S01E46: When We Dig Into Ads Strategies

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda talk about ads - the decisions they can make before and after running them.. and trusting them! 

Next week, Sam and Matilda will be starting a new series! Tune in to find out all about reading reviews... the good, the bad, and the ugly! 

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/3QHym3m

Most recent book: Heart of the Wolf (Moons & Magic Book 2) https://amzn.eu/d/4HecH3a

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Mal and Jill Cooper: https://www.amazon.com/Help-Facebook-Ads-Suck-Marketing-ebook/dp/B0C5RWPTL4/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Matilda Swift, here with my co-host, Samantha Cummings, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our Mastery Through Missteps journey.

Each week, we cover a topic to help along the way, and this week's topic is trusting your decisions.

Before that, what are your wins and whinges of the week?

I will start with my win, which is that I have been writing a first draft for, quote unquote, NaNoWriMo.

And this week, I just had a great week.

Like I kind of struggled a little bit because I've been so busy.

So it's been hard to get a good routine going.

Like I usually, I like to write specific time, have a good routine, and I've not had that this year.

But this week, I've managed to capture some of the routine, and I have been the hammering out quite a lot of words when I've been sitting down.

So my usual is like around 2000 words per session.

And this week has been glorious.

This weekend in particular, I've written so much and loving the story so much.

And it feels great.

I feel like, I just feel so excited to be writing this book.

And I'm just letting my, all of my like, like teen angst and every emotion that I'm feeling, I'm just like pouring into this book, which has been very nice because my whinge is that I have been feeling quite low.

What I've written down my notes here, I've got low energy, cosmically, that's what I've written for myself.

I've got cosmically low energy.

I don't know how to describe it.

We were talking about this before we started recording.

It's just been a bit of a, like just, I just feel mentally drained, but like emotionally, physically, spiritually, all the ways that I could be drained.

That's how I feel right now.

And so the writing element at least has perked me up a bit.

Like I've had some good writing, but yeah, I'm just like, I'm just tired.

And yeah, that's where I'm at right now.

I'm not, I'm not an annua.

I would say this, that feels very November-y to me.

Like I often feel this way in November.

And if I said something like, oh, I feel very November-y, I think that feeling would convey.

I'm just like, I'm physically tired.

The clocks have gone back and it just seems like it's dark all the time and I'm cold or I'm resentful of the heating pills.

Like there's no other option in between.

And like, I'm trying to do a lot.

I'm trying to be busy in terms of writing and publishing, but also Christmas is coming.

And yeah, it just feels like very stretched thin in November.

Do you not normally feel that way around Nano time?

Is it a new sensation?

No, it's a new sensation.

And I think not to judge or like blame my sister, but because my sister is back from Australia this month, she's just wrecked my whole life.

No, because usually, because I'm not a winter person.

So November is generally like, I just do Nano and I don't have anything else.

Like I don't go out and see people.

I'm just a hermit.

And I haven't been allowed to be a hermit.

So I think that's maybe why I just, I just feel drained.

I've seen too many people.

I've talked too much.

I just don't want to.

I just want to be like in my book.

Yeah.

So that's, that's just where I'm at.

It's okay.

It's fine.

But yeah, I'm tired.

How about you?

I think I'm going to have the same wind.

Yeah, I feel just slightly shredded beyond capacity all the time.

And I don't really know how to improve that.

So I've got good habits in place in terms of, I'm going to the gym, I'm doing yoga and morning pages and writing and day job, and all my hobbies, and I'm trying to add in some marketing.

And there's no space for any of that already.

Like to fit all that in is already quite a lot.

And then it just feels like it's time of year, more and more stuff creeps in.

So there's more, in a nice way, like you're saying, family obligations.

But also I do feel, I find myself feeling resentful, which is not, that's not really how I want to feel.

And you know, I've got like friends visiting and lovely things coming up, like a Christmas party that I voluntarily throw every year that I really enjoy is coming up.

I'm like, gosh, that's good.

Oh, I'm so honored about that.

And that's just too busy.

So I'm too busy because I don't like anything that I actually like right now.

So I need to have a think about that.

And it is really a tricky thing to maybe, I think I just have to live with it, right?

It's like at the moment I'm trying to keep my day job and also really amp up my writing side.

There's no way to do that and to maintain all the other things.

I just need to stop sleeping.

That's the other option really, but that is this time of year, it feels very hard.

Actually, I feel like I sleep more this time of year than I do.

I'm not normally a big sleeper, but in when the clocks change, I spend at least a month feeling like I need an extra hour of sleep.

At least a big winch on that side.

Yeah, but win, and I'd actually forgotten this until I was really trying to think of something for this episode.

I wrote my blurbs for my new series this week, and they're so good.

They are.

They are so good.

Yeah, phenomenal blurbs.

Yes.

And I did a lot of work on them.

So I wrote the first drafts months ago, and then kind of let them ruminate, and then have done some tweaking of them with AI, just go back and forth and say, can you give me some alternate lines for this section?

I want to convey this thing or have this type of pun in it.

I'm back and forth with that a lot.

And then I've run it past two different groups to get some feedback.

So I've done a huge amount of work on them.

And I feel really positive about them.

So that's lovely.

I never feel that way about blurbs.

So that is good.

And I put my books up for pre-order, which also good.

I put books one, two and three in my new series out.

I could have put book four out, but I don't have a date for it.

And I don't want to put a date on it.

And so I kind of see how books one, two and three go.

But it's been really lovely to see that, like, some people have pre-ordered one, two and three all straight through, which is really nice.

Yeah.

You know, not miraculously, thousands of people.

That's my other one this week.

Just not like thousands of people to send all these books, being like, this is the series for me.

I finally see now.

I've been waiting forever for this.

No, small numbers, but small numbers and half, just like half the people have ordered the whole series, which was really good.

And all I have to do is get more of these people.

But yeah, I feel more whinging than winning this week, if I'm honest, like just feeling wise, even though actually if I had to write down on my wins and whinges, I think I've on balance got more wins.

So that's, I think I'm just, yeah, very November-y.

Yeah, fair enough.

So let's, whether this is going to help us with our wins or whinges, I don't know, but let's move on to the topi g of the week.

So today we are talking abou trusting your decisions.

And it's a series about money.

What does this mean to you?

So in theory, this series is sort of all about, well, it's about like putting your money where your mouth is.

So I think we kind of conceived of that as about really going and like pushing ahead with ads.

So that's that's kind of the concept, this series of episodes.

And this is the last episode and it's about trusting decisions.

And I think this series has been so useful in terms of making me do something I absolutely don't want to do.

Like I really, really cannot convey how much I don't want to work on ads.

Because they just they do not align with any way that I find it good to work or that I'm effective working.

There's not a way in that I found that I think I can either trick myself into doing them or I can I can enjoy the process or I can do well at it.

Like there's no way in I can find.

And so I just have to do something I really don't want to do, which is not great.

And so what I have done several times in the past few years of publishing is start doing advertising, fail instantly, obviously, because I'm not magically just making Facebook ads or Amazon ads without any effort, fail instantly, and then take that failure and just decide this is the end for me.

I don't like failure, so nope, I'm done.

Or I will set something up and like I'm going to persist, I'm going to do a month to get the data and then I'll do something with the data without any decision of like what I'm going to do that data as well.

I'll spend money for a month and then the ad expires and then I'll just never look at it again.

Because there's just so many factors that I feel like I don't understand and it even feels like if I understood enough, like I did a PhD on Facebook ads, I still feel like one day you could have an ad that works and one day you can have an ad the same way that doesn't work.

And there's no other reason about it.

I find that incredibly disheartening and dissatisfying.

But that's like Mark Zuckerberg is not about to fix that.

He's not out there thinking, how am I going to make these ads work better for Matilda Swift?

I understand she's frustrated.

I will figure that out.

No, he's not going to prove that for me.

So I will have to work within the system that I do not enjoy.

This is my own personal Hunger Games.

So for me, in fact, I had thought that I would maybe come out at the end of the series sort of in terms of trusting myself and finding a way in but in fact, all I'm doing is going to trust.

I'm going to make a plan and trust that plan and just follow through even when it feels like everything's going wrong and make sure I've got like always the next few steps planned.

So it's not a fun decision to trust.

I'm looking forward to it, but I'm going to do it.

How about you?

Yeah, I feel the same.

I've only really done Facebook ads and I always think because I've got a history of Facebook ads, I used to do that quite a lot for my job.

So I probably come at Facebook ads with a very kind of glib, laissez faire attitude because I think I know how Facebook ads work.

I know how the system works.

So I don't really put that much energy or effort into it.

It's a bit of a vicious circle because obviously like I'm not getting the results I want.

But it's because I kind of know enough about it that I don't try hard enough, if that makes sense.

That's like a very me thing.

It's like a very, I know enough, that's fine.

That's how I live my life.

Sometimes that's great, sometimes not so much.

I have started ads in the past and I look at the result, and I think to myself, oh, I could do something with these results.

And then six months passes, I haven't done anything with the results, and I just start a new ad from scratch.

And it's usually been things like, and I'm sure a lot of people are the same as this.

You do an ad for something specific, like I'm running a sale on Amazon, so I'll run a Facebook ad at the same time and drive people to like a 90 cent P sale.

Or I've got a new book out, so I'll do an ad for the new book.

And I forget all the spaces in between, which are probably the better time to run ads, or at least like good enough time to run ads.

So like you, I am sure that Mark Zuckerberg is not at all interested in the fact that I kind of know how the system works.

And he's not looking at my account thinking, Sam knows what she's doing.

It's all going to work out for her.

He doesn't care.

And so I have to care more.

I have been thinking a lot this week about my plan and what I really want to do.

And I have basically decided that, like you said, I'm just going to set some stuff up.

I'm going to have a plan.

I'm just going to follow the plan no matter what.

And this plan will be a plan that is carried out completely separate from other ads that I might run that are like book release or book sale.

They should be like the extra things added on.

They shouldn't be like the main thing.

And that's kind of where I'm at.

I've been doing some writing of some like copy and coming up with different goals for campaigns that I want to run.

And because I've been doing that, I've actually been getting quite excited about it.

Which I know that's like way complete opposite.

You're like, I don't understand it.

I don't know how it works.

I hate it.

And I'm like, I don't know how this works.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I kind of like that.

Yeah, I'm excited to try.

I know it's crazy.

I'm excited to start a new spreadsheet.

We all know how much I love spreadsheets.

I'm excited to start a brand new spreadsheet, even though I've already got a spreadsheet for ads, I'm starting from scratch.

And I'm going to put all of my ideas and when these ads are going to run.

And I think that I'm going to have a basic plan for five to six months of just continuous ads.

And I am excited to spend all of that money.

Because why not?

Yeah, but also, yeah, why not, right?

Like nothing is going to change by you waiting for like the magical day when the winds are in the exact right direction, and the weather looks fine, there's a cloud in the sky, I'm like, this is the day I'll start my ads, and I will magically gain the knowledge.

Like I, that is definitely how I feel, is like I constantly feel like I'm waiting for the day when I, without having done anything to gain this knowledge, possess the knowledge of how to make Facebook ads work.

And I don't know what I, I don't know where this thought comes from, right?

I don't know where I believe that I will magically acquire the knowledge to do it.

I think some of it is just that in the self publishing world, there often are things that you don't know until you suddenly think you're like, oh, I see that now.

I get, I get how that works and understand what that is.

When before I just kept hearing these words, and they are just not a long time, I didn't even know what it was.

But I think with Facebook ads, that's not possible.

And I think there's a lot of stuff being said, you know, about like, oh, you can't do until you've got a certain number of books.

So I've, I've been in the past, I've been like, yeah, yeah, I won't do until I've got a certain number of books.

And then that number passed and I was like, well, it won't hurt to have a few more.

And I want to kind of get more happy releasing and you know, more consistent releases and have, there was always something, right?

I could put something in the way and say like, once I've reached this magical goal, I will then, it will be worth me doing Facebook ads.

So anyways, I'm trying to have a whole new mindset about it, because previously, and just by my nature, I'm quite like all or nothing.

Like I'm quite, like the way I like to learn things, like do all the learning and then know everything about something and then action it and it will succeed.

Whereas I just think that's not possible with Facebook ads.

Like A, the platform changes a lot and B, it is whimsical.

And not in a good way.

It is mercurial perhaps is a better way to put it.

So yeah, I think there's no benefit to trying to learn about it or waiting until some magical knowledge passes across your path.

Anyway, so what that means for me is I am going to make myself a very clear plan.

And I started it, I can talk to you a bit about it in a minute, actually, a really clear plan that I'm going to put in my, my regular habit routine.

Because I one thing I found wrong with ads is like, I have had it on my like weekly to do list, every week for months, like, learn more about ads, practice more about ads.

But if I'm busy, that doesn't get done because like, learn more about ads, practice more about ads.

So I need to have like a very, very clear, like, 100 step plan, right, and it can be every step is miniature, every step is like, check the ads today, check these three numbers.

And depending on that, these are your options of next next step.

I just need to have that in place because if I have that, I will do it.

If I know what my next thing to do is, I need these tasks broken down.

But if the next step is like, check your ads, but check them for what?

Just have a look at them and see, oh, good.

Yeah, there's some more money for Mark.

Glad he can buy another hoodie today.

That's not productive.

To like, do something for no purpose.

So yes, I want to make myself a really clear set of checks.

And I have again, once again, maybe the third or fourth time read Mal and Joe Cooper's help with Facebook ads suck.

But again, I'm really more knowledge and more understanding each time, just of, of like how the system works and what the words mean.

So I'm going to go through it once more and flick through all my highlights and all my, you know, bookmark pages and really make sure I've got a list that says things like every third day, check these things, make these changes, take these images out if lower than this number.

And I just have a really clear metrics.

Anyway, big thing is mindset shift.

I am not going to for a period to be determined as yet, but a period for a specific period, I'm not going to be concerned about profitability.

I'm only going to be concerned with increasing the outcome of the ad.

So whether that's getting a better click through rate, better conversion rate, that doesn't matter.

Like I will set myself a list of metrics.

I'm going to just improve them.

And that is my only goal.

And it is previously, I've been really trying to go from like, I'll test five or six ads.

And then the end of that, I should be in profit.

It's like, that's not true.

And there's no reason why that would be true.

Why I would magically go from being an author to being a Facebook marketing genius.

We just conflate the two together because you have to do both in this career.

So we think you just have to improve both quite quickly.

But no, I am going to start my new internship as a Facebook ads guru of my own making.

Just, and all I have to do is improve every single, however I'm going to set every single week, let's say, or every single three days when I check something, my only goal is to improve.

And if I just keep improving incrementally incrementally, one day, I will be profitable and then I will be a millionaire.

Those that's the progression set.

One, two, three.

Oh, yeah, makes sense.

It's funny because when you're talking about metrics and checking things and effectively doing stats, I kind of realized that I am terrible.

I like, I don't have stats for my business, which is quite weird for me.

So in my day job, every first of the month, I effectively look after about 20, 15 to 20 websites for a company.

And every first of the month, I have to go through Google Analytics stats and all sorts to pull all their numbers together to see, have we done better than the last month?

You know, what are the trends?

And I do all these stats and I send them to the marketing team, even though it's a marketing job, but for some reason I do it for them.

And as far as I'm aware, they don't do anything with the stats.

And it's a pet peeve of mine.

Every month I'm like, like what are they doing with this information?

It takes me three to four hours.

Yeah, like it takes me three to four hours to do all the stats and I send it to them.

And I don't think that they, I think they look at them and I don't think they make any decisions based on them.

And it really annoys me.

And I've just realized that I, I mean, I was gonna say, I do the same for myself, but I don't even do the same for myself.

I don't have like numbers for like, how many people visit my website a month?

How many followers do I have on Instagram?

And it all seems a quite vanity kind of, vanity stats, but if you don't start looking at your numbers as a business, how would you, how are you ever making a decision based on anything other than feeling?

And like, and that's just clicked.

I've just had such a stupid epiphany.

Like, I hate myself.

Why does it take talking things out loud for me to be like, oh, yeah, I am.

It's a sad epiphany.

Yeah.

Epiphany.

But that's fine, because because I'm starting anew with my Facebook ads, I feel like this is the right time to just start all kind of looking at my whole business and making decisions based off results of things.

Yeah, I feel like I feel like somebody should smash me in the face with a pie.

It's really difficult, I think, when you're starting out, like so many of the books and courses and whatever on ads are always like, oh, make sure you're working out your like ROI and what the re-drewing take-through rate is.

And I feel like a lot of these things, they assume that you have really solid metrics already in other parts of your business.

And also that like other parts of your business are profitable and that you've magically got loads of data.

But it's like my read-through and sell-through calculations are often based on like, if you look at this year, I haven't reached a book, but I have had two book pubs.

And last year when I'd reached a couple of books, like those books would have been out of kilter for other things.

And when you've had like things on discounts or and I just don't have a big enough sales, like consistent sales without those big spikes and random dips and things, I don't have those numbers reliable enough to feel like I know confidently metrics.

And in fact, when you're advertising, those people are different to your regular readers even.

So say I knew that I had a certain read through or self-recalculation to my newsletter, those people are much warmer to like readers than people advertising to.

So it's false to calculate those numbers based on previous numbers.

So that is why I find it really difficult to think about things like, oh, what's my profitability on an ad?

Because it's based on false numbers.

And it's sort of pointless.

Like I'd rather just start from, I'd rather figure out my baselines and like figure out my metrics.

And if I said, okay, the big thing that I'm doing, you know, I don't have a release now for three months.

If the big thing I'm doing between now and then is advertising, that's a really good like blank period.

And obviously Christmas in the middle of that, so it's a bit of a funny period, but I've got a reasonably long series that I can be advertising to.

And if I just look at that period, I'm far enough away now from releases and from other promos that I can say the ads are the things that are affecting this.

I can use this as a period of time to measure what is the literal outcome of these ads and what in that period is the read and the sell through.

And I want to be generous and gracious to myself about finding those metrics and not expecting myself to have had all this stuff before.

And to not be starting with a position of like, oh, we've got 40 ads that are already working here, so you measure them and tweak them.

It's like, no, I don't even know what I'm doing.

I constantly forget where I'm placed in the ad platform.

That's where I'm at right now.

Where's the Facebook ads for absolute dummies?

My Facebook ads don't suck.

I suck.

Yeah, here's Facebook ads for somebody who like, you've literally just released one single product, nobody knows who you are yet, you don't have any metrics to work from.

Because all the examples, you're right, they already assume that you're making like organic sales in some way, shape or form.

And it feels like you have to try and like, make the system work for your particular situation, rather than like, this is how the system should work for you right now.

It feels like you're trying to like hack a system.

And that in itself is so mentally draining because it makes you feel less than from the get go.

So as soon as you start reading, like these like directions on how to make an ad work, and you already are thinking to yourself, but I'm not at this stage yet.

So am I already like, should I just not?

But you carry on.

It just, it feels really rubbish.

But we should just be running ads.

There's loads of advice that assumes that you're further in the process.

Like, there's things like, oh, look at your like social proof, like send out to your own Facebook group first to get good social proof.

And it's like, that's not bad advice, but it's not, it's not useful to me, because I don't have people that are like, oh, put loads of positive comments on how much I love those books already.

Like I'm sort of finding those people.

And in terms of like making Facebook ads, a lot of things rely on like, okay, so think about your readers and what they like.

And it's like, you know, I do feel confident now that I could find those images, but at least have a good guess of what this image would be.

But it's like, but someone who's, I didn't a few years ago, and that's what really put me off Facebook ads.

It's just like, I felt like absolutely just throwing guesses, like throwing dartboards into the wind, like darts into the wind with no dartboard around.

Which is just like, if you just throw darts around, all you do is hit people and you get in trouble.

You need to be like, where is the dartboard at least?

And I just, I have, I felt so put off by previous experiences.

It is, I think, disingenuous to say like, what if you've got three books and then do Facebook ads?

Because like, there's so many other things that you need to know and have thought about and to just, I don't know, even now, like, I feel like it's an uphill battle in terms of, and we talked about this before we started, like, I have got a list of things I want to try, and I feel uncomfortable with the idea of saying them out loud, because I know they're super listening at home.

Super listening at home, but I'm a little bit cozy in their homes.

I think this is the 1950s.

Sitting around the wireless, there are people who, I'll say one thing, so I'll say, oh, I'm going to run my ads, for example, say I'm not going to, but like, say I'm going to put like book cover images on my books, on my ad images.

The people at the home who'd be saying, you can't do that, that's what idiots do.

Like, everyone knows that's what you do, you don't do that, it doesn't work.

And I might have read a perfectly reliable, reasonable person, say put book covers on the images and explain why.

And I've decided to follow this person.

And then someone else can come along and say, no, in fact, I tested it and that absolutely doesn't work.

That's, that's a surefire way to failure.

And the problem is that both those things can be true.

And, and it's just really disheartening to like, to think about like, how do I possibly ask for advice when everyone has got 100% opposite views on almost everything in ads and they are entirely convinced their way is correct?

Yeah.

What I just think is people have got a completely opposite opinions of literally everything.

You can go on.

And I love this kind of like ongoing joke on Instagram where people are like cooking and they're saying what recipe they're cooking.

And someone says, oh, you're making pasta.

And the person says, oh, yeah, I'm making pasta.

And like, I'm using this tomato sauce.

And then the comments will say, but I don't like tomato sauce.

And it's that whole thing of like, well, so this isn't for you.

This isn't for you then.

Like, if you don't like tomato sauce, then move along.

Find the next recipe that doesn't have tomato sauce.

And I feel like that's like such a good analogy for everything that you talk about online is that there's always going to be those people that like, but I don't think that's a good ad.

You know, I don't think that that ad's going to work.

You should do what I do.

It's like, I don't care what you do.

I'm putting tomato sauce on this.

You could go away.

I think it always boils down to pasta for me.

I think the problem is, I don't know if I'm making like chocolate cake right now, right?

So if you put tomato sauce on chocolate cake, awful.

If you put tomato sauce in pasta recipe, great, fantastic.

And I think I don't know what...

Don't say well, I'm not saying chocolate cake, it's not a good idea.

I don't know what I'm making.

I think that's where I'm at.

And again, maybe someone's like, but what about beetroot?

And I'm like, oh, you can't put beetroot in chocolate cake.

Maybe I should try it with beetroot.

And it's like, I am, I am, I think that's it.

I'm that easy swayable because I don't have a sense of like, what am I doing?

Whereas a chocolate cake, if I was making a chocolate cake, I know how to make it.

If I'm making pasta, I know how to make it.

But if I'm trying to make something, I don't know what the thing is.

I'm trying to make something, and I'm in the cupboard.

And I'm like, it could be anything.

I don't know what it could be.

People keep handing me different ingredients.

Someone's like, here, have some tomatoes, hot sauce.

And the next person's like, here, have some flour.

And I was like, okay, what am I making?

It's like that, have you ever seen that show?

I'm obsessed with it.

I really want to watch the whole thing.

It's like a mystery baking show, where you go into a kitchen and you get to inspect the kitchen.

And you can see what's in the bin or what knives have been used.

And you have to try and figure out what they're making.

Which I just think is such an unhinged idea for a baking show.

And I sort of love it.

Anyway, I feel like I'm doing that.

I'm trying to reverse engineer, add success.

But all I can see is like, what's in the bin and what's on your knife.

And I'm going to come out with like chocolate cake and then like, no, why have you put in tomato sauce and chocolate cake?

It was clearly for lasagna.

That's, I think that's probably our best analogy yet.

That is the most tortured metaphor.

But that is what it feels like.

It's just like, I don't know what I'm cooking, but I've got ingredients and I have to start, the clock is ticking down and I've got ingredients.

But the fun thing is that we're not being judged.

No one needs to know what we're trying to cook right now.

They don't need to, we're not sharing the recipes immediately.

We'll only share the recipes once we have successfully made the mystery dish.

So it's okay to be standing in the kitchen on your own thinking like, I've just put tomato sauce in a chocolate cake.

Well, I'm glad no one was around to see that.

Then you throw it in the bin and you move on.

So like that is like when we've said this before in the past, like that is part of the, like the good part of being where we are in our careers, is that we like it doesn't matter.

As long as we're just trying to do something, and we're trying to move ahead, and we're doing it with like, with our minds instead of our hearts in a way, like making decisions based on facts, the things that we're doing, then that's better than nothing.

So, like, put the tomatoes in the chocolate cake and just don't tell anyone.

I think it's really good.

I don't know.

But yes, I think that is I think you really a hundred percent like epiphany for me is that I act as if someone's watching because I am watching and I am incredibly critical of myself.

And I don't want me to see what I've done.

Okay, I am a little bit over the top.

Yeah.

That's what I'm talking about is like not wanting to make a mistake, even in the privacy of my own kitchen.

Yeah.

Whereas I'm just like making mistakes left, right, center, I just don't tell anyone about it.

I'm just like, keep that one quiet.

No one needs to know that I tried this and it just was absolute garbage.

Yeah, I think that's probably what makes me more excited about trying different Facebook ads and like coming up with different, like fun, a lot of different things that I wouldn't have thought about before.

Like some of the things I have like taken screenshots of other people's ads that I've seen.

And I'm really excited to look at those ads and think how can I recreate this for me and then see if I get good results.

I'm starting to see it really as a really fun challenge because I'm not going to share it with anyone.

It's just going to be stuff that I get to do.

Like when you're at home and you're drawing or painting.

I know, but I don't think anyone's looking.

No one's looking at my ads library.

No one and everyone listening at home, at your radios, just don't do it.

Some things are better not known.

Let me live in my mystery.

I listen to a lot of websites libraries.

That's maybe why I actually love them a lot.

Because I'm one of those kind of people.

It's such a snoop.

It's not snooping.

This is professional business research.

But it is interesting.

Maybe it's like maybe it's subterfuge.

I'm even trying to throw people off my scent and be like, I've got five ads running.

Four of them are awful.

One of them though, is fantastic.

But you can't tell because you got to see the results.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We can guess it.

Yes.

I think that is a good way to think about it.

It's like, I am trying to think too close to the end results.

Whereas like, you need to understand how the ingredients work together before going straight into like make a souffle.

Oh gosh, really stretching, stretch our metaphor today.

When you're a kid, you, you know, you just play around with like really simple recipes and try those and like, that is part of it.

That is that is how as an adult, you can then make souffle, which I've never tried to make and I'm a little bit scared to make it.

But one day I will try to souffle.

But that is how you get there.

You don't get there by like reading a lot of books about souffles and then like, okay, I've read enough books about souffle.

I'm going to go from zero to souffle in one day.

So, yes, I am, that's what I'm trying to do.

I am doing the zero to souffle and I do not want to do that.

Yes.

No, you need to, I think this probably is a good example of the sort of child I was and this is where my like energy towards like experimentation comes in, is that when we were kids, we used to make George's magic medicine at home and I have horribly vivid memories, like this.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a rolled out book and I don't even know if we read the whole thing.

I don't fully remember the story, but I do have very, very vivid memories of me and my siblings, just four of us, or not even that, stood in the kitchen with a glass bowl, which I'm sure we still own.

I think this is like, this glass bowl has like survived 40 odd years of us, like when we were kids making horrible potions in it.

And we would get every single liquid you could find in the kitchen, every liquid that you could find, every sauce, anything in the fridge.

Yeah.

And we would put a little bit, I can still smell it, and put a little bit into a bowl until you had a full bowl full of just brown gunk.

And I think that, I feel like that's like a staple.

It's also feeling very much like that succession episode where they make the horrible mix in succession, and they have to drink the kitchen.

Oh, I have never seen succession.

But yeah, it's like at the end.

Anyway, sidebar.

I know.

Yeah.

I think that that's like a core memory, and also has influenced my whole life of being like, do you know what?

I'm just going to stick this in a bowl and see what happens.

I mean, it's not recommended, but it is.

No, no, it was always brown.

It was always too much vinegar in it.

Always brown sauce in there.

Never good.

And I can still smell and taste.

Probably they all ended up the same and they all smell and tasted the same.

I have no idea who cleaned up.

I think that is how you learn, right?

It's like, I think I need to make George Marvel's most expensive Facebook ad.

George Marvel's Facebook ad.

Yes.

Yeah.

Just throw everything in.

Doesn't matter.

No one needs to, no one else needs to see or taste it.

Just your nearest and dearest.

Okay.

Yeah, this feels positive.

I feel like, yeah, again, I've had quite a bit there every day.

Can you tell us a bit more, you mentioned a bit about you've got a six month plan.

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Because that sounded really interesting.

Yes.

Yeah, I have got quite a few, like four, no, I was going to say four to five, about five to six ideas of different ads that I want to run.

And some of them might be that I might stack them and I might end up doing some like A-B testing.

But a lot of the stuff that I'm going to be doing is things like I'm going to run an ad for a month where it's focused on one of my books and a particular trope.

So I really, for Young Adult in particular, everyone's very focused on tropes in Young Adult.

And a lot of marketing tends to come from how many tropes can you pull out?

How many people can you entice with a love triangle or all the usual like Young Adult tropes that you see?

And I struggle with that in my own marketing to know what people want or expecting from my books.

So I've got a list of the different themes and tropes that are in my stories.

And I really just want to, over the next few months, run ads that are particularly like a call to action for readers for like just like off the bat just werewolf stories.

So that's just like a very bland vanilla attempt to say, these are werewolf stories, come along, read this werewolf series.

And then some of the other ones I want to run are more specific to like girl power, sister stuff.

Just see like what my readers or what people are attracted to.

So you can change your blurb as well.

Yes.

So that's what my plan is.

I'm going to run them when they've ended, see if I can decide whether I need to change anything blurb wise or just like what images I'm using.

I just really want to be always trying new things, always trying to focus on something very specific, so that I can just see for myself like what other key things in my own writing that is going to get the right attention.

Yeah, I really struggle with doing that for myself.

So that's kind of where I'm at.

I've got a good list of stuff, some good ideas for what images are going to go well with things, and what kind of quotes I want to use for them.

And I'm just going to start throwing them around and seeing what comes about.

And that's why I'm excited, because to me, it's like that's then going to influence what I'm going to be putting on social media and stuff, is like the results from those ads are going to then impact my other messaging.

So I'm kind of excited that I'm going to be going in or finding a particular direction to go in.

And that's where I'm at right now.

Yeah, that's really positive.

I also want to try to read different things.

I think I have tried to start too close to the end before, and be like, oh, this worked for this person, I'll copy this but slightly different.

And I don't know that would work for my books.

I don't know if it did work, I wouldn't know why.

I wouldn't have a strong sense of like, could something else have worked better?

So I'm just going to make a plan for how much money to spend and test, start wide and narrow down, and like improve, improve, improve.

And that is my only goal, not to make profit to start with, because I want to understand how the ads work and how changes impact things.

And I think I'm happy to be surprised with like, some things aren't impacted at all.

Like I want to feel confident knowing like, oh, you know what actually doesn't make a difference.

What I ever have as a headline, I thought it would and I tried like five as different as possible things and they all got about the same.

So yeah, I think that's what I want to do and not try to start the journey too close to the end and not try to learn from other people's experience because it's not the same as mine.

And it's not saying that I'm going to try and deliberately be like absolutely as out there as possible.

I deliberately can try and make sensible guesses, but based on my own intuition and then learn from that.

I think that will feel more meaningful and teach me more than trying to copy somebody else.

But yes, so I want to set myself like a really clear schedule to do that and to do it and check it.

And the only goal is to improve.

And I'm completely paid money to do that.

I think, yeah, I think that's the most positive.

It's just the most positive place that you can be right now is, you've got the money, you already budgeted for some ads money, that you might as well be having fun with it and not taking it too seriously.

I mean, I don't even think that for me, I don't even think that sales are the end goal, or I don't want sales to be the end goal for every ad.

I want to try different goals.

I ran an ad earlier this year, which was to get more followers on my Facebook page.

And that did really well.

And whether they're the right sorts of followers or not, it doesn't matter.

I just know that that did work.

So I might, that might be another fun thing is to run some ads and try and get some email subscribers.

I've never done that before.

I've never done an ad for subscribers.

And I'm, yeah, I think that it's a kind of nice idea to not always put money as the end goal, because it's not always, like that's just not always a good business tactic.

Sometimes you have to, just, you just have to not be scared to try other things where you're not gonna make money at the end point, I think.

Especially like you said, like now, when it's small, all you're trying to do is just like test if you need to learn.

That's all I'm trying to do.

That feels very positive.

Do we have anything else on this topic?

No, I don't think so.

I think I have said all of my smart glasses wearing things.

And for anybody who's listening, I'm now wearing glasses and I am ten times smarter.

You do look very smart, like in those glasses.

The frames are thicker than mine.

I think, oh, here I am, my spindly little stupid person framed.

I should get some big thick frames so everyone knows I'm smart.

I think we haven't really talked specifics on our plans.

I had made some plans, but they're not articulated enough that I think it's going to be really to share them.

But I do think we should come back to this regularly and keep talking about where we've got up to with our checks and maybe when we've made some more consistent schedules, things like that will be really helpful to come back to.

And that's not the next series.

But so we planned our next series and we planned a little bit to the new year, but we haven't planned the new new year.

So I think we could make a series on, you know, outcomes and what we've learned so far in the new year will be really good.

The next series is all about, it's very apt, in fact, and I'd forgotten we've done this and it's exactly what I need.

It is about how to believe in yourself, which I am really looking forward to, because I feel very, like, low on the reserves of believing in myself right now.

Like, it's not that I don't have any, it's that I really feel like I have been using it.

I've been using it a lot and I can see where I need some more.

I'm like, I need to, I need the juice in this area.

That is the juice that makes the difference, this believing in yourself juice.

The first episode is about reviews and believing them, which is an interesting one that we set first.

I don't know why, because it feels like that's a really hard topic and I was surprised when I saw it.

So yeah, do you have initial thoughts on reviews and why we set that as a topic?

Yes, I think it was my idea to do this and do it first, because I think I want to rip the bandaid off.

I am very sensitive towards reviews and I try not to be, but I think that it's definitely something that a lot of, it's just something that writers should be open and honest about.

And I also see a lot of discourse about this on Instagram, but also threads, there's quite a lot of stuff on threads about this, about reviews and which ones to take to heart, which ones not to.

So I really am looking forward to talking about how I've reacted to reviews in the past, and like both good and bad, because it's very different, but also strangely the same.

How about you?

Yeah, but I, yeah, I think it's interesting that we put this, what is potentially quite a, I think for a lot of people, will be quite a difficult topic that we put it like at the head of a Believing in Yourself episode.

I remember when we talked about, like I actually feel like I have got loads of really positive reviews, like things that people have said that are absolutely lovely, that I work really hard to make them go in and they just don't go in enough.

And I think if I could make them go in enough, that would be very helpful.

Yeah, like things like I've got six like bits from really positive reviews put on my wall.

I had like a little, trying to make a little wall of positivity.

And I just never read them and when I do, they don't go in or I don't believe them.

Or I think that person was just being nice.

Or, you know, on a bad day, you can make any excuse.

On a good day, I think, I'm amazing.

But I want to, yeah, I think there's more to talk about in terms of reviews and how we can use the positivity.

Because there are so many nice things.

People have like gone out of the way to literally take time to write.

How can we not, how can that not be more useful in terms of thinking, yes, I'm amazing.

So yes, I think it's a good episode.

And we'll, you know, be very much in the vein of our ongoing therapy sessions.

So I'm looking forward to it.

I, yeah, it is snowing here.

So I'm going to go and stare out the window at the beautiful snow a bit more.

And enjoy that lovely wintery coming on Christmasy scene.

And I will look forward to seeing you again next week.

Until then, goodbye.

Yes, goodbye.

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