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“What now?” You start to think.
This is the plight of the high achiever and the pitfall of the pursuit of happiness.
When we (my family and myself) first moved to Costa Rica 5+ years ago, it was a triumph. We accomplished a 5-year goal in 3 years, paying off our debts and finding ourselves in a tropical country with oodles of time and resources at hand. Do you know what I did first thing when we got here?
I slept. A lot.
About two weeks later, I found myself waking up early in the morning with a knot in my stomach, and I couldn’t figure out why. I was restless, picking up doing one thing and putting it down again, dissatisfied and unsettled. One night after dinner, I stood up from the table, exclaiming, “Holy crap!” (I didn’t say crap) “I know what this is!”
“WHAT?” said my startled and confused family.
I threw my hands up and said, “I’m bored.”
Thinking about it that evening, I realized that I hadn’t probably felt boredom since I was in my early 20s, which is more than nunyabizness years ago. I had been too damn busy pursuing my Perfect Day. Now that the dream had been realized, I was at a loss.
Five years have passed since that first dinner table exclamation, and here is what I’d love for you to know as you bring your dreams into reality:
Do you feel like you have a “fear of success” or find yourself overwhelmed, at loose ends, or not sure where your next priority is? Are you taking tons of action, but not getting the results you want? Reach out for a discovery session, and let’s create the life and business of your dreams.
Let’s create the life and business of your dreams
The Small Business Collaboration talks with Tina Dietz, international speaker and owner of Start Something Creative Business Solutions, about how to create immediate trust and confidence in business collaborations. Tina discusses how communication is the heart of business and advocates for good communication, as it is critical to ensuring effective collaborations. Good leaders and business owners must have communication to run a successful business and to achieve the best collaboration (which can also help personal growth). When you gather people together, you are helping them get connected with one another. They get to see who you are deep down and connect on a level that isn’t based on small talk.
Tina also brings in personal experience and excitedly talks about the collaboration that she is most proud of, which is the Evolutionary Business Council, a global organization of thought leaders, teachers, and people looking to make a difference in the world. The idea of the organization is to achieve shared influence and collaboration. She has been a part of this organization for a little over six years and has gained a number of amazing things from it, some which include:
She also talks about the keys to a successful collaboration:
Collaborations aren’t always going to be successful; this goes for anyone. Sometimes on the surface, things can appear perfect, even with a friend. Intellectually, someone may have great ideas but not always follow through with those ideas. While this is harmful, it teaches you to count on yourself first and start smaller, to earn that trust and to ensure you are in alignment, not only verbally but also in reality. This is huge with not getting attached. Tina emphasizes multiple times how you are more successful when you aren’t attached to an outcome, which allows for you to communicate openly and freely. It’s okay if something doesn’t work out because there are other opportunities out there.
Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely journey, but collaborations are all about strength in numbers. Remember to always put yourself out there and ask for help, build relationships. When you put out an idea, you can quickly start to create collaborations that aren’t part of your core business that can take you in different directions that are equally exiting. There is unlimited growth in so many different areas and directions that you never even knew existed.
Want to learn more about how we can help you develop successful collaborations in your business?
A purple squirrel is someone with a really unique skillset who can apply those skills in a number of different ways. Years ago I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times noting that employers were searching for new employees who were “purple squirrels,” something that doesn’t really exist in nature. Companies in essence were looking for people who had a large skillset who could apply skills to a variety of different areas but remain in one position within the company. I had to laugh, because I immediately identified with being one of these rare creatures.
If you say to yourself, “Okay, sure…I think I am a purple squirrel. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Well, as with most personality traits, there’s a little of good AND bad (but mostly good). A purple squirrel has many assets and can utilize them in almost any scenario. They are strong-willed and determined. If you can analyze data and still have a great background in marketing, if you’re a very good people-person but still know all the current software, or if you can do anything at a job in any position in that firm, you hopefully are viewed as a tremendous asset in your workplace, a valued leader. On the other hand, being a purple squirrel in a company may evoke fears from others that you’re going to take their job or be constantly trying to compete with them. Also, we all know that personalities can clash, because some people just aren’t that easy to get along with; those types of individuals really perceive a purple squirrel as a threat. A purple squirrel often speaks their mind, and sometimes others in a working environment can struggle being around this type of personality.
The benefits of being a purple squirrel are tremendous and can lead to great success. As purple squirrels, we have a unique vision that we want to fulfill and a unique skill set with which we can use to fill it. The challenge of having a unique vision is that not everyone can understand what you’re aiming to accomplish with that vision-so purple squirrels thrive when they can find other purple squirrels who speak the same “language.” Purple squirrels often ditch conventional 9-5 jobs and use their diverse skills and moxy to launch their own company and showcase their abilities, becoming the leaders they’ve always wanted to be by making their own rules. It’s not necessarily an easy path, but it’s a deeply fulfilling one and the innovation that purple squirrels bring to the world makes the world a better place.
You can use your “purple squirrel powers” to address the challenges you experience along the way. Cultivate your compassion for those who may be triggered or feel threatened by your unique skills. You don’t have to necessarily call someone out, but be open to the fact that they may feel a certain way that is different than how you feel. Deep communication skills are essential for purple squirrels, because often you can shift someone from being threatened to becoming your ally by being willing to get creative, dive into the difficult conversations, and find creative solutions.
Some people tend to think of purple squirrels as “too much,” but don’t let it suppress your purple squirrel-ness. Just again bring your compassion and perception to the forefront, understanding that some personality types need time to process in order to use their skills better, so a highly expressive purple squirrel can be overwhelming – and you might be missing out on a fellow purple squirrel who happens to be more of an internal processor! This is never personal; it’s just the wiring of how each individual functions—it’s all different.
So, what makes YOU a purple squirrel? Take some time, sit back, and think about your skills and how you use them. Do you think you’re a part of this magical circle of personality types? This will help you be a better leader as you realize and absorb those purple squirrel powers.
Purple squirrels need each other. As a fellow purple squirrel, I speak from experience when I say that it is so important to support each other and reach out to one another. We succeed faster and better when we have like minded squirrelocity around us. When you meet another purple squirrel, bring them into the tribe and help them achieve their success and understanding how to utilize their skills.
So get out there and shout out that you are a purple squirrel, and be proud to be one. Let that squirrel flag fly, fluff those tails, twitch those ears, and declare your membership in purple squirrel tribe! We are leaders, and we can do anything we set our minds to!
Want some help figuring out what obsession can boost your business?
Tina is an entrepreneur and content marketing expert who has been featured on ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes (to name a few), and her company, StartSomething Creative Business Solutions, helps authors and entrepreneurs expand their audiences with audio content.
She is an award-winning podcaster and an expert in leveraging and repurposing content, and her company specializes deeply in audiobook production and publishing for one simple reason …
Tina and her cohorts love to help authors expand their audiences, income, influence, and opportunities.
If you missed the first half you can find it here.
If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews.
Audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audibletrial.com/writerfiles and browse their unmatched selection of audio programs, download a title free, and start listening! It’s that easy. Go to audibletrial.com/writerfiles to get started today.
Interested in learning more about audiobooks and howaudio content can help your business and career?
Tina is an entrepreneur and content marketing expert who has been featured on ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes (to name a few), and her company, StartSomething Creative Business Solutions, helps authors and entrepreneurs expand their audiences with audio content.She is an award-winning podcaster and an expert in leveraging and repurposing content, and her company specializes deeply in audiobook production and publishing for one simple reason …
Tina and her cohorts love to help authors expand their audiences, income, influence, and opportunities.
If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews.
Audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audibletrial.com/writerfiles and browse the unmatched selection of audio programs – download a title free and start listening. It’s that easy. Go to audibletrial.com/writerfiles to get started today.
Interested in learning more about audiobooks and howaudio content can help your business and career?
So you’ve decided to publish an audiobook version of your book – great idea! Audiobook sales will top 3 billion dollars in 2018. BUT, guess what?
That also means you need to (gasp!) market your audiobook. Many authors think of marketing as a big scary thing you have to do in order to avoid failure, but think about your marketing time as time spent getting to know your readers and finding out what interests them.
Whether you’re promoting online, in print, or by word of mouth, there are many different options you can use to help in this process. To help get you started, we’re going to give you some tips and ideas you can use to promote your masterpiece!
Connect with Amazon
After your audiobook has been completed, the first thing you should do is look your book up on Amazon to ensure that the audiobook version is listed on the book’s page. If your audiobook is not listed, contact Amazon to request that the editions get combined. This is particularly helpful because some people exclusively listen to audiobooks, and if they are looking for the book, they will see the audiobook available on the same page in one easy search. Whispersync can also help here, because it synchronizes the Audible audiobook and the Kindle e-book so that you can switch between them with ease. You can go from reading your book in the living room to jumping in the car and listening right where you left off in the story.
Social Media
Promoting your work online and via social media is a must for any author. Based on who your reader is, focus your efforts on using the social media platform that your readers most use. Do you have an author page on Facebook if that’s where your readers are most? If it’s Twitter, use hashtags wisely so that people who are searching for your book or general book genre can identify your project by interest. Facebook also allows you to promote your post by adding a filter to it to enable traffic with the specific interest. Overall, posting on social media sites using videos created to promote your audiobook (with a snippet of your 5 minute retail sample) or quote memes pulled from your audiobook’s content will bring attention and will also be great for your book’s search engine optimization efforts by back linking to your book’s sales pages.
Promote to Audio Listeners via Podcasts
Just as you wouldn’t want to waste time pitching your audiobook to a paperback only crowd, you don’t want to promote your audiobook to them either. You want to focus on the audio listeners and the best place to find them is through podcasts! Podcast audiences are already listening and therefore they’re more likely to also be listening to audiobooks. Listen to some podcasts that would be a good fit for your audiobook and take some notes on the audience, jot down contact info, and contact podcasters about what you could bring to the show as a guest. Special giveaways or an inside view of your creative or writing process are good hooks to get listeners to tune in. You can also use your 5 minute audiobook retail sample in your podcast interview or in the episode’s “show notes” to give listeners a preview-both creating interest and generating traffic back to your audiobook’s sales page.
Be Their Guest
Being featured on someone else’s website as a guest blogger is a great way to get noticed and promote your work. In addition to guest blogs, consider Tweet chats, local radio stations, and YouTube interviews. You can reach out to hosts in the same friendly and value-oriented way that you would to ask to be on a podcast. If your audiobook narrator has a blog, ask them if you can guest blog and then host your narrator on your own blog for an article or interview. The more channels you appear on, the more you get the word out about your work. You can even write a blog that interviews the main character of the story and publish this on sites that engage with your readers and audience. This is a fun way to get attention, and it engages your readers in even more.
Free Audiobook Sample
Giving people an easy, risk-free way to sample your audiobook will peak their interest and have them craving more. When you create your audiobook, you have a “5 minute retail sample” that is featured on your audiobook retail pages so that potential listeners can have a taste of your work. You can use the 5 minute audio clip as a free sample that you can embed on your website in blog posts and on all social media platforms.
Reviews
Just as there are reviewers for standard print books and e-books, there are also reviewers who specialize in audiobook reviews. By using a google search or checking directories you can find publications, websites, bloggers, and many others that you can submit your audiobook for a review. As these reviews start pouring in, use the positives to your advantage. Post or share these reviews on your websites or social media accounts to draw in more attention, and to spread the word. If you use ACX to produce your audiobook, you can email ACX to receive 25 free promo codes that can be used to send your audiobook to potential reviewers in exchange for a review.
Video Book Trailer
Sometimes people make their audiobook trailers too long and it can lose the listener’s interest or make them feel as if they have already learned all there is to know already about the book. You want to keep it edgy and have the audience eager to know more or find out what happens next. Also, keep in mind that most people are always in a hurry and only have but a minute or two to spare, so try to get as much detail as you need squeezed into a video that’s two minutes or less. To make it easy, you can again use the 5 minute retail sample of your audiobook to help create your book trailer. Make sure to feature your trailer on your website, social media sites, and even in your e-mail signature.
There are hundreds of ways authors and narrators can market audiobooks, but it’s important to focus on making a connection with readers. Learn where your readers spend their time the most, and that will help you determine where you should focus on sharing about your work. If you offer valuable content and engagement, you will see the same in return, and remember that listening is the new reading, so promoting your audiobook and doing it well is worth it.
Want help creating & promoting your audiobook? My team and I have the expertise you need to unleash your masterpiece
I’m a creative person, as many of you are, and I have always dealt with the problem of having a large number of ideas all the time. I call it a problem because that’s what it was before I really learned how to start wrangling all my thoughts and turning them into productive ideas rather than getting caught in the “shiny ball syndrome” that takes us away from the things we need to be focusing on in order to produce the results that we keep saying we want.
When we’re looking at any idea, we have to bring it outside of ourselves. Examine it like you’re examining a physical object. Look at all the parts: What do you like about it? What about it has you absolutely enamored? What parts of it are causing you to hold onto it? What do you see about it that connects with the things that you’re thinking about doing or that you’re already doing? Will it slide in easily or take you in another direction? Is it a missing-piece-idea that fits in perfectly with what you have going on, or will it come into play later in the plan?
Ask yourself these questions to evaluate and manage your ideas and find the right actions to take to ensure productivity and a serene and calm approach to your projects:
If the answer to any—or all—of those questions is “yes,” put it into your plan. This is why I always recommend having a very flexible, creative, and strategic vision plan so that you can slide pieces in and incorporate them into what you’re already doing without throwing a big wrench into the plan.
If the answer to those questions were all “no,” but it’s a good idea, it might just be a good fit for later in the process. Slide it later into the plan, stop thinking about it right now, and use that as a holding center for your idea. It’s not going anywhere, and you can get to it at the appropriate time in the plan without distracting yourself now.
If the idea is one that you really don’t want to get rid of, but it doesn’t really fit into anything, you can put it into what I call a GeoSync folder. Think of yourself like a satellite, and you have ideas orbiting all around you. Turn this into a concrete idea, and create a GeoSync folder on your computer, Google Drive, or where ever you store your files. Keep track of your ideas, and review them every couple of months when you review your strategic vision plan. This way, they’re not taking up brain space or creating anxiety, but they’re also not disappearing into the ether that is lost thoughts and ideas.
It’s important to start an Idea Capture and Release Program. We all know that ideas don’t always come to us at the most convenient times. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we realize that our best ideas usually don’t come to us when we’re sitting behind a desk in an office, but rather when we’re using other parts of our brains and allowing our brains to be a little more free-thinking and creative. Where we get ideas is different for all of us, but the important part is to have a way to capture these ideas and not let them slip away.
This is where habit-building comes in handy. Most of us having our phones with us nearly all the time. Use that to your advantage, and have a spot on your phone—either in your email or a note app—where you have a running list of ideas. Sync this with your GeoSync folder to bring your short-term thoughts of in-the-moment ideas that were captured, and combine them with your long-term stored ideas in GeoSync.
Bill Gates famously said, “I keep my plate full at 60%.” The first time I heard this, it really surprised me because of the amazing enterprises he built. He left 40% of his time for thinking and creative time, reading, or writing. Although these things seem like idle activities on the surface, they are actually the life-blood of creativity and allow your plans and actions to be more streamlined and better aligned with one another. We have a tendency to get really caught up in the hamster wheel of day-to-day life and all the busyness that comes with it, so we will have to be really intentional about scheduling this Think Time into our calendar. When we allow ourselves time to let our brains get into a different mode, we can get a whole new set of ideas that we never would have thought of before.
Need support for your ideas and help bringing them into reality? Some great resources are:
Use Facebook for good, and get involved in the conversation and in-depth discussions on specific topics if you want to take all these big ideas and bring them into reality. Get out there, and StartSomething Creative! I go over all of this and more in this video, and if you watch it, you’ll even find out how I almost ended up being an emu farmer in Montana.
Want some help evaluating and managing your ideas?
Find out how on this episode of Single Smart Female with special guest co-host Tina Dietz
Essential Learning Points from this Episode:
Tired of meeting craptastic men?
Want to surprise Jenn and show Single Smart Female your love? XO!!!
Prior to the interview, Mark shares a few personal updates that include the launch of his new traditionally published book Macabre Montreal, and how that book launch interfered with attending the NIGHT OF THE WRITING DEAD event in Pittsburgh that same weekend.
This episode is sponsored by Findaway Voices . . .
. . . and also by the Patrons of the show at www.patreon.com/starkreflections.
All patrons will find, this week, the full audio of the first chapter about PRACTICE from Mark’s forthcoming audiobook of The 7 P’s of Publishing Success.
In the post-interview reflections, Mark talks about how Tina’s info PDF made his job as an interviewer so much easier and he also shares a link to a WORD document template that authors can download and modify so they have something similar to use for their own podcast or radio interviews.
Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and content marketing expert who has been featured on media outlets including ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes. Tina’s podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs. Tina’s company, StartSomething Creative Business Solutions, connects leaders, entrepreneurs and experts with larger audiences, resulting in expanded influence and income. Tina divides her time between the US and Costa Rica, where she’s part of a leadership team building a conscious community called Vista Mundo.
The music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Interested in learning more about audiobooks and howyou can be using audio in your writing career ?