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Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

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Welcome to the show. Today, we have a wonderful guest, Natalie Simmons is a multi genre fiction author and storytelling brand consultant. Her debut thriller, good girls die last is being adapted for TV by STV and the last book of her fantasy trilogy, children of shadows was shortlisted for the 2022 RNA Fantasy Award as a consultant. She works with various creative and entertainment brands. She has her own column in King’s College London, inspire the mind magazine, and she lectures at London’s rain dance film school. Originally from London, she now divides her time between the UK, Spain and the Netherlands, and above and beyond all of these things, Natalie is also my friend. So you know, I’m going to be asking her the questions I wouldn’t usually ask my other guests. Let’s dive right in. Welcome Natalie to the show. Hi. It’s wonderful to be here. This is the first time I’ve had a friend on the show,

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but a very inspiring friend with an incredible story. So I knew that you had to come on. But anyone who isn’t your friend and is new to you, please tell us more about who you are and what you do and who you help. I’m Natalie Simmons, and I’m an author. I write more than one genre, so I write thrillers as Natalie Simmons and paranormal romance as Cadiz Knight. Please excuse my cat. She’s going to be in every video I ever do and and I also teach creative writing and self branding and marketing to various creative students, from filmmakers to other authors, amazing. And one of the things I was reflecting with you before we got on is that making a living from being creative, it’s challenging, right? It’s not the easiest route to go. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on this show and have this conversation with you is, I believe you have been incredibly creative with the ways you have made your creative skills something that’s actually going to make you significant sums of money. And you’ve been on quite the journey. I mean, how well is your current book doing right now?

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So my book that came out on the seventh of September while my baby sleeps is still early days, but brilliant reviews. It’s doing really, really well. And the one before that is actually which is called my daughter’s revenge. Excuse me, my daughter’s revenge came out in August, and that one’s already been sold to three countries, as well as the UK. Yeah, and the one before that has been optioned for television. Good girls die last. So you know, when it comes to success, there’s there’s difficult markers. Is that which one’s making me the most money, or which one’s widely available, or which one’s gonna be on TV? Like, it’s really difficult to to gage what’s a success and what isn’t when it comes to creativity, yeah, and how many books have you published to get to this stage where all these kind of amazing opportunities are coming your way published. 10, so that’s three thrillers, a trilogy, a fantasy trilogy, and then four that I co write with my best friend, Jacqueline Sylvester, and we write as kadis Knight. And those ones are self published. So I’ve had a lot of experience with traditional publishers, digital first publishers and self publishing, and each one has its pros and cons. So 10 published. But actually, all in all, I’ve written the book I’ve literally finished writing Yesterday is my 18th full novel. Oh my goodness. I mean, that’s what I wanted to touch on, because you have not stopped. You have been consistently writing. And so for anyone who’s thinking they want these kind of opportunities, I just really love to watch your journey and see how you have just consistently kept on writing and publishing and writing and publishing. And it’s really beautiful as a friend, to observe beside you and see all of it, all these things that you really deserve coming to light, but that you know, these things didn’t just land in your lap. This has been a journey that’s gone, gone on for years, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, likewise with you, if you think back to when we first met, and all the dreams and aspirations we had, we were living incredibly different lives, what we might be 1010, years ago, or something. So the thing is, the secret, I think, is to just know what you want, and then don’t stop. So tell me more. What do you want? What’s, what’s the big goal with all of this? I mean, I mean, I mean, obviously everyone wants to be an award winning international bestseller that sold a million copies. That’s what I would want. I I would want people to not necessarily know my face. I’m not out to be the next Kardashian, but for people to say, Oh, wow. Natalie Simmons, oh, my God, I read your books. They’re brilliant. That’s what I want. And I’m already like that. I have a signed version of your book very proudly downstairs.

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Is in the living room, and every time my husband’s, like, that’s been there for a while, you can read it. It’s a signed first edition my friend’s book. We’re not moving that. Oh, you know more, but, um, yeah, it’s, and I have had a lot of my dreams come true. I mean, it’s, it’s surreal to be in this industry. I’ve had two people get tattoos because of my books, one with a picture, one with words, which is like, I’ve had people, you know, send me emails, because a lot of my books have got themes in them. So good girls die last is a lot about misogyny and sexual assault. And I’ve had some real personal stories and people saying, like, this book really helped me. And I think when you do anything creative, whether you’re you’re writing a song or you’re painting a picture, if somebody says your work touched me like it made a difference, then that’s enough. But obviously we want to make a living as well. So it’s not just enough to enrich people’s souls, but you also want to kind of make money, yeah, but those are the moments that you’ll always remember. I mean, of all of those things, of all of the achievements that your writing has afforded you, what are you most proud of that’s a good question. Actually, I think I’m most proud of the fact that I got,

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I got an agent that changed everything. So I had two books that didn’t get me an agent, and looking back, I know why they didn’t get me an agent now, and I’m really proud of the fact that I didn’t let that get in my way. I didn’t let that stop me, and I actually applied. I’ve got my background is in marketing, and I applied my marketing knowledge. And I thought, wait a minute, I’m doing this the wrong way. You can’t just write a story and then figure out how to sell it to people and get them interested. You have to kind of figure out what what is selling, what people want, and then and write something that means something to you within that realm. And that’s what I did, and it got me an agent in three days. And that’s the book that got a TV deal. And I think that’s my biggest, proudest moment, is that everything I was after didn’t take very long in the end, when I stopped and approached it from a different perspective. You know, I hear people saying, Oh, I’ve got this book, and it took me years, and I’ve been, you know, three years trying to find an agent with it, and I’m up to my 100th agent. I’m like, nobody wants the book. Write another one. If you can’t write another one, then this isn’t a career for you, because you have to write a lot of books to get anywhere. Yeah. And most people I know aren’t really making a salary until their fifth or sixth book. And you know, they’re not making six figures until maybe their 10th book. Very few people are. JK, Rowling, that’s going to be like a multi millionaire. That’s very, very rare. Yeah. So you, if you have to see this as a business, and I’m proud that I didn’t give up, and because of my agent, that’s opened a lot of doors, and now I’m working with some amazing publishers, amazing TV people. It’s, it is a real dream come true. I mean, that’s such a valuable reflection as well. Because I think anyone who’s self employed, whether you’re, you know, an author, or whether you’re kind of, you know, even if you have a wellness business, or whatever it is that you’re doing, all of us have an intrinsic creative streak in what we’re doing and a real passion about what we’re doing. And so your reflection about kind of recognizing that balance between wanting to make money from your skills and the kind of your zone of genius, the area where you flow, the area where you get the most joy, and at the same time, finding a way to make it marketable so you can actually make a living. I genuinely believe there are so many business owners out there, whether they’re authors or whether they’re coaches or whether they’re consultants, maybe not so much consultants, but certainly those who are working from a place of passion, who are kind of in that romantic, poor poet type scenario, because they’re so attached to what they desire to put out into the world. I don’t I have so much conflict around that night, but then look at Bob Dylan. But I think there’s certain people out there who kind of have a certain level of kind of Wizardry that somehow and maybe also at that time as well. I don’t know, you can tell my head is spiraling here, but there is that whole element of ultimately, if you want to be able to pay your bills with your creative skills, you do need to find that balance between, where is their demand, what is marketable, alongside, where can you fit that with your creative skills? And I love that. The moment you did that, it all started coming together for you. Oh, absolutely. I loved a book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic, where it’s actually not. It’s not about commercializing your art, but it’s much more about just let it come to you. Don’t overthink it. Don’t think this is the one. Just produce, produce, produce. And I’m really inspired. I actually sat down and wrote a list of all the people that inspired me, from Dali and Picasso to Dolly Parton, you know, to The Beatles, all these creatives, and what they had in common was this creative diversification, which, which I teach at film school, actually, where, you know, Dali didn’t say, I’m just going to paint this picture, and if it doesn’t sell, I’m a failure, or I’m going to set, oh, I’m going to paint the same picture. And over again, he was like, You know what? I’m I’m art. I am myself. Art. He walked around with a omelet in his top pocket, instead of a handkerchief. You know, he himself was art, but also he did everything from a telephone with a lobster on top, just beautiful, proper painting, if you like, to working with Disney to working with Chanel. He collaborated. He made his art accessible to everybody, and he had a go at so many things. And when you.

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To diversify to that extent, like Picasso, produced over 100,000 pieces of art, and you and I could probably pick out, well, name 10 famous ones, maybe recognize maybe another 20 or 30. There are 100,000 of them. So that’s how I started approach my work. And in 2019 when I had this kind of epiphany. I started to write manga. I started to co write with one author, and a day for children’s books, my friend Jacqueline Sylvester with paranormal, fun, sexy, smutty vampire books, which do really well because it’s fun and we didn’t overthink love a smarty vampire. I mean, right, exactly, who doesn’t want hot vampire ballet dancing? Brothers, to be specific, and, you know? And I just started to diversify in that respect. And then I thought, wait a minute, I’ll write thrillers. Thrillers are really popular at the moment. Agents are looking for thrillers, publishers looking for thrillers. TV, you’re looking for thrillers. And I wrote a thrill that meant something to me. Sarah everard’s case was so horrific at the time, I really wanted to write a book set in London about a woman who was dealing with not specific sexual assault, but these tiny microaggressions that women feel on a daily basis. I wanted to explore that, but in a commercial way. And that’s when I suddenly realized, well, I was going about it all the wrong way, like you have to create you have to get it seen, and you have to work with lots of people and diversify in that respect. Because if you’ve written this one book, and you think that’s going to change your life, and then you feel like a failure because it didn’t, then it doesn’t make you more of an artist. It makes you an artist that’s never going to have any money. Yeah, yeah, no, I love that, and I also love what you reflected on there, because so many of us associate those big artists with their kind of final results, and so many of us aren’t aware of the many compromises they made along their journey to get there, or the different things they explored that fail like you don’t find anyone who’s incredibly successful who hasn’t failed hard, many, many, many times, but the you Know the difference with the ones who’ve succeeded are the, you know, they pick themselves back up. They were willing to learn. And I also think failure is not even a word. It’s not really a word in their vocabulary. It’s like, Okay, that didn’t work out. I’m gonna go do this instead, or I’m gonna do more of that, because that’s obviously working. But I do think those who are constantly afraid of failure or rejection, and US creative types particularly, can be, um, it’s massively holding them back. Now, earlier on, you mentioned how our predicaments were enormously different when you and I met, what year was it? Was it like 20? I want to say it was like 2014

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Yeah, it was something like that. Was when your book came out. I mean, my daughter, Oh, was that 20? Or maybe it was, but it was but it was while I was still living in Spain, so when I moved to the Netherlands in 2016 so I might even be like 2015

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Yeah, 10 years ago, at least, been a while, and I want to, because we’ve been talking a lot about where you’re at now and what’s working and all these wonderful things that are happening for you. And Yeah, because I mean, as you were saying, I don’t actually believe in failure either, not when it comes to dating, not when it comes to, you know, careers, not when it comes to anything. They’re just learning curves. They’re just stepping stones, right? I love that sounds they are, because I know where I want to be, and every time something doesn’t work to me, it’s no different to a GPS, like you’ve got your markers and you’ve got your end goal, but if there’s a diversion or there’s traffic, just move your direction. You’re still moving. You’re still going forward, you know? And that’s how, and that’s when I sometimes you don’t know these things, do you, until you look back on it, and that’s why, the older you get, the Wiser you feel. But when I look back at my writing career, it actually started from a real pain point. I was incredibly sleep deprived with my two children, and when I say sleep, and I was verging on psychosis, these kids didn’t really sleep. They were born quite close together, and I had to kind of reframe my situation and think, Well, I can’t blame two children. It’s not their fault. Can’t blame my husband, who’s working full time.

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I’m struggling, but I can’t keep talking about it. It’s boring. So I started to write a book in my in my head. I was also working, and I was having to drive half an hour every day to work, and I started to, basically, I couldn’t escape my life. I didn’t want to run away from my children, so I ran away in my head, and I started to kind of make up this story, and it really took a life of its own. And it was about, it’s a fantasy. It was my trilogy, the path keeper, and I really got immersed into it. So I stopped presenting my kids when they had me up at one in the morning, three in the morning, five in the morning, because I would write it in my head while I was, you know, feeding them, or I would write it on my laptop when they were asleep. And that’s how I got into writing. So, you know, writing, in a way, it was always been a passion of mine. In my head, I always knew I was going to write the book one day, but this, this, I took seriously. And I, I remember, at the time, I had very little money. I was earning like, 800 euros a month or something, you know, like I had a job in Spain that didn’t pay very much, but I was doing my best.

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And And I paid 160 euros to go on a writing class thinking this was madness, like to me, it was an absolute huge investment in what I saw as a hobby. But that writing class reinforced that I actually had a talent that I should explore and I should go for it. And funnily enough, that’s where I met two other writer friends of mine who have gone on to be successful with their books, because we pushed each other. We didn’t let each other give up. And that was maybe about 12 years ago. And from there, that book got a publishing deal, a trilogy deal, the imprint went under. So I lost everything I’d worked for. I had to start again. Nine months later, I managed to get another publisher in the US. The books didn’t do very well. The publisher wasn’t very large, didn’t have a big reach. Two books weren’t wanted by agents. The manga took off. That was really well, but then she folded the business as well. And I just felt like it was one step forward, two steps back. But I kept telling myself, well, you’ve learned to write all these different genres. You’ve got to meet lots of different people in your industry and just keep writing books and see which one gets you an agent. And once you’ve got an agent, if you want to be traditionally published. And to be fair, there’s two ways to make money in in fiction writing, wants to have an agent and a decent publisher who’s going to support you. The others to Self Publish. If you get a self publish, it it’s 100% job, yeah, and I’m not very good at doing one thing all the time, and it’s very business orientated, and you have to really understand business side of things to act. And I know people making a lot of money self publishing. They’re making like, 30 grand a month or something. But I never wanted that for myself. I wanted to see myself in a book shop. I wanted opportunities for the book to appear abroad, or, you know, TV, where I was like, the ultimate dream. And so I kept going and going, and eventually, from first being published in 2017 to getting my agent five years later, and then that agent got me all the deals, and that’s how I became a thriller writer. And I think that’s that’s where my life and my career changed, and since then, my my thrillers have done really well. There’s three out. Another one’s out in September, and I write two a year. I’ve got a really good publishing deal with Bucha, who are very fast and I’m a very fast thinker and producer, I get anxious if I’m sitting around waiting for people, and it works really well. But I don’t think I’d have got there had I not have reframed a lot of kind of rubbish situations I was in, and just told myself that’s okay, that didn’t work, but you learned something from it, or that didn’t work, but you met these people from it, or you won’t do that again. Or, you know, you’ve got a higher sense of worth now, you’re not going to accept something that’s subpar and and it, yeah, and this, this is the first year where I feel like I’m actually close to making a salary I’m pleased with from my books. It has taken eight years. Yeah, aside from the reframe you just referenced, in terms of reframing, like I say, I don’t even like to use the word failures, the learnings. Are there any other things that have been really helpful to you in terms of getting to where you are now?

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Yes, well, I think my background in marketing really helped. So my first, yeah, I’ve been working since I was 18. I didn’t go to university. I got in to do English and film, ironically enough, so maybe had I’ve taken that path out of I’d be where I am now, or maybe I’d be even richer and more successful. Should have stayed on in school, but I wouldn’t have been in debt. I came out with, you know, with no debt. So that was a good thing back then. But I’ve been working since I was 18, and I’ve been working in marketing, PR, advertising. So I think I am very good at design and the commercial side of things and selling. So what I really cut my teeth on back then was cold calling, which nobody does anymore, you know, but that takes a lot of guts and standing in front of audiences and presenting and selling, and I think if you’re comfortable doing that, it’s giving me some amazing opportunities where I go into schools, or I teach at film schools and universities, and I stand in front of crowds of up to 300 people and talk with passion and excitement. And that doesn’t faze me. And I think a lot of authors are quite introverted. All they want to do is stay at home. They don’t want to do this side of it. They don’t enjoy the side of it, and it’s been thrust upon us. But I think an advantage for me was that I actually like it. I love doing things like this. I love podcasts, talking, having an audience, and I think it has helped me as well, be quite realistic with my agent and my editor, and say, like, Look, if this book idea is rubbish and isn’t going to sell, you’re not going to hurt my feelings. Let’s move on. Let’s do something else, which a lot of people, as you were saying that they romanticize having a creative job, or they think that if you think commercially, the quality is going to be lower. It doesn’t mean anything to you, and that’s nonsense. Everything I do, I do with passion and integrity and authenticity, and I genuinely, really 100% care what I’m putting out into the world, but equally, I want it to do well. Otherwise, yeah, so, but I think, I think one thing.

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It’s really stuck with me. It’s probably of some level of transgenerational traumas. My grandfather was an artist in Barcelona in the 1930s or 40s, and he studied with Picasso. And you know, he, he was at the same school as him. You he was in circles during the Civil War with some very renowned, successful artists, but he was absolutely poor, as you can imagine. They lived in a rundown, nasty little hovel, my grant, my father was brought up with no food, but his father’s art came first. And everybody thinks there’s some kind of depth to that. And I hate it. I hate it because there’s nothing romantic about letting your children starve. There’s nothing smart about it. In fact, it’s quite narcissistic and selfish. Is because it’s saying, you know, what I do matters more than what’s sustaining my family having a nice quality of life. So I’ve always had that at the back of my mind when people say, Well, you know, it’s art, and that’s all that matters. I think, well, no, my children matter. My life matters, my health matters, all these things that you unfortunately need money to care for. So, you know, they’re not mutually exclusive. No, I think that’s a really valuable reflection as well, because I think there is this story we tell ourselves when we’re endeavoring to do anything that’s bigger than we already know and different to what we’ve ever known before, that there can be a sense, you know, almost that sunken cost fallacy of you have put so many hours aside and so much time aside and invested so much in the thing that you might just be that next opportunity, that next conversation, that next thing away from everything changing, yeah. And so it’s very challenging to take, to be realistic with ourselves and recognize, you know, if it hasn’t worked so far, maybe it’s not the right thing, and that’s a really difficult thing for anyone to come to terms with, and when they’ve really put their heart into something. But what you also say there about, you know, it’s not, it’s not cool to not feed your kids. So you’re changing that you’re breaking that story, that generational pattern, is no longer there. You are the artist. You are the lucrative artist. I like it well, I just want to be recognized for my hard work and talent. I’m not doing it for giggles. You know, this is a this isn’t a hobby. I mean, you can have fun with what you do, but if it was just a hobby, I wouldn’t even show my work to anyone, you know. So, yeah, and that’s, and that’s something that that always resonates in the back of my mind, that and, and the fact that, you know, it’s not humble, you know, we have, I think being British as well doesn’t help, but we have this kind of idea where, like, when it comes to self promotion, like I don’t want to shout about myself, and when I talk to people about the importance of self promotion in an authentic way, I remind them, when it comes to books, that there are 4 million books that are released a year, including self published, if you just, if you’re just talking about the big, traditional publishers, that’s about half a million but 4 million books. Why do you think your book is going to be a best seller? You know, I was beating myself up the other day because my book got to 132 on the entire Kindle chart. And I was like, still haven’t made the top 100 and I thought, wait a minute, 132 out of 4 million. That’s not bad. You know, that’s amazing, but it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to be in the top 10, but, yeah, and that’s another thing I wanted to say about giving up, is that people think giving up means, you know, I’ve written a book. I’m not going to send it to agents anymore because nobody wants it. I’ve given up. And I’m like, That’s not giving up. Giving up is giving up on your dream. It’s smart to put that book down if nobody wants it. That’s not you giving up. You know, that whole expression of flogging a dead horse like nobody wants it put it away, doesn’t mean you’re bad. Doesn’t mean they’re terrible people. It’s not wanted. That’s okay. It’s a bit like dating that guy’s not treating you right. You’re not giving up on love. You’ve got have some self respect. Move away, find someone else, if that works. You know, it’s exactly the same way when it comes to publishing. And people think that once you’ve got success, I mean, you’ve got an editor that every idea you have, they’re going to be like, Yay, great. Give it to me. They don’t. Back in November, I pitched 15 ideas to my editor until, between us, we came up with something that she thought would work commercially for that for her publisher, you know, for Bucha, or the publishers, and that I was also passionate, excited enough to write so you don’t stop trying to find that compromise that’s not just at the beginning of your journey. Maybe Stephen King can write what he wants, but who’s in a nominee. You know, I’m sure nobody says, Oh, Mr. King, nobody can you not just write about sexy dragons like he can write what he wants because of his name. But very few of us have got to that stage where there’s that much power behind who we are, yeah, yeah, I love that. What you say about the name that’s so true that, I mean, that’s, that’s the goal that anyone should have as a personal brand, is to get that level of brand authority that truly buys you that freedom. And I think that’s, again, one of the biggest mistakes people can make earlier on in their journey, is they compare themselves to somebody like Stephen King and goes.

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Well, he’s managed to do X, Y, Z, and it’s like, yeah, because he’s Stephen King, I know I see it in other kind of industries, in the wellness coaching space, they’ll say, oh, but you know, Gabor Mate is doing this. And it’s like, because he’s Gabor Mate, there are certain people in this world who get to, you know, experiment and play and do riskier things that are slightly outside of the box, because they have a strong box to stand on the first place? No, absolutely, that’s a that’s a perfect way of describing it. And it’s not. It’s not only that. It’s that, you know, those people also had to do what you’re doing. Stephen King threw Carrie away in the bin. His wife fished it out the bin and said what you talked about. He’s like, but nobody wants it. So, you know, they didn’t give up. And you don’t, you don’t know what’s been a flop. I mean, I often have to compare myself, not just to authors, but to other creatives. So for instance, even Tom Cruise, there are loads of movies he’s been in right at the beginning of his career, whatever, that haven’t been successful. I mean, I was looking at Ben Affleck’s timeline actually on on Wikipedia, because I don’t know, I was just looking into his background, and I was like, what if? What was his directoral debut? And actually it wasn’t one of his latest movies. It was actually something he did in 2009 which sounded atrocious, and he was still a student, and no one’s heard of it, because it doesn’t matter. So all the things that you look back on and go that was rubbish. No one even cares. No one even knows about it. How many songs do we know that the Beatles wrote that weren’t a success? We don’t know. We don’t care about the ones that weren’t a success. So you know, nobody knows about my first three books, which possibly might not be my best work, because I was still learning. They only judged me on my latest thing or my most successful thing, yeah. So you’re comparing your, you know, stage one of your journey, with somebody else’s stage 100 Yeah, yeah. So true. And I think it’s that whole thing of we’re so close to what we’re doing. We’re looking at everything through kind of suddenly forgot the word for microscope anyway, but you know, we’re looking very but nobody else is looking as closely. The amount of times people say to me, do you think it’s okay if I do this or this opportunity has come up? And do you think anyone else, like, nobody cares, we’re all like drowning under WhatsApps and, oh no, like sorting out the recycling like nobody’s watching your career that closely, nobody. And that’s why it’s our job to kind of bang the drum, and we do want them to be watching that closely. And actually, I wanted to come back to that because you, you know, we’re talking about self promotion, and one of the things I’ve always admired about you that has not changed from the day I met you to who you are now, is your incredible levels of resiliency around self promotion and your kind of unapologetic nature around kind of capitalizing on either creating, you know, you’ve created a really strong community on Twitter, haven’t you got about some like, 20,000 followers, yeah. And then on, you know, you kind of utilize groups and things like that you’re, you’re really good at recognizing the resources you have around them, around you, and using them to kind of elevate the message that you need to get across elevate the fact that you’re either writing the book or need someone to support you with ideas. Or, you know, obviously, once a book is out there, letting them know about it, and I think a lot of creatives can almost like, be quite guarded around their creation. They’re almost nervous that someone’s going to not like it, or they’re going to say, Oh, how Who are you to tell me I should go buy your book. How are you the person that you are when it comes to these things? I think it’s because I don’t see it as selling. I just see it as sharing. And I just presume everybody’s as excited about everything that I’m as excited about. I love to talk. The only thing I ever got in trouble with at school was talking. I just have to talk to everybody all the time. I have to tell them everything. It’s probably the ADHD in me. I’ve got very little shame. I very, very rarely feel embarrassed. I don’t have a lot of self hatred. So rejection is not something that fazes me like it does others. So I don’t overthink things when I put things online, I just presume they’re going to be as excited as I am. And everything I do comes from a genuine place of authenticity. So I might be sharing like yesterday, I finished writing a book, and I’m very proud, because November and December, I was talking it through with my editor, plotted it and planned it in January, and then I wrote the entire book, as in, put the words down on the page from the 20th of January till the till yesterday. That was Fauci congratulations. Thank you. So it was like 50 odd days, 42 actual writing days. That’s 80,000 words. And I was really chuffed about that. And I was sharing with people how I did that, not in a showing off way, not because I think I’m better than others, just in a it can be done if you plot it and you plan it and you know what you’re doing. And I wake up at five, six every morning, not through choice, through hormones. My body just wakes me up at that time anyway. So I made to work. I might as well utilize it. I’m very good at utilizing crappy situations. I go, Well, I’m awake anyway. I might as well get my word count in. Yeah, you’re the queen of silver linings, that’s for sure. Yeah, I just kind of turned every bad situation into something good. Otherwise I’d be depressed. I don’t like to be depressed. So, you know, that’s.

30:00

One way of doing it, and another thing is I go to where the people I know we’re interested are. You know, I’m not going to keep writing on my personal Facebook page what I’m doing, because my family’s going to be like, right? Natalie, shut up. Share the pictures of your kids. You know, I want to see, I want to see your holiday pictures. I don’t really care about my book. I might do it once or twice, but not often. I’m not going to be on my family WhatsApp raving about it, yeah, but I am going to be on book groups. I am going to if people are following me, I presume they care about what I’m saying. I keep it varied. I also support a lot of people. Add a lot of pro bono stuff. I mentor young people, ill people for free, also obviously mentor for money. But you know, I give, hopefully, as much as I wish that people would give me. You know, I treat others. I’d want to be treating myself. I’ve grown a community, and that’s how I’ve carried on as I have, because I’ve got an amazing group of writer friends, and likewise, I help them in return. And we we support one another. And it’s like, you know, you’re doing this the whole time, climbing on top of each other, because there’s no competition when it comes to art. I love that. So true, so true. Because the thing is, if I’m selling you a car, funny enough, I have actually sold cars. I was paid to be this is a funny example. I was paid to be a face painter at a Ford event, but there was a huge queue of people wanting to buy a car, and nobody wanted their faces painted. So I went and sold some cars. So

31:27

you so I sold some cars, because I was like, well, they want the cars, so I’ll just show them what they want me to and then I handed the paperwork over. So here I’ve sold you some cars. They’re like, Do you want a job? I said, No, I don’t want to be a car salesman, but I was there kind of fulfilling a need, and that’s the same way as I see it. Yeah, in the in the creative industry, there’s no competition. So if I’m selling you a car, you’re only going to want one car, and if my mate’s selling you a car, we’re in competition. It’ll sell you a book, and it’s a book about cat, and you love books about cats. And I’ve got four friends that also write books about cats, I will sell you their books as well. And then we might create a little book about cat, a little group about cat books. And then that audience, that reader, will go and tell their friends that love books about cats. And then before you know it, you know you’ve got this perfect audience and a perfect network. And that’s that’s how it is in art, and that’s what Darlie understood when he was I’m gonna team up, team up with Chanel. They’re doing. Well, I’m gonna team up with Disney. They’re doing, well, yeah, no, I love that. I love that. So what role would you say community has played in your business growth? Oh, it’s everything to me. I couldn’t I would not be here without sounding like an Oscar win. I would not be here if it were not for my writer friends who get it, they’re the only ones that are going to be excited about things that other people be like, Oh, well done. That’s not the reaction you want. You want. You want, like, huge reactions, because they are. They’re the only ones that understand what it takes to get there. My agent, my editors, you know, the marketing team that I work with within the publishers, I really want to be part of that group. That’s why I love the publisher I’m with at the moment, Bucha, because they are very, very transparent, and they are very kind of collaborative. I love that so. And I don’t know, and I want to, I want to know writers who are international bestsellers as well as I want to know writers that haven’t got an agent yet, and I’m somewhere in the middle. So, you know, we’re, you have to be like that, but you have to do it with authenticity. You can’t do it because you’re trying to get somewhere. You can’t use people. Yeah, and in terms of your book sales, would you say you’d attribute most of that to the kind of efforts that your kind of agents are doing, or is that has that also been kind of fueled by the community that you’ve been building and that you’ve kind of got around you virtually?

33:39

What’s interesting is that people always equate social media and marketing to sales, but it’s actually more about branding. It’s more about self branding. So there isn’t it’s not often a correlation, unless you go viral, between something that we as authors do and sales going up, unless you’re self published. But most of the time it’s advertising. Facebook advertising, that’s what a lot of digital publishers do, and self published authors do. Or it’s getting your book into bookshops. It’s the deals that they do. What a lot of people don’t realize is, like the top 10 books in WH Smith, they’re paid for, they’re they’re places people are paid for. All those books that you see there have had a huge amount of money put into their marketing. They haven’t risen there because they’re better than other books. I mean, I’d go as far as to say every books good to somebody, yeah, brilliant. For some, if it’s published, it’s going to be good. There’s no like the best rises. You’re not like a footballer, you know, footballer, it’s quantifiable. You know, you’re either good or you’re not good. Like, there’s no argument about it. But as an author or a painter, it’s subjective. So the sales are down to my publisher, and how much effort they put into it, how they do it, and obviously after that, once it’s got the initial push, if the book is good and there’s word of mouth, and that’s going to fan those flames. But the work that I’m doing to build, doing something like this, talking to to you, working with others, that’s building me as a brand. And.

35:00

Then off the back of that, I’m more likely to get festival gigs or school gigs or talking here or teaching there, because people want to tap into that they know what I offer as a person, not just my books. So I’m curious to know if someone’s listening to you and really loves the idea of making their creativity, their writing, their their living having obviously explored self publishing as well as being published by traditional publishing houses. What would you say is the best route to having a kind of lucrative careers as an author? First of all, it depends what you’re writing. So if you’re writing non fiction, and you’ve already got a successful business, and you just want a book that you’re also going to sell or that’s going to add value to what you do. You can self publish it, if you have to be prepared to invest money in it, you have to work with professionals, because I doubt you’re going to be a brilliant, you know, cover designer or editor, proofreader. You do need professionals to do that. They will things that we think we can do ourselves? We can’t, and they’ll make a difference to the quality? No. So if you’re providing a Canva graphic for Instagram, let alone for a book, No, exactly. So if so, if you’re prepared to put that money in and also to read up on it and understand, how does Facebook advertising work? How does Amazon advertising work? The back end of KDP and Amazon, which is really complicated, and I really don’t enjoy it, and this is why I’m not going to be a self published author, solely because we dip in and out. But it’s not my favorite part of it. If you can manage all of that, and you are consistent and fast, so if you want to do your one off self published book for your business, that’s that’s fine. Crack on. If you want to write a series, then you need to write them all in advance and then bring them out three months apart, because people that read self published books on Amazon and digital platforms are huge readers, and they’re going to read way faster than you can write, and also they read very specific genres, So literary isn’t going to do as well as sexy stuff, sex resells, sexy fantasy, sexy rom coms, sexy sports romances, they’re going to do well,

37:10

yeah? Sexy vampires do well. Children’s books don’t do so well because they’re not reading them on Kindle as much. Yeah? So really, if you’re going to self publish, you need to understand about pricing strategy, about advertising, about releases, who your audience is, how to reach them. You have to be really, really active. You have to have a newsletter. You need to be on groups. It’s a full time job, and that’s where you’ll find money, and that’s how you’ll make 30 grand a month, like my friends making. But that’s all he does. And he spends 12 hours a day, six days a week, just doing that and writing just one series. I’m not prepared to do that right. If you want to be traditionally published, you don’t need to understand all of that, but you need to be smart, patient and tenacious, because to make decent money, you need a decent publisher, and you need an agent, and an agent is going to represent you. You know, much like a movie star is not going to crack Hollywood without a representative, they’re not going to walk up to Steven Spielberg and say, I’ve got an idea for you. You know, you need a rep, like same with a footballer, they need a manager, right? So you need an agent. And it’s really hard to get an agent. They get, you know, three, 400 queries, applications a week. And they probably sign two, three people a year. If you do the maths, it’s they don’t even get to read everything they’re sent. It’s hard. And that’s where my self branding came in, because I was so, like, big on Twitter, and I was talking about it so much, and one of my good writer that’s where my community came in. My writer friend was shouting about how much she loved my book and how I was going to be sending it to agents. A week later, her agent saw her say that and say and said, Emma. Emma Cooper’s the writer. You know, Emma can actually send it to me first. I’d always been jealous of her agent. She was my dream agent. I kept thinking, I want someone like Amanda Preston. And Amanda Preston said, Emma, get her to send it to me before anyone even saw it. That’s how I got an agent in three days. So if I hadn’t have been easy to see, yeah, I wasn’t so public with everything that was doing on my journey. And if I didn’t, hadn’t grown my audience, that agent wouldn’t have got to me first, I’d have been in her pile of 1000 emails it’s gonna take a year to get through. So as I said, it’s not very quantifiable, but of course, it helps. Yeah, it can’t, not, yeah. So that mean they’re the two journeys. I think it’s whole consistency piece, isn’t it? Like, you know, you have been consistent and persevered through absolutely everything, and had one very clear goal in mind, and kept on doing, doing, doing. And I think that is the challenge with the kind of work we do, is there are those odd, Lucky, lucky breaks that come through, and they’re not really lucky, but they can feel like that, because it feels like they’ve almost come out of nowhere, and they nowhere, and they are that, that kind of response to all those cumulative actions you’ve done over all this time, and that’s what’s come about,

39:52

just amazing. Thank you so much, Natalie, for sharing your journey, for sharing the ways you’ve diversified your income through your creative skills and. Congratulations. OBS, way at now I can,  I’m sorry, no, honestly, same with you. I wish that the two of us, when we first met 10 years ago, oh, my goodness. Like, listen, I mean, I had less wrinkles, at least. That would have been a good thing.

40:17

Yeah, they’d be like, Oh, you want to do your facial yoga a bit more, but other than that, they would be saying, well, we did it. And that makes me quite emotional actually, because we talked about this, we talked about what we wanted and and the difference between talking about it and making it happen is a hell of a lot of ups and downs, but it’s worth Yeah, yeah, when we talk back then we were very much kind of, it was almost more of a passion project, certainly on my side than anything that was really making, making anything close to a salary. Yeah, yeah. And nobody, and nobody sees the value in what they do. Like, I could see the value in what you were doing. I remember we had a conversation where I was like, no, no. Like, what you’re doing is really worth it. You know, it’s worth something. And it was the same with you, you know, you really believed in me. I remember how, like, sighted you were for me. And I think I met up with you before my first school visit in Gibraltar or something. So, you know, yeah, and you got on TV, and everything I was I was on local Telly,

41:13

my first and only live TV. That was terrifying, even though there was, like, you know, three people that watched it. But that’s fine. I mean, funny enough as well. At the time, I remember thinking you were quite alien to me because you were so good at self promotion, and it was something I really shied away from. And now, look at me now

41:28

and everything, I came to you for advice a few years ago, didn’t I, and I was like, See, I always knew you had it in you, but no today. Thank you. And yeah. And so, for anyone who’s listening and thinking, oh my goodness, what a powerhouse, I need to go give her a follow. I need to go see what she’s up to. I want to go explore your books. Where can they find you? The easiest place to find everything, because I try and keep it up to date, is NJ Simmons, which was my first author name when I write my fantasy. So Natalie Simmons, without any is my author name for my thrillers, but my website is njsimmons.com and everything’s on there. I’m on every single social media platform. I spend more time on, on Canva and on social media than I do writing. But um, you can find me everywhere or just google me. I’ll come I’ll pop up amazing. And of course, all the all of those links will be in the show notes, so people can simply dive down into the show notes and find those there, and that’s all I have to say. Thank you so much for your time today. Natalie, well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. If you have anyone in your world who is a writer, a creative and looking to break through into making it their career, then this is an episode that is sure to inspire them, so make sure you pop that into their DMS or into their inbox so that they can enjoy it too. In the meantime, I will be back in your ears next week talking about the systems you need to have in your business to outgrow your hustle era and start truly living like the Cushy CEO that you deserve to be I’ll be in your ears then.