Be open to opportunities around you and love what you do. In this episode, Renee Rose shares her experience of having the best outcome in her life by following her guts. She had a degree in creative writing and knew she would be a writer. Her opportunity came after discovering 50 Shades of Grey, wherein she knew she could also write the same genre of books. She has sold over two million copies of her books, mainly focusing on romance. Tune in to learn how to maintain an abundance mindset and why loving your book is key to creating the best future for yourself. Plus, Renee shares a helpful ingredient that might just catapult your career: ego sauce.
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Pouring The Ego Sauce On Loving Your Book With Renee Rose
We are here with the lovely Renee Rose. She is an eleventh-time USA Today bestselling romance author. She’s passionate about helping other authors find and maintain an abundance mindset to catapult their careers and create their best future. She employs energetic tools and techniques to help her clients clear resistance and money blocks, access their inner guidance and tap into their love and appreciation for their books so they can achieve their dreams. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you. Just because it’s fun, I’m a fourteenth-time USA Today bestseller. I hit it 3 times in 2 weeks so that was fun.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
How does that feel?
It would be easy at this stage to be like, “I don’t care anymore. It’s not a big deal.” The first time you’re like throwing a freaking party for yourself. It’s important to celebrate our wins because it tells the universe that we’ll have more wins. I still went out to party and celebrate all of them.
Did you always start that way? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey going from wherever when you started to be a fourteenth-time USA Today bestselling author?
I have a degree in Creative Writing so I always thought I’d be a writer. I took the detour by way of thirteen years as a technical writer, which was super snoozy. Engineering manuals, you can imagine how exciting that was. Meanwhile, I was working on the hundred thousand words manuscripts that you keep under your bed. It was on a computer but still the kind that you keep under your bed.
One day someone mentioned Fifty Shades of Grey and how it was this phenomenon that someone was writing fanfic and made this big thing. I had to check it out and then I was like, “I could do that.” I am kinky so I sat down, whipped out a 25-word novella and sent it off to a publisher. The way the universe conspires when you’re following your path, they happen to have a brand new editor and I was the first manuscript on his desk. He was like, “It looks great. We’re publishing it.”
Two weeks later, it was on Amazon. By the standards, it’s not huge but for me, it was the first time I wrote a book in five days and sent it off. It was selling 100 copies a week but still, my first check was $4,500. I was like, “I found my calling. I’m going to write smart because it’s so fun.” You start projecting all these expectations that it’s always going to be like that. It’s not always easy. It can be a slog. I had to keep at it and years later, here I am.
I have questions because we skipped over the slog part, which makes the fourteenth-time bestselling even more exciting. Can you expound on the slog part so that we can see ourselves in the slog possibly and in the USA Today bestselling author?
Things aren’t always so easy to get.
I have been in the trenches. It’s like you turn out 1 book a month or every 6 weeks as fast as you can, keep getting them out there. For 3 or 4 years, I went with a small indie press. I tried some on my own but I don’t have the mailing list of a press so it took a little while to build that. I did all the strategies that everyone does, which is to grow your mailing list and swap with other people. I had a blog back when people had blogs. I do the Facebook parties and did everything that everyone says to do. I did Kindle Unlimited and learned how to work the Facebook Ads to work the algorithm with that and had a lot of success that way. In 2021 was when I went fully wide.
There are so many pitfalls and bad things that can happen to authors. You always hear like, “My Facebook account got shut down.” I got kicked out of KU in 2021. I had one of those mistakes where my Permafree book got put into KU, which could have been a total tragedy but I was like, “The universe is telling me to go wide so I’m going wide.” I doubled my income. A lot of it is how you spin and roll with it. It’s about clearing all the pain and the frustration around authoring to let the universe support you.
I want to get to that but it’s a little bit hard for me and maybe other people. I did not relate at all to you. I wrote a story in five days.
It was only 25,000 words. It was very short.
Maybe I have other things in my life that I could say, “That has happened to me in other parts of my life but not specifically with authoring.” It’s powerful for an audience to be able to be like, “I want to relate to you to learn from you.” You’re slogging it, working hard and doing all the things. While you were slogging it, you were having some measure of success. Maybe not as good and easy but it was some.
It was enough to pay the bills. I had maybe three years making $30,000 to $40,000 a year. When I did the KU is when I did rapid release. I was looking at the trends. I saw that Sci-Fi romance was selling well. It wasn’t my favorite but I was like, “I’m going to give it a shot.” I did write kinky so I did alien abduction. I did the rapid release of that. I had one book that was already written. It was in a box set and I got the rights back. The next one was pretty much ready. I did three weeks apart and then that was my first five-figure month. They were both KU.
It was that thing where the momentum got the algorithm going. It was magic. I was like, “I’m onto something.” I tried to bang those out. I went from $50,000 a year to 250,000 a year. I 5X my income so that was exciting. I then doubled, plateaued and then doubled again. It’s like keeping the faith in those times when sometimes I’m going down and I’m like, “Do I freak out, do this or start going? What’s wrong with me,” but I go like, “There are ups and downs.” Being weird is our worst enemy sometimes with this stuff.
When you started, were you like, “All through abundance?” Have you been like this the whole time?
I’m an energy person. From the first book, I’m like, “I am going to be the next Fifty Shades of Grey.” My friends are like, “I don’t think so.” I’m like, “No, this is the one.” They’re like, “Maybe not this one.” They were right but I was hungry for it. I believed in magic. It was her first book so I thought it could be my first book. I was like, “It can be done,” but then, there was a ton of hard work and 150 books between that.
A few years ago, you were turning them out, rapid releasing and going with this trend of Amazon’s algorithms working for you. You found something. I’m very woo-woo. Part of what I like with my abundance and attraction is being able to have some level of ease. I’m like, “I do want the money.” I have been co-writing with a friend. We burned out because we were writing these short stories together, releasing one a week. There are two of us and they’re short. They’re like 15,000 something but it’s a lot.
She’s a single mom and works a regular job full-time so she’s burned out. I’m like, “For me, it isn’t worth it to burn out even for the money,” even though I do want the money. How can I get the money and the ease? Is the success that you’re having different in a way? USA Today’s bestseller 3 times in 2 weeks is the same energy output and effort as it was maybe years ago.
There’s so much more ease. I am still looking at this because I’m killing myself. I’ve got three deadlines. I am a little insane. I keep thinking. This is that thing where anywhere you’re equating in your mind, hard work is the only way you’re going to get there. That’s then closing the door to the universe helping you. You have to have your nose to the grindstone or do it all by yourself.
It’s taken me forever to hire myself some help to get a PA or a publicist. I have to work on my own. I am worthy of help with my self-worth issues versus, “No. You’re supposed to work hard yourself and do it all. You’re a woman and a mom. That means you do everything.” There are authors out there who are killing it with 2 books or 4 books a year. It doesn’t have to be the way I’m doing it. I keep going like, “It’s not the formula. It’s being open to receiving and willing to let the universe work the magic.”
That’s what I want to dive into in this interview. That’s a difficult place to get to for some of us, including me. I’m practicing it. I do want to say putting a lot of effort and energy into something that you love can be different than putting effort and energy into something you don’t love. Working hard but loving all the work that you’re doing has a different vibe than working hard at something you don’t like.
That’s one of the things when we look at a lot of things. We have a monthly membership on an abundance mindset and a lot of times, they’re issues of burnout and writer’s block that come up. That is when you get into resistance. You have a should like, “I should be doing this.” You’re resisting the should because that doesn’t feel good. You’re judging yourself for resisting the should. It becomes that self-fulfilling thing.
Anytime you can lift off the pressure and go, “How could I have more pleasure writing? How could this be more fun?” One of my co-authors was having a hard time because she’d put pressure on herself to up-level her writing. Finally, she was set free when she was like, “I’m going to write the most mediocre book I can.” That was what her inner scribe needed to go, “Thank God I can write.”
Practically speaking, I don’t think a lot of us trust our talents as much as we could. I have written a lot of books because they’re short. I have quite a few to look back on. One of them I wrote, my grandmother passed away while I was putting it out. I’m like, “I’m going to do this.” During a stressful week, I’m doing the best I can. Sometimes those are the ones that people love the most. I look back and read it. I’m like, “That’s not bad. I should trust my talents, skills and myself more than I do.”
I had that too. When I first started, I wrote historically and called it the Regency Snore. I thought it was so boring but it was one of my bestsellers for years.
When we don’t care so much, we don’t have something needy or expensive attached to something. We were like, “However, this turns out.” That gives space for the universe to be like, “We’ll take it.” You’re like, “No, I have to control every aspect of this.” You don’t have any space for the woo-woo.
My first book was great so then I thought it was all going to be that easy because I projected onto it. I was like, “It needs to be that way,” then there was no space. It wasn’t that easy. It got hard.
A lot of times, what people are reading is actually what they should be writing.
For marketing purposes, I do say, “I made $3,000 a month within 3 months of publishing my first book.” I have that for my find-out-more marketing strategy but the bigger story is I was experimenting. I wasn’t like, “I’m going to make $3,000 a month in 3 months.” I was like, “Let me try this and see what happens.” It works.
I tell people this and I have so many people that want to come to write short romances. I’m like, “Yes, it worked for me.” As I’m coaching people, I’m like, “I don’t want to be one of those coaches or people who tells you to do what I did. What I need you to do is do what I did in the abstract energetic way, which is to find out what feels fun, enjoyable and integrity for you and then write that,” which is what I did.
You are singing my song because I’m always like, “I can’t stand on these experts telling you to do it exactly the way they did.” You do you. That’s the only way you’re going to get to your abundance. Maybe you’ll hear a short story and it lights you up. That’s for you but if you hear a short story and you’re like, “I have to do that because that’s what she did,” that might not be your magic.
I do say that. I’m like, “If it does feel good to you or if you can do it playfully and you’re like, ‘I have been struggling with these long ones. Let me play in short for a little while as we pivot.’” You need to tell me some experience about this because I do have questions but it’s not like you can look inside yourself and be like, “What genre and length? How long should it be? What voice should I have? What is the thing that’s going to light me up?” Sometimes it doesn’t look like that. You have to try it and try a few things.
Do you have any experience either with yourself or with coaching or something? I am curious and I don’t know if this is related or not. I’m bouncing all over but I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. When you were plateauing, something else happened. At different parts of your career when you were at the $30,000, $50,000 and $250,000, what happened both may be energetically and practically?
I was trying stuff out. It’s true. I was like, “Aliens are selling. I’m going to try aliens. Rapid release, I’ll try that. Stepbrothers, I’ll do a stepbrother.” I’ll even make a bully romance. I still am like, “What’s the trend?” There’s no reason I can’t follow the trend and still write what is central.
Can you talk a little bit about that because that’s a place that can be a challenge? How do you do that? I would imagine that’s some kind of a mindset. I like writing about strong women, which I can do in any genre or something but that’s what I would say. How do you make sure that you include what you love?
I’m usually into the dominant alpha male. Sometimes there’s a weak female and sometimes she’s fighting back. I’m into abduction, seduction or the mafia where they kidnap her. I’ve got Shifters because they’re dominant. I had a Wolf Shifter series that I was co-writing with Lee Savino. I heard, “Bully romance is hot.” I was like, “I could do a bully wolf.” I have three together and it’s all crazy. The next one didn’t where you project, “This is my next best series,” then it was a no. The next one was a major huge flop.
How did you discover that you liked writing dominant males? Did you always know or was that a journey?
This might be TMI.
It’s not for me. I have zero TMI. I warn people, “I’m about to say something that’s probably TMI but it’s too bad for you. You’re my friend.”
I’m always like, “Tell it all. Let’s hear it.” That is my kink. Those were fantasies I always had in my head. That’s why when I heard about Fifty Shades, I was like, “There’s a market for that?”
Is that the TMI?
I want it to be tied up and spanked. From playing with dolls a little, I was born and came into this world with that kink. As soon as I found out that there was a market, I heard the angel’s bugles going like, “You’re a writer and it’s your kink.” A lot of times, what people are reading is what they should be writing. People are like, “I only read Regency Romance but I’m writing this. I only read mystery but this is what I’m writing.” I’m curious because it seems like you try writing what you love to read.
People don’t because they think they won’t do it well. They maybe have some perfectionism around that because they like it so much but that might be where their magic is. I have one friend, Jane Henry, who was writing daddy books but was reading dark romance. She was like, “Maybe I’ll try writing my dark romance.” It was huge for her. A friend of hers was co-writing with her but was only reading M/M so she tried writing M/M and it’s been huge for her. Follow your bliss. What are you reading? What lights you up when you read it?
That’s a pretty wide variety of stories that I could be writing and still love because I read a lot. I do have phases at times. Years ago, I’m with academy and then later not, which is nice because there are not as many of them. I’ve noticed in myself and told people, “Sometimes when you’re afraid of something, it’s because you care about it so much.” I sometimes use my fear as a compass.
I am an entrepreneur/author. It’s been a years process of figuring out what I want to do. At one point, I was like, “I’m going to make t-shirts.” I had all these ridiculous things that I was not successful at because they didn’t scare me. I didn’t care about making t-shirts. None of my heart, passion or anything was involved in making t-shirts. It wasn’t scary because I didn’t care.
When you care about something in your heart, it makes you vulnerable and it makes it scary like, “I love this dark romance, M/M or whatever it is. If I try to do this and it doesn’t work, that’s going to be a huge disappointment. Therefore, let me try something else.” The magic happens when you do the thing that your heart wants you to do.
You are 100% onto it. I’ve been using that as my compass too. Looking at what are the places where I get most insecure and bound up is where I have the greatest capacity. All it needs is a dose of ego sauce. Instead of going like, “I think I suck there,” I pour the ego sauce on and be like, “This is where you’re most brilliant.” As soon as you did that, you’re contracting when you’re like, “I suck.”
It’s not I do suck but you’re so afraid you’re going to suck. You pour your ego sauce so it starts opening and then you can make it. It may not be perfect yet or you’re not doing it in the most brilliant way but it’s because you’re so clamped down. Once you pour the sauce on, things are softly open and have that space you were talking about, you do become your most brilliant self.
Follow your bliss. Follow the things that light you up.
The ego sauce, community support and finding other tools also help. I did the Write Better Faster Strength Course, which focuses on your strengths. She’s like, “Focus on your strengths but don’t avoid your weaknesses.” I’m trying to clarify for people that it doesn’t mean go get better at the things that you’re weak at. It’s not the same as when you’re scared of something versus it’s not your skillset. You can tell only in yourself. I don’t like producing this show, does that mean that I’m scared of it? No. It only means that it’s not something that I enjoy.
Maybe that’s the thing where you will offload that part.
What scares me is still around shows reaching out to people I admire. I’m talking Brené Brown kind of level admire. Would I even show up awesomely in that situation or would I be a goofball? I’d be both. Once they discovered their path, they were like, “I feel like this is maybe the thing that scares me but I’m excited about it.” Are you scared but also nervous and excited? That’s a good measure.
When my daughter was a little, she called it nervouscited.
Once somebody has that and they’re like, “I know where I’m nervcited,” what are your next steps when you’re writing? Is there a certain way to stay in this abundance space as much as possible while you’re doing the process?
Ego sauce is one of my tools where you got to love the hell out of your book. As soon as you get into a judgment of it, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Once you start looking for what’s wrong with your manuscript, you’re killing your potential and creativity. If you stay in this like, “I am a genius author. I’m going to write this,” it doesn’t mean you’ll make bad decisions. It gives that space for you to make it. If you keep pouring the love like, “This is what I love about this book and what I’m good at,” if you’re in that mindset, then you’ll be like, “This could go in here.” It’s a generative space. Staying out of judgment, pouring the ego sauce on and loving your book, that’s magic right there. That is all any author needs.
I know some authors, not me as much. One of my strengths is self-assurance. I don’t need ego sauce as much. Mostly because I don’t care that much if it goes wrong, generally speaking, but I do find that sometimes it’s hard. I do know myself with eating healthy. My willpower comes at the point of purchase. If there is a bag of Cheetos Puffs in my house already, there is no willpower happening. There is me eating the entire bag of Cheetos Puffs.
When I want to eat healthier during the week, I don’t buy Cheetos Puffs at the store. That’s knowing about myself when I’m doing work, things like this and creating the environment to optimize, being able to pour the ego sauce or love myself on my book, which means maybe not looking at reviews. If you can’t love your whole book at the moment because you’re in the middle, maybe just love the characters. Are there some practical ways of loving yourself while you’re in it and you have a bad moment? It takes months to write a book.
A lot of times, I’ll try to look at, “What was causing me to shut down or collapse? Why am I resistant to this? What am I telling myself?” A good question to ask is, “What is the lie?” Usually, if you’re thinking anything that makes you feel bad, it’s a lie. What is the lie you’ve bought into? I remember when I got the download that my dad was going to die and I was upset. I was like, “What is the lie?” Nobody ever leaves us because you can’t kill a soul. He may be gone from this plane but his being is still there somewhere. That was a real comfort to me.
Sometimes asking the lie, you get the real truth of the essence of things. When I was contemplating divorce, it was terrifying like I’m going to die. It was like your body goes into absolute. I was like, “What is the lie? You’re never alone.” I had some deep-seated alone fear. My dad is with me and beings all around us. There’s no such thing as alone. You may not be married but never alone. There is energetic support for me. I have a team.
Years ago, my mom stopped talking to me. She’s very narcissistic. I never mentioned it to anybody because I was still in a relationship with her. If I told anybody, she would have exploded at me. It would have been awful. There’s one thing that I want to acknowledge when you’re talking about the lie. I was into The Law of Attraction, The Secret by Abraham Hicks and all those stuff for many years.
I still wasn’t having this momentum, even though I’m doing all the things, working through a lot of stuff, doing therapy, exploring, buying courses and all these things. I had some success but it wasn’t until my mom stopped talking to me. There was a period of grieving for a while. I realized that there had been a lie that I’d had to tell myself. To maintain a relationship with my mom because of her narcissism, I had to be less than her.
After she stopped talking and after a lot of processing, I realized that I had to minimize myself in so many ways to allow her to feel good about herself. Did she manipulate me? Yes. Was it my fault entirely? No, but I don’t believe there’s any power in being a victim. What I did in this part was I kept myself small. I didn’t charge what I was worth, acknowledge my value in things or say, “I’m good at this. I’m going to share it with people.” It would have been a threat to her. Now I can say, “The lie I was telling myself is that I wasn’t awesome. I needed her.” It’s a hard one because I still love her. Even doing with the law of attraction, I’m like, “I’m trying to stay in love in the energy of love.” I do love my mom so it’s very hard.
You can be in total allowance of someone and see all their shit.
I can’t be now. Maybe someday in the future. It was a hard decision to maintain because she did call me again. I was like, “No.” I can’t because of that lie that I believed that I wasn’t good enough or that I had to stay small to be loved by her, God, whoever, the universe or whatever you want to call it. It’s taking a while to deconstruct and allow myself to step into the joyful thing. I listened to Abraham Hicks for years and I’m like, “Sometimes there’s something that you can’t see that you don’t even know you can’t see and you need help seeing it.”
One of the common money wounds is people not surpassing. Let’s say you don’t want to do better than your author bestie. We keep ourselves at a comfortable level. Maybe not to make more than your husband or more than your parents made. We have these setpoints that are related to keeping ourselves small around people. I also think that thing about the place you’re most nervous about. We may come into this world knowing that we kick ass at that thing. We don’t want to blow everyone else out of the water.
We give ourselves this handicap of thinking that we suck at. It’s like a way of tying one arm behind your back for whatever that is that you do like arm-wrestling or sack race. That’s how you recognize, “That’s where my greatness is because I’m most freaked out about that thing.” That means I must have hidden it from myself because I was afraid of being so great that I would blow everyone else out of the water.
Maybe it’s also a thing that people use to make fun of you the most. People call me weird for laughing aloud. It’s like a lot of people when they’re younger like if you were nerdy, people were making fun of you for that. As we become adults, which thank God for adulthood, you get to be like, “Being weird and laughing loud is freaking awesome.”
I was the kid who couldn’t sit still. I’m a dancer. My parents probably put me into the movement because they were like, “That kid needs to move.” It’s a good thing we’re not on film because I fidget the whole time.
Let’s say you’re falling in love with your book and you complete it. You want to put it out there with the best energy. How do you take these practical things that maybe are also scary because they’re new like publishing or maybe ads? How do you approach these things that are maybe not what you always dreamed of doing? Facebook ads can be a little overwhelming, especially when you’re new. Plus, there are a lot of things you need to know. How do you go into that practically but with a powerful mindset?
Ego sauce is one of the tools which helps you remind yourself to love your books.
I am a huge advocate for doing intuitive checks or gut checks on things. I will test my ad spend. I can muscle test it. Sometimes I’ll go to what number pops in my head. I’ll be looking at it and be like, “How much a day should I spend?” If I hear $10 a day, I’ll be like, “Let’s try that.” The next time I open it, I ask again. If I hear $12, they changed it. I try to use my gut for everything instead of my head.
Sometimes the answers will surprise you. You know it’s an intuition when it goes against what you thought was going to be the answer. That’s when I’m like, “Let’s see what happens.” Lee Savino had messaged me and said, “Let’s apply for a BookBub.” It’s how we hit the last USA Today list and I heard Friday. I said, “Wait and apply on Friday.” She forgot, which was fine. She did it Monday.
That was for book one. For book four, we got it Friday of the release week. I was like, “That is magic.” Had it been Friday, we might have gotten earlier in that week, which didn’t matter. We still hit the USA Today list on both books. Had we done it a week earlier, it would have been a perfect time. Those two books sold for each other because the sale and release week were the same.
How do you practice checking in with your gut maybe when you haven’t done that very much?
You folks are writers journaling. To me, that is magic. If you’ve ever done The Artist’s Way, the Morning Pages, you could have a Post-it with questions or if you can remember your questions, you could have questions that you want to free write about in the morning. For people who haven’t read it, the idea is in the morning, your subconscious is wide open because you just woke up. You can channel. If I’m stuck on a plot, I’ll go to the journal and be like, “What do I need?” I try to free-write until I come out with this or that. Sometimes it doesn’t come out but asking the question and then it will drop in when I’m driving or in the shower because I asked for the information to come through.
I’m a big journaler because I feel like in my experience, there are a couple of pros to it. Sometimes I have thoughts racing around in my head. They don’t stop moving unless I write them down somewhere. That’s one thing that I’m like, “I can let that go because it’s written down. It’s concrete somewhere.” Usually, the first bit of whatever I’m journaling about is whatever’s top of mind. If I have a question or something I want to work through, the writing somehow accesses the wiser higher part of myself. I can go back, look through journal entries and be like, “I wish I’d remembered that more concretely later in my life because look at how wise I was.”
I have that all the time. Sometimes, I’ll ask questions like, “What does the spirit want me to know?” If my body is bothering me, I’m like, “What does my body need me to know?” It’s when I need to eat something, take a bath or whatever it is. I have rheumatoid arthritis that causes my eyes to goof up. The question my coach had given me was, “What am I seeing that I don’t want to see?” That’s when I got that my dad was going to die. It was the last time I saw him but I didn’t want to see it.
Journaling is one good way to check in with your gut. People reading this are going to be like, “We need more detail.”
Other gut checks are some which you can hold one in each hand. It’s an either-or thing. Maybe you’re asking about your ads spent more or less.
You put your hands up like you’re carrying two oranges or something.
Yes, or you’re the liter scales.
You put one and you’re like, “$12 in the one hand and $10 in the other hand. Which one feels heavier.”
Which one tips the scale. This is confusing because usually, light means yes and heavy means no. In this case because of their scales, sometimes it gets bigger brighter for the yes. You’ll get drawn to one hand and that will be the one to pick.
Maybe you could put one in a fist and the other in a fist and be like, “Which of these should I pick?” I like to check-in. One of my ways is I like to envision myself because I’m very futuristic oriented like, “Let’s say I’m spending $12 a day.” This is not a great example but it could be any. Let’s say I go into dark romance, mafia or romcom and then I envisioned myself writing romcom or dark. Which one feels better, more enjoyable and lights me up more? Go with that one.
You can also ask, “What would my life look like in one year if I started writing romcom?” If you’re thinking about co-authoring a bigger commitment, ask, “What would my life look like in two years if I author with this person or if I don’t? Which one’s brighter?”
I use that in big decisions. I was teaching in New York for a little while, Teach for America. It was supposed to be a two-year program. I went into the special ed so I became a special education teacher. The university I was getting my Master’s at while I was teaching was a three-year program for that. Towards the end, I was very depressed. New York was not good for me then. Probably still not. Good for vacationing but not good for living for me. I was like, “In one year and if I’m still here in New York, I’ll have my Master’s in Special Education.” It is a big freaking deal. “After 2 years and I had 30 credits towards a Master’s, I’ll be very dangerously depressed.”
The other option was, “What will happen if I move?” It was a pure question mark. I had no idea or plans. Nothing was better than knowing. The question mark offered a lot more options than knowing for sure that I was going to be depressed even with a Master’s so I moved. I use that a lot because I’m like, “If the worst-case scenario on that one and I know what it’s going to be, I’ll do something else.” Pivot.
You could do a couple of time checks. I was thinking about a certain writing option and it was short-term lucrative but it died off. I was like, “Something is going to go wrong with that. Let’s not do that one.”
You hit your longtime goal of a seven-figure income. What do you think has been one of the things that you’re like, “This has been the biggest lesson or benefit on what I have done to achieve or receive this?”
It was about receiving because I was like you too. I was listening to Abraham Hicks many years ago before The Secret. I believed in manifestation but there was some part of me that wasn’t willing to receive. I didn’t think I was worthy. It would be like I would project into the future like, “Someday I’ll be a millionaire author.” Instead of being like, “No, I’m having that shit now.”
Have intuitive checks or gut checks on things.
I’m going, “I’m worth that. My books are good enough.” It was always like, “Someday I’ll be writing the book.” Maybe that was because of the first book that a friend was like, “Not this book.” There was some point where it’s like, “I am not writing books that are good enough yet.” Then it was like, “It’s okay. I can have it and keep writing better books.”
Self-worth issue was so big and that willingness to go, “I’m having it.” There was a resistance to being rich. I’m a hippie so I had that phrase, “Rich people are bad.” I had to get over all those demons like, “People will think I’m a rich bitch. I’ll leave my friends behind,” all of that stuff. There was a lot of clearing of money wounds.
I’m a banana slug. I went to UC Santa Cruz and they are still hippie central.
I birthed my babies at home on the bathroom floor and we use clock divers but now I can use my money to have a Tesla and I’ve got solar on my house.
You’re speaking to something with that feeling worthy. I can speak more to women and that’s why I like to speak more but once we realize that we’re worthy, everything opens up all of a sudden. Sometimes it’s a process to get there. You see so many women in their 40s blossoming. Paranormal women’s fiction came out because all these writers are like, “I want to have a story about someone my age being awesome in a magical adventure.” The 40s is a magical time for women because you finally have that like, “I am worthy,” or you’re getting more of something. I don’t even know if it has to do with age but I notice it a lot more.
There’s a generational. I’m hoping that by me working through this while I have a teenage daughter in the house, she’ll have it sooner. She’ll witness my transformation and choose it.
It’s part of the reason why I love working with moms too and I have. This one lady I worked with always wanted to be a writer so she started working as a writer. She was working hard and started making money. She didn’t have a writing space in her house so she only had a curtain in the corner or something. She’s like, “When mommy is behind the curtain, she’s writing.”
One time, her daughter was on the other side of the curtain on a little mini desk writing her story. Maybe your daughter will want to grow up to be an author or won’t but she knows that mommy is doing what she loves successfully. I cried when she told me that because I’m like, “That’s what I want for women.” That’s part of the evolution of our work that happens.
Both of my kids are so much more evolved.
You are teaching this to people and I love that you are. I have my course and I’m revising it because years ago when I created it, I didn’t have that freedom from my mom yet. Now, I have all this more. It’s different. I look at the course and I’m like, “It’s very good.” It’s the course that I follow to make my money as an author but it doesn’t have as much alignment as I want it to have. It does but I want to make that a primary part of it. You can’t do the course without being aligned.
You have a thing because it’s not an easy thing. A lot of people know how to write. Maybe at this point, they already know how to market but the thing that’s stopping them is this resistance or belief that they’re not worthy or they have some money blocks from their past. How do you work with authors to help them get to the other side?
My co-author, Lee Savino and I have an author abundance monthly membership. We do a once-a-month Zoom and then others. May is the month of me where you nurture yourself and see what blossoms because all kinds of incredible things can happen when you show yourself that you’re worthy. It’s so fun.
Could you tell us one thing that you’re going to talk about in May 2022?
It’s such a good story because Lee had her second child. She had two very little ones at home. She was trying to write to me. We were on a break because she was having a hard time doing it all. She was writing herself hard and then was like, “I need to take care of myself.” She took a month off. She may be booked a few massages, got a couple of spa treatments and signed up for yoga or whatever it was. During that month, she connected with another author and gave a trilogy she’d written. It was her first book and the author is Stasia Black.
Stasia took the books. Lee was part of this but Stasia did a lot like rewrote them. They released them and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had insane success with that trilogy, which came out of her doing nothing and taking care of herself. The magic happened and paid probably a year’s worth. It was lucrative and magical. She couldn’t have figured that out. It’s not something you figure out. It’s things that happen.
I’m going to end with this story and then ask you a couple of things. One of my favorite stories is by KT Tunstall. I love how she became a big story. She’s British, maybe Irish but was doing her thing. She was making her music, doing what she loved but not very successful. She wrote the Black Horse and the Cherry Tree song. The way she did her music was she uses one person. She had a guitar and a looper.
She would do a beat on her guitar, record it and press it to loop so then it would do the beat for the drum. She’d do humming and then press that so she’d have that in the background. She was doing it all by herself, putting the work in and doing what she loved. It was amazing. I never saw it but what I saw was a big show in Britain where they would bring artists on to compete. The audience and the people calling can say, “That one was my favorite.”
It was a way to find new artists in the area. Somebody had canceled at the last minute and her agent or somebody was like, “KT can come in.” She went on there and brought her looper. She did the whole thing by herself. Everybody was like, “Look at all this stuff that she’s doing by herself.” It took off. I love that so much because she had to do the work just like Lee had already written the books. The books were there.
She enjoyed and loved the work and put her love into the work. She created content and stuff so she was ready for the opportunity when it happened. Josh Groban has a very similar story where some opera singers couldn’t, they’re like, “Come on, Josh.” They’d already been doing it and when the opportunity came, they could take it.
This is the thing where mindset is important because there are many times the universe tries to offer that and because of the lack of self-worth, we go, “I don’t know if I could have that.” Abundance or opportunity comes knocking and we refuse it. That’s where pouring the ego sauce on.
All kinds of incredible things can happen when you just show yourself that you’re worthy.
We don’t even see it at all. We’re blinded to it and that’s what I’m realizing. It’s like, “Now that I believe I’m worthy, how much more am I going to be willing to converse like you or people that a few years ago were too big for me? Why would they choose to be on my show and not even going to ask them?” I didn’t do that so much. I still was pretty bold. I am thinking bigger like, “Who do I want to invite on? Let me go ask.” It’s ginormous. Thank you. What’s your best advice? Where’s the best place?
Always my number one advice for marketing and writing is to love your books.
There are so many ways to do that and ways that could show up, which you can find out more about at what website?
AuthorAbundance.com. There’s also Abundance Mindset for Authors Facebook group. I’d love to see you there.
That’s a good Facebook group. It’s got a lot of activity in there. That’s how I reached out to Renee because I was like, “I heard you on Spa girls.” Promo to SPA Girls. I was already in the Facebook group but I haven’t spent a ton of time on Facebook. I was like, “I love this topic though.” You can tell after having talked to me. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for chatting with me and sharing your time.
Thanks so much.
Thank you, everybody, for reading. Hugs and happy authoring.
Important Links
- Renee Rose
- Fifty Shades of Grey
- Wolf Shifter Series
- Lee Savino
- Jane Henry
- The Law of Attraction
- Morning Pages
- The Artist’s Way
- Stasia Black
- KT Tunstall
- Josh Groban
- AuthorAbundance.com
- Abundance Mindset for Authors
- SPA Girls
About Renee Rose
11-time USA Today bestselling romance author Renee Rose is passionate about helping other authors find and maintain an abundance mindset to catapult their careers and create their best future. She employs energetic tools and techniques to help her clients clear resistance and money blocks, access their inner guidance, and tap into their love and appreciation for their books so they can achieve their dreams.
