Today we welcome author coach and marketing mentor Kelly Weekes to the podcast. We talk about:

• Ways to reframe comparisonitis
• How to tackle overwhelm
• Why it's important for authors to prioritise self-care
• How to deal with rejection and criticism

About Kelly Weekes

Kelly has been involved with books and publishing for almost her whole working life from when she first started out as a bookseller through to senior marketing roles at HarperCollins and Hodder&Stoughton where she oversaw the marketing across the adult list. She has worked with household brand name authors like Stephen King and Jodi Picoult, launched debut authors and has worked on a broad selection of non-fiction authors.

Since starting her own business, Kelly’s focus has been to mentor authors (and some book related organisations) through the process of marketing themselves and their books.

Being an author presents all sorts of mindset and confidence challenges that Kelly became more and more aware of through her marketing work with authors. Common challenges are a fear of being visible, how to handle rejection and comparisonitis, lack of self belief, loss of confidence, overwhelm, burnout and procrastination.

Through working with a coach herself for a number of years, Kelly recognised the power of coaching to transform people’s performance through working with their mindset. She wanted to take the power of coaching and use it to support authors.

Last year she became an accredited coach (Institute of leadership and Management) and now works with her coaching clients to help them past any challenges they face in their author careers.

Her real passion is helping existing authors who have been writing and published for a while, but have fallen out of love with their careers for whatever reason and are feeling really negative, reignite their passion for their writing again and to move forward. Nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing an author client who has been feeling burnout and overwhelmed, or has stopped writing altogether, start writing again with ease and positivity.

Kelly has delivered workshops and talks on marketing and mindset for organisations like The Independent Publishers Guild, The London Writers Cafe, Byte the Book, The Novelry and Bookmachine. She is a member of the Institute of Leadership and Development.

When she is not working, or has her head in a book, Kelly is often running around after her young sons. In the last year she has also started Kickboxing and has fallen in love with sea swimming, managing to swim almost every week throughout the winter.

Key Takeaways

• Pressure on ourselves is constraining for our creativity
• If you're suffering from comparisonitis think about what is triggering you. There's often a message there. Flip it to show you what's possible for you too.
• The time you spend worrying about what other people are doing is a waste
• Dealing with criticism - Know from the outset that not everyone is going to like you and that's OK
• It's important to take negative reviews with a pinch of salt

QuoteIf we don't have self-belief and confidence it's hard to put ourselves out there and be visible and talk about our books and projectsConnect with Kelly Weekes

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