Why Writers are Broke, Sad, and Resentful

why is almost every writer in the world broke in 2024 and this is such a touchy topic for so many people out there because writers as a collective have more limiting beliefs than any other artistic group out there it is actually sad and here on right conscious we believe that literary Works can kick off a literary Renaissance and I would never promote or tell anyone to write hacky science fiction fantasy book talk world romance Thrillers or anything like that because only transformative Works can create Ed an educational and spiritual awakening that can activate the world

and as writers we have a unique opportunity that filmmakers and visual artists and people into politics or whatever else don't have because books cut deep but what what has happened to us because this may be shocking to some people but money is the primary social resource it has no inherent value on its own but if you are writing transformative and valuable works then the sky is the limit with how much money you can make and let's start with the main limiting belief out there about making money from books in 20124 in a literary way and

that is that out there in the world there are a bunch of brain rotting sheeple and NPCs that don't care about reading anymore and don't care about deep things but that is 100% false because we do live in a postliterate world where most people don't use the reading skills they acquired when they are younger and yes people are becoming less intelligent happy and healthy every single year but for instance there is a YouTuber out there named Wendy goon and he made a video on Blood Meridian and because of that video tens of thousands if not

over a hundred thousand people who probably don't read very often or aren't that literary of readers picked up Blood Meridian and got through it I've talked to a ton of them and it was hard but they pushed through it because they were Prime to and had a burning desire to finish it and so most likely what you are writing right now your literary work is not as complicated and as convoluted as Blood Meridian when infinite Jess came out in the 1990s countless people who weren't strong readers who had never picked up a postmodernist work before

finished Infinite Jest and let me go out on a limb here and get pmic and give you guys a real hot take I have read a ton of writing online I have seen a ton of amateur writing but I have never seen someone who is actually a great writer who is willing to Market themselves and put themselves out there who hasn't attained success and generated thousands of readers across three or five years I've never seen it it actually doesn't exist because we love to hold on to the kofka what about Emily Dickinson what about all

the Misunderstood writers in 2024 there are countless people who will read your work there are people people who will understand you you don't have to just impress the oligarchs of the publishing houses anymore you can impress individual people who will understand what's going on and if you are good enough you will Spike their interest and so a lot of the negativity in the writing community and here we go is coming from crappy authors who haven't put the time in who haven't actually had Transcendent experiences and are writing anything transformative and when they don't have success

when no one cares about their work when and and when they are even unwilling to even talk or promote their work and they just post it online or send it to some random publishing house then they get all Mew Mew and then create a bubble of negativity for everyone else and priming is more important I think than any of you guys realize because I don't know where I read this but I've told this before told some of you guys this before on the channel but there was a study where people would walk up to individuals

at a coffee shop and say hey if you listen to my story for 1 minute I will give you 20 and so obviously they had some people say yes and so this one minute sto story had some very happy elements and some very sad elements and then around 20 minutes later someone would walk up to that same person and say hey can you hold my coffee really fast and then they would hand them A coffee and they would say hey I saw that guy talking to you earlier he gave me $20 too what did he

tell you a story about and people who were given a hot coffee overwhelmingly talked about the more positive elements and the and people who received a cold coffee talked more about the sad elements First Impressions priming matters a ton and so when authors in 2024 enter the game and they are new and maybe they are developing their skills when all they hear is that this is all [ __ ] and no one cares they are going to be inherently lazy they are going to create limiting beliefs and become resentful and mad and embody some of

the mentalities I'm about to talk about right now and so there are two core mentalities that make writers lazy and the first one is a very anti- capitalist mindset because there are WR writers out there excuse me who believe that they are capturing a piece of the Transcendent ideal and this little fragment will be this little fragment of their story will be corrupted if it has anything to do with money and they don't have a care in the world about success or people's opinion or money they are just going to leave this here and go

off into the night which is fine but what makes me laugh about those people is that they have to [ __ ] tell us that they are doing that if they were actually living that out okay post your story do your thing I don't care about you but many of us have trauma surrounding money because when you look at a lot of movies when you look at the media and and the evil billionaires and the PE and in and in movies and in stories who are the evil people they are the ones with money and

and of course that comes from a very realistic scenario and archetype that has been played out all throughout history but applying that that Arch type and applying that mindset to to your transformative work that can create social value happiness and Enlightenment out in the world is absolutely insane you should be getting paid for your work or your work should be leading you to some paid position where people are supporting you and so this anti- capitalistic mindset that so many people bring into the game has ruined many countless or countless talents out in the writing world

and if you spend time on Reddit or Discord or or online which a lot of writers do if you are a logic bro then is very easy to get sucked up into this mentality because obviously capitalism sucks obviously communism sucks obviously the exploitation of workers and people in the modern-day era by whatever economic system because we haven't transcended the concept of the GDP being our God sucks and I love when I mention economics people go oh this guy doesn't understand economics he's a poet they don't understand guys do you want me to go on a

15minute economic lecture right now would that make sense in a video that my dad was a professor of Economics my entire life he still teaches economics though reductive Logic Brewing is insane but back to the second mentality so we have the anti- capitalist Bros whose work can't be corrupted then we have the real problem we have the idolizes of the golden age of literature because yes we would all love to be be able to sit down write our book you know publish our book and send it off and make a million dollars like Ernest Hemingway

did and everyone else did back in the day we would love if slush piles existed but the reason slush piles can't exist anymore is that people don't take their work seriously everybody wants to be a writer now everybody wants to be an artist but no one wants to put in the work and no one wants to transform themselves F first so they can re release transformative literature I worked at a literary magazine we would get I mean it was a bigger one we would get for an issue for like poetry submissions we would get 5

to 600 poems and guys maybe 10 to 15 would be passable the other 550 were absolute [ __ ] but if you ask those people about being a writer they'd be like yeah I'm I'm a writer and so that was just at a literary magazine that would pay you $50 for your poem how many novels and things does would random house or penguin get if they had an open slush pile still and so all of us want that but just like before the printing press and before paperbacks became a big thing at the start of

the 20th century not many people could be authors there is a new situation for literary authors in 2024 and we could either complain which which which is what everyone does because we are moving out of the golden age or we could figure it out because the number one thing I hear from people and I would say this is actually the number one reason why people are broke is this line right here and I'm taking the mic off to show you guys this one has to be over overd dramatized other want to promote my work oh

my God my work is so I can't do I'm an introvert mommy doesn't like me oh my God promote your work you promoting your work is talking about your work in a confident way that is clear and coherent and tells people that it's transformative no one gives a [ __ ] about your random novel that is you know some convoluted mess that maybe has this little p this much of transformation in it just because that is an interest that you like from an when you were a 12-year-old boy guess what everyone I love super campy

and Niche things that have no transformative power but I would never use my artistic talent and time to shove it down someone's [ __ ] throat I would I respect myself more to do that and then if I tried to do that and no one cared and I I mean it's crazy you guys so many people are not using their talents and that means yes that you are going to have to transform yourself that means yes that you are going to have to become a different human being that means yes over the next 3 to

10 years you are going to have to get over your fake anxiety your fake ADHD your fake [ __ ] excuses for every single reason that you can't understand that when one suffers we all suffer and when you understand that all your petty excuses don't matter and all that matters is the art and the ideal fragment of an experience that you are going to put out in the world because it actually matters and you matter and it's so easy to talk about it once you you understand that but the only way you can get there

and this is now we're getting in the mind-blowing stuff now we're getting into the really sketchy territory you should turn this off now because you understand that concept when you have a Transcendent experience and when you have a Transcendent experience you're writing automatically has a Quantum Leap all the people who I said are crappy writers who don't write anything who I just look at I'm like Jesus Christ what is happening here every single one of them hasn't tapped into something deeper yet all of them haven't tapped into something outside of themselves yet and when you

do that two different things are going to happen you will either become a Hermit stop complaining not worry about any of us and any of this anymore and go off into the world or you are going to have the confidence and the skills to overcome anything and adapt to the situation that writers need to put themselves in to be successful in 2024 and being successful as an author is bigger than making money it's about transforming people's lives but if someone transforms your life of course you're going to give them money I mean people are cheap

as hell now any you know and that's a whole other story but there hasn't been one person since the start of the bartering system that if they had something that could change your life whether it was a technology a mindset or whatever that wasn't able to capitalize that at least a little bit and if they were confident in themselves and it actually was helpful to society most of the time it worked out well some of the times they got killed but everyone also and here's another thing everyone most writers are broke in 2024 because most

writers think that they are the outlier well I have ADHD it's no I I can't do that no I no it's me no it's not you you are not the outlier Jesus Christ you are not special you are just like the rest of us and that is step one taking personal responsibility for where you are at and your successes or your failures if no nobody cares about your writing right now if you think you've done everything then it is 100% your fault you somewhere along the way went wrong with what you were doing I can

look almost at any single writer substack and in 30 seconds tell you absolutely why no one cares about their writing I don't have to go that deep I can it's like that and that may sound harsh that may sound brutal but there is an aura and there is something when it's there and when it's worked on and when it's cultivated that I can sense and this isn't just in the genres that I like I'm on substack all the time and I see people's profiles who are doing some crazy thing I've never heard of before or

don't care about I'm like oh yep they got it but if you don't have it and you don't know that you don't have it then you are just really blind then you really need to work on yourself and really work I mean that's a whole other podcast that is like a personal development course and seminar type stuff but most of the time it comes from selfishness it comes from a reluctance to get in the Tolan mindset to get into a mindset that this that this is bigger than you because when you say I don't want

to promote that means that you are offsetting the responsibility on agents publishing houses journals the Amazon algorithm booktubers to promote your work citizens social media um places where you can advertise that's what you are doing when you say that and writers are the biggest group of complainers and [ __ ] that I've ever known I had a friend in University and he wanted to be a rapper he was like you know I'm going to sit and do this and he practiced his skill he made it objectively pretty good but then he was like I don't

have the money for this I want like an A A Newman microphone that's like $1,500 I want to get some features from like famous rappers and those are going to cost like $10,000 each and guess what guys I mean this is going to sound bad but he didn't s a complain oh no one cares no know the SoundCloud era is over he didn't say that he went out and did illegal activities and in 6 months had $50,000 had studio time had features from everybody made his dream a reality and he's now moved on to other

things but he can look back at his life and say that I made good rap songs I performed at concerts and got people to come out and he sold Merchant and he was just moving he activated himself he didn't say that this is wrong or he didn't care about the law he didn't care about anything he made his dream a reality almost every other group of artists in the world knows that people move to Los Angeles in New York like my boy David Sanchez shout out to him the good MD he's over on substack right

now he writes some good he has some good writing but he's also a very good comic and he was telling me today to fuel his comedy career he's getting out of Arizona and he's moving to New York City how many of you guys have moved somewhere for your writing career people do it all the time in every other field I mean even though I trash on MFA programs all the time how many of you guys got have gotten into MFA programs because there is a buffer zone if you are being serious about writing you know

selling books is very hard you know if you want to make $100,000 a year you're going to have to sell you know if it's self-published 20,000 books a year and if it's traditionally published like 40,000 books a year and those are pretty big numbers but there is teaching writing in college there is fellowship there are Fellowship opportunities there are all the different things that you can do online you could be doing live readings you could be helping people oneon-one there are countless ways to make money and cruise as an author in 2024 and most people

who tell me that they want to be a writer aren't aren't even pursuing any of those we literally do nothing we are lazy and I understand that there is this once again this priming idea that most writers are introverts and I 100% don't buy that because 99% of the authors behind me on that bookshelf were not introverts they had a very good social life they had wives or multiple lives they weren't in cells they were out in the world they go out and have tea and drink at night with people they have friends most writers

out there who call themselves writers or call themselves introverts once again are just scared and that's a whole other video of why they are scared and what they are scared of but making people care which is the job of a writer a job the job of an artist the job of someone who is trying to make money from their art making people care and it's a really hard thing to do you know cha sun and over in the UFC says that all the time that making people care about you as a fighter is the most

difficult thing in the world and most Fighters out there you know there are countless Fighters and countless boxers who have been absolute goats but because they have refused to Market themselves they don't make a lot of money they are forgotten and eventually they kind of are out of the conversation of the goat you know one of the reasons that Jon Jones is kind of in the conversation of being the goat is that you know he cheated on his wife he did steroids he beat his wife he hit a pregnant lady with a car he did

um he hit under a UFC octagon to not get tested I mean all of those things add to the aura even if they're all negative he's still in the conversation but someone like Demetrius Johnson who has maybe a more formidable record than he does no one cares about him because he never really did anything with his time in the spotlight and it sucks and obviously you guys don't need to go full Conor McGregor but it is something to think about that making people care is an active thing and it requires thought and there are outliers

there are people who can just post their work or they just come into the UFC and people just love them for whatever reason but most likely that is not you and so let's talk about it so the first excuse I always hear people people say is I'm an introvert ER who cares second promoting and selling my art ruins it we already talked about that marketing makes me feel icky I'm not a Salesman then don't sell anyone guys talking about your work talking about other people's work being in the writing and reading Community doesn't have to

be salesy at all guys right now I could promote my substack and my writing school and probably get someone to join just like this hey you guys if you guys want access to 50 or 60 hours of content that I've put out that you can here including some including an unreleased interview by corat McCarthy and a a ton of other cool stuff and you guys want to support me a broke teacher who is trying to make his writing dream happen then go join me on my suback but if you don't have any money I still

want to help you and I want you to go join my free writing school which is the best free writing school and the most active free writing school on the internet that didn't feel icky at all you guys that that feels like a fair pitch I'm offering some paid stuff I'm offering some free stuff everybody wins the same could be with my writing hey if you guys want to go buy my book desert Orphus which isn't out yet but is about to be out very soon head over to Amazon I really put a lot of

time into infusing Greek mythology into desert poetry I'm really proud of it but if you guys don't want to or if you guys want to see a preview of my work you guys can go over to substack where I have a bunch of poems posted and if you subscribe over there over the course of the next three or 4 years I will probably post a poetry books worth of free content over there and so thank you for the support and if not thank you for watching in that's all it is you guys it's not that

hard and going back to my previous point a lot of people feel icky about their work because they don't believe in it guys for $10 a month my substack I feel is a pretty damn good deal maybe you don't but I feel like it's a good deal for all the book clubs but what's funny is that back in May I wasn't doing the book clubs yet and the office hours and a bunch of other stuff and I was sitting there I was like why are people paying $5 a month like is this worth it and

I was sitting there I was like hm and sometimes I'd feel weird when I'd be talking about it I'd be like is there enough so then I made a huge effort to make it worth you know way worth it and so the same could be said about your writing but the best part is that is that as a young writer as a new writer online that you shouldn't feel icky if your work is free even if you don't like your work or it isn't great if you say hey if you like fantasy uh fantasy books

about dragons I posted my whole novel for free over on substack that should be so easy to say even if it sucks even if you dude the worst that can happen is no one reads it or people are like oh I don't really like that and this may sound bad but anyone that goes to your page and gives you a chance is good it's very rare that you make such a bad impression that no one will come check out your stuff again if the opportunity presents itself there are a lot of you guys out there

that maybe saw one of my videos and you had to watch multiple of them to like be like oh I like Ian or I'm going to subscribe to the channel I read something that like on average to get someone to go from like your free content to like a $5 patreon they have to consume like 40 videos or something or 40 blog posts like that's an insane number and so people aren't going to automatically like you and maybe if you screw up your reputation isn't going to be gone forever especially if it's free if you

charge someone $20 for a book and it sucks then people are going to hate you all right next one of my favorite excuses is I'm ugly and if you are a guy just grow a beard it will cover half of your face and this one is basically obsolete now because there have been countless people on YouTube or in the podcasting world who have had worse voices of you than you or looked way worse than you could ever look and have been successful and once again if you have a Transcendent Mission if you are connected to

your Divine Purpose then you won't care what you look like and I personally like people like I watch a couple YouTubers and a couple booktubers and they have bad cameras they have terrible audio they look grubby and it makes me want to support them more I'm like yeah bro like you're doing it I don't this is the literary Renaissance like you are out here doing content and that's I honestly really appreciate that about the book world is that there's like 70-year-old retired dudes just like on their iPhone 6 just talking into it and they have

to press it and to start and stop they don't edit anything like it's really cool the next excuse is I don't have people skills and this is something that you can improve like one of my favorite recommendations for people who don't think they have people skills is to go take an improv comedy course and this may seem like the worst idea but I I've known countless people who have changed their lives by just taking one improv comedy course they have met friends they have gained a ton of confidence but most of you guys won't do

that but there are literally books like there's a random book by Vanessa van Edwards called Captivate the science of succeeding with people that will teach you how to succeed with people that will teach you guys how to be more likable because there are so many authors and so many people also who are just unlikable people like we've all confronted them before maybe you you are one of those people but out in the world you don't have to be unlikable it's actually really hard to create enemies and make people hate you out in the world and

you don't have to be an NPC you just have to be able to Prime people and bring a good energy and have a positive spin on most things and just not be an [ __ ] and nine out of 10 people online and in the world will like you and if you don't know how to solve that like I said there are countless books that you can read you read toll sto you read war in peace but it may seem hacky but if you are Autistic or if you are just like really bad socially there

are things that you can learn and start to implement and the best part about it is is that the entire world is your playground for instance when I read this Captivate book it taught me actually a lot about people's facial expressions and their emotions and I actually had wrong ideas about people's reactions and that has actually changed a lot about how I react to people because sometimes I would think someone was surprised or angry but they were just like confused or something else and me talking to you right now has been a lifelong project I

was the dude back in high school and in college who would just ramble and not make sense and like jump from point to point with no connection and I could have stayed there and said no one understands me and been bitter and resentful and I was for a while or I could fix that like I remember at like my peak of like social anxiety and like introvertedness because I was an introvert for years I was pretty extroverted in high school but then I broke away when was was a Hermit out in the desert for years

and I remember coming back into society one time and I was at this like party that my sister invited me to and there was this girl and she was this woman and she was like oh you were a writer and she was trying to flirt with me and I was like I don't remember what I said but I said something and then I said right after that I was like oh that was a plural Progressive use of that that was really cool and she looked at me and she's like are you okay and I remember

being like Oh my God I'm really lost out here in the writing world right now but that's how a lot of people are but that doesn't have to be your reality forever I'm a better writer than I was now than I was back then I am more well read and I am also better with people it doesn't have to be this separate thing another one people hate is I want to hide behind a pen name and this is the outlier favorite I talk to those 120 people excuse me I haven't mentioned this yet but over

on my free writing school I over the past month have taught to a 120 people for free from anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes it was something that I wanted to do to give back back to the community and help people and just talk to people about their life their writing and give them any advice that I could and it was also so I could learn more about the play of the modern author but I heard countless people give me the most [ __ ] excuses ever for having to use a pen name and using

a pen name is okay like if you have a crazy name but what I mean by a pen name is anonymous Anon anonymously hiding behind your work which I think is the biggest coward move that you can ever do there cannot be a literary Renaissance and I don't think that you can really be a part of it if you are going to hide behind your work because people would be like I live in a small town in Nebraska with you know 30,000 people and I have sex scenes in my novel and people are religious and

like what if they care and I have kids in school and I'm like first of all you are going to assume that people are actually going to read your work and care which they aren't and you also are not a political person you are someone who is doing a piece of art and if the people in your town react to you doing an artistic piece of writing that has a steamy sex scene in it but otherwise is very literary then you live in a really [ __ ] dumb place and you need to get out

right now because you are living in a trapped world but I can tell you having gone to school in Utah and be and having been a very extroverted and crazy individual that wasn't afraid to scream at people at least back then to troll them I would do the most insane things you guys I would wear provocative t-shirts I would walk up to people people and criticize their religion and make them uncomfortable just you know as a way to create change that's what my crazy head that's what my crazy mind thought back in the day but

there were no social consequences I was known on my campus at Utah State University by a ton of different people like I would walk up to people and be like hey what's your name they'd be like Jean I'm like I'm Ian they're like I know I'm like what do you mean you know zero social consequences in one of the most lockdown universities in the country no one cared and I would hang out with people who were adults and doing crazy arti IC stuff and there were zero social consequences for them because if your kids get

bullied in school then they'll know who the jerks are and there'll be other people who are going to accept them because they know those other people are crazy and like I said if you're living in that extreme of a scenario then you need to leave and then the other outli outlier scenarios are all you know pretty dumb too like unless your life is at risk literally at risk that if you write a book someone is going to come and kill you which is insane and 100% unrealistic and improbable then there is no reason to have

a pen name if you are working for the government and they are going to fire you because of what you were writing then you need to go get a new job and most people overreact about how their job is going to react if you are that worried you can literally go and ask your boss and they and they will be like I don't care but the pen name stuff is a losing battle when people get their mind on this they can't get off of it but how are you going to promote how are you going

to make people believe in you if they don't even know who you are so next we have the classic I have social anxiety and and guys I have been a teacher for 7 years now and 7 years ago I don't think I remember any of my kids having social anxiety nobody talked about it that was non-existent everybody got up and did presentations everybody got up and did debates I can no longer do presentations and debates because 30% of the class has an excuse because they have social anxiety and it's the same with adults everyone as

adults had to make it work but now for whatever reason we have these built in mechanisms and excuses and there are people who are introverts don't get me wrong I know a lot of them like I am very close to someone and I've known him my basically my entire life since we were 13 years old and he is 100% a socially anxious introvert but when push comes to shove he will get up and do what needs to be done I have seen him kill and do really well under very big duress in social situations but

all social situations are as I talked about in the people skills section it's a challenge and some people are going to start and be very bad maybe you are a 300 lb man who is trying to run a marathon so it's going to be really hard for you to be able to accomplish that goal as there are other people who are very thin and have genetic stamina who can just do it very easily but when you look at it over a 5 to 10 year period it is something that you can overcome and if you

have complex PTSD or something like that then those are also things that you can solve over time these aren't overnight Solutions but if you are going to take your work seriously then I don't see that there is any excuse unless you are the outlier that over a period of time you cannot overcome your social anxiety tell me if I'm wrong right now if you are listening to this and you have such bad social anxiety that you can't do anything because you have to remember and let me let me blow your mind with this that if

you work 40 hours a a week and sleep eight hours a night you will still have 70 hours a week left to free time and let's cut 30 of those hours out because of family or other stuff so you have 40 hours a week left and let's cut out another 20 hours for your other [ __ ] excuse so you have 20 hours of free time left a week and so I want you to retire from writing and so 20 * 50 and that's the weeks of the Year giving you two weeks off is 1,000

hours so over the course of 5 years that's 5,000 hours and so over the course of 5,000 hours could you get over your social anxiety if you did everything you could and the answer is yes and I'm telling you right now that if you want to be a part of the literary Renaissance then you are going to have to get over your social anxiety and I would say it would be better for your writing and you would be a better writer in the long run not just in terms of success but actually on the page

writing if you got over your social anxiety and so spending 5 years if that's how long it takes and if you have no other time to get over that would be not just an investment in your writing but in your own life and this gets into my next excuse that a lot of people say I'd rather spend my time writing that corat McCarthy didn't have to do this but cormet McCarthy wasted a lot of time you guys corat McCarthy yes didn't have to promote his work but he applied for fellowships he got into science he

got into math he got into all these different things and so instead you can communicate and build a relationship with your audience because that's something that's missing from this whole equation that my life has been enriched by all of you guys like guys I have made friends that are going to be with me till the day that I die there I have met people in this community from my YouTube channel that I am right r or die for like right now like they could show up at my house and say they murdered someone and I'm

harboring them and figuring out the next move to get rid of them and move on to a safer place if I just said I'm just going to focus on my writing I wouldn't have that I wouldn't have countless people who I could hit up if I'm having a hard time right now it is 7:00 at night I could find at least 15 people to hang out with just in my Subs subscribers alone that live in Arizona if I just wanted to go out and have a good time or talk about writing drink espresso even though

I don't drink caffeine and just rage out over corat McCarthy that's liberating that that is like the old writers that is like like a movement if we're going to create a literary Renaissance it is a movement and even though we're independent and we don't have a Manifesto and stuff like that coming together is a big deal and I wish I had more money you know I'm a broke teacher right now but one day I'm going to fly around the world and meet up with people who I have become great friends with because of the community

that I've built and I want you to have that same thing I want you to have people that believe in you and love you and so when you say I'd rather spend my time writing it's all about you and you will have that time in the future and that's what's great great about all this that if you put the time in now guys my you know I feel that if I do this for another decade that I will have achieved the success in on my YouTube channel my substack and in my like Book Sales that

I could spend a lot of my time writing and just do a lot of Maintenance and you know spend a lot of time with my family and really just focus on writing I could put in the work or excuse me I am putting in the work and that is going to be my reality but at the end of that Journey I'm going to have so many people and have so many systems in place that make videos and writing are going to be so easy here's one I like that art should be free that making a

book or writing things and doing that is inherently evil and I I feel this you know I used to be friends with this crazy drug dealer from Detroit who thought he was going to be the next UFC light heavyweight heavyweight champion when I was doing Jiu-Jitsu and MMA in Las Vegas and that's what he said about yoga he heard that I was a yoga teacher and he was like dude why would you charge for that and that kind of shook me up a little bit even though I didn't believe him it was one of those

things I was like yeah that's kind of true but what's great about substack in these places is that you could release a bunch of free stuff and eventually just turn on your monetization op options and people will subscribe to you what blew my mind you guys is that I'm planning at some point to launch like a premium writing school I don't know when that's going to happen but it's mostly going to be stuff like this like all the stuff I've learned about book and whatnot and it's going to be more like you know how to

grow your audience stuff at like a very deep level and so I have that up and then I just put a random price I put like 770 $70 a month I and I was like no one's and I put on the page do not subscribe I don't have an offer ready yet I don't know what I'm offering I've had three people give me $70 and subscribe and then I just messag them I'm like hey why did you subscribe and they're like I don't know I just really love yourself and then I'm like okay well what

can what service can I provide you for your $70 like let's work out a win-win scenario I have a lot of people who subscribe to me on my substock and they don't listen to any of the podcasts they don't care about my writing they just want to support me like they just are motivated by me or support my journey and they just want to give me $10 a month and so you can have a pretty detached non- salesy mentality in this community if you are providing a ton of value for people with your fiction and

your poetry honestly I subscribe and pay people on substack just because I like them sometimes a lot of the time I don't read their stuff because some of them are dogs and release stuff all the time the next excuse is the most sad of all these and it's the I don't know how excuse like this one is so dumb that you have guys like me you I have a whole free course that is I think five or six hours long over on my free writing school that tells you how to build your audience step by

step no matter where you are in the world or what language you speak but don't listen to me there are countless of countless other people who can give you all of that advice and so that I don't know how excuse is mindboggling to me but if you don't know how go on substack right now create a publication and post your entire backlog post anything you've ever ridden before add some cool titles titles add some cool cover art and start there the next one is a hard one and I totally toally resonate with this and that

is that social media is dumb and guys if you go look at my Instagram page and my Twitter page I have done nothing to optimize it I think on Instagram I have like 700 followers and all of them have just come from people from the YouTube channel I don't think I've gained one organic follower on Instagram or Twitter and in a past life I used to I still do but I used to have a yoga Instagram page that had 15,000 followers back in like 2016 and can you imagine if I kept growing that what that

would look like today but I was so fed up with like the superficiality in yoga on Instagram back then I just deleted it I hate social media but what's so cool about YouTube and substack and the book community and the substack community and the Instagram Community is pretty cool is that they are generally very supportive of you I I actually have only received a couple negative comments on sub substack my entire time there YouTube is a little bit different but in general posting videos on YouTube or posting a podcast or posting blogs or your work

over on substack it doesn't really feel like social media and what's great is I have another video on this is that Instagram and Tik Tok are terrible places to find readers if you are a literary writer it's almost impossible it's like just not worth it X can be somewhat good but in general it's also really terrible conversion rates and so the way that you are going to get readers if you're going to be doing social media is through long form content whether in podcast or on YouTube or you know writing long form content on substack

that's it and so I don't think that many of you guys think that's done because you're actually watching me do this right now you don't hopefully feel that this video is like brain rot and YouTube makes the process very easy to kind of avoid all the crap like if I want to post on Instagram I got to log on to Instagram and then see a reel of something interesting I could get sucked into the messages but on YouTube I could just go straight to the page where I upload upload put on a thumbnail put on

a description and I'm out of there same with podcasting and on substack and so the medium is the message and I have a lot of problems with YouTube but I still think that it is a very decent platform for sharing information out in out in the world I have no problem with podcast and I have no problem with substack and I think podcasting and substack which also host podcast for free is a beautiful medium and so I've talked about this before but really fast the playbook for writers in 2024 is not selling book copies that

is the long game 5 to 10 years that will be how you make income but the best way to make money as a writer is to get and to become a full-time writer is to get 1,000 people to pay you $5 a month which will equal $60,000 a month on substack and it's very easy to find people to pay you $5 a month because they like you and they want to support you and you can build that one by one or very slowly over time but it's very hard to sell literary fiction books and make

that your entire goal and so the play in 2024 is that you are going to have to meet people and you don't have to be social there is a super cool writer over on my substack she's a subscriber but her name is I think her name is Misty Misty Violet and she doesn't like promoting but she has done a great job of communicating with other people and getting people interested in her work and I personally think that her poetry is very good and I think over the course of time even though she's not going to

post on YouTube or ever do a podcast I think that she will get to that 1,000 paid subscribers if she puts in the effort that she's putting in over the next 5 years I can't see how she doesn't do it and what's great about that is that when someone subscribes to you and continuing to give them value they will continue to basically buy a book because most of the time if you self-publish you get about $5 a book and if you are traditionally published you get anywhere from $1 to $2 per book sale but every

single month if someone subscribes to you that's a book sale and so a thousand people buying a book or you're writing on substack a month is insane and my quick five-step format to make this happen and not be a broke writer in 20124 is this go on substack substack is the home of the literary Renaissance there is no other website it's it's not ghost it's not WordPress it's not anywhere else don't believe the unless you have a massive audience unless you have let's say over 3,000 people on your email list or 10,000 subscribers on YouTube

or over 30,000 subscribers on substack or excuse me Instagram or X you should be on substack because you won't be able to convert an audience over to someplace else as well as what substack is going to offer you step two post any writing you've ever written your entire back catalog even if you think it sucks get it all in there there that's a free library for people to investigate once they get into you I used to be really into like personal development blogs back when I was like in college and I would find these authors

and I would read their entire archive even if the article sucked I would go back to 2002 and be reading these articles just because I like them as a person I wanted to get to read you know wanted to read everything they had ever released people do that maybe you don't do that but people like me do that and so the more I have the marer and if it sucks then I will you your reputation won't be ruined step number three is you have to write you have to start producing free content then to start

building and building and bolstering that audience you need to write anything and everything you can short stories poems non-fiction pieces Instagram Instagram captions X posts and you should have books of poetry and fiction on your substack for free before you ever consider that you'll be able to go full-time like that's what I'm telling you you need to have a lot of free writing out there to be able to achieve the 1,000 members paying you $5 a month and at the same time that you're doing this you should be working on your legacy projects because your

book should have thousands of hours put into it you should put a ton of effort into your book especially if it's fiction and so as you are writing and doing all that you slowly are putting time into your book and then when you have a sizable audience you don't have to launch to nobody because the saddest thing in the world is having a book launch and nobody but your family and friends buying it and what's also cool is that if you have a ton of reviews then the algorithm the Amazon algorithm is also going to

start working for you because if you post a dead book it's never going to get out of the Kindle graveyard but if you post a book that people are excited about and review it will actually be elevated and you could get some organic sales and so I have a full course on this I can go over the excuses all day but the reason why riters are broke in 2024 is that they are not willing to adapt and so that is my message to you guys that if we are going to create a literary Renaissance then

we need full-time authors we don't need hobbyists we need people who started and continued this process that I'm speaking of for 5 to 10 years and then they will have the social credibility in the world to be able to kill it and I personally don't think that there's any other way to to gain momentum in the literary fiction World honestly I've looked at all the other avenues while talking to 120 people I heard all of their plans and not to toot my own horn but I think that like the vision that I am seeing is

the direction that we need to go if you disagree that is okay but you will come across and do something very similar to this and so boom there we go everyone I love each and every one of you please comment down below what you learn what you are doing what your plan is what your excuse is I would love to hear I would love to read it I read all the comments and I will see all of you guys very soon in the next video