Creative Dividends

The Unexpected Gift That Saved My 2024

When I returned from my annual hike in April, I chose Consistency as my word for the rest of 2024. Consistency in posting regularly to Patreon. Consistency in delivering value to my students through salons and Substack posts. Consistency in managing my ADHD with tools, protocols, and—finally—a medical solution.

Then, life went totally off my outline in late July.

Plot Twist 1: I ended up watching the first week of the Olympics from a hospital bed after sharp back pain and sudden trouble catching my breath turned out to be a bilateral pulmonary embolism—the same thing that killed my mother out of the blue when I was 19.

Unlike my mother’s case, which wasn’t discovered until after she passed, advancements in medical technology turned this terrifying diagnosis into something manageable. With blood thinners and regular monitoring, I was sent home, grateful.

Grateful to be alive. Grateful my kids wouldn’t have to face the same loss I did as a teenager.

Like most writerholics, I reoutlined my August and was ready to leap right back into work. But as anyone who’s experienced a major health scare knows...

Plot Twist 2: Emotional fallout has a way of inserting itself into even the best-rewritten outlines.

Rolling bouts of depression, anxiety, intrusive existential thoughts, and bandwidth breakdowns made it impossible to execute my rewritten outline. After that hospital visit, the only thing I managed was posting chapters to my Patreon and a couple of interviews. Forget Substack, salons, or newsletters—I was just holding on.

By November, I thought I was back. I released a book, got purple hair twists, and even sent out a newsletter declaring, “I’m BACK! Let’s goooo!”

Then, the election hit. And I was down again.

But…

Plot Twist 3: During all of this, I was carried through the messy back end of 2024 by Creative Dividends.

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What Are Creative Dividends?

For me, Creative Dividends are what you earn every month without doing jack shit.

This is the money you get even if you haven’t released a new book in months, haven’t run ads, or haven’t lifted a finger to “advance” your author business.

In short, Creative Dividends are the income and stability you earn later by investing in your author business today.

For me, Creative Dividends came from:

• Readers discovering and buying my ebook backlist based on—well, nothing I did, other than making sure those books had a terrific Butter Blurb and Butter Beginning months (or even years) ago.

• Payouts from my Audiobook Program (what I call the audiobooks I’ve funded myself).

• New students somehow finding and purchasing my courses.

Basically, these income streams kept paying me even when my ability to effort outside of writing ground to a halt.

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In 2022, after happily paying for an early version of Vanessa Vale’s Box Method course¹, I shifted my focus from aggressive advertising to prioritizing projects with long-term payoffs: audiobooks, translations, courses, and a robust, diversified portfolio (backlist). Back then, prioritizing future gains over actions that yielded immediate results felt risky and counterintuitive—like planting seeds for a harvest with a super-vague date.

But this year, when I couldn’t effort at my usual pace, those investments sustained me.

• In August and September, when I did almost nothing for my business, Creative Dividends still paid the bills in October and November.

• They gave me the grace to step back during emotional lows without risking my livelihood.

• Most importantly, my “do-nothing” income tripled compared to my last extended break right before COVID hit the States.

Talking with my dear author friend and Project Management Consultant, Nana Malone, helped me see the true power of this approach.

“That’s the number I want to grow,” I told her during one of our calls about staging a bounce-back 2025 after such a challenging 2024.

Yes, I want to attract more readers and students, but above all, I want my books to sell themselves—even when I can’t be online or don’t have the bandwidth to launch the way I want to because LIFE.

Creative Dividends gave me freedom, stability, and grace when I needed it most. And I hope I can help you achieve Creative Dividends that do the same for you.

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Start Growing Your Creative Dividends Today

To help you build a foundation for 2025, I’m offering:

• Bestseller Magic (Universal Fantasy™ Course): On sale at a steep discount through January! Learn how to create characters and situations that addict readers and make them clamor for more of your work.

• Butter Blurb Master Class: Transform your book descriptions into irresistible magnets that make readers one-click—no further effort needed.

• Butter Beginnings Master Class²: (Coming Feb 2025!): On PRE-SALE now for just $47! Earn readers all year by starting off your stories in ways that hook them from the very first page.

Invest in yourself now so your future self can thrive—even when life throws you curveballs.

Let’s make 2025 the year of Creative Dividends.

Have Creative Dividends ever gotten you through a tough time? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

1. I credit Vanessa Vale’s Box Method for increasing my profits, and I raved about it so much behind her back that she eventually confronted me—in order to feature my story in her official Box Method Course, which I honestly cannot recommend highly enough.

2. Premium subscribers, check your inbox for the discount code for the upcoming Butter Beginnings Master Class.