy, right? And it’s like you need something that makes your soul feel alive. You need something that makes you feel joyful. You need something that makes you think deeply or critically. You need something that makes you care about other people. You need something that makes you have courage and you need something that forces you to take action.
So, like, I intentionally made these six forms of energy around the things that I felt were non-negotiables in the kind of human rhythm experience. And what’s important to me about this is we’re usually good at some of them and not good at others. So some of us are really great at action, really suck at rest. Some of us are really great at rest, but we’re not good at spirit or soul, right? So for me, it’s, you can’t just ignore these pieces of yourself and disintegrate them. Like, at some point, there’s going to be a cost for that, and you will not like paying that cost. I promise you, you won’t like paying it. And some of it is, if we ignore certain pieces of ourselves for too long as a community, we end up having to pay a cost for it. And those costs are often catastrophic costs, right? So we need some level of balance in all rhythms and all seasons and all things and all opposites. We need some level of balance in that. And so I intentionally made the cards that way to kind of encourage us to think about all six of those areas consistently, because we are a very rhythmic and organic animal.
Jo: Yeah, I thought it was really good. Going through the cards and giving them different denominations as to whether they gave me energy or took energy was a really interesting process. Like some of them, like you were saying, we’re super easy. The ones with spirit, I do a lot of those anyway. And like with my Strengths and that, I’m a lot of Intellection and Input and Learner and all those are like way up high. So the Learning and all that was fantastic. But when it came to things like the more action ones, I had to really think. Like, I think you had one there about running up and down stairs and I’m like, Oh, that sounds horrible. But then when I think about like going to the gym and that, I’m always so resistant to it. But when I’m there and when I’m back, you know, the energy deficit in thinking about going to the gym and getting my butt out of bed to go to the gym always ends up outweighed by what I get from being there and how it colours the rest of my day and how I feel afterwards.
Becca: Yeah, we call those the net gains and net losses, right? So like if you, if it costs me 50 pennies to get out of the house to go to the gym, but it gains me 75, then it’s a net gain in. And I need to remember that, I need to remember every single time I want to go to the gym. It is going to be something I don’t want to do, but the net gain is significant enough that if I don’t do what I have to do other things to compensate for that energy loss anyway. And again, this is very, you know, taking into account things like the running the stairs and going to the gym, like that’s not everyone’s, you know, uh, positive. But for you, that’s something that gives you a positive. And so other people are going to struggle more with feeling their feelings. Like they’re going to struggle with the cards that are like, Hey, you need to call a friend and talk about what’s wrong with you.
Jo: Oh, I had that. I was like, Oh yeah, yuck, no, really? And I’m quite a feely person, but I’m, well, I’m quite an emotional person, but expressing feelings and that kind of thing and having those conversations or being around too many people, I’m like, Oh, gosh, no.
Becca: Yeah. And if that’s a net gain for you, right, for some people, that’s a net loss. Yeah, like trying to do that as a net loss. And I would say if you’re not ignoring other parts of the emotion, then that’s fine, right? Like, you don’t necessarily need to talk to a friend about it. Right? But if you are having consistently no things that you’re doing that are a net benefit, and that that’s a danger zone for me, like, if there’s no net benefit, then that’s a place where maybe we need some coaching, or maybe you need to have a conversation with somebody about that.
Jo: Yeah. And that’s what I thought was interesting, too, was just bringing it to my awareness, the areas that maybe I need to put a little bit more attention into, because I’m feeling a little bit of resistance towards those areas. So maybe I need to look at what’s underlying that. So, yeah. I agree.
Now, for people who missed out on the Kickstarter and don’t have access to the cards and that, how can they still use this concept in their life? Like, what would be a starting point that they can still use the concept of energy pennies in their life today?
Becca: You can make lists from the activities that you do normally. And that’s how I did the energy pennies cards is I just kept a whole bunch of lists about all the things that either I do, or my friends or my clients do, and then try to whittle them down to like, what are the core things that we’re doing here? Right? So you can just make lists of all the activities that you do, and assign them to different positive or negative, kind of like a pro-con list if you wanted to, and then have that on your desk. I also am going to have an Energy Management for Writers book out. I’m hopeful and I believe that you can use it, even if you’re not a writer, because I think it’s going to be just geared towards the idea of energy management, period. But my hope is that that will come out at some point in December. And that is the, we had a book that happened along with the Kickstarter but we’re actually going to pull that book out and we’re going to do the Energy Management book instead and release that one. So the Overwhelm book, unfortunately, is not going to see the light of day, but other than the people who got it on the Kickstarter. So you were one of the early adopters. Good job. But we are going to release the Energy Management book, which will have all of the energy penny stuff in it. So it’ll have all of the card fronts and like all of the descriptions of what, like how to assess these things for yourself and stuff like that. So there will be that option. But you can do it yourself by just keeping a list and then playing the game from that list. Like just take the activities that you know you need to do or that are beneficial for you that have given you energy in the past and make lists of those and utilise that in that way.
Jo: Yeah. Oh, that’s fantastic. Well, I look forward to that book, the energy management pennies book. That’s going to be fantastic. So I want to kind of segue again. I mean, this all ties into each other, but it’s just another thing that I know you’ve been talking about for a little while, and still relates to having that sustainable author career and how you use your energies and whatnot, and that’s the Author Success Archetypes. So you’ve developed a framework called the Author Success Archetypes or you’re developing it. Can you briefly explain what these archetypes are and how they’re relevant to helping us really create a sustainable author career?
Becca: Yeah. In my coaching, I would notice that there were some consistent types of people when it came to certain activities that we would do. Right? So like, yes, every author’s process is different. I definitely do believe that, but what they really are is a combination of these different continuums. So, like, if you were going to write to market, how would you write to market? And there’s a continuum for that. If you were going to have sustainable energy, how would you have sustainable energy? There’s a continuum of different archetypes for that. If you’re going to write a manuscript, if you’re going to market, if you’re like all of these different things, the pace that you get through your career, like, all of these different things have these little pockets where you’re all doing the exact same things, but because it’s not often reflected on the stage, a lot of people feel like they’re doing it wrong because they’re not doing, like… And the one I use all the time, because it’s the place where we have the most content, is the write to market continuum, where there’s a particular designation of archetype called the Drafter, and Drafter like you’re in a race and you’re following the lead bike and you’re going to draft around them to take the lead, right? So Drafters tend to follow people who are already really excellent. They do a lot of market research, trying to figure out what all the people at the front are doing. They’re very obsessed with, you know, what can I do that will be the next big thing, or something like that, right? Like they really want to level up and they are very good, they have all the tools that they need to be able to read a bunch of the books that are out there that are selling and figure out what they all have in common that’s actually resonating with the readers, and then do those things. So, like, those trait combinations are very important when you’re talking about writing to market. If you can’t read a segment of books and figure out what they all have in common that readers resonate with, you cannot do write to market in the way that it is commonly taught, right? And so, unfortunately, what we hear a lot of from stage, is we hear a lot of Drafters talking about how to be Drafters in, and we call it writing to market because that is what has been taught.
And by the way, even the original book on write to market is not a Drafter book at all. It’s an Evergreen book. And if you read it, what you hear in that book is the process of figuring out what you like and trying to make sure that you can write something that isn’t too far off of what’s selling and, you know, like, it’s very consistent about Evergreen tactics, and Evergreen is one of the non-Drafter archetype types. But the people who have been the most successful at that tactic over the course of the last 10 years have been primarily Drafters. And they are people who have an easier time spotting trends, you know, seeing what’s selling, understanding what those books have in common, knowing what resonates about them, seeing what pleases readers and what doesn’t, understanding how to have value proposition, stuff like that. And then knowing how to meet those things when they actually sit down to write. Which is the key with Drafters, is not just can you tell, oh my gosh, all these small-town people seem to really like small towns? That’s not what I mean. What I mean is, why do they like it? Can you put those types of things that are the actual butter, to use the Theodora Taylor concept, right? Can you put those things that are the actual butter or the actual Id List, to use the Jen Barnes concept, inside the books? Well, you can’t if you can’t tell what they are, if you don’t know how to please the readers in that way.
And so what we’re constantly taught is just read the books. Just watch the market. Just do all this research and then go and write a thing that’s to market, and if people can’t tell if what they’re writing is to market, if they can’t do the thing where they can read books and write something that’s similar without just direct line for line copying what other people are doing, it’s like we don’t all have the same trait clusters, right? But this Draft or trait cluster is so well aligned with this idea that we have put forth in the last probably five to six to seven years of writing to market, that it has become the dominant way that people teach it. You have to change these things about your book. You have to force your book to fit inside these parameters. You have to, et cetera. And most of the time they want you to do it before you even start writing. And for a segment of writers, you can do that because you have the traits that are required to do that. But then there’s a whole group of people, and there are three different groups of people outside of the Drafters on this continuum, who can already write books that are to market without having to do it. But the way they do it is different from the way the Drafters do it. You don’t have to do it intentionally in order for it to happen. And that’s the downside, is that when some of us try to write to market, we inadvertently just don’t do that. But we don’t realize that we’re not doing it because we don’t have the trait combinations that are required to be able to force ourselves to fit inside of the box the way that you need to fit inside the box, if you’re going to write a book that is to market.
And then there’s all the typical, you know, discussions about the difference between writing to trend and writing to market. And what I mean is when I say the write to market continuum, I mean, writing a book the market wants. All of the different archetypes can write a book the market wants, even the Trailblazers who intentionally are trying to write stuff that is unlike anything else that exists in the market. So, even those people can create new holes in the market, can blaze new trails in the market, and they will do that by writing things that are unlike what we see. And when you try to force Trailblazers to write like Drafters, then it kills their ability to write great creative books, right? It kills their ability to do that Trailblazer thing that they’re so good at. And again, this is just the example, right?
So much of what we do instinctively, those of us who naturally want to just write whatever we want to write and then figure out how to align it later. If we decide to do that or not. Some of us don’t want to change anything about what we write, we just want to put the book out and then we want people to read it. And for some of us in that designation, we call them Islands. Absolutely, there will be people who read the book. You don’t have to intentionally create it to market. You don’t have to shape it to market it. But it’s because the way that you create when you’re an Island, you’re writing what you want to write. You’re writing the thing that’s in you to write. And if you can write something that resonates, because it resonates with other people who like what you like, or who are like you, or who think how you think, then you’re going to still be able to write something that resonates.
But again, because we have this idea of the way that it’s supposed to work, if you’re writing, running a good business, you have to do it this way. Except that there are plenty of people who are not doing it that way who are extremely successful. And the way that they happen to be doing the writing falls in trend with other people who are also very successful at doing it that specific way. So there’s evidence to suggest that there’s more than just this one way to do it. But when I start talking about it, and the reason that I tend to pull back from having these discussions is the people who’ve had success writing to market are usually the people who are the loudest about saying that everyone has to do it, and so I’ve learned to just not talk to those people directly because they’re allowed to think whatever they want. I’m not trying to change their mind about what they should do. What I’m trying to do is help people who have not yet had success, question whether or not they need to be following the advice that they’re hearing. Because not everyone should be following that advice just based on the data, again, based on the data, and so I just want people to know that there are other things out there besides just what you keep telling yourself you have to do because you don’t want to do it.
Jo: Yeah, I think that’s a really good reminder. And I would believe too that that overwhelm and that burnout comes when we try and put ourselves into a box that we’re not really aligned with. So we try and do those things that we’re hearing those loud voices tell us that this is the one and only way of doing, and we’re finding that there’s resistance because it’s not naturally aligned. So then knowing your success archetype would, I guess, open up those doors a little bit for you to be open to trying your version of success and being more in alignment. So that would maybe minimize that overwhelm a little bit.
Becca: Yes, a hundred percent. And I think part of the problem is, and I’ll say, you don’t need to, you don’t need me to tell you what your archetype is in terms of like, you don’t actually need to come to me for this at all. I can tell you, you are going to naturally want to do it the way that you want to do it. Like the way that you’re supposed to do it is going to be in you to do. You don’t have to have somebody else tell you, yeah, that’s this. That’s this. I will do that. If you need me to do that. That’s why we made the name so that they have little pictures in your brain that I can be like, Oh, no, I’m an Evergreen tree. Evergreen trees are organic, but they don’t need to be Willows and move with the Drafters. Like, they don’t need to let the wind take them. Evergreen trees grow organically. They can grow in any kind of… what’s the word? Environment. Like, they’re very resilient. They don’t need a lot of, like, sunlight or water. They don’t, you know what I mean? Like they can exist in really cold temperatures. They’re extremely resilient, but they’re only resilient at being Evergreen trees. They’re not resilient at being Willows or Water or Drafter. Like they’re not resilient at being other things. They need to be organically what they are. And that’s going to mean for some Evergreens that they’re going to write the book of their heart, and then they’re going to shape it to the market after they write it. For some of them, they’re going to write the book of their heart and they’re not going to do anything but what they want. It’s that they need to follow their intuition about it, and try as much as possible to just trust that the process of experimentation is what’s going to bring you the most data about what works for you and what doesn’t. Rather than assuming that there’s a way, a tactic out there that somebody can teach you that’s going to magically just make everything change.
Jo: Yeah. See I, yeah, I love that. And I think, yeah, just everything you’re doing around the Clifton Strengths and the Author Success Archetypes and all that is so important to just get people to bring their awareness to their individuality and the fact that we are not all the same. We do not work the same. Our success will not come in the same way, no matter how much we try and force it. And so just having that almost permission to trust in our intuition and go with what feels right for us, I think is so important. And I think I’ve also seen that you’ve got another cluster of archetypes, which I think you mentioned they were more around that sustainable energy? Like I’ve come across your Phoenix and Bread Machine. Are they similar or different?
Becca: Those are different continuums, but, and they’re also different continuums from each other, which is hilarious. But the Phoenix archetype is about the fact that you can, uh, there are certain people who in projects, they don’t do any work, any work, any work, any work, and then they do all the work very quickly, right? And so the key with Phoenix’s is that there is no structure you can put in place that’s going to make you do work in those early phases that will get you the same type of result that you will get if you let yourself do the Phoenix thing. And this is different from the sort of like those of us who have ADHD, who are doing that for, you know, potentially overwhelmed reasons, potentially biological reasons, there are always things you can do to compensate if you want to try to compensate. And if you are not a Phoenix, changing yourself to be like more regular in your production is not going to make you write worse books. But if you are a Phoenix, you’re not going to be able to latch into the creativity in the same way without that pressure, and that’s part of the pressure is part of what creates the creativity, and that’s why we call it the Phoenix in terms of like you work really hard and then you sort of burn up, and then you go to ashes, and then you have to reform yourself, and then eventually, you know, work really hard and then burn up again.
And it’s not burnout. So that’s very different. It really is just like you use all the energy and then you’re done. And then the pain point for Phoenix’s is almost always I need to find a way to not let myself feel guilty when I’m not working. Because you’ll see everybody else will be working all the time and you’ll be like, I’m just going to play Animal Crossings and lay here and then I’ll write a book really quick in a week and then totally veg for a week after that and then start another book. And that’s just the normal Phoenix process for some people.
Jo: Yeah, I like that. So I know that these archetypes that you’re putting together and that, I think you’ve been moulding them or, or whatnot for a little while here. What’s on the horizon for, um, or what is available now for people to look into this a little bit more, or what’s on the horizon, maybe in regards…
Becca: So on the website, we have a place we collect all the links. It’s https://betterfasteracademy.com/links, like the word links. And then the archetypes link is on there. And so you can go and look at all the archives videos that we currently have. Anytime I make a new one, we put it on that page, but we don’t have any official stuff around it currently, except on the Patreon. And I will say, don’t join the Patreon just for the archetypes, and don’t join the Patreon unless you’re into Strengths, because most of what we talk about on the Patreon is Strengths. And because all of our coaching is hosted there, right? So it’s, anyway. We are going to release some content on the archetypes, both like to the public on the Quitcast, and also I’m hoping to do, we have this free library, Author 4 Life library where I’m just sort of collecting all of these courses over time. And I’m hoping to be able to do an archetypes course on the Write to Market Archetypes in that library, which again is on our website. Actually, I think you have to join the newsletter to get the library, uh, the course library. But my hope is that we’ll have some stuff in the new year.
It is very difficult to develop these systems. And I’ve been working with two different people, like actively working with them. One to do the conceptual sort of framework work and to work on how to teach them. And one, literally just doing the dials, knobs and levers about like, what is the talent that Drafters have that is higher in them than everyone else? What is the, you know, so that takes more, I guess, I guess the right word is like, parsing through the details. Because if all I do is just interview 25 people and then make a whole, you know, system based on my assumptions about the other 250,000 people who are writers, then I’m going to make a faulty system. And so I just want to make sure that I’m doing as much as I can to help the system have veracity to it, and that I’m only really teaching the stuff that’s actually necessary for people to know. So we will be doing some stuff in the new year. If you follow the Quitcast, if you’re on the newsletter, you’ll see everything that you need to see, but there are definitely plans.
Jo: Amazing. Well, I can see we’re just running out of time here and I could talk to you for ages, but, yeah, I just love chatting with you, but just to kind of round up, you’ve mentioned that you’ve got your website, you’ve got the Quitcast, is there, um, I recommend people join your newsletter, I’m on your newsletter and that and really enjoy that, and anywhere else that people can find you or anything else coming up that you want to share for people to keep their eyes open about?
Becca: So I would check out on that links page. There is the Authors Business Phases Summit, and I definitely would check that out because we we’ve done something that I’m really excited about. We have a FOMO version and a JOMO version. So, like, the joy of missing out version is just your phase. That’s all we want you to have. Because there’s five phases and you don’t need the information from all five phases. You really just need one. So we have a fear of missing out version where you can get all of the phases and that joy of missing out where you only get one. I’m really excited about that option. But I do think there’s a lot of authors who are in the R and D phase who think that they’re failing because they haven’t found the demand for their product yet. And really it’s just in a saturated market and in a competitive market, you have to assume your books aren’t going to get seen. Like you almost have to assume that at this point, and my books probably aren’t going to get seen. So if I release something and I do my best and the books still aren’t seen, it’s not an indicator that I’m failing. It’s an indicator that I haven’t failed. I just haven’t found the demand loop yet that I need to be hitting. So I just want to keep trying to find the demand loop. And so I would suggest a lot of people probably need to check out the other business phases on it. I think when this comes out, we’ll just be starting tomorrow. So the, like when you release on the 18th, I think the summit starts on the 19th, and so there’ll still be room. Yeah. And still take it.
Jo: Amazing. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much. It has been, yeah, just the pep talk I know I needed. Hopefully my listeners get the same out of this, but it’s just been such a joy chatting with you and yeah, like I said, I could chat with you for ages. You’re just amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show again, Becca.
Becca: Thank you for having me. I love being on this show. So the next time we have something to do, we’ll reach back out. Yeah.
Jo: Yes, please. That’s amazing. Thank you.
Takeaways from today’s episode:
1. Many authors burn out because they don’t realise they’re in the research and development phase of their author career.
2. The way you know you’re out of the R&D phase of your author business is when you make more than 100 percent profit.
3. Not everyone thrives on having realistic expectations.
4. Tracking your energy pennies, what gives you energy and what drains your energy, throughout the day can help you make changes towards creating a more joyful life and sustainable author career.
5. Although authors have different processes, there are themes found on a continuum that can be used to help authors gain success aligned to their strengths.
6. There are different ways of quote, unquote, writing to market. Knowing your success archetype can help you make sense of your process and why other processes may not work for you.
And finally, the big one: Anything can change for the better.
So I hope you enjoyed today’s episode as much as I enjoyed chatting with Becca, learning from Becca and sharing her insights with you as well. Like I mentioned in the intro, I have some fantastic interviews lined up for the rest of the year and going into January as well. So I’m excited to share those with you and I appreciate you sticking around to listen to Alchemy for Authors.
If you’re so inclined, I’m always incredibly grateful if you wish to share this episode with a friend, word of mouth is amazing, or you could leave a review, or if you want to make a donation to the show, you can do so by going to https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. Any way that you show support is always gratefully received and always makes my day knowing that what I’m creating is resonating with people out there. So thank you so much.
I have got, as per usual, all the links in the show notes so you can check out all of Becca’s resources. You can sign up to her Author Business Phases Summit, which is happening in the next day or so. So I highly recommend you maybe check that out. And of course, if you want to see the transcript of this episode, you can head on over to my website at https://jobuer.com. There is an “Alchemy for Authors” link up the top that takes you to all the previous episodes. So you can also check out Episode 20, if you like, where Becca was originally on the show. There is also a “Resources” page where you can find some of my favourite recommended resources that may benefit you or help you out in some way as well.
So I am wishing you a wonderful writing week ahead my friend. Until next time, bye for now.
author mindset, Author Success Archetypes, burnout, Energy Pennies