In conjunction with the release of my book, Live To Win! 5 Essentials for Victory and Success, I’m excited to provide a series of guest posts over the next few weeks. These folks are special to me, having coached me in one way or another to achieve my career goals and experience victories at various times and in various areas of my life.
Today, I’m pleased to share with you the insights from Ellen Violette, The Ebook Coach. She’s helped me in my career so that I understand how to write, finish, and market ebooks. Experiencing victories in your career is important. Ellen’s business insights may help you with that. Her insights can also be applied to life in general, as you’ll see as she shares some life-changing decisions she had to make.
How I Reinvented Myself and Found My True Calling
When I started my business, the economy was humming along and people were hungry for Internet-related information, so I started offering copywriting to clients. But, I had always wanted to write books and the timing was right. My husband and I had been buying, fixing, and selling real estate, but the market was getting too hot and there was nothing to buy. So, I started researching ebooks.
I loved the idea of writing ebooks because I could get directly to my potential buyers and I didn’t have to wait for some middleman to approve of my work, which had been the case in the music business where I worked as a songwriter and producer for almost 20 years. I kept winning music awards, (I beat out 30,000 writers for Grand Prize in lyric writing in the Music City Song Festival) but I wasn’t getting the cuts because of the politics involved. I even got a Grammy nomination, and still the work wasn’t coming my way. That’s why I was so excited to discover ebooks and self-publishing. Nobody was going to stop me or get in my way with ebooks!
I wrote my first ebook on writing ebooks and I was finding the process overwhelming and hard to follow, so I looked for an ebook coach, but there weren’t any. My husband and I were already immersed in learning Internet Marketing and since we were going to the BIG SEMINAR, a fabulous event hosted by marketing great, Armand Morin, I thought, surely, I would find an ebook coach there. But, I didn’t. And that’s when I knew I was going to become the first ever ebook coach!
I put together a writing workshop, and then a marketing workshop, and it worked! I made $13,000 on my first offer and was making a 6-figure income in 2 ½ years. I thought I was on my way. I bought a Mercedes and moved to the beach; life was good.
But, then the recession hit, social media came in, and everything changed. Whereas before people had been throwing money at me, now I was hearing more and more from people who wanted to take my courses and workshops, but they couldn’t afford them. I was working harder than ever, but my income was shrinking. So, I started taking more programs trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, but nothing worked. I continued to make a living online while others in my position simply perished. But I wasn’t happy.
In the meantime, Amazon introduced Kindle and that revitalized the ebook industry, I got really good at doing bestseller launches for myself and my clients (I have a 100% success rate taking authors to #1 whom I coach) and that was a lot of fun; it kept me afloat; but more and more people were writing ebooks, launching ebooks, and calling themselves experts. How was I going to continue to differentiate myself and get enough work to stay in business? In addition, I was so pigeonholed that I could only talk about a narrow range of subjects, and boredom was setting in. Something in my career had to change.
So, I went back to the basics. I didn’t have the money to hire a coach so I became my own coach and put myself through the same paces that I put my clients through. I asked myself, “What do I love to do?” “What makes me unique?”, and “How can I leverage my business, so I don’t have to work so hard?” “Or at least work so hard at things I don’t like doing?” And once I could answer those questions, things started to change.
But, I had to be honest with myself. I decided I would only do what I was passionate about, so I am doing my first collaborative book called, “How to Crush it in Business Without Crushing Your Spirit, How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Depression and Find Success” and loving it! I’m helping more entrepreneurs with a subject people struggle with, but are embarrassed to talk about and finding real solutions! And it’s become more of a mission than a job.
I also made some life-changing decisions; I would write books for other people because I enjoy it; I would no longer coach people who were energy burners because I don’t enjoy it; I would only work with action-takers because they are the ones who get the results I offer; I would joint venture more and stop trying to do it all myself (I now run a mastermind that I thoroughly enjoy with a co-leader, so when I have a speaking opportunity that’s too good to pass up, she can run it and I don’t have to feel guilty!); I would value what I do more and not give into people who wanted my expertise, but didn’t want to pay me what I am worth; I would outsource more of what I don’t like to do; and I would focus on what I love to do that pays me well.
I had to make some changes in my career strategy to accomplish this. I started spending more time on LinkedIn and going offline to networking meetings. I also started reaching out more to contacts I already had— to colleagues, former clients, and prospects. And when I did this, I found that some of the tasks I had hated doing in the past, I no longer hated because there was now a much desired payoff! They have given me more opportunities, more leads, and better clients and I’m doing what I love!
So, I want to encourage anyone who’s struggling to re-evaluate what they are doing and find another way. And if you need help, I offer a free Extraordinary Results Consultation at http://ellenlikes.com/schedulefreeconsult.
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Ellen Violette
info@bestsellerbusinessblueprint.com
818 970-6132