by Chris Harris
As you will read in the blog, I am hoping when I find more time for promotion, I won’t need Chat GPT to generate dire images like this, although they do make me smirk. If only I was that rugged and good looking!
I am blessed to be able to write a huge amount of content and material at a breakneck pace. From the albeit limited feedback I’ve had, it’s okay stuff. But behind all this is the knowledge that, somehow or other, I’ve got to find, at least for six months, 20 hours a week to create promotional content and learn how to get it in front of people’s laptops and devices.
I have some experience of this, some of it with a degree of success. I’ve created a relatively successful blog and YouTube channel, both of which are now neglected. I’ve also invested a lot of time and effort into other social media and flunked. So I know how to do it, even if I haven’t always succeeded.
Hence, I know, when I say six months, I say six months because anyone who knows anything about all these different media knows that the thing that makes it work is consistency. The reason so many people, nearly everyone, fail is a lack of resilience and tenacity. But after putting so much effort into writing these books, the last thing I’m going to do is give up on the hard work I’ve already put in.
The timing has been really bad because my partner has started a business that is sort of associated with mine. So, it’s involved me going from 18 months ago, when I probably spent six months working only 20 to 30 hours a week, to spending the last year working 50 to 60 hours a week trying to sort my business out so that I can have a more successful and profitable business long-term and knuckle down to my writing endeavours.
The timing of publishing the book this week couldn’t have come better. We’ve just achieved our best month ever. Not only that, but for the least amount of work. So the 50- or 60-hour weeks I was putting in, with the writing on top, and yes, sometimes I do start at half past two in the morning and carry on until six in the evening, have paid off.
It’s going to be something like 20 to 30 hours for my business: 20 hours writing and 20 hours promotion. I know a lot of people will be aghast at that. Ten hours a day. But when you’ve run your own business all your life, you’re very active, and some days you put in 18 hours; it’s really not that difficult because I’m not someone who wakes up thinking, “Oh God, I’ve got to do all that work.” I love my business, and I love writing. So to me, I’m waking up and finding myself in a sort of paradise, albeit one that is pretty relentlessly physically and mentally tough.
I’m also set up for this because I had counselling over a four year period. I do have an overactive brain, and one of the things I was taught was how to compartmentalise. I’ve been quite successful at that. So over the next couple of months, I need to establish a new way of working, keep everything organised, and create a system I can actually operate within. Because without one, you try to do everything at once, and when there is a lot to do, you quickly burn out and fail.
Right now, I’ve just published the book. It’s been a bit of a mess getting it done. I’ve been working really hard with the business. The social media and other platforms I set up for the book and started using have largely fallen by the wayside. They are all still active. I’ve just got to rediscover them.
So now I have to start, one by one, getting on top of all these channels again. Then hopefully, by Christmas, I’ll have a system where I can run my business, do my writing and do the promotion properly. That, frankly, will be the greatest Christmas present I could give myself.
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