S01E50: When We Find The Secret To Luck

Samantha and Matilda lean into luck, preparation, and opportunity in their new series on How to Believe in Yourself. 

Next week Sam and Matilda take a well earned break over Christmas - not to leave you longing, you can listen to a banked episode all about money! Everyone's favourite subject!! 

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:

Ink and Magic podcast - Masterminds episode: https://www.inkandmagic.net/e/ep-38-masterminds/

Two Authors podcast - Becca Syme episode: https://thetwoauthorschatshow.podbean.com/e/embracing-our-strengths with-becca-syme/

SPA Girls podcast - How Long to Make $1k episode: https://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/spa-girls-podcast-ep456-how-long-to-make-1k/

Wish I’d Known Then for Writers podcast: Matilda Swift’s episode: https://wishidknownforwriters.com/249-2/

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 luck, preparation and opportunity.

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

Ooh, my wins are that we spent all of yesterday, I say all of this day, a good few hours of yesterday in our mastermind slash end of year prep kind of review thing in a lovely coffee shop in Manchester, which is also a book shop.

So it's book friends and house of books and friends and co.

Yeah, house of coffee, yep.

Yeah, which is a lovely place in Manchester.

And it was just really nice.

And it's nice, like we did a lot of backpacking because it was like nice to see how far we've come.

And yeah, I'm riding the buzz of that.

I feel like that we're doing backpacking.

It's backpacking, back patting, back patting.

Back patting, is that the sort of term that I've heard?

It's not really terminology that anyone has ever used.

It's just the way the words came out of my mouth.

So back patting.

More people need to get on that.

Yeah, it was just really nice.

I feel really, really good about it.

And I'm looking forward to what's coming up next year for both writing and podcasting.

My whinge is that I am so tired, because as much as I love it, we say this every time, it's like, I feel like it's like doing like six exams in a row.

It's so brain numbing.

Like just, you just have to think about everything.

And yeah, it feels like using our brains way too much.

So I'm just very emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually and cosmically drained.

Yeah, I feel that.

It does feel like, it sort of feels crazy when you're maybe three hours in, and you're just like, I can't, I've got no more thoughts.

All my thoughts have been used, my brain power is gone.

And in a good way, right?

In maybe the way that you feel when you're really, sorry, I'm pushing on a book deadline and you're kind of pushing, pushing, pushing to finish something and you get out of it and you just think, oh, that's it, my brain's empty.

I've used it all.

But it did feel so good.

And I think now as well, because we're heading up to the year mark for the podcast, which was heading up to year mark for our mastermind, we are really, you know, it feels like a very significant point.

And we're really looking at all the aspects.

So when we're meeting up, we're talking about, you know, our individual writing, our kind of writing journey together, so our mastermind journey together, and the podcast and how all those tie in together.

And so now it feels like we're trying to have, you know, at least three gigantic meetings all at once.

And we kind of did it as an end of year review session as well.

So it did feel like we, we surely have changed the world in some way.

The amount of thinking we did, that must have changed the world.

So fantastic.

And also I'm very glad we got to do, we changed venue this time and did it in a shop that we can never remember the name of, but it's so nice.

A really nice book shop in Manchester that just had delicious food as well.

It has really good vegan options and it's very festive.

And it's an old, weirdly, it's an old members club.

So they kept all this beautiful wood panelling everywhere and they filled it with books.

So it's a beautiful Christmas tree.

It felt like we were meeting in a Dickens novel.

That's how lovely it was.

But we were the rich people because we had the nice food, the Dickens, and we weren't Bob Cratchit.

No, no, no.

We weren't the like Rizzo the Rat trying to get cold for the fire.

Yeah.

Cause you know, like the only version of Dickens is the Muppets Christmas Carol.

Yeah, the one that he would have wanted, the one he was thinking of, but it wasn't brave enough to write.

So yes, that was definitely my wind.

I say I'm also feeling rundown.

I finished my day job work for the Christmas and that's when it comes to get, so that's when you get a cold.

So just feeling a bit rundown, but I've sort of planned for that on purpose.

I've got a few things next week.

I'm seeing a bunch of Cozy Mystery Authors for a little office Christmas party.

We're having a weekend away.

And I've got that and then I'm flying to Spain.

And then that's pretty much what I've got next week.

Apart from, I also need to be doing quite a lot of writing.

But yes, so that's a win with some whinging.

But my big one of the week, which is sort of going to lead to the topic of today, my big one is I am a podcast superstar.

I feel like I am.

I was on one of my absolute favorite podcasts this week.

I was on which I had known them for authors, which is Sarah's There and Jamie Albright.

Everybody will have heard it, the podcast because it is just so good and they are fantastic hosts.

And being on it as a guest was really clear how professional they are.

The conversation was so smooth and comfortable.

And I came out of it sounding about 1000 percent smarter than I sounded this podcast.

So Sam, I think you need to look at your techniques there.

It's totally me.

Yeah, I drag you down to my level 100 percent.

You're making me talk about Muppets, but on the other side, I was erudite.

I never wanted to talk about Muppets otherwise.

It's actually my favorite film, Muppet Christmas Carol, my hands down, all time of year favorite film.

So yeah, I think it's just different side of myself, but it was so good.

The episode was really, really good.

I've had some really nice messages following it.

And hopefully it's also brought people over to this podcast, which I think I said on that podcast, is I really, really want more people doing podcasts like this.

I want people following their journey.

I want to hear the people's writing journeys.

Another one of the week was not a win for me, but it was a podcast I listened to again, which kind of made me think, oh, I'm so glad I'm finding the right things, was listening to the Inca Magic podcast this week, which is about masterminds, and it's about their mastermind.

And they just gave us an example, like peek into it of one of their sessions.

So it's like, I feel really good generally about podcasting.

And in fact, I'm meeting a friend this evening who wants to start a podcast, who wants to pick my brains about how to do it.

So it just feels like this is the thing I had never done a year ago.

And now just a year of consistently doing it, I feel amazing about it.

And it feels so comfortable and I feel really confident.

And that is such a nice thing to be able to see.

A year is such a short amount of time, really, you know, it's the time of last Christmas.

That was a year ago already gone.

And I feel like life has changed quite significantly.

Yeah, it is crazy when you think about how I remember, I can still feel the feelings of when we first started.

And I felt like it just felt so foreign and so wrong to be talking.

It felt like I just felt like I didn't have any of the right words.

I still don't have any of the right words, but I felt like I was just so bad at it.

And I probably like didn't probably didn't come across that way at all to anybody else.

Like, maybe just I sounded a bit nervous or something, but I just felt like I had no clue what was it like.

How does it work?

We've got an episode coming up because we're taking a little break over Christmas.

We've got an episode coming up that we recorded a while ago to put in the bank for rainy day.

And I listened to that earlier.

And that sounds really different to how we sound now.

And I can't I can't really put my finger on it.

But I if you asked me to guess, I would have said it was a while ago, because I think we just sound I think maybe we're maybe slightly more conscious about what we're saying, but we're not talking around topics as comfortably.

We're not maybe getting to the depth of our actual thinking process.

I think that really helps in this podcast is the way that we not only explain our like end result thoughts, but we're really talking through questions that we've had asked ourselves that we can ask each other.

And that I think has changed over this year.

Yeah.

And sort of that same topic.

One of the best things we did yesterday, I think for me was talking about how we want the next year to look and be able to think about something we want something that's going to serve us and listeners and being able to figure out what's the best thing in both of those and then having some review points for when we're going to think about again how to keep changing that.

So it feels like such an area of competence for me that I hadn't had before.

And it's just so nice to see that, like to be able to watch that in yourself and grow in that way.

So yeah, pat on the back for me.

That's packing all around.

Just coining phrases all over.

Right, so we might as well just get into the topic then.

So the topic of the week is inspired by the Seneca quote, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

No, we're not becoming Roman Philosophy podcast, but we are talking about it.

So what does this quote mean to you?

What do you think of when you think about luck and opportunity and preparation?

So I think this felt like a good one to kind of round off our year of talking because, sort of because it feels reflective.

So so much of what we've done this year just feel like really big things have changed for us both internally and also opportunities to come along.

And it's, the whole point of the podcast is to kind of be able to observe in real time what happens, rather than look back and think, oh, that was the turning point in my life, and that was the turning point in my writing career.

And I think so often, we look at other writers, and we can kind, we're not close enough, we can kind of only see the luck that they've had, or even they will talk about it as luck.

They might say, oh, I was in the right place at the right time.

It's interesting, actually, I was listening to two authors podcast.

We had an episode with Becca Seymour, in fact, I'm going to make a note of that, so I'll put that in the show notes, because it was a really good episode.

And again, sort of was like an observation of the live process that Becca Seymour goes through.

And she on that was talking about how, you know, everyone knows Becca, she's the person who does the strength coaching and strength for authors.

And she was talking about how it was just sort of right place, right time.

She has a background in coaching and just kind of strength training and helping people figure out how they fit themselves into their business and work around what they're best at.

And then she said, when she moved into the author world, as an author, she's an also a Cozy writer, she was seeing that people were having the same problem again and again, due to not really knowing their strengths and not really working with their strengths.

And she was saying, like, she just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

But that's not luck, right?

And many people might think, oh, that's lucky.

A bit like we think about the gold rush of self-publishing.

It's not luck.

It's you are a certain sort of person who put yourself in a certain position at a certain time.

And I think it's useful for us to talk about at the end of the year, maybe what things we've come across this year that might look either externally or might even internally attribute to luck and think, actually, how was that just we prepared for something?

And an opportunity came along or we sought out an opportunity.

That was actually fortuitous, perhaps better than more than lucky.

Is that the sort of thing you're thinking about on this topic?

Yes, 100%.

I think luck is just a nice way to, it's a romanticization of preparation, because you can only be lucky.

I don't think actual luck exists where you step outside and a 10-pound note floats into your hand on the wind.

That's like...

I'd say I am quite lucky like that.

I often found my little child.

Yes, but you were probably looking for it, right?

Were you not looking for it?

I mean, I was looking for it, yeah.

But I think that the idea of luck is really nice, but you can't be lucky if you're not looking for the opportunity.

And yeah, so it's all tied in, in like action and reaction and all of that fun stuff.

So that is how I have been kind of thinking about this over the last week.

I listened to what I thought was a recent episode of the Writing Girls Podcast.

And I was like, oh, it was this episode.

It's the Spa Girls, right?

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, yes, Spa Girls.

And I was, yeah, I was telling Matilda yesterday, I was like, oh, you know, I heard this great episode of the Spa Girls.

And it was an episode about making your first thousand dollars.

And it was just like the right one to listen to.

It was really good.

You should listen to it.

And she was like, I didn't see that come up on the feed.

And when I looked-

I've looked at every Spa Girls episode.

I loved it.

Yeah, so I looked, and my app had just fed me an episode from July, which maybe that was luck.

It was just like, it was the right episode at the right time, because they were talking about different ways to get better in your business.

And one of the things they were talking about was reaching out to other authors and how, if you don't try and talk to other people, and you don't put yourself into people's line of sight, and don't look to make connections, you'll never get those connections.

And I was listening to them talk about this.

They obviously spoke about it much more eloquently than I did.

And I just thought, wow, this is such a right thing to hear, because that's what I've been thinking about recently, and when I've been making the Discord group that I set up, which is in itself setting up opportunities for myself and for other people.

And yeah, and that was an episode that the universe gave to me.

Maybe, look, it does exist.

Or maybe I'm just dumb and I don't know how to use the podcasting app, which is more like it.

But yeah, I think that I really love, I think I'm really into preparation.

I love working.

I am a workaholic.

I'm always doing something.

And I really believe that you can't do anything without preparing for it.

So I am a big advocate for just doing stuff and seeing what happens afterwards.

I feel like I definitely haven't felt like I was doing that as well in the past, as I have been doing this year.

And I was trying to think about what's the difference.

And you mentioned something out there about putting yourself in front of the right people, or putting yourself...

I can't remember what that wording was, obviously.

In their line of sight.

Yes, that's the line of sight.

And it's interesting, like a lot of things that maybe come together this year.

I feel like I've been doing different things this year, but that's actually maybe not true.

There are things that are paying off from several years ago.

So one thing that maybe we can talk about, so there's a couple of things that we can kind of talk around today that we're not quite ready to publicise yet, but we can talk around them that have come as a consequence of putting yourself in the right person's line of sight.

But one thing I can really talk about is being on which I'd known then for Authors Podcast, which is usually a podcast, which features people who are six-figure authors, or at least full-time authors.

I would say it is one of those really fantastic big podcasts.

It's often people who are already successful looking back that we have both loved and we wanted to make a kind of different version of that coming from the bottom up.

And I would never have thought a year ago of just messaging them and saying, I'd love to be on a podcast.

Because also partly, there's nothing for me to get out of it.

Like I, it's not a book, it's not a podcast where you go to sell your books.

But it is a podcast where you go to make connections with other authors.

So like someone has emailed me, post that podcast appearance and a couple of other friends have been, you know, writer loose connections have been in touch following it.

And that feels like that's increasing my network.

So you do get things out of it.

But I wouldn't still never have thought about going on because what am I going to talk about?

And the way that I ended up getting on was I have met Sarah Zett very, very briefly at the SPS conference a couple of years ago, you know, maybe even three years ago now.

Just in passing.

So she knows something that I know.

And the introducers, maybe a two minute, hello, how are you doing?

That's it.

And then we were talking about ways to kind of expand listenership for this podcast.

And we were thinking, do we just, what's an easy way to kind of put our toe in the water with that?

Do we know anybody already we could look at and that we think they've got the right audience, could we advertise in their podcast?

And I was like, oh, you know, I could reach out to Sarah Zett and ask her, can we advertise in your podcast?

Hopefully, it's not that expensive.

And in fact, the point of it came around when I said to do a different podcast, where they had mentioned their rates for promoting other things like podcasts, and it was a really affordable price.

And I was like, oh, you know what, maybe we never thought about it actually probably quite affordable, maybe cheaper than doing some ads.

So let's try to put her in the water of expanding that way.

So I reached out to her and she's like, oh, actually, we're no longer doing ads, we're looking to go to more lesser supported kind of in perpetuity.

But do you want to come on?

I was like, oh, yeah, absolutely.

Again, a year ago, if someone asked me that, I might have even said no, because I would have thought not only would not have approached for that, but even if they asked me, I thought, I will sound awful, because what we're going to say, I don't know.

I think I wouldn't have been able to interpret the questions in a way that may be confident and understand what they're looking for as an answer.

That's not saying anything about them.

That would be about me and my understanding of the way that sort of conversation is structured.

But when I went on to speak to them, as I was saying, it was so comfortable, so nice and easy.

Part of that is they are enormously professional about it.

Part of it is, for a year, we've been having this sort of conversation, and this conversation is in one way, a very natural conversation, but in another way, it's structured to be listened to.

We have a specific rule about how to interrupt each other.

We have often already kind of pre-touched upon the topics, or we've talked about things, you know, just checked, what did you do this week?

Did I do the same thing?

Can you talk about most things this week?

Because I've got no idea what we're doing.

You know, we've had a little behind the scenes chat, so it's, knowing that now helped me know when I went on to their podcast, when I went on to Wish I'd Known There For Authors, how to get the best out of our conversation and present the best work to other people.

And so being on a podcast would seem like luck.

If I were looking back on this a couple of years in the future and say that appearance was the thing that made this podcast become really successful, I would say, oh, wasn't I lucky that I just at the right time messaged Sarah and asked her and she was like, come on the podcast.

But it absolutely wasn't that.

That's the product of me attending a self-publishing conference several years in a row, having made enough connections, being able to, and in fact, the person who introduced me was someone that I had already reached out to online because we are from the same area.

So that is all preparation.

And me kind of slowly, slowly, extending my network led to me being on that podcast and has led to an enormous increase in downloads for this podcast.

I'm sure there's listeners now listening to us for that.

And hopefully that means that we're connecting with more people that really will benefit from following our journey along.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's like, it's insane to think that you being on that podcast was luck because we've put in a years with the work for it.

But we weren't doing it for that purpose.

Like that would be a good thing to do.

But this is all preparation.

And it's not just preparation for the podcast, it's preparation for our careers in general, because we're practicing every week practicing, talking about our work and breaking walls down where you might not feel comfortable originally to talk about how much money you've made or how much work you put in, or whether you had a bad week and you didn't do anything.

Usually you wouldn't tell other people that stuff.

That would just be all the things that you kept in your own head and berated yourself about.

Or, you know, just like all those fun things like we are, this is all preparation for setting ourselves up for more honest future in publishing with ourselves, but also with colleagues as well.

I liked what you said about if you'd have come across the opportunity to go on, which I'd known, you would have said no.

And I think that saying no, I think we're both probably the same.

I have a terrible habit of wanting to say no to everything.

And that is a mindset thing that we've worked on a lot over this year and we've probably talked about it a lot on the podcast, is wanting to lean away from things that you didn't think you're ready for, not sure if it's right for you.

It's only really with things that I care about a lot, right?

Like, yes, I in my, you know, talking so far, like in my real life, I feel quite adventurous and feel just like, you know, I've done some acting locally, I would never, I'm not really interested in acting.

I'm not a person that would ever say, I'd love to have everyone looking at me.

I just thought I'll give it a go, because I didn't really care about the outcome.

Like, if everyone looked at me and was like, I was the worst actor ever, I don't care.

That's the director's terrible choice put me in the play.

Whereas I care so much about this, I care so much about my writing life.

That I feel physically stung by things going badly.

And I'm so conscious of that, that it means that I sometimes don't put myself out there enough, because I'm avoiding that pain.

Right?

And that's not, that sounds sort of terrible, but also sort of really obvious.

We don't want to be putting themselves in pain.

So yeah, of course, I avoid situations where I think I'm going to be embarrassed, anxious, literally maybe somebody else will make me feel bad and say things that will stick with me for a long time.

So it often has felt easier to avoid those places where I'm starting to fail.

And now I feel much more confident and I've expanded the things that I would feel comfortable saying yes with, including something I'll talk about in a little bit.

But can you tell us an example of something for you that you have felt like has maybe looked like luck, but has been a preparation meets opportunity moment?

I think that most of my career has been, I think from the outside looks like, oh, she's managed to pull this together.

How the hell has she done that?

And I don't think a lot of people in my day to day life, I don't think people know how much I work, like how hard I work behind the scenes, because I put across a very relaxed persona.

I'm a very chilled out person, and a lot of my friends and family think like, how do you do, how are you publishing books?

How are you always doing things?

And because they think that I must just go home and watch TV all the time.

And I do watch a lot of TV.

You do watch a lot of TV.

TV is a main hobby of mine, and I squeeze it in where I can.

But I also work really hard.

And I am the really overused cliche of the swan, or the goose, or whatever bird you want to call it, the duck on water, where I'm just gliding along, but my legs are kicking furiously.

So I think that my whole career has had this perception of luck, but really it's me doing a lot of work.

And I give everybody who's ever published a book, whether you've published one book or you've published 10 books or 50 books, I give everybody so much credit because nobody, unless you're doing this, nobody knows the hardships of it.

Some of the stuff I would say that I have wanted to say no to in the past, and I would say maybe this year is getting my book edited by somebody, because I have edited some of my own books in the past, and I have also had external editors.

This year, I really wanted to really just hand that over to somebody else, and I almost didn't want to because it meant somebody would be telling me all the things that are wrong with my work.

I know as a writer, that's just part of the process and I'm way over that feeling now.

But at the start of the year when I started thinking about it and like, oh, I really should make sure that somebody else edits the hell out of this.

I didn't want to.

That's so dumb.

But I am, yeah, I am just, just don't want somebody to tell me how rubbish I am.

But it worked out so well.

And I think that it comes across in the book.

I think my last publication is the best book that I've ever put out.

And I hope that people realize that that is a team effort and not just me on my own as well, because I love the team that I work with.

I'm gonna say this now because we don't really have a podcast before it.

So we all know that Matilda was on the Wish I'd Known Them podcast last week, but I am actually recording an episode as well next week.

And I don't know when it's gonna come out, but I might as well talk about it now, because I don't know when we're gonna talk about it, because we've got Christmas coming up and stuff.

And that is something that I would never have said yes to.

If you hadn't already done it and been like, you know, they invited us both on, I was like, okay.

So that's definitely something that I would not have said yes to.

But I have been forced to because we come as a pair.

And now we're dragging each other along.

Yeah, that's kind of, I feel like saying no is a thing of the past for me.

Next year, I'm not saying no.

I'm not going to say yes to everything.

I might say maybe, but I'm not going to say no to any opportunity next year.

You can quote me on that.

I am.

And that is something that I think some people find really scary.

I think I've done enough similar things in my career in terms of attending conferences, going places where a lot of people are that I don't know, that I didn't feel at all like a thing that I would even think about because I also really like learning.

So I love a conference.

So I've been a couple of years and I think I'm excited for you to come this year.

Last year when I went, someone was like, is Sam here?

Because they don't listen to podcasts.

No, sadly, we don't actually come to the fair this year.

We're not.

I am going to be there and please, people come over and talk to me.

Make me feel good for saying yes.

Yeah, hopefully we're wearing our hoodies.

The last year it was so hot that I could not wear my hoodies the whole time.

And also the hoodies are the exact same color scheme as the SPS yellow.

So yeah, it's not that fortunate.

But find us, find anyone yellow and ask them if it's one of us because it might be.

Yeah, that thing is really exciting.

I also think us doing this together in some ways seems like luck.

So you know, we've talked about before we have the most tenuous connection.

We are, we have a mutual friend in common, but someone who did not overlap in in terms of like the times when they knew each of us.

And there's no reason for us to have to, there's no reason for us to have a podcast together.

That's, that's crazy for someone like you met like 35 years ago.

And then I met 25 years ago, they, they knew both of us.

And then thankfully, this digital age has kind of connected us very tangentially online, we could kind of keep a little bit of an eye on each other, but not that much.

And then I happened to move back to the UK and want to have more writer friends, and felt in the really a strong need to like proactively reach out because I knew how important it had been back in Hong Kong.

And so just reached out to you for a critique group.

And then that was like that went well during the pandemic and then post pandemic thing, people had kind of different life schedules.

So then again, we could have just drifted apart after that.

But I happened to see just a post from you on the internet saying, I want to become a full time author by 40.

And I had literally just said the exact same thing a few weeks earlier.

I'll stop proving my luck thing wrong.

Both of us could have decided not to do that thing, right?

Yeah, and both of us could have done that thing and then thought, oh, that's interesting, and not acted on it.

But I think we've had so much preparation in terms of our interaction with other writers by now, that we both felt like I've been preparing for this.

Because again, if I'd seen that from you five years earlier, I would have thought, well, Sam's really delusional.

What a crazy person.

Yeah.

Don't want to speak to her.

And we were preparing by just constantly putting ourselves in a space where we could say out loud what we wanted.

And again, I think five years ago, I wasn't really talking to people as much about my writing.

Like I hadn't had published at all five years ago.

I have made a really conscious effort in recent years to tell my family and friends, like, oh, I can't come this weekend because I'm writing.

Oh, I've got another book out.

Even though I know that it's not their main area of interest and it's not really something that they can understand in the same way that writing friends can, it feels important for me to have friends and family ask me about my writing and my books in the same way they would ask somebody else about their kids, because it's a significant part of my life.

And just because there's nothing visible, like tangible about it that they would encounter, I don't want it to seem like it starts to feel like a dirty secret.

So for me, making the conscious effort to say more things out loud and the same for you, I assume, that put us in a place where we could then be confident enough to go to each other and say, I would also like to do that.

And so yeah, it's just it's just being more consciously yourself, and then getting yourself to a stage where you can see the next opportunity.

And then I have received recently a really big opportunity that feels like something that even though I'm trying to say yes to things, my first instinct was to say absolutely not.

Because it's so big.

It's such a change to the path that I've been thinking about.

And I really I can't go into this because we've not signed contracts or anything and hopefully we'll be soon but and I will talk about it then but and it might go nowhere like it turns out logistics but it's fantastic just to have the opportunity that feels very, very measurably different.

Like I put myself in a different place and just to kind of, I know this is unbelievably vague, but it's a right opportunity that someone's come up to me with.

And it's again, someone that I met a few years ago, in fact, also at SPS, but I've kind of maybe stayed in their consciousness from doing things like being in this podcast.

That's connected to other people being in other Cozy Mystery groups.

And just being really present and feeling confident being present has kept me in people's consciousnesses enough that when something came along, someone recommended me for this opportunity.

So that again, feels like luck, but it's absolutely not luck.

It's an opportunity.

And I have been preparing for it by being doing this podcast really, it's been a huge preparation in terms of like having to really articulate what I want, and what it could look like.

And having you interrogate what I want, right?

And ask me questions in terms of what's your plan?

What does it mean to do that?

How would you change your life if that if X happened?

Having to discuss it out loud feels like when something came up where someone said, would you change your plan significantly?

Essentially, I could then not just have to instantly say no, I could even just come to you and say, I want to say no.

Please can we talk about it a bit?

Yeah, convince me.

I know, because we have, I think that's been one of the biggest changes of my life and doing this mastermind, is the benefit of having two brains.

And we are two very different people and we come at life very differently.

We are on opposite ends of most spectrums when it comes to making decisions, which is why it's so helpful because, you know, if I just ask myself, I'm like somebody who really thinks, oh, you know, trust my own instincts, and I really lean heavily into like thinking that I'm some sort of witchy, woo woo person who's like, I don't know, you know, I know the right option, I'll know the right decision to make.

But I also don't know.

And like, like I said, like a lot of my a lot of my gut instinct tells me to say no, which is out of fear.

And having you to be able to to talk to about any decision that I might have to make.

I know that I'm going to get a completely different perspective that I would never have thought of.

And that is just like indispensable to me.

I can't even imagine that I would have gotten this far.

If we hadn't started this mastermind, I don't even know, I just don't even know.

I can't imagine what my life would be like.

I can't imagine what I would have been doing.

Yeah, you've changed me.

I know, me too.

I feel like you're making sort of marriage vows right now.

But that is how I do it.

I feel like I feel like it's so nice to have a work wife.

And I think what you were saying about being able to talk to somebody who brings a different perspective, I think it's also important that it's a different perspective from someone who knows you.

Yes.

So much of self publishing is like, who's who shouts aloud on the internet and the internet forums, that's a person whose opinion kind of becomes popular belief, because they have said it loudly enough and enough.

Eager hangers on have said, yes, that's true, that it sort of becomes the case.

And then when you experience something that contrasts with that, it always feels like gaslighting like, it's said to do this, and I've done it, and it didn't do anything.

I must be wrong.

It's like diet culture, right?

And so having just one person who knows every thought you've had in relation to a certain topic over a year, and you've had to really articulate it for them to understand that that's the whole purpose of your interaction, then to go to them and say, I'm thinking X, and they say, that's because you have the same thought pressure every time we talk about this sort of thing.

The next step that you're going to think is, why?

Let's talk about that and get you there.

Or is it because when we talked a month ago about money, you felt this about money, is it because of that?

And it's so valuable, and there's nothing else that I think you can have to give you enough, that much business help.

And I'm sure some people don't need that.

I'm sure some people are really, really able to independently think through this.

And you can see that awesome people are better at thinking in a group.

But I think for me, it definitely feels like this works.

That's what I really liked about listening to the Inca Magic episode this week about the Mastermind.

It was almost like, you know, here in this exact conversation we have every week with a different group of people and being able to see it.

What's fascinating is how much of it was the same and how much of it was different, like which parts of which.

And because they are three very different people.

So the Mastermind is, the podcast is going to be two people and the Mastermind is a third person who doesn't come on normally.

And they're three very different people.

And they have the same process of asking each other questions, challenging other on like, you've said this many times, is it because of this?

Or, you know, you want to do this, but you're shying away from it.

And we've talked about this so many times, can we go back to it?

And it felt very validating to kind of hear and other people do the same sort of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I need to catch up on that episode.

It just, yeah, it's, even if you were to meet up with someone or share some thoughts with another writer, and if it didn't work out, I would also, I think that much like finding a good hairdresser, I don't think finding, because we have, okay, I'm gonna go back on myself.

I do believe in luck.

Because we're lucky that this worked out as it did, like off the bat.

But it could be just...

I think that's true.

I think that's not true.

I think we, I think probably in our lives, if we look back on it, we would find other situations where we've had starts to something similar, but they didn't work.

And that we have been putting in the effort to get to a better place where we are both doing more or we are the authors or doing more in terms of being open about our writing, that when the someone else came along, and it had to be a slightly better person for us, but it had to be, and I feel slightly right time.

But I think it looks like luck, but it's not luck, right?

I think it's a precious opportunity.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, thanks, we don't have to go back on what I said.

Yeah, but I do think that I think if other writers or people listening to this are not having a great time working with somebody else, then maybe you need to find the right person to talk to.

And the more people you talk to, the more opportunity you'll have to find the right person.

Maybe that's more.

I think it's just opening lines of communication with other writers, and that is the preparation that leads to the opportunity that will look like luck.

And you can find those people in Facebook groups or on social media, or you can make your own Discord like I made.

Something I want to talk about is time.

Because I have been publishing for a long time.

Like 2016 is when I first released a book, and I haven't done it consistently.

I've just dropped in here and there.

But I think that time really plays into everything.

So I think that a lot of people might think that where I am in my career, which isn't like very far, but if you were to look at the books that I've released recently, I think you would think that they look like good and professional.

But I have come up, I have put a lot of time into that.

And so preparation can sometimes look like time, and sometimes that's off-putting.

I think if you're listening to this and you're somebody who thinks, I haven't had any of these opportunities, I haven't had a single opportunity that could even be thought of as luck.

It might just be that you are still in the preparation phase.

Do you remember what it was like when you were just preparing?

Like what was that like for you?

So many of my opportunities this year are coming from things that I started several years ago.

Yeah, and like the first person I really knew in self-publishing was someone that I knew in my real life.

So it was the writer Jordan Rivett, who's a sci-fi, fancy writer.

I've talked about her before, and in fact, we talked about her this week on.

We should have known then as well.

And she's someone who just by luck, I happen to know, but also not by luck.

She's someone who, like me, wants to go and live in an interesting country, so both chose to live in Hong Kong.

And she's someone who, like me, is very proactive and would happily works, you know, at the time works a day job and also wants to do writing.

So she set up a writing group on Tuesday evenings and met in an ice cream parlor.

We both love ice cream.

So it's like a match made in heaven.

But many people came to this and then I...

Every social function I went to in Hong Kong, I would always end up talking to the writers and I would get invited to different groups.

And then both Jordan and I found ourselves in a...

A salon, it was fancily called a salon.

It was so much fun.

It was like a little critique group.

And we met there once a week.

And that's how I knew her and she saw enough of my writing to say, oh, this is a Cozy Mystery.

And so in a way, luck, right?

That's, I couldn't control that I met her, but actually really opportunity because I had prepared by, I have been writing forever.

I joined writing groups.

I spoke to everyone about writing.

There's no, you know, cosmic hand coming down from the sky to say, this is this thing.

But I think it didn't change my life, right?

It didn't like suddenly make me a millionaire author.

It just gave me the opportunity to take the first steps.

And I think that's maybe what people undervalue is that you're not looking for like a big lightning strike opportunity.

Luck isn't one big thing.

Luck is like lots and lots of little steps along the way.

And actually, they're just you haven't prepared very well for many different opportunities that will come to you.

And you cannot control opportunities to come to you.

That is the hard part.

Yes.

And like if I had wanted to be on Wish I'd Known a year ago, I would not have been able to get on because I would not have had anything to talk about that they would be interested in.

But it didn't feel at all, beyond belief to be on now.

It felt like, yeah, that's a great match up.

I felt very fortunate to be on and it felt like a wonderful opportunity, but it did not feel like a bolt of lightning had been sent down from the sky and I had been chosen to be on this thing for no reason.

But again, that isn't going to be a thing that says, now my publishing career has changed vastly.

No, it's one thing along the way.

It might be that the person who emailed me from that is now going to become the person that I do something significant with in terms of writing.

I've got no way to know or the other people who have come to this podcast from that.

One of them is one who reaches out and we end up doing something together.

I've got no way to control that.

All I'm doing is trying to just give myself more and more opportunities.

I'm just trying to build up as many chances for opportunity as possible and prepare for them as much as I can.

And then be able to run and take them when they come.

Yeah, because it's so difficult because everything seems to take such a long time.

I know like in the past five years of my life, I have felt like I have been slogging, like it's just been like such a long game and feeling like I was never going to make it.

And and I haven't made it yet either, but I do feel like I'm closer.

And although I love the idea, like I love the idea of if when I play the lottery, I'm so sure that I'm going to win it.

Like, I'm sure.

And for every book that I release, I'm so sure that's going to be the one that launches an insane career for me.

But at the same time, I know it doesn't.

And I have learnt this year that patience really is a virtue.

And I hate that.

And you do, and you have to have faith that hard work pays off.

And I, I know that, I think I've said this before, you know, as long as you keep putting books out, you'll start, you'll make money, and you'll make more money.

The more books you have, the more money you'll make.

And I know that that might not always be the case.

In some regards, you could be putting out trash, and so you're never gonna get better.

You're not getting better, and you're never gonna find the audience, because someone will pick up one book and see that you haven't done, you're just not great.

I don't, but I think that that's like very, very rare.

I actually think it's more rare to be bad and not get better than it is to put in hard work and continuously put in hard work, because you have to surely have to get better and you have to make more money.

And that's what I'm putting my faith in, is that as awful as it sometimes feels, like as slow as life sometimes feels, and as slow as progress feels, in a year, I can guarantee you will be doing this again and looking back, and we can't even imagine now what changes are going to have happened this time of year.

And it's incredible.

I'm so excited.

And there's no way that things can't happen, because all this preparation is going to lead to so many things.

And they're going to be things that we never could have ever guessed.

That's like a weird thing to think.

Yeah.

And I think, interestingly, like this year, I feel so much more certain of that than previously.

And really, that's maybe another unexpected benefit of doing a weekly podcast, is like, it puts such a specific marker on your life, that now we're coming up to the anniversary of podcast, and we can literally look back and say, what has happened to us in the past year?

So many things that I could not have guessed at.

And if I had decided at the beginning of the year, like, oh, I'm going to try and do X, Y and Z, I would have missed out on the opportunities to have all the things that have come up.

And I definitely decided on like some things I wanted to do, but it's nice to be developing bit by bit and just be able to kind of take what comes and see what I want to do with that.

And that feels a bit airy-fairy, but also it definitely has taken me great places.

And I might, you know, at some point want to change the process of how I plan out and take different opportunities.

But it feels great right now to be able to, and that's maybe a thing we talked about in terms of like having the early career positivity that you're not tied down to things.

Being able to take opportunities is a fun thing we should appreciate right now, that we won't always have that chance.

We won't always be able to say, I'm going to drop certain aspects of my plan in order to make space for this big opportunity to come up.

So again, yeah, really appreciating that.

And that's a fun thing to appreciate this year, that I haven't been able to appreciate in the past.

Yeah, same.

I'm just thinking now whether, I can't remember whether I did like a, this is, I apologize for people listening, because this is like really witchy woo woo awful stuff, but vision boards.

I'm sure we've talked about this before.

And I can't remember whether I did a vision board for this year.

I must have done, because I'm sure I do them all the time on Pinterest.

And I haven't looked back to see like if I hit any of those things.

But I'm starting to think maybe I might do like an actual physical vision board on my wall in front of me and and see what a difference, if that makes a difference, to be looking at the stuff that I'm going for rather than just like thinking about it.

And I, because so many things have happened, and I feel like so many opportunities have have arisen just through, like just through doing this and just through talking to people.

And I haven't really, I haven't really kind of like pinned any of these things down, if that makes sense, like I haven't looked at them and thought, was this, was this something that I was going for, but I just didn't realize it.

And I'm starting to think maybe I should do a little project and see if actually going for specific things works.

I think that's a thing we could try in the next year, because I think this year we have had this benefit of saying, like, we're not tied down to anything, and that has been fun and helpful to see what comes up.

And then next year, maybe say, I want to have a balance of things I've chosen to do versus things that come my way.

Like I think, you know, in the same next year, I'm releasing a new series, so I've got different intentions of where I want to spend my time and effort.

And I feel free to say, like, yeah, I'm just going to throw these things down and do this instead.

Yeah, let's see.

I'm very excited.

I am excited for all the opportunities that will come our way to take advantage of the enormous preparation we have put in.

And there's no such thing as luck except for luck dragons.

And one day I will find a luck dragon and it will be so good.

I cannot wait for that day when I am living my full never ending story life.

But until then, there is no other form of luck apart from Falco of the luck dragon.

Anything else to say on the topic of luck slash opportunities slash preparation slash, again, another 1980s obscure reference and no one else is going to be that interesting?

No, other than that you just have to be playing the game in order to win the game.

I mean, there's Seneca and then there's you, like right up there with the Roman philosophers.

Let's go for the poster.

You got to be in it to win it, as many philosophers say.

Yeah.

Well known.

Hopefully, a good one to if you want to get coming up to Christmas, when it can feel, you know, it's dark and cold and it can feel a bit like judgment is descending in terms of new year is coming.

But it's a great opportunity to think of new things.

As I mentioned before, we've got something a bit different coming up.

So next week, we're not able to meet up due to our Christmas plans.

But thankfully, we have prepared for that.

We've prepared for a rainy day by having an extra episode.

And it's actually everyone's favorite topic.

And I've listened to it already and it goes very well after this one.

It's on the topic of money.

So that's out on New Year's Day because we're not releasing on Christmas Day, obviously.

We're not, Santa, we're not delivering that day.

So next episode is coming out on New Year's Day and that's the one on money.

Then after that, we're back to meeting up.

We're doing an episode, a 2024 review.

Then we're doing an episode that we record together.

We keep calling it a live episode, but it's not live.

It's not live.

It's live for us.

It's in the flesh episode.

That sounds less nice.

And then yesterday, we spent all of our session yesterday planning out next year, that's going to be something not even different, better.

It's going to be bigger and better than this year.

And a way for us to keep showing you the way in which we're developing through time.

So yeah, we've got something different.

I think we'll be announcing it at the start of next year.

It will still be a weekly podcast.

Don't get too excited.

It's much the same, but...

Yeah, you're not getting rid of us.

Yeah.

But just it's going to be an even better way to represent kind of how we're discussing and growing.

So hopefully that is a thing to look forward to.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas, unless you listen to us at any time of year, in which case just enjoy the spirit of Christmas no matter what time of year it is, as I always do.

And thank you very much for everyone being with us this year.

That's been excellent.

Thank you and goodbye.

Goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

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