How burned out marketers can profit from doing months of fun & totally unprofitable stuff

True story: Starting in 2018 I spent two years prepping to make 2020 a “coasting” year. By that I mean, busting my gluteus assimus creating, retooling, and launching multiple offers. Anyone who’s been on my list since then will have observed me creating and launching so many books and other offers (including affiliate offers) that I literally can’t even remember them all at hand, and have them organized in a text document. It began in 2018, and then I tripled down on that in 2019. And at the tail end of 2019 I sat back, laced my fingers behind my head, propped up my feet… and sighed a breath of relief. I could finally ease up. And, specifically, I wanted to write a bunch of fiction the next year (2020) and coast. Yes, I intended 2020 to be a long, pleasurable year. But just a few weeks after launching Breakneck Content Stefania got pregnant. Then, not long after that, Covid reared its fugly head, with all the uncertainties, inconveniences, and ground-laying for the inflation and supply chain clogs we are all enjoying now. So much for writing fiction that year… And so much for doing any kind of “coasting.” Instead I ended up busting my rump & doing more work than I had the two prior years combined. And so after that, I hoped to make 2021 my coasting year. But that didn’t work out either due to launching multiple software platforms amongst a bunch of other nagging time and money commitments. That left 2022, which very much was a “coasting” year. I didn’t bother selling my books to my main list last year. And all but slacked off compared the past 4 years prior. And that included finally writing some fiction. I’d been mostly putting it off for over two years, except for a brief stint writing my 8th novel in 2019 (which only took two weeks). And I was jonesing to do it again. So I carefully structured 2022’s scheduling and knocked out the first draft of my 9th novel in July and August, took September off from it, then started editing in October and all the way through just this last week (finished editing it February 24th). I spent a lot of time on that last Enoch Wars saga book. It is three times longer than each of my other books in the series. And it took me many long hours each day to edit it for several months. That was time I could have been working on writing the launch emails of my upcoming book about the lost art of world-building in business. Or writing the 4th “Villains” book. Or any number of other high-payout activities — including some affiliate promos I’ve been wanting to write and launch to my list that should pay out quite nicely. But instead, I focused all those months on my novel and nothing else. (Other than writing Email Players and some assorted emails) Five full months on a novel that has a 99% chance of…losing money. At least, in the short run. I do have a business plan for promoting my fictional universe. But that may be a while. So when I say “lose money” I do not just mean that in terms of time, but also practically. These are not high-selling books as I simply don’t have time to implement its business plan. That is why I do not run ads for them or promote them very aggressively — if at all. These books basically make enough to cover the cost of having the covers done and hiring Email Players subscriber Galel Fajardo to record each of the audio books. This last book will very likely also include interior illustrations I am wanting to have done, which will cost another several thousand dollars if I can secure the artist I am keen on hiring for it. All of which is what makes it both ironic and a paradox: It will make me zero sales in the short term. And it may or may not directly make me sales in the long term. But, despite that, my business is on track to profit more over the next few months than I could possibly have hoped to if I did NOT spend those five months working on the book. There is both a psychological and practical reason for this. And I talk about both in depth in the March Email Players issue. It’s the weirdest thing for me to think about. But no matter how I crunch the numbers, there is almost no way my business will not profit far more as a direct result of doing nothing for five months (for the most part) other than working on a novel that will barely make its money back when it launches, if it ever does at all. This is knowledge I wished I’d figured out years ago. But like a lot of knowledge, I had to learn it the hard way. However, if this interests you, you need not learn it the hard way. I explain all on pages 10-13 in the March Email Players issue. If you are the type to burn out, feel like you are always putting off the fun stuff until later but “later” never happens, then prepare to be happy, Hoss. Because if you experience what I did doing what I describe inside with whatever it is you want to do, I suspect you, too, will profit far more from doing it than if you didn’t to it. All right, enough cryptic teasing. Deadline to subscribe is today. Use this link to subscribe while there is still a little time left: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA