Overwhelm can be paralyzing especially if you are writing a book. But you don’t have to let it stop you. I want to talk to you about a straight line to success that for many of us is achieved through a good mentor or mastermind group.

I still sometimes even to this day find myself in overwhelm mode when I think of all that must be done to keep my publishing and information marketing business moving forward. The feeling of overwhelm doesn’t last very long anymore because I realize that by just focusing on the task at hand along with a little faith will always get me to where I want to go.

As an author you don’t have to know about all the different steps to get your book written, published and marketed, you only have to get started. The universe always has a way of bringing to you what you will need next if you will only get started in the direction toward your goals.

You can’t see the next valley until you have climbed to the top of the first mountain. Once you conquer that first mountain rest assured the view will probably be greater than even imagined but you have to take that first step.

Even today I don’t worry too much about all the things I must learn and prepare for but I do know that I will have the right information and resources come to me when I get to the next step. Although I can most of the times get myself moving consistently along the track I still depend on both a good mentor as well as a mastermind group I meet with weekly.

My mentor and mastermind group have an uncanny way of being able to stand back from my situation and see it for what it really is, and more importantly keep me moving forward. I couldn’t or wouldn’t do it without them and I think many a successful entrepreneur or author would say the same thing.

Don’t let overwhelm defeat you but instead use it as your special sign to get a good mentor or become part of a mastermind group.
 

Overwhelm can be paralyzing especially if you are writing a book. But you don’t have to let it stop you. I want to talk to you about a straight line to success that for many of us is achieved through a good mentor or mastermind group.

I still sometimes even to this day find myself in overwhelm mode when I think of all that must be done to keep my publishing and information marketing business moving forward. The feeling of overwhelm doesn’t last very long anymore because I realize that by just focusing on the task at hand along with a little faith will always get me to where I want to go.

As an author you don’t have to know about all the different steps to get your book written, published and marketed, you only have to get started. The universe always has a way of bringing to you what you will need next if you will only get started in the direction toward your goals.

You can’t see the next valley until you have climbed to the top of the first mountain. Once you conquer that first mountain rest assured the view will probably be greater than even imagined but you have to take that first step.

Even today I don’t worry too much about all the things I must learn and prepare for but I do know that I will have the right information and resources come to me when I get to the next step. Although I can most of the times get myself moving consistently along the track I still depend on both a good mentor as well as a mastermind group I meet with weekly.

My mentor and mastermind group have an uncanny way of being able to stand back from my situation and see it for what it really is, and more importantly keep me moving forward. I couldn’t or wouldn’t do it without them and I think many a successful entrepreneur or author would say the same thing.

Don’t let overwhelm defeat you but instead use it as your special sign to get a good mentor or become part of a mastermind group.
 

I want to talk about how you must not confuse motion with action because one will keep you broke and the other will make you rich.

One of the biggest challenges I have is to keep my clients or students moving in the directions of their dreams. It is always nice when they email me or phone me to let me know they have finished their books and are very excited about the future.

It is a great feeling to know that I have helped in some way. But not all that start their books finish their books and I am constantly trying to increase the percentage of successful authors that take my courses.

One of the things I tell all my students is to check to make sure what they’re doing is not just motion but is actually action.

Motion is usually anything that you do from day to day. For example: If you make coffee every morning before you start to write that is motion. The motion of making coffee. If you turn on your computer and check you email that is usually a motion as well. Organizing your desk and on and on it goes until at the end of the day you have still not taken any action because you are too busy being in motion.
 
So what is action?

Action is a task that you do each day that moves you closer to your goal. In this case we are talking about writing, publishing and marketing your book.

So action would be finding a company to print your book. Then maybe after that it would be to contact a webmaster to make your website. Do you see the difference? Action puts another brick into your overall book business and gets you closer to your goal each day.

Motion is doing things that you do day after day that don’t bring you any closer to your goal. If you don’t take action you will never reach your goal as a successful published author. If you do the same things everyday and expect different results is that not the definition of insanity?

Take action and put at least one more new brick into your business each day and you will be amazed at how fast your life will change.

So many people lead lives of quiet desperation needlessly. If they only knew how very close they are to a miraculous life they would probably take more inspired action.

I remember many years ago when a business associate commented to me after I was telling him the great business idea I had discovered. His response to me was “I have been telling you that for a long time”. I don’t know why but a switch went on in my brain that particular day saying he had in fact been telling me about that very business idea for many years.

Why had I heard him that day but had obviously not heard him the many times before? It is because we can only see what we know and I finally knew what he had been talking to me about for all those years.

You see the universe or higher power which ever you prefer to call it is always supporting us for our higher purpose if we would just be open to it. The universe sends us messages many ways. It may be a friend, business associate, event, book or an article just like this one. We’re getting our lives queued constantly if we would just open up to the new and let go of the old.

I teach a course, How To Write & Publish a Book In 40 Days, many times per year in the Vancouver BC area. It is obvious to me that everyone in the classes I am teaching has been given a nudge by the universe to write a book or else they wouldn’t be there.

That being said why do many of the students get all pumped up at the class but then run out of gas on their book project a short time later? It is because they can’t see themselves as published authors yet. This is a tragedy because finishing their books would make a miraculous difference in their lives.

I truly believe we are put here on this earth to help each other and writing your book is a great way to help many people and in fact in most cases it is our obligation to do so.

I know my life purpose is to help as many people as possible to expand their lives through the process of writing their book. Many of my students do finish their books within a few months of the course and I am grateful for that.

Others it may be years later when someone says to them after they are beaming at the miraculous life changes that have come to them after writing their books. I said to you years ago that you should write a book.

Hear me now this very day that you can write and publish your own book and you will leave your life of mediocrity for a life of change and miracles. Can you hear me?

Making money from royalties for most authors is not a very financially rewarding career.
If you don’t start to make money with your book it can get pretty lonely. This is where too many authors go wrong.

Don’t let that last statement depress you because your chance of making money with your book if you package and sell the information from your book in different ways brings up your odds of financial success exponentially. If you break your book into CD’s Seminars, DVD’s Consulting and a number of other ways that many of us like to consume information then you can turn a not so profitable book into a cash generating machine.

I always take a poll in the classes that I teach to see how many read books. Obviously in my classes most are book readers. Then I ask how many buy Audio CD’s? Still quit a number put up their hands. Next it is seminars and a number of hands go up as well. Then of course I ask how many take classes and everyone has to put up their hand for that.

I then use the example that we have 25 people in this class who all paid $59.00 for a 3 hour class. This quickly calculates out to $1,475.00 for 3 hours work which doesn’t even count other moneys that may come from coaching, consulting and other information I could sell the students.

I remind them at this point that this is mostly the information in my book sold to them in different ways of consumption. It would take quit a few books at even a $2.00 per book royalty to bring in the same amount of money from the class and other back end products I may sell.

They quickly see what I am talking about. My students are always a good example of how insatiable we can be for getting more and more good information. Many of them, myself included spend thousands of dollars per year and will continue doing so.

Even after you give your readers or clients every bit of information you have they will still want more and that is why you will always be in demand. As Martha Stewart says “It’s a beautiful thing”

One of the best things I like about coaching my students is how pumped up I get teaching the exciting opportunities we can all have by writing and publishing our own books.

Why do I get so pumped? Because every time I teach a call like the one we had this past Tuesday on continuity programs I get more excited hearing myself talk about all the great  opportunities we all have with our books.

Now I know many of you reading this article are no where near ready to retire yet and in fact one of the reasons I wrote my book with my coauthor Jeff McCallum is the fact that I never want to retire. So why the retirement talk?

Because in my last coaching call I gave many examples of how you can monetize your books information into having your customers paying you a monthly fee without having to do monthly work. So if you are getting money monthly for work you have done in the past isn’t that just like having a retirement income? You bet it is.

One student saw how easy it would be to get 100 people from her list to pay a monthly fee of $47.00 per month by setting up three, one hour support group tele calls for the information she has written about in her soon to be released book. Do the math! That’s $4,700.00 per month for three hours work.

What if she decides to set up four groups like this and maybe one is a little more expensive at $97.00 per month? Three groups bringing in $4,700.00 per month and the last one bringing in $9,700.00 per month makes a total of $23,800.00 per month and she would still only be working by telephone a total of 4 hours per week.

We talked about many of the possible ways of  having your customers opt in to a monthly continuity plan all relating to the information in your book including:

Newsletters
Membership sites
Coaching programs
Consulting
Certifications sites
Interview website

Actually when we started brainstorming the issue they realized it was endless and could be done with pretty well any niche or topic.

Does it take a little bit of set up work? Yes but with the right help even that is not a big issue. There is no better return on investment in anything else on this planet as writing & publishing your own book and that continues to make me jump out of bed each and every morning.
 

I know you are reading this blog title and thinking about most of the authors you know of are starving and I am way off base with this one.

In my second life I am in the fire and flood restoration business which is considered to be  part of the construction industry. Our industry in North America has an average net profit of 4.5%. To me that is a tragedy and even borders on pathetic and is probably not worth waking up for each morning.

Luckily my companies are not in the 4.5% profit margin group. In fact I learned a long time ago how to run a profitable fire and flood restoration business. I educated myself and we run net profits anywhere from 30 to 50 % each month. Now that is worth waking up for.

Why am I telling you all this? Because now that I am also an author and sell my information in a variety of different formats such as books, CD’s, DVD’s, Seminars, coaching and a number of other ways I am still in awe of how truly profitable being an author and information marketer is. In fact if you market your information properly you can very often make 90% and more net profit margins.

I am grateful and amazed every day about what an exciting opportunity it is to be an author and information marketer in today’s business world. If you are in this exciting business it is only going to get better over the next several decades.

I get more jazzed and excited each day when a customer buys a DVD set that I made once and now sell over and over again for profit margins that are not made by any other industry on earth. How cool is that?

Your wealth or money can come and go but if you have valuable information to sell you will inevitably be rich in very short order. It is specialized knowledge and information that is and will be the most valuable asset to have for a long time to come.
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Whether you are an employee, business owner or want to make your book your main business being and author and information marketer is the best gig on earth. Don’t wait make it happen now!
 

Having taught so many would be authors how to write and publish their book has really given me a keen sense of how faith plays out in our lives. With 81% of people in North America saying they want to write a book why is it that so few actually do?

Lets face it if you are coming to my class it is probably a given that you are more serious about completing your book than the rest of the population. With that being said why do I have so many students that come to my classes with an almost completed book but they still have not reached the finish line?

In fact I have had several students that say they have been writing their book since the late 1960’s and still aren’t to the finish line. What up with that? What’s up is always the same answer I get from every student and that is when they are ready to pull the trigger and shoot their book into the published world they loose faith.

They loose faith that what they have written is good enough and worthy of their reading audience. They loose faith that they really can be a published author and they loose faith that they themselves are good enough.

Here they are standing at the door to ‘Published Author’ and they loose faith. So who is the guard standing at the door stopping them from going through? It is their worst enemy and it is the enemy that has stopped them from enjoying a more full and successful life.

That enemy is their own mind working against themselves. This is the same mind that might even encourage a friend or even a total stranger to go for it but when it comes to them they feel they are not worthy and loose faith. So close and yet so far because nothing happens until that book is out there for people to read.

The tragedy of this thinking is that probably 90% of the people who would read their book will be much more supportive and kinder to the would be author then they are to themselves. How ironic!

This reminds me of the fly that continues to fly up against the closed window looking for freedom until death. Had the fly moved over 6 inches to the open door the fly would have had total freedom to live out its life. It is the same story with the would be author. If they could just have the faith to let their own mind go they would see the miraculous results that being a published author can bring to their lives and the lives of their readers.

If there is one big piece of advice I can give these authors on writing a book it is this. To just let it go and have faith. Have faith in yourself and have faith in your readers and you will join the ranks of published author and I promise you your world will change.

The fall season night school classes have started and I am busy teaching lots of eager new authors how to write and publish their own books. I get so pumped about letting my students know the opportunities they have in their lives by becoming a published author. Many have already been working on their books and some for several years.

When I ask why they have been working so long on their books and haven’t gotten them out yet it always comes down to the same answer. Although it’s usually a convoluted answer the answer is they just don’t think their book is good enough to publish. It is not perfect yet so they just keep stalling and tell themselves as long as they’re still writing the dream is still on the way.

But you see here is the big point for all us would be authors to ponder. Your book will never be perfect because there is no such thing as a perfect book. A mediocre published book will always outsell a book that never gets published because the author is waiting for perfection.

Of course we want a well written book with good content but it is not the most important thing you need to be a published author. You need to finish it and get over yourself. Just say enough is enough and get the book published and out into the world. Nothing is going to happen to you as an author until your book is published because until it’s published you are just another wanna be author.

If writing the perfect book was the criteria for being a published author we would all have nothing to read. Noting bad is going to happen to you if your book is not perfect. I will tell you this. If I can write a best selling book then anyone can.

You are going to get good and bad comments whether or not your book is the best written book in history so you may as well get used to it. As a matter of fact, the very few derogatory comments you may get are usually from a people who has never written a book and the nice ones are from most of the rest of the population and often from authors.

So I say as a teacher and author to all my students to just get your book out there and watch your world change.

Writing, publishing and making money with your own book is just like any other business. You will find 5% of businesses, are making money and the other 95% are struggling financially. Being an author is no different than being in business for yourself and most authors don’t want to except this so they remain broke.

Poor authors think it is all about the writing and Rich authors know its all about the marketing. You could have written the best book ever but if you don’t know how to market it you will probably stay fairly broke. On the other hand a mediocre book that is properly marketed could make you a very rich person.

So lesson one as an author is to accept the fact that you are first a marketer and then an author if you truly want to make a lot of money by writing and publishing your own book. That’s good news for authors because marketing your own book is easy to do if you just take the time to learn how.

Writing and self publishing today can be a financial bonanza and there is much help to encourage would be authors how to make a lot of money writing their books. If you are like 81% of the population who say they want to write their own book there has never been a better time in history to prosper as an author.

There are many books available on the internet as well as book stores that will show you how to write your book in as little as a month or even less and I am talking about only an hour a days work. Self publishing your book has also been made much easier as well because of technology.

Not too many years back you had to pay a large some of money to get 2000 books printed by a printer just so you could get a decent per book price. Now with desk top publishing and new technology you can print one book at a time.

One book I highly recommend that is full of good information is ‘From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur’ by Stephanie Chandler
http://tinyurl.com/2ozkwq