Episode Description:
In this episode of What If For Authors, Claire Taylor tackles one of the biggest challenges many indie authors face: working with a tight budget. Claire shares insights from her own experience of starting out on a shoestring budget and provides practical strategies for authors who want to make their writing career work without breaking the bank. Whether you're an author with no extra funds or someone who’s being mindful of their spending, this episode dives deep into how to navigate publishing costs, leverage skills, and avoid common budget pitfalls based on your Enneagram type.
Key Takeaways:
Start Small, Learn More: You can launch your author career with very little upfront cost. Claire shares how she started out with just a website and Adobe suite and worked her way up over time, stressing the importance of learning new skills to save money.
Trade Skills with Other Authors: One great way to get things done without spending is to trade services with other authors. Claire discusses the value of learning key skills, and how fair exchanges can help you stay on budget.
Where Budgeting Anxiety Comes From: Each Enneagram type faces different fears and anxieties when working on a tight budget. Claire walks through each type and how their specific tendencies affect their budgeting decisions.
Avoid the Credit Card Trap: Claire advises against opening credit cards or overspending on courses and marketing tools before you’re ready. Patience and gradual progress are key when working on limited funds.
Overcoming Mindset Blocks: Having a tight budget is not necessarily a disadvantage. Claire explains how shifting your mindset from scarcity to opportunity can build resilience and help sustain your author career in the long run.
Why You Should Listen: If you're an indie author struggling with budget constraints or just looking for ways to make your money stretch further, this episode is full of actionable tips and advice tailored to each Enneagram type. Claire’s personal experience and expert coaching help demystify how to balance financial limitations with building a successful author business. This episode will not only help you feel empowered to work within your means but also give you the confidence to continue on your path, no matter how tight the budget may be.
Join the Conversation: Sign up for the 5-Day Author Supercharge course at FFS.media.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for Authors as well as a Humor and Mystery Writer. You can check out my latest books to sustain your author career by going to ffs.media/sustain. Man, that's a mouthful some days.
Anyway, I've received feedback from folks lately that they really appreciate the shorter length of my episodes. Maybe like 25 to 35 minutes. I hear you. I love the feedback. Thank you. Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to be a short episode because I have a lot to say on our topic today.
We will see though, maybe I can get a little bit of auctioneer energy going and we can just get through this quicker. Even though I am, I am filming this right after lunch. We'll see, Hey, miracles can happen. All right. So people start their author journey from all different entry points. [00:01:00] Maybe you're working a nine to five that pays bills, but isn't that interesting?
Or you've had a long career doing something else like practicing law or medicine or working in law enforcement. And now you're ready to try something a little bit different in its pace. A lot of the people I work with have disabilities that make it hard for them to get a job or stay in a job. And so their resources are limited,
But they're hoping that in pursuing an author career, they can generate a source of revenue that will make their life a little easier while also allowing them the flexibility that they need. I also work with a lot of authors who are stay at home parents, and maybe you've always wanted to write, and you're also hopeful that it could generate a little side pop for something like family vacations, or even saving up for kids college.
Hearing about where the authors I work with are coming from, what life experience they're bringing with them, and what situation they're working within, it's really one of the most interesting perks of what I do. [00:02:00] I really never hear the same story twice. But one common thing that I do hear is anxieties about the cost of publishing, especially as an indie author.
So that's why today's episode is going to be asking the question, what if I'm working on a tight budget? Now a tight budget is going to look different from person to person. For some people, it might be that they have no available income to spare when it comes to investing in their book, in their career, like zero money.
It's all relative and a matter of perspective though, right? So some people might consider a tight budget 10 grand to get the book from inception through editing, get it a cover designer, and launch it with some basic marketing. I don't really know that I'm an authority on how much everything should cost, but I will say that people who are charging you thousands of dollars simply to publish your book are most likely scamming you. They're playing this [00:03:00] middleman and saying that you need a middleman, but you really don't need a middleman.
Most of the time, they're not producing value other than possibly saving you some time and effort when it comes to learning how to do the basic things that they're doing for you with their service.
If you plan on publishing more than one book, it's absolutely worth the investment to learn how to do the things like Working with a cover designer, formatting for an ebook and print, and maybe creating some basic graphics, that sort of thing. So this is what I'm going to talk about for most of the episode. If you're on a tight budget or no budget, I assure you that you can make it work. It's gonna take more time, and if your time and energy are limited resources, then it may just be a while before you can publish that book. And that's okay. There's really no race going on here. I know it feels like there is.
You know, death could come for us all at any moment. But living life in a rush like that is not a great way to enjoy any of it. What we [00:04:00] also all know, probably by now, is that I hate talking about myself on this show. It, I don't know, it just feels really embarrassing to me to talk about my own personal stuff.
I do it, because sometimes it helps illustrate a point, but it is a little bit embarrassing. , and also, I know that I'm not a universal example, so I do worry that if I give a single example Some folks may just compare themselves to that, and it could be a favorable comparison, but it could also be an unfavorable comparison.
So don't take any examples that I give from personal experience as a, this is the one way to do it. Okay. That being said. I will use myself as an example sometimes or explain where I'm coming from because I think it gives you a sense of my perspective as I explain these things. And in this case, it does show that I'm not one of those very moneyed people who shows up and goes, Why don't the poor just work harder [00:05:00] if they want to be rich?
Uh, that's not me. . When I first started writing with a career in mind, I was still working as a teacher. And so I was working 60 to 70 hours a week, getting paid jack shit, shout out to Texas for devaluing teachers, but then blaming them for every fucking social ill. Anyway, at the time I was also planning a wedding that was getting very expensive.
I didn't , particularly want to have a wedding. I was helping support John cause he was barely making above the minimum wage while he was going through the Academy. So, yeah, uh, it was still the most money I'd ever made working as a teacher at the time. I'd worked some pretty shit jobs, but I really didn't have anything to put towards writing at the time.
So this was where that tight budget really, really showed up for me. And even since then, I've had times where things are just not going according to plan or I need to make a pivot and I need to really tighten things up again. So I do have some experience with this.
So when I [00:06:00] started my writing business, in that it wasn't making money at the time yet, but it was, I was running it as a business with a desire to sell books. , I started with just the expense of like a cheap WordPress website and the Adobe suite, the Adobe Creative Suite. So that included Photoshop and Design, Premiere and Illustrator.
I had some experience with Premiere and Photoshop, but not much. , so I think at the time that was like 30 bucks a month. So it wasn't a zero dollar a month budget, but it was less than a hundred. And I probably kept that budget for the first year, year and a half. Once I had enough books out, I sort of dipped my toes into Amazon ads at that point.
So I was generating a little bit more revenue for my editing at this point. I quit my job as a teacher, so my income was a little less than before, but my husband's income was a little more than before. So it was kind of, it kind of balanced out. Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details, but I will [00:07:00] say that it was a little while before I started to throw real money at my business.
It was a few years. So you can do a lot on a tight budget for a long time because the most important part of building up your business is simply making writing good books. You don't even have to get them edited one at a time if you don't have that money. You can write a bunch of books before you start hiring someone to edit them for you.
And frankly, you don't technically have to hire an editor. Oof. I know. I, I know. I know. But there is no rule that you have to do that. So there are tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid that you can use to kind of get your book into decent shape. And if you're comfortable with that whole minimum viable product thing, then that can work.
If you're an Enneagram one, don't worry. I'm not talking about this for you. This is not for you. Enneagram one's [00:08:00] minimum viable product is like oil and water. So the biggest tool that you have, if you're working on a shoestring budget, is your ability to learn. If you are unwilling to learn new skills, this is going to be much, much harder.
So, not impossible, but much harder. If you don't already have at least one very useful skill for authors, then it's safe to say, Time to develop one, essentially. Now this could be making websites, writing sales copy, like maybe you're good at writing, , sales page blurbs. It could be editing, beta reading, cover design, creating graphics in Canva.
Maybe you want to learn how to do ads really well. So you want to work on a shoestring budget, you need to find something that you're at least decent at that authors need. And then what you do is you start trading off services with other authors. This is just how you start from the ground up. If you don't have money, you use your time and your [00:09:00] expertise.
If you don't have time, you need a lot of expertise. If you don't have expertise, I've got great news for you. There's this thing called YouTube. It's a great resource to learn all kinds of useful skills.
If you have the time to dedicate to it, but some skills, especially those around marketing and advertising will take some initial investment to get good at. So anytime I start a marketing platform that's new, I expect to lose a bunch of money at first. I call it tuition, makes me feel better. And it's so much cheaper than even a single semester of my college education.
So that's what I do. I just consider it tuition. You've got to learn. There's going to be that initial investment. You could also call it education tax, you know, whatever feels right. But if you don't have money to throw at that at all, Then you probably don't want to start developing skills in something like marketing and ads.
If [00:10:00] you can afford 20 bucks a month to create a Canva account, there is a lot of need for graphics that authors have. , and you can start to create little graphics packages. you know, go out and make an account and something like Upwork and offer this as a service to generate some income, but I don't really recommend it.
I think the best way to do this is simply to create some graphics for yourself and post them on social media. So meet other authors, tell them what you're offering. If you can find a few people who are the sort of maven personality types, who know a bunch of other authors and enjoy recommending services that they like, those are the people to start with.
And you want to give them some services for free. And you want to, you know, do them some favors and give them your best work. And then you'll start to see the slow trickle of other authors who are coming in and asking if you can help them. So you can either charge for these [00:11:00] graphics, or if you're working with other authors who have a skill that you need, like maybe they love to beta read, then offer to swap services.
So one word of advice on swapping services. You need to make sure that the effort and the general price estimates have balance. So if they're going to spend 15 hours beta reading your book, let's say, and then you only offer them five marketing graphics with their book cover, that's not really an even trade, is it?
So as an Enneagram 1, I know a thing or two about things that are fair and what happens over the long term with relationships when things are not fair. So I think it's really important to keep track of the work that you're doing versus the work that they're doing for you. If you're, if you're conducting swaps of any kind, keeping track of things.
Tip for tat may be bad and like say a marriage, but this is not a marriage. This is a business exchange. Even if it's really friendly and [00:12:00] congenial. Keeping track will also allow you to validate any feelings you begin to have that maybe you're being taken advantage of, which sometimes happens. People will take advantage of people in this business knowingly or unknowingly, but especially if they are not, the most pro social people and they know that you're just starting out and you probably are in a power down position.
I'll do an episode on getting scammed at some point soon, so I'll just leave that there for now.
Okay, so all of this is pretty basic practical information and a lot of it is probably things you've already heard before or could have figured out on your own. So why do people still have anxiety about getting started or downsizing to a tight budget? What is the thing about working on a tight budget that really starts to make people anxious?
So this is probably the simplest approach for me, but maybe not the easiest because I'm feeling a little lazy today, but whatever. [00:13:00] So I'll just go through the types and talk about where the fear is going to show up in this process of getting started on a tight budget. Instead of starting with the reformers, like I usually do, because I love a good sequential order.
I'm going to jump to the end and go to the peacemakers first and then work my way backwards. I don't know. I'm just feeling a little love for Peacemakers today, and I don't want them to have to wait till last like they usually do. Anyway, okay, if you're an Enneagram 9, the Peacemaker, there are going to be a lot of moments in this jumpstart process that could possibly unsettle your peace of mind.
Every single one of these that pops up is going to look like an exit rant for you. Any opportunity, any, any task that comes up that might disrupt your peace of mind is going to make you wonder if there's another option. For instance, it generally takes a long [00:14:00] time to write a book. So let long time mean whatever you want it to mean.
My point is that it feels like a long time from starting a book to finishing it. If you have other responsibilities in your life, which you probably do. And this could look like another job, taking care of a relative or whatever, those responsibilities and time commitments are going to come into conflict with actually getting this book written.
And when that happens, you are very likely to not want to experience the energy of anger. That is very important. That is crucial to saying no to things.
Anger helps us protect our autonomy, which includes our wants and needs. It's a signal that someone may be taking advantage of us and we might want or need to give them a no.
But if saying no feels like conflict to you, what will likely happen? is you will look at your book and say, it's not that big of a deal. It's fine. If I don't work on this today, [00:15:00] it's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
I've seen a lot of nines. It's fine themselves into never completing that first book or whatever the next book is. So nines, you can have a bit of a complex of I'm nobody special, and that can lead to a desire to sort of stay out of the way. Now doing that makes it really hard to recognize what skills you have to offer for something like a trade with another author.
If you're working on a tight budget, it's not that you don't have skills. It's that the need to stay hidden to protect your autonomy and avoid any sort of feelings of conflict or anger is making you fall asleep to the skills that you have that do make you special.
So if you are a nine working on a tight budget, With possibly limited time or many other responsibilities. Notice if the book isn't getting done and ask yourself if you are, I'm finding it the, it's not a big deal. [00:16:00] Um, approach to that book because it's really hard to write when that's the case. All right.
Type eight, the challenger. If you're an eight, what I really discourage you from doing to start out if you are on a tight budget is. opening up a credit card. Okay. Keep an eye on that. Maybe don't do it if you can help it. So the vice of the eight is lust, which is sort of this. I need it right now. Energy working on a tight budget almost always means doing one project at a time or taking one approach at a time and doing it slowly to see if it's working at all before rushing straight into it.
If you're an 8 and you haven't worked on that all or nothing mentality, you're very likely going to run up against that credit card limit very quickly, before you even know whether or not you can earn that money back.
There are some things in this industry that cannot be forced. So if you're an eight, your approach of saying nothing will stop me, [00:17:00] I'll make it happen. It can get you into some trouble if you're on a tight budget. Because again, I know you don't want to hear this eights, but sometimes the situation is such that you can run into the brick wall as many times as you want.
And that wall will not come down. You'll just end up with a concussion. Yeah. So if you are an eight on a tight budget, look for where you're rebelling against your tight budget. I mean, you're the one that's setting the budget, so there's really no reason to stick it to yourself. Just keep an eye on that.
Sevens, the enthusiasts will have a similarly tricky time staying on a tight budget. So this is not to say that every seven has some sort of shopping addiction or anything like that, but the vice of the type is gluttony.
So the vice is just the sort of, , you know, trap that we tend to walk into of our type over and over and over again in every way. That's why vices are super fun. So the vice of gluttony, it's less of a focused intensity [00:18:00] than the vice of lust. That the eights have and more of an everything at once pattern, right?
So the thing that sevens build their life around is avoiding limitations.
Limitations is what's called the vulnerability of the seven. And so you can see how limiting a budget is not going to feel very good to the seven. What this may look like is blowing the budget by trying to do too many ad platforms a little bit without mastering them. So buy, buy money. That's a real quick way to do it.
But it may also look like starting too many projects at once, but not getting any ready for an editor and therefore not really moving the business forward. Writing the book is generally the cheapest part of the process and it's the most important. If you don't finish a book, it's really hard to ever get out of that stage of having a tight budget unless your financial circumstances change outside of your writing business.
So if you're a seven, just start to notice the ways that anything that [00:19:00] feels like limitation will, which will be a lot for you, triggers that need for stimulation, for going and getting everything all at once, but not closing off any options or possibilities.
If you are a six, the loyalist, keeping tight reins on your budget will probably feel very natural. What you might run into though is that old pattern of doubt. So with the money you have, how do you know if it's going to a smart place or if you're being scammed? How do you know if the person who's telling you what to do is a credible authority? How do you know if you're writing your book the right way? And of course I'm being sarcastic because there's no right or wrong way to write a book.
So if you're trying to do all this on a tight budget, that doubt is going to likely slow things down to a crawl. The best thing you can do, and probably the most natural thing for you to do, is to start building your network with other authors of various experience [00:20:00] in the industry. If you're a six, your gut is pretty damn good at figuring out who you can trust and who is just out for their own ambitions. Go ahead and use that gift. In this case, if you meet someone who seems trustworthy in this industry, it doesn't matter if you can see what expertise they have that might be useful to you now or in the future, just connect with them.
Because what you really need is someone to bounce ideas off of who seems to have your best interest in mind. So when you start to go back and forth on a decision, you won't have to do that indefinitely. You can go and talk to that person you trust who understands a little bit about what you're going through because they're going through it themselves or have gone through it themselves and you can get their advice.
And then this is important. Just take their advice. Honestly. If you're going back and forth between two options and you really can't see one that is jumping out to you as the better option, then probably you don't have enough [00:21:00] information to know yet. And the only way to get that information is to make a decision and move forward.
Listen, it might turn out to be the wrong decision. You regret it. Welcome to being an author where you make a lot of decisions you eventually wish you hadn't. Uh, that's just part of the process. So if you can end up making more beneficial decisions over the long term than decisions you regret, even if it's just like one or two more, you're doing great.
It'll become easier for you to make decisions as you get more experience in the industry. But when you're starting out and on a tight budget, or you're starting out in a new pen name on a tight budget, and you have previous experience, but are getting experience in the specific genre you're in, then the only way to have the information you need to make an informed decision is to try things out.
So probably if you can hear what your gut instinct is saying, just go with that. A rule that usually works well for sixes is always go with your first instinct. Your [00:22:00] second instinct will come along, maybe a third, fourth, fifth instinct. , if you just default to your first instinct over the long term, you'll see positive results.
But again, if you're really stuck, just ask one of those connections you've made and take their advice. Besides people like it when you take their advice. You know, it strengthens relationship, builds trust, so forth. All right. Type fives, the investigators. Okay. Fives. Listen up. I know you probably got very excited when I said that working on a tight budget means going and learning a bunch of new skills on the internet for you though, that part is going to feel safe and not scary, or at least less scary than concluding that you now know enough to get started on action.
Your natural attention towards self sufficiency is, it's going to be a huge benefit to you and working on a tight budget. It just is. Until, you know, it's not. And then it's very [00:23:00] much not. That's because fives have a hard time knowing when they know enough to get started. So fives generally want to have zero questions left before they start taking action. But there are always questions that can't be answered until you take action. That's why the scientific method isn't just hypothesis conclusion. You have to run experiments, and you have to run experiments enough that the information you're getting, the data, is significant.
Okay. I've seen fives blow through that tight budget very quickly by signing up for a bunch of courses that they never take. So this would be known as the sort of knowledge hoarding that we sometimes see with fives. It comes from that fear of being incompetent showing up and it's showing up in our spending habits.
Will I ever read all of these books that I buy? Of course not. Will I ever take all of the courses that I purchased? Also no. No. But that's not the reason that you [00:24:00] bought those. If you're a five, the reason you bought those was because your core fear was kicking up. Just one more course, just one more how to book.
And then maybe I'll know enough that I have zero risk of looking foolish when I take action. And the irony of it is that a five who says, yeah, I know a little bit about cover design probably knows more about it than someone of almost any other type who claims to be an expert. If you're a 5, I guarantee you that you are selling your knowledge short.
Fives are also usually the last authors to switch from doing everything themselves to hiring other people to take things off their plate. I can't tell you how many fives I've worked with who are making really good money having started with a tight budget, but because they want to reaffirm their competency by doing things themselves, they're wasting a lot of time doing something that someone else could do just as well or better.
If the five just paid [00:25:00] them. So fives, you're gonna say it's about saving money, but I really need you to pause and reflect on that. Honestly, are you maybe struggling with the idea of asking for help?
If you already know you're capable of doing those things, how much more confirmation do you need before you'll let someone take that off your plate? So you can do other things you'd like to do besides, you know, say the administrative work.
Okay, but that's, that's a question for a later time. Once the five has worked to the point of being off that shoestring budget, we're not necessarily needing to be on as much of a tight budget. Okay, four is your turn. If you are a four, the individualist, you might struggle with the feeling that your book is better than other books you've read that are selling more copies.
This might make you just want to give up. And the defense mechanism I see that pops up is best vocalized as, eh, good [00:26:00] books don't sell, only crap sells nowadays.
I also sometimes hear all of the bestsellers are terrible. People only want surface level books. They don't understand depth anymore. Right? And so on. If you find yourself saying this or thinking this, it's probably a good little sign that envy, which is the vice of the type, is kind of creeping up on you.
So yes, some people may write books that you think are significantly worse than yours. Yes, some authors have a whole lot more money to work with than you do, and that is not fair, I suppose. And yes, some of those authors with much more money than you write books that you think are inferior to yours. Okay, so all that, valid.
But if you let that sentiment take up residence It'll demotivate you to do the basics that you [00:27:00] need to do to eventually get more eyes on your book. Namely, write the book. It's also likely that even if you don't see your own envy as a four, which many, many fours don't, I can still tell you that it's there.
Time and time again, I'll be working with a four and I'll mention, the vice of envy to them and they'll go, I'm not envious. And then we'll have a conversation and they'll go, Oh, okay. I guess I am shit. I guess it's kind of everywhere. So if you're not addressing your patterns of envy, these are emotional patterns of envy.
You can kind of forget about networking, which is really important to work in a tight budget. If you feel disdain for every author that has more money available than you, or whose books you think are inferior to yours, you're really shooting yourself in the foot there. Other people can sense the envy, even if it's [00:28:00] in a blind spot for you.
And a lot of types have absolutely on point radar for it. So if you don't manage that pattern of envy and try to interrupt it and reprogram it, if you give it space to settle down in your heart, You may end up wondering why other authors don't respond to your emails or why they don't feel a strong desire to push you out to their readers.
And that can lead to the feeling of abandonment rejection that can sort of trigger some cycles that if you're a 4 you're probably familiar with so I don't have to explain them. So I know it's really hard to hear this and it's a tough pill to swallow. But the number one thing I see keeping force from success starting up an author business on a tight budget is this pattern of envy.
So I'm pointing it out to you so that you have the opportunity to inspect it. It hides itself very well, and it's incredibly destructive as a pattern. It can also often show up as waiting to be saved or [00:29:00] rescued rather than self rescuing. So. It can be quite insidious and it can be quite demotivating if you're working on a tight budget.
The bottom line is it doesn't really matter how brilliant your book is if this emotional pattern is calling the shots. So, if you are a four, look at that envy and if you notice that you are focusing your attention more frequently on what others have that you don't, that's a sign that it's time to refocus on what you do have at your disposal as far as resources, as far as skills, time, people, you know, that can help you get going when you're working on this tight budget.
All right, type three, the achiever.
Now, you might think I don't have much advice for a three getting started on a tight budget because the attentional patterns of the three really lend themselves to the whole bootstrapping philosophy. Threes are very good at marketing and promotion too because they have a natural talent for knowing what someone [00:30:00] else wants and being able to see through their eyes so that they know how to pitch something to that person or to a larger audience.
So the problem that threes run into here when they're trying to work on a tight budget. Is really about jumping into the marketing phase before you have a substantial product or catalog to market. So this comes from that need to be seen and to go get attention.
You can certainly put together some graphics to get people excited about a book ahead of its release. But I do occasionally see threes jumping into promotion before they even know what the book is going to be about. This may look like buying a cover that they think will sell or making one, putting together a bunch of pretty graphics, building a flattering website that makes them seem very successful, and then being like, Oh yeah, I guess I should write this book.
The problem is that, like I said, writing a book can take a long time, even if you're a three who can find the most efficient route to [00:31:00] anything. If you're already hooked into the gratification of getting attention through marketing. It can be really hard to pull back and not receive that kind of attention during the process of writing the book.
For that reason, writing the book can become incredibly difficult and just not hold your attention.
If you're a three that cares a lot about projecting the image of success. That can put you at risk of overspending, but it can also leave you on the edge all the time. Since a part of you knows that you don't yet have a product to back up that image of success, or maybe you only have a few books and they haven't yet taken off.
That's okay, but it doesn't feel good to try to maintain an image of success when deep down you don't yet feel successful. That drains a lot of energy. So really the biggest risk for a three is getting ahead of themselves and jumping straight into the marketing and the image [00:32:00] construction before writing the books.
Three is you don't need to know your brand yet. Write the books first. You will feel much better about the marketing if you do. Enneagram to the helper. The part of getting started on a tight budget or pulling back into a tight budget that will likely have the most pitfalls for you is the trading off of services with other authors. If you're trading services with someone else, your first instinct is going to be to give more than you receive.
Twos have a very difficult time receiving help. This is Not a revelation to any twos, right? This is the first thing that we generally mention when we're chatting. But in the mind of the two, they're supposed to be the helpful one. That's how they reaffirm their self worth. So what happens when they receive help from others?
What does that say about their self worth? Hmm. But giving substantially more than you receive is how you end up [00:33:00] being stuck on a tight budget for a really long time. It's also how you burn out before you ever start generating enough income to get off of that tight budget.
The secret hope behind the over giving of the two is that they will receive the appreciation that they're desperate for. And, you know, maybe you'll receive some appreciation. Maybe that will happen for you. But Not to be too much of a killjoy or a cutthroat capitalist here, but at the end of the day, businesses run on money, not verbal appreciation.
So if that verbal appreciation leads to sales from your book, then great. But the need for that appreciation can sometimes blind the two to the reality that appreciation is not leading to a sustainable income to continue writing and publishing.
Appreciation is feeding such a deep emotional need that money can seem entirely secondary.
And you [00:34:00] all know me by now. I'm not some sort of money at all costs person by any means.
But I do know that twos, like everyone else, wants to be able to pay their bills each month and being on a tight budget can be stressful over the long term. So if you want to get off that tight budget and you're a two, just make sure to check the numbers rather than going entirely by whether or not you feel appreciated when it comes to evaluating your writing marketing efforts.
And finally, Enneagram type one, the reformer.
There's a book called the Buddhist Enneagram.
And it describes each type as a different kind of warrior.
Type one is called the warrior of exertion. I definitely had a good laugh when I first read that. It's the first place that I've seen that kind of pattern described. So it's not quite like the challengers intensity of forcing things, but it's more like the one develops a high [00:35:00] tolerance to exertion and to white knuckling to make sure that everything is done to a standard of quality as close to perfection as possible.
If you're working on a tight budget and doing all of the things yourself, your life will remain stressful as long as you're trying to do all of the things to perfection.
I need ones to hear this. Okay. There is no reason you should know how to do all of the things well. Figure out which things you can do the most subpar without facing a major lack in sales. So it's really important if you're working on a tight budget as a one that you pick which areas of your business are going to get a C plus effort.
And I know that hurts to even think about, but honestly, I say this with love, who made you so goddamn perfect? Right? Seriously. It's only our ego that tells us that we should be able to do everything really [00:36:00] well. Being a healthy one means learning to love yourself, even when you're being a C plus student in some things.
So if you're going to stay on a tight budget and not give yourself a medical emergency from stress, and I'm not even kidding about that TMJ and migraines anyone. Yeah. If you're going to work on a string budget, you need to make a conscious decision about what you are going to let go in terms of quality.
You are going to be really good at a few things. So maybe let those be the things that you're an A plus student in. And then when you start to make back the money in your budget and a little extra on top and your business starts to really be profitable, The next big mountain for you to climb is going to be admitting that you could pay people to do things that are not essential for you to do and trust that they could do at least as good or better or maybe even [00:37:00] just a little bit worse of a job as you do.
And that's okay. It's worth paying them to do. It's worth not having to do yourself so that you can go enjoy life or just be slightly less stressed out. I don't know how many times I've had this conversation with, uh, an author who's a one where they don't want to let go of some aspect of their production and publishing.
And I ask them, are you any good at it? And they say, not really. It's like, so all you have to do is find someone to pay who's not really good at it. That shouldn't be too hard to find. , you know, but most people are going to be, you know, if you're letting go of your C plus, projects, the things that you just aren't very good at anyway that just take a lot of effort, you're probably gonna be paying someone who that's something that they are naturally good at.
And so you may get better work out of it. But anyway, if you're a one and you're trying to work on a tight budget, you need to pick what you're going to allow to be not your best [00:38:00] effort. Nobody's grading you on this. You're not going to get in trouble for slacking off here.
So stop messing around with those graphics where you're just moving a text box one pixel to the left and maybe two to the right. Just stop. Nobody cares. If your writing business is going to fail because your text isn't completely centered, then there are probably deeper problems going on that could use more of your attention.
But most likely you'll just be fine. Okay?
If you're working on a tight budget, Whether you're just getting started or whether you're revamping your model as you make a pivot, there's definitely a path forward for you, regardless of your type. But you are going to feel some sort of way about it, depending on what Enneagram type you are. And if you don't bring awareness to those feelings and those inclinations of your deeply rooted patterns, there's You could be [00:39:00] stuck in that tight budget for a lot longer than you want to be, or end up in burnout, or end up with massive credit card debt.
It's also just fine to stay on a tight budget for a really long time. There's no rule that says a successful author has to spend a lot of money. But do be aware if you're staying in that mindset for a long time out of fear, or whether you're able to make this choice outside of that, because it actually is the best thing for your wellbeing and creative life.
So to answer the question of what if I'm working on a tight budget, I'd say, welcome to the club. There are a lot of authors doing it in all stages of their career. If you start to become fixated on it as a disadvantage, then it will become a disadvantage. But if you can focus on your ability to pull it off, and you can learn how to do that, it can be a huge boost in confidence and free up a lot of options later on down the road [00:40:00] when you may not be on such a tight budget, but You want to make a pivot that will require you to pull back a little bit in your spending.
Or, you know, when sales just do that thing that they do sometimes, which is dip out of nowhere, shit happens.
The authors that stay in this the longest are the ones that are mentally and emotionally able to expand and contract their business appropriate to their situation and the industry at large. I know it can be easy to get down on ourselves if we don't have a whole lot of money to work with, but when you start to feel those thoughts and emotions creep in, remind yourself of the skill that you're developing right now, and how it could be the difference maker in sustaining your author career over the long term.
That's it for this week's episode of What If For Authors. I'm Claire Taylor. And if you're currently on a tight budget, I do offer more free resources than just this podcast. You can check out my free five day [00:41:00] author supercharge course at ffs. media forward slash five day. And that's the number five and the word day.
Or you can jump into the Enneagram type calls for authors that I do, or you can, , sign up for one of the open monthly Q and A's. Or you can just go ahead and go for all of it and sign up for my email list where I drop tips for authors based on my training and experience, just freebies, kind of whatever is coming to mind that I see a lot of authors are dealing with.
I like to tap into the zeitgeist and sort of extract what needs to be addressed and, and drop that in my emails for free. So my email list is also where you can make sure that, you know, when I have more free offerings coming out, so you can go to ffs.media/joinjoin to sign up, thanks for tuning in y'all. Happy writing.