How I turned my love of writing and coaching into a business

Hey honeys and hustlers,

Today, I’m bringing you some words from Maureen Wiley, the writer behind the Narrative Driven newsletter. I found her work through the Hype Yourself VIP chat, an exclusive space for paid subscribers of Lucy Werner’s newsletter. Once Maureen finished the first draft of her first book, instead of hiring a book coach, she decided to train to become a book coach and coach herself. Isn’t that wild?! Very unusual, but awesome. I think you’ll really enjoy this one.

I was just another burned-out teacher with an unfinished draft of a historical fiction novel gathering dust in my Google Docs. During the pandemic lockdown, I set a goal to write 500 words a day and grabbed a few craft books on story structure to help me through the messy middle. By the end of 2022, I had a full first draft, but it was in pretty bad shape. In one of the craft books I read, Story Genius, Lisa Cron mentioned working with a book coach. I thought to myself: I could hire a book coach, or I could sign up for the book coaching program, learn what a book coach would tell me, and then become my own book coach.

I never thought of myself as someone who would have their own business, market their services online, and make money outside of the confines of a traditional 9-5. By the time I received my certification, I was hooked on helping authors translate their ideas on the page and guiding them through their own messy middles so that they don’t abandon their dream of writing a novel that works. The last two years of creative entrepreneurship have been the most dynamic, inspiring, challenging, and fruitful time of my life. Here are the top five lessons I’ve learned.

Lesson #1: Find your favorite way in

At first, I was afraid to start posting on social media to grow my business. I dreaded implementing the hustle culture bro advice that says to post on every platform twenty times a day. An entrepreneur friend told me to think about the spaces where I already enjoyed spending my time and focus my efforts on sharing my work there. I call this “finding your favorite way in,” and I wrote about it here. I loved Substack and YouTube, so I started posting weekly essays and videos (with long pauses when my teaching job got busy). I love making new connections, so I sent lots of cold emails out to people I wanted to collaborate with (more on that below). I love coaching people live, so last spring, I hosted a 12-week free course on planning a novel, which became the 4-week Novel Incubator I’m launching on August 23rd. Several people from the first novel incubator became regular 1:1 clients.

Lesson #2: Find your “zone of genius” and give it away for free (at first).

As a teacher, the most satisfying part of my job was when students wanted to learn exactly what makes their writing better. The best way to do this is what writing coach Roy Peter Clarke calls “X-ray reading,” so I made content about how to analyze the most successful writers and see what works and what doesn’t. I invited people to hop on a free call with me (I still do this here!), taught them this skill, and gave them a few titles to read for practice. My client Jim says that without this skill, he would still be spinning his wheels. Instead, after a year of working together, he has a complete first draft of his science-fiction murder mystery novel and a solid outline of the rest of the six-book series.

Lesson #3: The right-fit client is a dream. The wrong-fit client is a nightmare.

A lot of business-building advice focuses on getting a larger volume of potential clients, but I have found very little on learning to trust the inner voice that says whether a client is a good fit. Because I started my creative business while working a full-time job, I had the luxury of being selective with the clients I took on. I had one client I felt wouldn't be a good fit, but I ignored that instinct and then dreaded every call with them. Afterward, I thought, “Ok, I could beat myself up about this, or I could think ‘lesson learned’ and listen to my gut in the future.” From that client, I also learned not to take it personally when people sign up for book coaching and then don't actually do the work. I can't do it for them.

I have never fired a client. I learned to check in with my body after consultation calls. If I felt even a slight aversion to seeing that person again, I gave myself permission to “bless and release” them. One potential client did not seem to listen to me or respect professional boundaries. Sure enough, when I emailed her to tell her that I didn’t think we would be a good fit, she wrote me back a wildly inappropriate and disrespectful email. I never responded.

Bad-fit clients are incredibly dangerous to a fledgling creative business because someone who reacts poorly to feedback, who doesn’t hold up their end of the coaching bargain, who gets defensive or even aggressive when you offer your unique creative services can damage your confidence. Someone working with wrong-fit clients might think they don’t have the emotional fortitude to keep building their business, rather than recognizing that many people want to hire someone but don’t actually want to do the work required to get the results they say they want.

Lesson #4: There will be some deeply discouraging lows.

I had a blast hosting my Novel Incubator last year, and during the summer, I decided to start hosting weekly open coaching calls. I posted about it on Meetup.com because many aspiring authors look for writing groups there. One night, about a month into my weekly calls, I was Zoombombed by a group of trolls who flooded the Zoom room, took over the meeting controls, and posted horrifying hate speech in the chat as I frantically tried to kick them out. I should have just ended the call, but at the time, I thought it was just one or two bad actors. Nothing like that has ever happened to me in the classroom, but ten years of teaching made me pretty unflappable, so I just kicked out all the Zoom bombers and apologized to my actual attendees.

We spent the rest of the session talking about how to be resilient in the face of challenging emotions, which I consider a key skill for writers to develop! I was pretty shaken the next day and didn’t want to host the call anymore. Then a client on the call sent me a very kind email about how well I handled the Zoom bombing and that they hoped I wasn’t blaming myself. This helped me remember that my goal was to help as many writers as possible, so I tightened my security settings for the following week’s Zoom call.

At the start of next week’s call, I explained what had happened and thanked those who had returned. I did not want to be intimidated by these internet trolls into hiding or even giving up on showing up online to promote my business. The returning writers were incredibly gracious and supportive, and we got straight back into coaching. I felt an incredible surge in my confidence after weathering that stormy night.

Lesson # 5: The most effective method of growing my business

Soon after my certification, I attended a webinar on writing cold pitches to collaborate with other online creators. A Substack writer whose work I really enjoyed, Catherine Andrews of The New Sensitive, had written an essay about taking a sabbatical to write a book. I wrote Catherine a pitch about helping with her book proposal in exchange for her promoting my business on her Substack newsletter. She loved the idea, and we had a fantastic call with conversational sparks flying. We spent the next year working on various elements of her book proposal as she gained confidence in her new identity as a book author. She ended up winning a book proposal contest through Hay House, her dream publisher. During our year of working together, she gave me a shoutout in her posts about writing. Since Catherine has a much larger following on Substack and Instagram than I do, whenever she linked to my pages, I had an influx of new followers and subscribers. In my first year, about a third of my new clients told me they found me through Catherine.

Recently, another author whose Substack newsletter I feverishly consume, Jo Piazza, posted about her disappointment regarding the preorder sales of her novel, The Parisian Heist. I emailed her and suggested she host a masterclass on writing a bestselling novel, with me as the moderator. The ticket to entry? A pre-order of the book. She loved the idea, and we had an absolute blast hosting the webinar before the book’s debut. The collaboration brought a bunch of new people into my world and onto my mailing list. One of the most powerful strategies for growth is collaborating with someone whose audience aligns with your work. Think about who you follow and where there might be overlap with your content pillars, and dream up ways to work together. Getting in front of another audience is a huge growth lever, and if you pitch it right, it can be a ton of fun!

I’ve spent the last month chatting with writers from Jo’s masterclass in my free consultation calls, and several of them are joining me in my upcoming Novel Incubator, which I am very excited to teach this Virgo season. At the end of the 4-week course, attendees will leave with a killer pitch, a clear understanding of their novel’s genre, a compelling story outline, and a concrete plan for writing their first draft, plus tons of mindset hacks to help them stay on track and finish their novel. If you have an idea for a novel or even a half-finished draft, I’d love to talk to you about it and see if the incubator could be helpful.