So I decided to make the most of that setback by pursuing something radically different that I had always wanted to do: write a novel.

Two years later, my debut novel, Bit Flip, is finally being published. It has been a long journey that felt daunting at first. But what I discovered along the way is that my time as a tech entrepreneur actually prepared me quite well for being a novelist. 

Although it felt like a 180-degree pivot at the time, I’ve come to recognize the striking similarities of the two occupations. Both are, essentially, typing words (or code) into a computer to create a product. Both are forms of entertainment. And both have discouragingly low probabilities of success.

Beyond those vocational similarities, I realized there were many lessons I learned as an entrepreneur that, somewhat unexpectedly, prepared me to be an author. I offer these learnings here because I believe they represent a unique perspective and perhaps different advice than most authors receive. 

Authors are taught to focus on their craft, that great writing will get discovered. Most don’t think of embarking on a career as an author like starting a business, but, in many ways, that’s exactly what it is. In short, they approach their writing careers like MFAs, not MBAs.

With that preamble, here are the 5 things I learned and practiced as an entrepreneur that directly translated to becoming an author. Hopefully, this will provide aspiring authors with an alternative mental framework for pursuing a career in writing—and maybe even encourage some entrepreneurs that becoming an author isn’t so farfetched.

1. Creating Something from Nothing

The core similarity between starting a company and writing a book is that, at the outset, they are only an idea in your head. Transforming that idea into something real requires tremendous vision, creativity, and tenacity. When founding a company, you have to have a thesis not only for what your product will be, but why customers will want to buy it and how it will be differentiated in the market. 

Writing a book requires the same level of passion, determination, and unwavering belief that you can bring your idea for a story to life in a unique and compelling way. Some writers plan out their story like a product manager writing a product requirements document, some writers just start writing like a coder who can visualize an entire software program in his head. 

Personally, my approach falls between these “Planner” and “Pantser” approaches—creating an outline that I frequently stray from along the way—but this part of the creative process is my favorite. Coming up with ideas for new products was what I loved about being an entrepreneur. And it’s probably my favorite part of being an author as well. 

Finding inspiration, refining your concept, and delivering that first, raw instantiation of your idea is like a drug, whether it’s starting a company or writing a novel. 

2. Obsessing Over Product

One of the most important practices I learned building software products is the ability to continuously refine your offering. 

It starts with a really rough version of your product (a “minimum viable product” in start-up lingo), which you expose to friends and family—your “alpha” users. Then you capture and incorporate their feedback into a next version of your product. 

As you broaden to a larger set of “beta” users, you analyze their usage, conduct user surveys, organize focus groups, run A/B tests, and capture feedback any way possible, which again gets incorporated into a next version, and a next, always improving. 

The same technique applies to writing a book. Many authors think of writing as a solitary exercise—words in your head captured on the page. But once your story is written, and ideally along the way, you need feedback from customers. 

Solicit as many early readers as you can. Be explicit about the type of feedback you want from them. Join writing classes and workshop your story with your peers. Hire professional editors to critique your work. 

Don’t be bashful. Candid criticism is invaluable. Listen to and incorporate their feedback. Obsess over getting it right. Let the market steer you toward a successful book, just as market research can steer an entrepreneur to a successful product. 

3. Investing in Yourself

Another critical lesson I took from entrepreneurship and applied to becoming an author is the willingness to invest in yourself. 

You need to have faith that the near-term income you are forgoing will be worth it, despite the long odds of success. When starting a company, you usually need to bootstrap it at the beginning, investing your own time and money to get the venture off the ground before raising capital from outside investors. 

Becoming an author requires a similar investment of time and money into the success of your books. Just as if you were starting a business, you need to know what you are willing and able to invest. How much income do you need? How much progress can you make writing on nights and weekends? Can you afford to write full-time? What other sources of income can you develop? Do you have a spouse or partner who can support you while you write? 

Be scrappy and efficient. Give yourself a budget and timeframe. Approach it in a financially sustainable way. Getting into financial distress will only set you back. Just like the entrepreneur who has built a meaningful equity stake for herself in her own business, the rewards—not only financial but emotional—for an author can be substantial. 

4. Building a Brand

As an entrepreneur, I spent as much time strategizing over sales and marketing as I did product. In business parlance, I focused on building a brand—from the corporate logo, to messaging and positioning, to user experience, to the “brand promise” communicated to customers. 

As I pivoted to writing, I learned that, just like building a brand for a company, you need to build an author brand. This discipline is one where I see many authors struggle. They view the “promotional” aspects of writing as a distraction or the job of their publisher. They underinvest in building a website, developing a social media presence, producing engaging content, publicizing their work, and the myriad other efforts required to build a brand. 

Even those who do invest in these tactics often lack a larger strategy. They aren’t thoughtful about what they want their author brand to represent. 

The best-selling authors all have clear brands. Their readers know what to expect, from the subject of their writing to the fonts on their covers, and that turns them into fans. 

If you’re not a best-selling author, then you need to build your author brand yourself. You need to look as professional and established as possible. You need to be conscious and consistent about what your author brand will be. 

Plot out the reader journey, from initial discovery, to social proof, to first-time reader, to 5-star reviewer, to loyal fan. This requires not just your book itself, but all the messages, reviews, media coverage, and other ancillary content that constitute a full-fledged brand.

5. Creating an Ecosystem

Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned as an entrepreneur that applies equally to writing is you can’t do it alone. Every entrepreneur needs to be scrappy at the beginning, usually mustering an initial product by themselves or with a small set of co-founders. But to scale that business up requires an ecosystem—investors, employees, partners, and others to grow it into a real business. 

Many first-time writers fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves. While they recognize the need for an agent or publisher, they fail to develop the other complementary talent necessary for success. Becoming a successful author requires an ecosystem. 

Even if you are self-publishing, you need a developmental editor, copyeditor, proofreader, designer, cover artist, publicist, and other critical functions. 

Nobody possesses all the disparate skill sets necessary to launch a successful book. Even if you somehow did, the time required to perform all those functions yourself would mean you never publish. Just look at the acknowledgements page of any book—it’s a long list of people! 

Be thoughtful about all the additional resources and investments you need to make. Ask other authors. Get references and recommendations. Post projects on Reedsy. However you do it, having a team around you will result in a much better book and a much higher probability of success.

The process of becoming a published author has been incredibly rewarding. At the same time, it’s been unexpectedly familiar from my time as a tech entrepreneur. The thrill of people reading my book is nearly identical to the excitement of having those first customers use a product I helped build. 

I’ve come to see becoming a novelist less as the radical career change I first thought, and more as the latest chapter in my lifelong interest in entrepreneurship. A continuation of what I loved about founding tech companies, activating the same passion, creativity, and determination. 

I hope these learnings help you approach your career as an author more like an entrepreneur.

Mike Trigg is an author and former tech executive. His debut novel, BIT FLIP, comes out August 16 with SparkPress. Follow Mike on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, or on miketrigg.com.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways Being an Entrepreneur Taught Me to Be an Author appeared first on DIY MFA.

Jeanette the DIY MFA Curriculum Unicorn (aka Curriculum Director) here. I’ve been a fellow word nerd since early 2018 when I ran across Gabriela’s Stop Dreaming, Start Doing video series. At the end of the videos, I flipped to the next blank page in the journal where I had furiously been scribbling notes and wrote down my biggest takeaway—Be the best learner as well as the best writer.

It was this sentence that inspired my deep dive into the DIY MFA curriculum and the three pillars: write with focus, read with purpose, build your community. Consideration for each of these areas is necessary to create a well-rounded literary life. 

Part 1: The Writing

I had just quit my steady job to become a full-time writer. I knew nothing about turning myself into a business or even what a professional writer even did every day—except write. It was obvious that if I wanted to make a living from my words, I had to get them out of my brain and into some publicly consumable form. 

But my first method for full-time writing was the equivalent of throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. I wrote short stories, blogs, chapters of various novels. I branched out into unfamiliar topics and genres. And at a certain point, when I looked back at all I had accomplished, I realized I had pieces of everything that amounted to almost nothing.

Without concentrating on a single project and putting my everything into it, I was left with half-hearted attempts nowhere near ready for publication. I needed the first pillar of DIY MFA—I needed to Write with Focus. To achieve this meant committing to a project, following through to the last page, and having a plan for what would happen with the piece afterward.

Put It Into Action: It’s okay to want to vary your writing, but you have to see the larger picture and how each individual piece fills in a space in your unique literary puzzle. If you’re just starting out, imagine the body of work you want to create, then craft your writings around this central image. As you contemplate each piece of writing, hold it up to your ideal image and ask yourself: How does it fit? Where is this leading me next?

Part 2: The Reading

As a kid, I could race through a 400-page book in a single afternoon. But after college, my love of reading began to wane and it was a struggle to read even a couple of books a year. I was still writing, but that too became more and more of a battle as I lost the creative spark so often felt after reading a particularly well-crafted chapter from a favorite author.

So when I saw the second pillar of DIY MFA was Read with Purpose, I groaned outwardly. Failure. I was sure this step would mean utter failure in my attempts at following the DIY MFA plan. But in her very Gabriela way, the great word nerd-in-chief convinced me that I could at least try and so I did.

I began devouring books on crafting characters and perfecting scenes. I stockpiled resources on style, grammar, and punctuation for further reference. And I finally picked up a novel and revisited my favorite authors to bask in their genius once again. To me, the second pillar of DIY MFA made reading easy because it became necessary, yet flexible at the same time. Until then, I hadn’t realized how much my writing truly needed the reading aspect in order to advance my own creative works.

Put It Into Action: The best part of DIY-ing this curriculum is that you make your own syllabus! List 5-6 books that could help you in your current project. These could be comp (competitive) titles that are similar in topic or theme or maybe use the same narrative structure or point of view as your book. In any case, they should be books that will give you insights as you work on your writing. Now, pick one book from your list and start reading!

Part 3: The Community

Writing may be a mostly solitary act, but editing and publishing sure aren’t. I knew being a full-time writer would require immersion into the broader writing community, both locally and globally. I started attending various writing and critiquing groups around town (back when getting together was a thing). I joined Facebook groups and grew industry connections on LinkedIn. Everywhere I turned, I tried to fit into the community of writers I found.

But after a time, I realized I was unhappy in some of these communities. Whether it be the focus of the group or its personality, I found myself pulling away from places I felt I should have been diving deeper into. And I had to ask myself, “why?”

What I had missed in the third pillar—Build your Community—was the idea of building only the right community. Critique is necessary, collaboration is necessary; but if you leave every writing group feeling downtrodden rather than inspired, it can mean you aren’t getting the right feedback or haven’t found the right people who will truly support you and help you grow as a writer.

Put It Into Action: Luckily, DIY MFA makes this pillar really easy to apply. If you’re reading this newsletter, technically you’re already part of an awesome writing community. Now that you’ve found the right community, you can reach out to fellow word nerds in a way that makes you comfortable. There’s the Facebook group Word Nerds Unite, or you can connect on Twitter and Instagram via #DIYMFA. Plus, we have something awesome planned for next week that will let you connect with this community even more.

A Complete Writing Life

These days, I live and breathe the three pillars as part of my role here at DIY MFA. And I must say, it has been a distinct blessing to help shape the very content that has impacted me so much. I didn’t actually know how much I needed Gabriela and DIY MFA until I had truly experienced these three pillars for myself. Without each of them, I would not have the full writing life that I enjoy today.

Get on the waiting list for DIYMFA 101 today!

Jeanette the Writer is an editor, coach, and freelance writer who wants to help others demolish their editing fears and finish their manuscript. As a former scuba instructor turned entrepreneur, Jeanette knows about putting in the hard work to pursue your passions. She has worked with authors, speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs—empowering them with the right mindset, knowledge, and tools to help them tackle their editing goals. You can learn more about Jeanette by visiting JeanetteTheWriter.com. 

The post Beyond the Writing: How to Build a Well-Rounded Author Life appeared first on DIY MFA.