Speaker 1: 0:05

I used to be a journalist and you know this is where I got my money from pitching and you know writing. And then I was in a pandemic, so I had a secure employment. I had a 10-year job at a university and I got my salary every you know, every month, and I gave that up due to burnout, but I left empowered but also, you know, tired but empowered, feeling like I want to create something for myself.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Dr Nicole Janz, who helps academic entrepreneurs and creatives find their unique voices and create powerful books. With a rich background in journalism, academia and coaching, she believes in the transformative transformative power of writing to make a profound impact on the world. She's the author of the Right Habit, the writer's planner. So, dr Nicole, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you with me here today and I'm so excited to hear about you, know your project, and I think my first question is I want to ask you about your book, the Right Habit, if you can tell us a bit about it. What's the message and all of that? So the floor is yours.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Well, thank you, natasha, and I'm so happy to be here. I've been following your podcast and I'm very excited to speak to you and your audience. Yeah, the Right Habit the Right Habit book is a planner and it's helping people to create a daily writing habit, and I think the best way to describe it is by what is it not? And I started the Right Habit planner as a self-help book. So I was writing this book with all these chapters on how to create a writing habit, how to, you know, get over the inner critic and how to plan your writing better, and halfway through the book I got stuck. I felt like I'm telling these people all these things to do, but they know that you know when you read a self-help book and later you don't actually do any of the things.

Speaker 1: 2:41

So it took me a few months to figure out that this book shouldn't be a self-help book. It needs to be a planner where you just open a page and it says write three goals in here and then break them down and then slot them in. And so I completely. I basically threw away the self-help book and created a planner that is simple, it's easy, it's visually appealing and it gets you through. Your is simple, it's easy, it's visually appealing and it gets you through your monthly planning, your weekly planning, reflecting on your writing, reflecting on what you need to say no to to make more space for writing. And it's yeah, it's meant for every writer who finds it difficult to keep up a daily habit, because they just take the book, open it and plan, check in with themselves and keep it on their desk. So that's what the right habit planner is meant to do.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Yeah, this is interesting because recently I started an Excel sheet. I'm doing a revision for my second novel and I wanted something to you know, help me accountable. So, like every Excel sheet, I divided it into like session one, two, three, and each session I put the number of words I added in the division and just to see where I am. And it's interesting how I would look at the days. Some days I wrote more, some days I hardly wrote. So I was pleasantly surprised how that helped me. So my question for you is what do authors struggle the most when it comes to habits? Is it fear of failure? Is it like? What is the main block? That? The resistance? Um, you know, as, um the author of the, uh, the war of art, uh, stephen presfield, said. So what is their main resistance?

Speaker 1: 4:33

so, the writers who come to me are usually people who can write or they have a great idea, but they are stuck. So I meet them at the point where it's painful and at the point where you are in pain. They often don't know exactly what is troubling them and on the surface level they tell me things I'm procrastinating, I can't find the time to write, I don't know if I'm telling the story right or if I'm making my argument clear. I'm not trusting my own message or I have too many other goals. So often there's some sort of superficial um, and these are valid things, right, if you don't have time to write in your calendar, it's painful.

Speaker 1: 5:13

But when I actually start coaching them, there are the deeper layers and those are the things that you just mentioned. Right, there's this fear the writing isn't good enough. There's the fear you know you're being overwhelmed with having to create this huge mountain 80,000 words or something. Maybe you're too perfectionist or you just don't have the confidence. You don't think other people are going to like it points, you know, of course you start avoiding it. And when you avoid that, then you start procrastinating and then you never make the time. You get distracted. So the whole idea of procrastination. Procrastination is really pain, avoidance of of the deeper issues that we have as authors, and I also know how it feels like, sadly.

Speaker 2: 5:59

And how do you solve that for them? What? What? I mean, I'm getting an advice for free here here. How do you solve that? What do you tell them? So?

Speaker 1: 6:10

as you know, as a coach, it depends on each person, but I have a sort of framework or system that I go through and one of the things is we do need to look at the surface level. We do need to look. Well, show me your calendar. Where are your writing slots? Do you know which chapter you're writing on? How far are you in the book? Let's take stock.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So a lot of people haven't looked at their document for a long time out of frustration. So we do need to think about all these planning things and that's, you know, the easiest entryway is the right habit planner. That's a quick solution to get back into planning properly and identifying writing slots, making more time for writing and keeping it as a sacred slot. But then, as I progress with them in the coaching, I do ask well, what voice are you hearing in your head when you sit down? Or what do you feel in your body Like you sit down at your desk, you've got your writing slot, you've got your coffee, you open the document and somehow you feel a tight chest or you know your stomach is rumbling or the shoulder is tight.

Speaker 1: 7:10

So we go through what. What are you feeling and what thought is in your head at that moment and then, depending on you know each person it tends to end up with something deep down yeah, I'm not good enough. That's where deep down that we always end up. Yeah, I'm not good enough. That's where deep down that we always end up with that I'm not good enough. And then we start unraveling where does that come from? How can we get you to a point where you just trust that you can write a little bit and then keep writing, editing, rewriting. How can we get so? I often try and get people to just write something, just sit down. Here's a prompt. Let's do it now.

Speaker 2: 7:51

Write something and just hold that feeling for a little while and see how you feel once you've written a few words so you're more of a book therapist in a way like uh, you know it's, it's interesting because it's not really the craft it's, it's the mindset correct very much so.

Speaker 1: 8:10

I'm like a mindset coach for writers or a life coach or I don't know what I want to call myself, but I have, you know, I do have some clients.

Speaker 1: 8:18

I work with a memoirist who is not really a writer, but this person has a story to tell and she had been stuck since 2016 with you know, two chapters and never kept going and I'm not super specialized in memoir I, you know I chapters and never kept going, and I'm not super specialized in memoir I, I, you know I have training in that and I can advise. But what I worked with her was mostly on how to how to kickstart the writing and once we overcame those thoughts well, I'm not a writer and I can't do that she wrote a chapter per week really fast and had a full first draft. That needs a lot of work, right, but she had a full first draft even before Christmas, and this is a person who didn't think she could be a writer, and so it had to do with our relationship and how, somehow the space we held together gave her the trust that she can start typing, even if it doesn't sound great for now.

Speaker 2: 9:14

Yeah, so now you're more of an authorpreneur, correct? So you write a book and then you have, I think, your coaching business, your courses, your cohorts. So how do you manage to maintain a stream of income with all these different, let's say, ventures? And I know it gives you the freedom. But what about your own mindset, handling all these different incomes and instability of the work? How do you handle it? And if you want to advise someone to do the same, what would you tell them?

Speaker 1: 9:55

So I'll start with the mindset, because that's the tricky one.

Speaker 2: 10:00

I'm asking for myself, by the way. Yeah, so there we go.

Speaker 1: 10:04

So it's, it's yeah, so go ahead. Let me ask you back when are you at? Are you making a full-time income from your books?

Speaker 2: 10:14

Not books only, but books writing for clients, courses, coaching. You know different things here and there affiliate marketing and others. So, yeah, so I mean I love it, I enjoy it, but you know you have the mindset of what is next. Is this sustainable, all of?

Speaker 1: 10:34

that. So that's exactly the question that I started with Is this sustainable? And I used to be a journalist and you know this is where I got my money from pitching and you know writing. And then I was an academic. So I had a secure employment. I had a 10 year job at a university and I got my salary every month and I gave that up due to burnout. But I left empowered, but also tired, but empowered, feeling like I want to create something for myself.

Speaker 1: 11:04

And still there's this nagging feeling. Is this sustainable? This is called the scarcity mindset, right. So the feeling of, well, I'm all on my own, I need to keep this ship running. If I get ill, no one's going to give me sick pay, right.

Speaker 1: 11:19

So it's the hardest thing as an entrepreneur or author, coach, whatever we want to call it to trust that you can have a continuous stream of amazing creative ideas that can be monetized. And this is where I'm currently sort of trying. I try to really hone that, and I'm in a few coaching groups where other people are doing the same, reminding myself, trying to tip and tap into the abundance mindset. I have infinite ideas. I've done it in the past, I can do it in the future. So this is sort of the mindset that I sometimes struggle with. But I need to have that trusting myself. So that's sort of the starting point. And then, out of that mindset that I am a creator and I create what is important to me and can be monetized, then I sort of I try out an experiment.

Speaker 1: 12:12

Right, I started as a one-on-one coach, mostly for academics, because that's where I came from. And then when that, when my sort of calendar got filled too much and I got became at risk of burning out again, just like I had as an academic, I realized, okay, let's try groups. And I trialed. I ran a better group. I saw that it worked and I put a lot of the information that I give my one-on-one clients and all the amazing things we figure out about their own psychology and their writing. I put that into these trainings and life cohorts and I had that running.

Speaker 1: 12:48

So that was the second thing. And then the third thing is that sometimes organizations or universities are asking me can you give a workshop, can you run a coaching program in-house? And so I do that as well, on top of doing some writing writing blogs on Medium, which gives you know, or having published my book, there's a bit of income. So for me, I'm not the type that I can, you know, only do one thing. It would just kill all my creativity. I have a diversified portfolio and I keep thinking about how can I repurpose content, how can I reach more people, how can I help? That's essentially the goal, right? If I have a one-on-one client, that might be amazing, and it is amazing, but I can only help that one person in the one hour, or I can do other activities that help 20 people at exactly the same time.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Yeah, so how? Like you know, in order to do this, you know we have to learn a lot of skills, right, business skills, and for me, what I realized is I really need to learn marketing and I need to learn the psychology of, let's say, convincing people to buy your product, and all of that. So how do you market your work, since you have a lot of things going on, and what was the thing that brought you the most success in terms of your marketing efforts?

Speaker 1: 14:21

so I started my marketing, probably doing it all wrong, okay, posting anywhere and everywhere that everyone should buy my products and should get on my course and you know all these testimonials and those are not bad things. But I was very much in what I talked about earlier, the scarcity mindset of I need people buying my stuff, otherwise I'm screwed, and that sort of created for me personally a quite constricted energy and I'm pretty sure that somehow you know I'm not too super woo woo, but I had a feeling that it might create that feeling Okay.

Speaker 1: 14:59

So it might create that constricted energy in other people who just they can sniff it out that I am keen to make money and, by the way, I have nothing against profit I, you know I need to pay for for my life and my children and all that. So I did a lot of marketing burned out with that, just trying to post on all the socials at the same time and like, oh you know what. And then I changed my approach and I had to really go inward and think about Nicole, what are you actually good at and what I learned from the coaching and the writing that I do? I'm good at connecting with others and I'm good at community and I'm thriving on community and not feeling lonely as a writer and as a coach. And so I switched my marketing into how can I write a newsletter that connects with someone else and that brings my deepest emotions and my struggles with trusting myself as an author. How can I bring that to another person to feel connected, just like what I do in my coaching? You know, if the person I'm coaching doesn't feel connected to me or my story, they're not going to tell me their deepest fears that hold them back from writing. So I really switched and I have now a very different way of holding discovery calls, where I just I connect to the person and then we see if we can work together or I direct them elsewhere.

Speaker 1: 16:25

And I do the same with, for example, the marketing for the Right Habit Planner, the planner that I published at the end of last year.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Instead of writing 20, 30 or having ads or something to just get people to buy the thing, I found a community of writers and I created a community, a team, a street team or early reader team there are all these publishing expert names and labels for that.

Speaker 1: 16:50

I created a group of about a hundred people around me that love the writer's planner.

Speaker 1: 16:56

They love working with me and interacting with me and sort of getting my tips, and they are in, you know, sort of a special Facebook group and they are actually as a community because they feel connected to me and my mission to help everyone to write more and better. They are going out and promoting my book. So most of the people buying the planner tell me now and I know them because they are in my Facebook group they get free training and stuff. So it's more than just a book, right, and now see, the people that are just listening can't see it, but I'm smiling and I feel open, I feel spacious, while I'm talking about connection and community, which essentially is selling and marketing, but through a way that feels true to myself. So that is sort of my approach, that I sort of made it up, but this is the better way for me to make money, essentially the better way for me to make money essentially so you would say in in terms of of social media.

Speaker 2: 17:55

You're more comfortable with private communities where you can connect with people, like private facebook group or private linkedin group, is. Is that where, you would say, connected more with the audience? Or, as in the form of a newsletter, like, where would the most connection happen? Because, like some people are used to just post a tweet here on twitter or, and I just okay, where are, where are the people? You know how? How did it happen for you?

Speaker 1: 18:22

I think there are different sort of stages and level of levels of engagement and feeling close to people. I used to just dump things into Twitter, instagram and then feel like, okay, I've done my job and walk away, but sometimes I currently I'm in a in a cohort program that helps people. You know, write every day on Twitter and and I'm a participant, and I realized that when I looked back at my previous posts, sometimes there were people responding and asking questions and I didn't even see that because I was overwhelmed with having to do the marketing and, you know, creating more posts, and so I went back to actually answering to them. So, you know, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram and in some Facebook groups, but I've changed my strategy towards posting maybe less, but responding more, or my medium blog posts. There's a lot of people highlighting things on medium and responding to that and I didn't even see that. So now I feel like I'm creating that mini community around those posts and I've already found quite a few people that when they book a discovery call, they say they found me on Twitter, but actually what tipped the needle for them to book the call was that we had a little interaction on Twitter and it's not.

Speaker 1: 19:43

You know these. Yes, of course, in the end I do need to make money and sustain myself, but these were genuine interactions where someone read a post and said, well, that doesn't work for me. And then I might ask, well, what's your situation? And so it's not about private or sort of open social media, it's more do I make the time to respond and show up with authenticity and with just the mission of wanting to help and serve first, and then something might develop out of it. And maybe 90% nothing ever happens, but 10% some people feel like I want more of Nicole, and then they, you know, come closer, book the new, you know, subscribe to the newsletter and get a little bit more personalized and deeper advice that way.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Do you use Substack? I've been seeing a lot of authors using Substack. It's becoming huge with authors and I'm trying to get more active on it, but what do you think about it? I've been.

Speaker 1: 21:35

I have a sub stack that I don't write on, because I signed up very enthusiastically and got overwhelmed with all the things that I supposedly should be doing. I do have an email list. Um, that means when you subscribe to my newsletter, it's like sub stack, but it's just on a different platform where people read my weekly advice. Okay, I do subscribe to some sub stack, but only to those that give me, because I get so overwhelmed with having to read all the newsletters that I subscribe to write. So only ever if I have a certain thing that I have certain problem I want to solve, like how to post on Twitter, I will subscribe to someone's sub stack for a few months and see if I can get the information out of it. So for me, it doesn't matter which platform, it matters how much time can I put into reading it, and I don't have a sub stack, but I read it and I'm fine for now.

Speaker 1: 22:30

I might start a sub stack, but the question is does it have a place in my portfolio of all the things I'm doing? So for me, yeah, I think that what I do instead at the moment is posting on Medium, because on Medium I have a little community around me now that same people keep coming back to my posts. Plus I earn a little bit of money when a post gets sort of boosted, there's you know 300 pounds extra, which is really nice. So I feel that life that some people live on Substack. I'm currently sort of having that on Medium. But yeah, never say never.

Speaker 2: 23:04

Yeah, well, what they did recently is they created their notes section. So it's becoming like Twitter, so you actually open a feed of authors discussing various topics and like reposting stuff. So I recently discovered that, by the way, and I was like, wow, there's a lot going on there, so just something to think about. Okay, so what is next for Dr Nicole in terms of your projects, your books, all of that? In terms of your projects, your books, all of that?

Speaker 1: 23:37

So I think this year 2024, right. So I'm sort of going year by year. At the moment I'm looking into ways to work more effectively without burning out, because, as a businesswoman, burnout if you've once had it it's always around the corner because you slip into the mindset I need to do more, I need to do better. So I'm trying to find ways of being very effective with serving my clients and at the same time still having time for my own writing. So right now, for example, I decided that this year my 90 day accelerator, which starts end of January, that this year my 90 day accelerator, which starts end of January, is only going to run twice.

Speaker 1: 24:21

This year I used to run a lot of cohorts because in between I'm submitting my master's thesis, so I'm doing a master's degree on design and creative writing just for fun. So I need space for that right. So at the beginning of the year and then in about a year from now, this program runs and all the people who need my help have to jump on those cohorts, otherwise they've missed their chance. And for me that creates space for my own writing and peace that the money will come in. And I know it'll be those two cohorts and in between I might have some other ideas putting out a product or having another one-on-one client, but sort of.

Speaker 1: 24:58

I'm trying to scale my business at the same time as staying healthy, having time for my writing and creativity and making it still feel authentic for myself. So it's a bit of a wishy-washy answer, but these are hard decisions. Not to run continuous cohorts is a real decision as a businesswoman gives me some stress, but also the feeling of, well, I need to make those count and in between, if the money flow goes down, I trust that I will have another great idea that I'm going to put out and it'll probably work out. How do you take?

Speaker 2: 25:38

care of your health. You know, in the midst of all of that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:42

So I have something that I call the basics and they are my basics. So my basics are a morning meditation. I use the waking up app by Sam Harris. I do yoga Either I go to my yoga studio here in Cambridge or I do an online yoga. Okay, and I have dedicated break times.

Speaker 1: 26:06

So I use my own planner and in the planner there is white space on purpose, because I know that I need to step outside, go into nature, do a mini meditation. Or sometimes, you know, I just read a fantasy novel that I can, you know, a page turner. So I need to schedule those things into my calendar. If I don't take off my meditation for a few days, I feel that I'm not quite myself. And then I return to those basics and then my super trick at the moment is, um, knowing when to close down the laptop and not engage around five o'clock, which is when my children come home. Um, it's, you know. Obviously, having children is an in your face thing, so you can't do your emails at the same time, or at least it's not going to be good.

Speaker 1: 26:57

I have a time when I close down my laptop, maybe I write down my three wins of the day, and on Thursday I have a recovery day. So ever since I had burnout, now that I have the luxury of deciding on my own schedule, thursday, I might write if I like it, but I don't have clients, I don't have meetings. I don't think I might write if I like it, but I don't have clients, I don't have meetings. I don't think about the business. I go to charity shops and buy books, or I go to my favorite cafe and sit and do nothing. Most of the time I have a good idea during that time because my brain just had some, some space to mull things over. So I'm watching my health very, very carefully because I have to, but also because I want to. I want to, you know, I want to be able to be creative and it's not possible when you bog down and in the hamster wheel yeah, so how do you think meditation helped you as an author?

Speaker 2: 27:56

ah, that's a one.

Speaker 1: 27:58

So I often have the problem that, whatever issues I have, the resistance, the fear that my writing isn't good enough, the anxiety around it, the very it shows up in my body and I only notice when I have this back pain, like I can't write anymore, my hand hurts, my back hurts, and then I, then I try to outthink the problem. Oh so I have some write anymore, my hand hurts, my back hurts, and then I, then I try to outthink the problem. Oh so I have some medical issue. I need to get pills, go to the GP, get myself back on track. Like it sounds quite harsh, right.

Speaker 1: 28:26

And when I meditate I let those thoughts go and I just sort of it's a mixture between just trying to let it go and observe, but also seeing that thought spirals that I've gotten into and feeling what goes on in my body.

Speaker 1: 28:42

A lot of meditation makes a body scan and so when I meditate, itness in my chest has to do with you know, there's a deadline coming or a client was unhappy last week and I need to really get back in touch and see how I can help them better. And meditation helps me to pause, like pause, have a second check in with yourself in different ways, mentally and in your body, and then decide consciously what is my one next step. And that helps me as a writer. It's like intrinsically linked right, if I'm a stuck writer and I have writer's block and I have many of those clients. We don't sit for 20 minutes and meditate, but we take a pause first and we do a body scan sometimes, pause first and we do a body scan sometimes, and so it's intrinsically linked to me as a woman, a business woman, even a mother, when I take a pause and I meditate and I'm really not a very good meditator, to be very honest, I'm just trying my best I can function better and function more intentionally in everything that I do.

Speaker 2: 29:56

So wow, Okay. So how can people find you? They want to get in touch with you. What are the best way to get in touch with you?

Speaker 1: 30:06

So they can find me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is camwritinghub cam for Cambridge, camwritinghub. I have a website, wwwnicolejanscom just my name. My planner, the Right Habit Planner, has its own website, therighthabitplannercom, and I'm on a few of the socials, of the other socials under my name. So I think if you find me in one place you will know all the other places you can see me. I'm currently very active on Twitter because I'm in a cohort program at the moment to post daily on Twitter, so Cam Writing Hub on Twitter is the fastest way to get a hold of me.

Speaker 2: 30:50

Great. So any final thoughts, tips, advices for anyone who's listening or watching.

Speaker 1: 30:57

You know, the one advice it's and that's the hardest to really create that for yourself is, I would say to people trust yourself, trust that your story matters and trust that you are worthy to be seen. What you have to say in terms of insights, in terms of a story, it's worthy to be seen. And trust that people, someone out there needs to hear your story or, if it's nonfiction, your argument. And trust that you can create the space for yourself to write and to feel good while you're doing the writing. And once you have just remember that trusting yourself and trusting you are worthy to be heard, you start writing from a different place. It's very hard to create that trust. It's a daily practice, but that would be the thought to leave with anyone who's listening. Try and write from a different place and start with trust and see where that takes you.

Speaker 2: 31:56

Yeah, that's great. Well, Dr Nicole, that's great. Well, Dr Nicole, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast and I look forward to connecting with you and for anyone who's watching or listening. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, of Read and Write with Natasha. And until we meet again. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.