Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lisa Daily. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lisa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

I do take vacations. Not only that, I try to infuse a little “vacay vibe” into everything I do. I live in Siesta Key, FL which is a place people come from all over the world to visit, so it’s probably easier for me to get that beach vacation feeling, even when I’m not on vacation.

A million years ago, I was reading a biography for one of my college courses, and it was written by a CEO who said his employees always tried to impress him by saying they were so indispensable they couldn’t leave the office for longer than a weekend. His take, however, was that they’d not done a good job training their employees or managing their own time efficiently — and that really stuck with me.

I try to take at least a month of vacation in the summer and several smaller trips and 4-day breaks throughout the year. As a creative and entrepreneur, your brain needs downtime to rest — and I find I often come up with really interesting solutions to problems I’ve been struggling with or just have big bursts of creative insight after (or sometimes during) a break.

Plus, I write beach-read romantic comedies, so I like to get into that vacation mindset whenever possible.

Last year, I’d taken about 6 weeks off, and then got a nasty case of COVID for six weeks and I did feel a bit of financial and other pressure for not working for basically the entire summer. By the end of it, I’d resolved to work on more passive income streams so that I could continue to take long vacations and also be inoculated from unexpected work breaks.

In the end, I’d rather restructure some of my business model than tale fewer vacations.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I got into publishing when I wrote my first book, a self-help book called STOP GETTING DUMPED that became a bestseller both in the US (Penguin) and the UK (Random House). As the book was launching, I happened to meet the literary agent for another VERY well-known dating expert who was under fire because she was in the middle of a very public, very nasty divorce. At the time I had a new baby and had only been married for a few years and I had this terrible thought — I’d just banked my author career on something I didn’t have ANY control over — how my spouse would behave throughout our marriage.

After my initial panic attack, it occurred to me that could be a really interesting premise for a novel– a big TV dating expert who gets publicly dumped by her spouse. Your career and your personal life are decimated in a single moment. The idea became my first novel, FIFTEEN MINUTES OF SHAME, and suddenly I was hooked on writing fiction.

In the meantime, my self-help book continued to sell, and brought me a ton of really interesting opportunities including a weekly stint as the on-air love guru on a national morning TV show; as a real-life expert in a feature film; speaking and course opportunities, and more.

That book brought me income in one form or another for more than a decade (it still does.)

My background was in advertising & PR, and I became the Director of Publicity for a mid-sized traditional publisher. I was often invited to colleges and writing conventions to speak about craft and found I really loved it — not just the aspect of talking about publishing and writing (which I will do all day every day if no one stops me) but also in helping aspiring authors to get started. I loved this aspect so much, I decided to start a YouTube writing channel, Bestselling Author Writing Coach (www.author.coach) to give writing and publishing advice.

I had done private book coaching, primarily through word of mouth, for several years — primarily focusing on self-help, which I love. The YouTube channel was suddenly bringing me tons of new clients, including Theodora Taylor, a 7-figure romance author. She needed write her book 7-FIGURE FICTION in 11 days, I believe, before a conference and she reached out to me to see if I could help.

I love a good challenge, so of course I said yes. The book went on to be a huge success, and if you’ve been to a writing conference or online group in the last year and heard someone talk about “Universal Fantasy” or “Butter” you’re seeing the impact of Theodora’s book first hand. We had a great experience working together and suddenly she was referring friends, and they referred their friends, and I found myself the go-to book coach for 6- and 7-figure romance authors wanting to write self-help books on writing craft, publishing, and marketing.

While a big part of my client base is 7-figure authors, I also work with a lot of first-time authors as well.

The only thing I love as much as writing books is helping other people write books — I feel like this is the work I was born to do.

I also love the fact that you can literally build an entire business out of a single self-help book. I did it. Theodora did it with 7-Figure Fiction. Renee Rose has done it with Write to Riches. Heather Hildenbrand has done it with Manifest Your HEA. I could go on and on and on.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

My three biggest sources of new clients are 1) client referrals, 2) my YouTube channel, and 3) my books.

If you try your best to do a great job for your clients, the referrals come naturally. This is also, I find, the easiest new client to sign because your former client has already been kind enough to do the heavy lifting.

My YouTube channel, Bestselling Author Writing Coach (www.author.coach) has been a fantastic source of new clients because it’s working 24-7 and potential clients have the opportunity to get to know you a bit before they ever jump on a call with you. It’s also a great source of market research because you can see what topics viewers are actually interested in and engaging with. A number of my YouTube videos have reader magnets as well, so they’ve been great with helping me effortlessly build my subscriber list.

Finally, after coaching so many other authors, coaches, and entrepreneurs to write a self-help book to build their businesses, I decided to take my own advice. I just launched my new book WRITE A SELF-HELP BOOK IN 14 DAYS: The proven step-by-step plan to easily write your nonfiction book — from the bestselling author coach, in addition to my WRITE A SELF-HELP BOOK IN 30 DAYS course. Although the book has only been out a few weeks, I’ve already gotten several new clients and course students.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Most self-help authors (or aspiring self-help authors) want to help other people — they want to share the methods that led to their success in business or their personal lives, they want to share their story as a source of inspiration, they want to share how they’ve solved a problem.

My job as a self-help book coach is to help my clients help other people. I have a real sense, every single day, that I’m helping to make the world a better place. It’s a heck of a reason to get up in the morning, and it’s why I love what I do so much.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lisadailybooks.com & https://bestselling-author-coach-lisa-daily.teachable.com/courses/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorbythesea
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisadaily/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-daily/
• Youtube: https://www.author.coach