By Novae Caelum · Originally published
No, really. Because it’s where you grow.
I’ve been a little quiet the last week because 1) I blasted into stratospheric output several weeks in a row on various projects and my human body alas knows it and 2) I got embarrassed.
What this post ISN’T going to be is one of those stupid TikTok engagement videos showing crocodile tears about some big thing that happened.
It’s not that kind of thing.
It’s the burn of knowing you’re building something and it isn’t hitting the curve you charted.
That’s it.
Or the burn of having three good sales days in a row and then having a fourth with nothing.
Or the burn of setting your course on a certain path, and then the ground shifts from under you.
I’ve been feeling all of these things.
And they are NORMAL BUSINESSY THINGS.
And that’s actually the burn, not any of these things above.
It is normal, soooo normal, more normal than not, really, to grow at your own pace. To have off days and off weeks. And to be flummoxed when the world is demanding you pivot and you look around with confused John Travolta gif face and you’re like, “But I just did!!”
For me, this week, it’s been chasing down bugs in my app after launch. I wanted that app to be PERFECT. I spent 60 hours the week before making that sucker perfect!
And there were bugs! But OF COURSE there were bugs. Every software in the absolute world has bugs on release, let alone beta. I am not you, I’m never going to come up with your exact sequence of buttons to press or have your exact needs. Why am I embarrassed about that?
I had a rough ads week. I’ve been trying a lot, and some things have been sticking and some have not. But that’s business. Business is ALL about experimenting with informed decisions of the data at hand, and the data you project into to see how it lands. That’s literally how this works.
The filmmaking course I recorded RIGHT before Astra came out is going to need an update, too, because Astra as a filmmaking driver is becoming main dish, and I don’t have anything about that. I have that in my app, yes, that’s a big part of it. But, for people who are building their own workflows, or want to learn the process all the way down, that’s gotta be in the course. So I need to sidestep and record something new before I can push that out, too.
Business is messy.
For many of us, who are moving on tight budgets and flying close to the ground, business can be hella stressful.
That’s okay.
You really, really don’t have to hide your mess.
Because one thing that has driven me berserk about the author world for a long time is how green grass and picket fence things can be—oh, that author has it ALL together.
And yet, they spent more on ads that month than they made.
Or, that author with the high follower count must have it MADE. Except they built their audience on influence and personality and struggle to sell their actual books.
Or, that author with the book deal is flying! Except, they don’t have their rights anymore, and can’t move on things they might want to do.
Everyone has a different situation, every week the world is a little different.
That is never going to change.
You and your drive and your passion and your obsession and your need to do what you need to do…even that might change.
But I think that’s okay, too.
So when I write posts like these, they’re always my own pep-talks to me. Because I think it’s not hard to have weird brain days when you’ve been crunching on tasks and you’re high on hubris and you get so far, and you realize the ground is not in fact where you left it when you took to the air.
Some of my experiments this week, with a coin toss yet on if they’ll land (but I find them hella amusing):
My first post with these didn’t do so well. But I’m gonna rearrange and try again.
I’ve been posting my King’s Weaver show, and my first film The Throne of Eleven, on Youtube for the last month, and, swinging wildly too in how I feel about it. I’ve been watching a ton of films and shows on YT with hundreds of thousands or millions of views. Studying like crazy. Enjoying the hell out of it. And then I’m posting and looking at my numbers and going ahhhhh whyyyy not climby yet???
Because I have…a normal channel! It is steadily climbing! The Throne of Eleven just passed 2K views and it’s been on a very steady climb. I’m very happy about that. I have 120 watch hours in the last month, coming from a mostly dormant and still new channel. And almost all of that was made pre-new-research.
Sometimes things pop off! I’ve had that happen before with my books. I know I’ll have it happen again with my movies and shows. Because I know how to study, and iterate, and test, and try again, and try again.
Same with my ads. Same with my app. Same with my courses and my books and every business thing I have my hands in.
When I was first making a serious go at learning Tiktok (and not in the “oh, well, I guess I’ll promote my books” mindset—authors, get out of that please), I iterated for weeks. I spent weeks studying dark romance hooks as the wildest most hooky hooks I could find. I was patient, I was steady at it, and eventually things started to hit.
And then hit MORE.
And then HIT MORE. Until they started hitting more than not.
What works in marketing has changed since then—so I’m testing again. I’m always testing. There is never a moment in business where you’re not testing.
And to do any kind of science, you have to see what doesn’t work along with what does.
And then there are tests that land! Like this one! On a new ad I launched a few days ago, with the new Muse/Astra system Cassie and I’ve been mad sciencing the last few days (and will be talking about on the Friday Zoom). I had no idea if that would work. (And thank you, author friend, that made my day!!)
We don’t have to do any of this on our own anymore, either. Our messiness doesn’t have to make us sit in the corner.
OpenAI’s Dot (I named mine Charles) was also on a mission to help me be less embarrassed today. That agent read my Meta emails, caught an error, checked it on Shopify, then pinged me on his own. We don’t have to do this on our own.
So, I’m not going to tell you not to be hard on yourself. Please be EXTREMELY hard on the part of yourself that is telling you you’re not enough right now, not doing enough, all of it.
That part is wrong. Tell THAT dude to go sit in the corner.
We have business to do!
-Novae