Pen to Prosperity: Money Mindset, Manifestation, and Management with Carissa Andrews — Self-Publishing Conference Highlight

Nurture a positive money mindset, master the art of manifestation, and take away lots of money management tips for authors. Carissa Andrews will explore how shifts in your money beliefs can expand your commercial success as an author and you'll learn practical money manifestation and management techniques. Unleash the abundant author that lies within!

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Carissa Andrews: Hi there, everybody. Welcome to Pen to Prosperity. This is going to be a blast of a class. We are getting to talk about two things that are my most favourite things in the whole wide world. We're going to talk about writing, or author career, and bringing prosperity to it. Manifesting something that brings us joy and lots of money.

So, for those of you who don't know who I am, hello guys, my name is Carissa Andrews. I am an award-winning and internationally best-selling indie author. I've got more than 20 books out there so far. I'm also the CEO and founder of Author Revolution and Millionaire Author Coach, as well as the host of the Author Revolution podcast. If you have not yet checked it out, I highly encourage you do. There's over 200 podcast episodes available now.

I've taught thousands of authors, just like you, how to sustainably rapid release and manifest an author career of your dreams. So, when we talk about this, trust me, it comes from a place of understanding this industry pretty dang well.

So as far as I can see it, in my mind, the path to indie author success starts actually a little bit earlier than you might think, because it starts way in the beginning when you decide that you're worthy of your goal. So, worthy of writing the book, worthy of getting the words on the page, worthy of publishing the book and not fearing what might happen because of it. So, that means you have to start working on your mindset, right?

A lot of us don't come fully equipped, already trusting, already knowing that we are worthy, and so we start working on that mindset, knowing that hopefully we're going to get there.

In the meantime, we're mapping out our success path. We're deciding what we're going to do, how we're going to do it. We're going to figure out how we're going to publish, what our editorial calendar looks like, all of the things.

In the meantime, we're also locking in the vibe. Trusting that as we write our books, as we publish our books, as we work on our author careers, things are going to get better and better, and we take inspired action as it comes in order to finally achieve that thing that we really want, which is probably an abundant author career because that's what we're all hoping for. I know it is.

So, inspired action is really key. You can't just sit on it guys, just saying, and here's why.

Did you know that 99 percent of authors do not make a living off of a single book? And while that might seem obvious when you see the single book part of it, there are so many of us, myself included, that when we write our first novel, it's like our baby. It's the thing that we think the entire world needs to read because it's so magnificent. It's going to be the next Harry Potter or the next Twilight, or whatever your favourite author in your genre is; it's going to blow everybody away. But the truth of the matter is, most six figure authors have written 28 books on average, 28 books.

Now this is coming from a survey from Written Word Media in 2020. They have done multiple studies since then and it's pretty darn cool when you think about it.

But here's something else that's a little bit, I don't know if frightening is the right word, but it's a little bit out there, authors earning a living wage of just $60,000 a year have 22 books on average in their backlist. Now there's not a whole lot of difference between 22 and 28 books in the grand scheme of things. That's an awful lot of books. An awful lot of books you need in your backlist just to be able to earn a fairly decent wage from it.

Now, this leaves you with two choices if you're a new author, because that's a lot of books. Do you really want to write that many to get to the point of earning some income? Do you give up then and just go, yep, this isn't for me. Nope, I'm going to have to do something else. Or do you just build the dream? Do you trust that you're going to make this thing happen come hell or high water and keep moving forward? Those are the questions. Those are the options.

Now, in order to get what you want, you have to believe to achieve. You can't have what you don't believe. That's how the paradigm of this universe works. You only achieve when you know and trust and move towards that direction. So, that means publishing more books. It means building that backlist and trusting that it will eventually lead you to that success. Or it also means working your plan until you get there, because sometimes you might find something new that pulls you in a different direction, but it's still in the same vein.

Maybe you write in a new genre and all of a sudden you realize that's where you should have been all along. There are all sorts of ways to make success work for you, but at the end of the day, ultimately your mindset is going to be what's going to make or break your success, because we've all seen this quote: whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. Think about that for a second. Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. Because when you think you can, you're going to find a way, and if you think you can't, you're going to find a way out of it.

So, let's get a little bit woo for a second, because if you know me, I love to talk manifestation and get a little bit woo. Okay. So, the way that you think deeply impacts what you experience in your reality, what you experience in your author career, how you go about your day, everything. So, for example, when you think about lack, you get more lack, right? Seems pretty obvious, and the reason for it is because you're adding that momentum of thought to having less. You're putting so much power into that thought process, that's what the universe brings to you.

Now on the flip side, when you think about abundance, you'll get more abundance, and when you believe that your author career is going to succeed, you're going to see evidence of it succeeding. Now all of this is to say, this is the law of attraction in action.

Now, for those of you who don't know what a law of attraction is, in essence, it means like energies are attracted to like energies. We are all in this vibrational world at a molecular level, we are all vibrating. So, our thoughts and the way that we put our momentum out into the world, they all have an impact on what we're receiving back to us, because law of attraction with our thoughts, with our actions, it's like a magnet. We bring to us what we perceive of ourselves. We get what we believe, and we're using this to manifest what we want all the time, whether we realize it or not, and that's pretty powerful, whether we realize it or not, sometimes we are doing it unconsciously.

Now the goal is actually to do it intentionally. We want to create the life that we want. We want to create the author career that we want. We want to bring in the type of money, the type of love, the family life that we want. We want to intentionally create these things, but the way that our mind works, it can actually cause discordance between what we want and what we think we get to have.

So, that means limiting beliefs are standing in the way of what we want, and there's power of momentum in the way that our thoughts have already been curated.

I've been in this industry for over, I don't even know now, 13 years, something like that, and the state of indie authorship went from this very, wow, we can do anything, we're going to put our books out there and we're going to earn millions to being deeply entrenched in the poverty mindset, and then overwhelm and burnout, because we're all trying to figure out how to get this thing to work for us and we're trying to do everything that everyone else is doing and when it doesn't work for us, we're getting discouraged and we're having problems and we're just frustrated.

Here's the thing, limiting beliefs equals stagnant vibes. They do not help you to achieve what you want in your reality, what you want in your author career, what you want in life. Those frustration vibes are actually putting you way down the emotional scale, and it does not help you get to the place of joy and passion and positive enthusiasm for receiving the life that you want or the things that you want, which is ultimately the type of thought process you really want to get to.

So, limiting beliefs look like fear of success. Maybe you're afraid that if you get successful, people are going to see you, or you're going to have family members coming after you for money or for whatever. Or maybe it's fear of failure, because if you don't try, you can't fail. Maybe you're afraid of looking stupid or not being able to do the thing that you say you're going to do, so you just don't. Or fear of rejection, because sometimes we just don't want that kind of thing in our life. We want to feel like we're in control and we want to feel the way that we want to feel, and so we think if we hide ourselves away, it's going to keep us safe.

But unfortunately, there's other things that get in the way too. Insidious assumptions can play a role. Beliefs that you are holding onto of, I'll never have enough. Nothing I do works for me.

That's one that I actually had for quite a long time. It was very difficult to get over, but once I did, guess what happened? Things started working in my favour.

Or thoughts that authors can't earn big money.

Ads don't work; I've heard that one over and over again. Ads don't work.

I'm not fast enough. I don't write fast enough. That's not necessarily true either, and I'll tell you why in a little bit.

Or, at the end of the day, I'm not worthy. Remember, if you start at that place where you get clear that you are worthy, everything else gets a lot easier.

There's also this limiting belief inside imposter syndrome. High achievers actually are very prone to imposter syndrome, and I find that fascinating because we're looking at so many different things, and creatives are known for being high achievers and for being, really high achieving thinkers.

So, there's five archetypes. The first is the perfectionist. Maybe you've heard of it, but the perfectionist keeps us stuck because we're constantly trying to do the thing in the most perfect way, and sometimes it keeps us from moving forward and actually doing the thing we need to do, like placing that pre-order up or even writing, because we think we need to be perfect at our prose, whatever. Perfectionism doesn't exist, and so it can keep you stuck. It limits you from moving forward.

There's also superman/superwoman where you feel like you have to do all the things and you can't bring on a team of people, you can't ask for help. It all has to be you.

Or the rugged individualist who feels like this thing is theirs, they don't even want people to touch it, don't even look at their thing. And if you do it's because I'm demanding that you do it.

There's the natural genius who gets frustrated when things do not work out and then knuckles down and digs her heels in, trying to figure out why it doesn't work. When in actuality, they'd be much more successful if they just focused on the things they're naturally good at.

Then there's the expert, who is the king or queen of procrasti-learning, who will continue to learn and learn, never actually applying the things that they've been incorporating and learning in the process.

Now if you'd like to learn more about the imposter archetypes, you can definitely check it out through the book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Men and Women, and this is written by Valerie Young. It's a fantastic book. I highly suggest it.

With all this in mind, what does an abundant author think about? How do they view the world differently from someone who is coming from a place of lack?

The first thing is they envision their next books into being. They just do; it becomes their goal. They know that and trust that the process will unfold no matter what; it always works for them. They find new ways to market. If one thing doesn't work, they play with something else, and then they know everything is figureoutable at the end of the day. If they can't figure it out, someone else can, and someone else will either do it or help them do it, and they trust that at the end of the day of everything, they're enough. What they're doing is enough. What they've written is enough and how they're moving forward is enough, but they also have a plan. They are someone who goes forward and just trusts.

So, do you believe an abundant author is someone who publishes a book every month? Publishes a book four times or more per year? Publishes just once a year? What do you think it would be?

Now the truth is a successful author can be all of those things, they can publish in any way that they want, and they do it successfully because they are true to themselves, true to their goals, to the things that they wanted in their author career, and it's very individualized.

No, you don't have to be an A type personality either. You don't have to be publishing that book constantly or have ducks in a row and cats corralled or whatever. In fact, most of the time, at least in my experience, successful authors are actually one big, gigantic hot mess. Most of the time.

So, am I saying then that even lazy authors can be successful? Yeah, I am, and here's why. They have perseverance and trust in themselves on their side. Successful authors don't get distracted by perfectionism. They don't get distracted by imposter syndrome. They put blinders onto the haters because who in the world has time for that? They keep pushing forward with their plan, knowing and trusting that it's going to lead them to their success. They know it. They feel it.

So, let's talk about this Abundant Author plan for a second. Abundant Authors treat their author career like the business that it is, because they know that they need to invest in their career. They know they need an editorial calendar. They have to set goals so that they know where they're going and whether or not they're actually succeeding, and they need to take action.

But first, they need clarity. How do we do that? We ask ourselves, what is it we really want? Sometimes that can be insidious because when we're thinking about what we really want, we're focusing on the absence of it, because every desire is really two, what you want, and the absence of it. So, you need to be very cautious when you're thinking about how you want things to go, that you're not focusing on the lack of it, that the absence of it is drawing you in and that becomes the big thing that you are ruminating about. Because remember, your beliefs are powerful. They're the difference between achieving your dreams, or repeating the patterns of resistance.

So, beliefs, in the way that they operate, because they're so powerful, let's talk about those really quickly. They're just subconscious programming that controls how you perceive the world, how you look at things, how the world gets to work for you. But more importantly than that, they're just thoughts you continue to think.

Now, think about that for a second. Beliefs are just thoughts you continue to think. That's powerful stuff, and if you take that on board, if you take anything on board that I'm talking about today, let it be that one. Because your beliefs, it might be powerful for you, it might be working for you, it might be working against you, but someone else, I guarantee you, in this space, who is watching this video, has the exact opposite belief, and it's working for them, and it's maybe not working for them, and it's colouring the way that their entire perception of reality works.

So, your beliefs, while they are part of the picture that you see the world through, the lens that you see the world through, they are not set in stone. They are not the same for everyone.

If you really want something, with this in mind, then, your only job, the only thing that you have to do, is disprove any thought that crops up in your head that tells you cannot have it, because they're lies. They are lying to you, telling you can't have it, because you can be, do, or have anything that you want.

So, let's talk about manifestation, and we're going to talk about that comment I just made, too, okay? So, consider this, if the assumption was that you could be, do, or have anything that you wanted, how would that change the way you operate today?

Think about that. If it was no longer Oh, I can't seem to make this work. Or, oh, I haven't been able to earn enough money. Or, oh, my books haven't sold enough.

If you could trust that no matter what you wanted this book to do, no matter how much money you wanted to earn, no matter what it was you wanted your life to look like, no matter how much you wanted to work and then how much you wanted to travel, let's say anything, the answer is always yes.

How would that change the way you operate today? Because that is how it works. If you believe you can't have it, you can't have it, because the universe is not going to override your belief structure. Because that's the power of the Law of Attraction and the energy that you are putting out into the world constantly.

Now, manifesting what we want means we have to embody the vibe of it. Remember the law of attraction. If your vibe does not match, you don't receive, and even if you're focusing on or thinking that you're focusing on more money. You're thinking, oh, I need more money. I want more money, and it's coming from a place of, I don't have enough money. The universe will go, Oh, okay, not enough money. That's not where you're trying to go.

In essence, what's happening is you're saying to the universe, I want it, but. I want it, but I don't think I can have it. I want it, but it's never going to work for me. I want it, but it's not here yet.

That's like having two trains in opposing directions trying to pull you to your destination, and because the engines are of equal value, you are going literally nowhere. Nothing changes.

So, let's talk about the three pillars of manifestation, because manifestation gets a weird rap. Sometimes people are like, oh, it's so woo, but really, it's not. In my mind, it's even a very scientific based thing.

So, step one is you decide what it is you really want. That's it. You just make a decision. What is it you want? Doesn't matter if it's your author career, for dinner, for the day's work, none of it. It's all about what decision have you made.

Step two is that you lock in the vibe, trusting that whatever you decided gets to be yours. That's it. You lock the vibe, you move forward confidently, knowing that it's coming, knowing that it's yours, and it's there. You don't waver in it. There is no discordant energy in it.

Then you take inspired action, doing what you're called to do because of that decision, and typically it feels like the next logical step. It feels so obvious that's how it must go. You don't have to worry about the how. You don't have to worry about how this thing is going to unfold or how the money's going to come, it doesn't matter. None of that matters. What matters is that you're doing what you're being called and led to do.

So, let's talk about spaghetti for a minute. Those of you who followed me for a while know about this analogy. It's a fun one to talk about because it helps People to understand manifestation better.

So, let's say for dinner tonight you want spaghetti. You want spaghetti, it sounds so good. It's in the back of your mind. You're like, heck yes. This is the thing I want.

You go to get all the ingredients and you realize you have everything except for spaghetti noodles. Everything else is there.

Now you have a couple of choices. You've added resistance into the mix of having this dinner. So, you either get to go to the store to pick up some spaghetti noodles, you go to a restaurant maybe and have them cook the spaghetti, or you decide to do something completely different. Those are your options, really.

When you look at your author career, and you are making the decision to have an abundant author career, and it's going to be fantastic, and it's going to be wonderful, but you're in the mid manifestation of it, and ads are not working the way you want , or books aren't selling the way you want, or you haven't found your vibe or your voice yet, or maybe you haven't gotten out there far enough, when those things are happening, that's like your lack of spaghetti.

You've got choices. You can continue to add new ingredients to the mix. Do you get better at writing prose? Do you understand series structure better? Do you write in a different genre? Do you give up entirely? It's all the same, and you're working toward it until you have the thing on your plate, or you have something different.

So, like I said, manifesting money then is no different either. You decide on a monetary goal. You trust that it's yours unwaveringly, because as soon as you add that little bit of wobble into your thoughts, guess what's going to happen, you're going to get yourself stuck.

Then step three is you take inspired action until it's yours.

So, let's talk about that mid manifestational doubt situation because they happen, and they happen frequently. When you have thoughts that are telling you that this is too hard, that you're not able to do it, that this isn't going to work for you, step one is to notice and acknowledge that those are just limiting beliefs.

Your ego is trying to keep you safe; your mind is trying to keep you in a box, you have reached an upper limit that's telling you, better step back down into what you know is comfortable for you. Acknowledge it, and then choose a new, more aligned belief to the thing that you actually want.

What is it you want? Remind yourself what you want and align your belief that this is always working out for me. Up and up only. This thing gets to work for me. I get to have this thing.

Step three is to continue to shift that old limiting belief by thinking, repeating, and believing the new one over and over, until that becomes the hardwired neural pathway in your brain, and it no longer has any association with those limiting beliefs that told you can't have what you want.

So, here are some questions in your author career or when you're trying to manifest money that will help you to decide on what it is that you want.

Number one, what is it you really want? Why do you want it? If you can lock in an emotional core reason why, not just because, oh money will be helpful, but like I want to be able to travel and I want to experience the world, I want adventure, I want to feel the joy and freedom of doing what I want when I want to. Get to the core reason why, that's very important.

Are there any beliefs that are telling you, you can't have it? When they crop up, make note of it and remind yourself they don't have to be true.

So, bonus points if you ask yourself, but are they really true? Because more than likely they are not.

Another one is, if you could tell a different story about how your author career works for you, what would it be? What would that look like. If it got to be any way that you wanted, how would it work for you? Then start asking yourself, can I make this happen?

Then when you're trying to lock in the vibe and trust that it's yours, here's some questions to help you align.

First of all, this is not really a question, but if success was your only option. Maybe it's a question. It's fine. If success was your only option, what would you do? Would you take more risks? Would you add more money to your ads? Would you get that cover? Would you try that promo? What would you do differently than what you do now if success was your only option?

If your abundant author destiny was already here, if it was here today, everything was working, what would you be thinking, feeling, or believing about money or your author career?

Would you be feeling grateful? Would you be feeling in awe? Would you be excited to know that this is working? Would you feel empowered? Would you be feeling so much freedom to be able to be what you want to be? Find those emotional points and those are the things you want to start working towards. Find thoughts that bring you to that place.

Now if you were writing the story of your life and anything you wrote down came true, what would you write? Would you write that your words are golden? That every story that flows connects with your readers in a way that is visceral and helps them to be entertained or enlightened or inspired?

What is it that you want this author career to do? And how does it get to work?

Then finally, in the inspired action part, I want you to use these questions to spur on the inspired action. What aspect of my author career do I love to do?

The more you focus on what you love, the more you focus on the joy that your author career brings to you, the closer you get to the vibrational energies of bringing all that goodness into your life and into your career. The more you can have those thoughts that are reaching towards passion and enthusiasm and optimism, and just the joy of doing those things, the more you're going to see that in your life.

What aspects then do you want to pass off? What do you not really like to do? And no, you can't just say completely blanketed marketing. No, I'm kidding. Yes, you can. You can pass off marketing. You could pass off social media. You could choose that social media doesn't have to work for you at all. That there doesn't have to even be a social media thing.

You could decide to just use Patreon, like I've done. There are all sorts of ways that you can create the life that you want by thinking about what do you love and what do you want to get rid of.

What actions have I been putting off that I know will help me manifest my abundant author destiny? Do you have a story idea that you know is going to be amazing, but you just haven't picked it up yet? Are you thinking about switching to a different genre, but you think, I hate the genre? That's me, for example. I kid you not. I'm writing in rom com now, but there was a time in my life that I swore I would never write romance. But I had a story idea that just would not go away, and now here I am.

What actions have you been putting off, and can you do them now? Can you bump them up into the priority level?

Am I putting my time and energy into my author career the way I feel called to? We forget this part of it, right? Sometimes we feel like we have to, we have so many hats as indie authors, so many things that we think we need to do all the time, that we forget that it's okay for us to put energy into the way we feel led, the way we feel called, because that my friend is your inspired action.

It's helping you to sift through the noise of all the things that have to be done, and you get to make the quickest beeline path toward your success when you focus your energy the way you feel called and the way you feel led to work.

Finally, am I slowing down enough to see, hear, feel that inspired action when it shows up?

We, again, don't need to be constantly going. Creative people need a little bit of time to hear the muse calling, to hear that inspired action, to ruminate a little bit about how the world is working so that we can write those angsty stories. We need to have that aspect in our lives.

Now, here are a few tips that I want you to think about to maintain your abundant author vibe. As you elevate, as you get yourself into those places of joy and knowledge and empowerment, here are some ways to remind yourself or to help yourself stay there.

Number one, make time for yourself. This is going to prevent you from going into that burnout and overwhelmed part that we were talking about. We don't need that. The industry has pushed us to that point for a very long time. We don't need it anymore. It's done. It's over. So, pay attention to how you feel. If you're feeling like you're on the verge of burnout or you're on the verge of overwhelm, it's time to switch because this, noticing how you feel, is where your point of attraction is. If you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed and disappointed that things aren't working out, you are on the opposite end of the spectrum of the energetic levels you're trying to reach for.

Remember, you want to go for that joy and passion and excitement. Happiness is your goal. So, if you're feeling bad in any way, shape or form, you are submitting energy to the universe that goes in direct contradiction to what you're trying to create.

Then finally, recalibrate when needed. You're still human, so focus on what makes you feel better. Days are going to happen where stuff goes sideways and you're just not going to feel it. Or maybe you're not feeling well, you've got a cold and you're not feeling good. It's up to you to focus on the thoughts that make you feel better, focus on the vibe that shifts you into a better feeling place.

That's how you start working and building the momentum you need in order to have a successful author career, to learn the things that you need to learn that are going to bring you to that success. It's all about staying locked in that place of trusting the universe to guide you where you need to go and knowing that it gets to be good, it gets to be yours. That is the ultimate truth.

So, abundant authors trust the process and then they keep right on going. They keep going until it's theirs. They keep going even when it is theirs because they love what they're doing, and they can't imagine anything being different.

All right. If you'd like to learn more about manifestation, about law of attraction for authors, or if you would just like to learn more about what I do, head over to AuthorRevolution.org. You can also check out Millionaire Author Coach. That's where a lot of the abundant author courses are being housed. Then of course, check out the Author Revolution podcast because I would love to have you as a listener.

Guys, thank you so much for being here. This is such an important talk and one that helps us to elevate the indie author industry in so many ways. We're here to shift the poverty mentality into one of abundance so that we understand that our thoughts are powerful, and as we believe we can have it, as we understand how law of attraction works and our energy and vibe works, the more we focus on what we get to have, the less we're focusing on what we don't already have, and the better things get because we obviously are meant for more. We're meant to be and do and have everything that we want.

So, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you so much. Have a wonderful rest of SelfPubCon.