This was all so much easier when my business was the only thing I had to keep alive...

Your life changes so completely after you become a parent it can be difficult to remember there was ever a time when it wasn’t this way. We’ve been discussing reasons I think my book is under-performing but we can’t omit the most obvious one: my life is completely different right now. As much as I did to market Sell Their Stuff, it’s a fraction of what I did for my other books and that’s because I just don’t have the time I used to. There are dozens of things on my marketing plan that I knew I should do… I just never got the chance to do them. And while part of it is because I had four books releasing without weeks of each other, a lot of it is just that there’s only so much of me to go around.

What it looks like inside my daughter’s mind… Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

This manifests itself in many ways. I don’t always have the time to as aggressively purpose or follow-up on things as I did when my job was the only thing I had to keep alive. I don’t always have the brain power to think like I used to when I was getting regular sleep and adult conversation (not that the ins and outs of Minnie Mouse aren’t fascinating in their own way). And I have to turn down marketing opportunities from in-person appearances to podcasts I would have previously been all over because of the logistics of the little one.

These are, of course, just excuses. I could make it work and often do. But they all factor into the bottom line. And while I’m busting my ass to keep the company running and the words flowing, it’s an important reminder that stuff is still falling through the cracks.

Life is always changing which means we’re always learning, and re-learning, how to succeed. There’s bound to be failures along the way. As long as we keep adapting to the changes, I like to believe we’ll always trend upwards.