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Transcript

The Exception to the “Core Message” Rule · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: All this past week we've been talking about the importance of having one core message as a writer.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason this is such a key principle is that many writers, especially at the beginning of their journey, feel paralyzed by all the things they could say or that they want to say.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have a dozen potential messages that you can focus on, how do you move forward without feeling like you're making the wrong choice?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a few days ago we talked about how to choose your core message.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're still wrestling with this or you haven't done that exercise that I encourage you to do, I want to challenge you to go back and listen to that episode if you're still not sure how to make that decision or you're not sure how to move forward.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all that said, there are times when it is okay to have several different messages.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's when you're writing lots of books or you want to build a few different brands.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some authors do this by having different pen names.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: For example, one of my favorite writers, Joanna Penn, she hosts the Creative Pen podcast.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: She creates resources for authors, and you can find all of her books and tons of other stuff, courses, podcasts, and everything at The Creative Pen with two Ns at the end, thecreative pen.com.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Joanna is wonderful and she has been so helpful on my writing journey.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, she's going to be on the podcast here really, really soon.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited about that.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Joanna Penn also writes thrillers under the author named JF Penn.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a way for her to separate her nonfiction for writers from her fiction, and those are mostly different audiences.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, personally, I don't see myself using a pen name.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Will I in the future?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'd never say never, right?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But everything that I do, at least as I see it at this point, will be listed under my real name, which of course is Kent Sanders.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: However, you might have seen earlier this year, I released a book called 18 Words to Live By, A Father's Wisdom on What Matters Most.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a book that I wrote for my son for his 18th birthday back in April.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that book didn't fall into the category of writing resources, like my other upcoming books and projects do.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So how does that fit into this?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And am I violating basically my own advice here?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how I would explain this.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: That book, 18 Words to Live By, is the first book in a set of what I'm calling the wisdom series.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And while it's obviously written under my own name, that book also has a different identity and a different purpose than what I'm doing for the Daily Writer, as far as the podcast, the community, my upcoming Daily Writer book, and so forth.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The 18 Words book has a whole different audience than people who tune into the podcast.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not an entirely different audience, but it's mostly different.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I initially just did that book as a one-off project for my son, just as something fun to do.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was surprised to find that it's kind of turned into something much bigger.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So back to the main topic of this episode, which is the value of having one core message.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the only time to violate this rule is if you're willing to put in the time and effort and if you're willing to do the marketing to build a separate brand around each of your different messages.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example of this.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: My friend and my writing mentor and coach, Anna Ray Corter, she does this very, very well.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: She has a series of books for single mothers, and she has books also for business leaders.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: She has books for writers, and she has like a whole series on those different topics.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she has books on other topics as well.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But she's done this over the long term.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's been writing for a long time.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not something that she did like all in a year's time.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It happened organically as she felt the desire to write on different topics and as she saw the need to write books for different audiences.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But again, this did not happen over the short term.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: This happened over a period of years.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important to keep in mind.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing this over the long term.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would not recommend having different verticals.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, verticals is a term that they use in the magazine industry to refer to different topics or different subject categories.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would not recommend having different verticals as a writer until you are established with one central message.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard enough for most writers to consistently write on one topic, much less two or three or four or five or whatever.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So don't get distracted and feel that you have to write about everything.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, if you're highly motivated and you want to put the work in to write multiple books a year and establish multiple brands, I say go for it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's no reason not to if you can do the work and if you're motivated to do it, and if you really have the desire to work hard and do the marketing required to make those things successful.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because the more good books that you can write, the better your business is going to be.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you can cross-promote and you can do all kinds of cool and interesting things with those.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend you go check out um honor recorder's books and all the interesting things that she's doing.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Go to honoracorder.com.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's H-O-N-O-R-E-E-C-O-R-D-E-R dot com.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Honor recorder.com and get on Amazon and look at her books and see the interesting things that she's doing.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll give you a really cool vision of what is possible when you want to write under different verticals over the long haul.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's accomplished some really, really cool things, sold millions of books, so you can absolutely do it as well.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So check out her website.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Also check out her courses and all the other cool things she has going on.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's super, super helpful stuff, I promise you.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this past week, again, we've been talking about the importance of having a core message, but the exception to that is, as we're talking about right now, the exception to that is if you're willing to put the work in.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're willing to put the work in to do different verticals or different write on different topics, maybe have different series, I think that's absolutely awesome.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm building.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're super motivated, I hope that you're gonna join that bandwagon also.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: But before you do that, at least establish yourself with one thing.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't written any books yet, get that first book out there, get it done so people can uh start to benefit from it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can start to grow your author brand and your business as well.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So here's today's question for you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know that I always leave with a question because as a former college professor, I cannot end a podcast without giving you some type of question to to help you think about how to apply what we've talked about.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, on a scale of one to ten, how motivated are you to have more than one core message by writing a lot of books?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.