There are no overnight successes, sorry to bust your bubble. Everything takes time. Along with patience, energy, effort, drive, dedication and so many other words. There's no getting around it. I wish I could tell you I published my first book and boom, there I was successful as hell. But I'm not, I'm deep into this thing and still nothing. I've tried so many different things, invested so much money into this and still nothing yet.
I'm entrenched in a world where there are millions of books on different bookstore platforms. Do my books stand out? Yes they do, they're written in prose format, with the focus on societal issues in the world that are character driven and they have a journalistic feel to them where it's telling you a story about a specific person. You would think, wow that is different and that is an interesting concept to how I write my books, but that's not necessarily the case.
My podcast did well in 2018 on two platforms, if I would've been on the ten platforms I'm on now, things may be totally different so I shot myself in my own foot. For me, I've done the patience thing when it comes to my books, but the reality is, I have to do even more to stand out from the pack and I figured out a few things. I have to humanize myself a little bit and show behind the scenes stuff in my life. How I write, what I do when I'm writing and other things that most writers aren't doing on their end.
It's not easy to be patient when you've done so much work, put in so many hours and you're still not seeing the results you want. I'm a few years into my writing journey so imagine how many other people have been doing what they love for way more years and still haven't seen results yet. Trust me, I question if I'm cut out for this on a regular basis but then when I think of another book idea, script concept, blog post, podcast idea, then I'm thinking to myself, I gotta do this work!
Time can be our best friend and our worst enemy because you don't know how your life is going to go from day to day. If I died tomorrow, there would be so much content you wouldn't get to read, listen to or see. That's how much I have stashed and ready to go. That's how I know my time is coming and when people finally realize all of the work I've done, they'll be playing catch up.
When I tell you everything takes time, I truly mean it, so keep doing the work and finding ways to get others to see how you can impact them. Remember there are very few people who will understand your goals and reason for doing what you are doing. Don't let negativity and self-doubt keep you from doing what you're great at!
Be good everyone and go accomplish your goals!
Jamell Crouthers
Aquarianmind
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