Brand Architect

Stefano L Tresca was employee #8 at Wind, a telecom startup company sold for $12.1 billion. Before joining this venture, he was a teacher of Italian for Koreans, a web designer, and an ice cream maker, just to name a few.

Bestselling author and passionate about travelling, he worked in over 20 countries, until he quit the corporate life in 2011. Today Stefano enjoys mentoring startup companies, writing and occasionally consults for corporations on innovation and investments.

Many years ago, he felt in love with the city of London, and that's where he lives now when he's not traveling. 

In this interview we talk about

Useful links: Stefano's book - Future Cities: 42 Insights and Interviews with Influencers, Startups, Investors Kindle Edition Lanyrd - the social conference directory

Today I am talking to Dan Wood from Draft 2 Digital. This episode is the short official version of the Blab we did few weeks ago, back in 2015. We spoke about how to go wide as an author and make sure that your book is available in most of the possible platforms out there.

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I hope you had nice holidays and amazing New Year celebration. And with this recording I’d like to share my wishes to you for 2016.

I wish that we all read more and learn new things. Although we don’t talk about it often, I am sure that writers have not only to write but also read every day.

I also wish that we travel and get out in nature a lot. Travels will bring new experiences and topics to include in your writing as well as help you become open-minded.

I wish that we all toss away the self-doubt and start believing in ourselves, because no one will believe in us until we do.

From now on I wish we don’t wait for the right moment and start right away. Don’t waste time

waiting. Don’t make your life one long stay in a waiting room. Do what you always wanted to do in 2016. Believe me there will be no better time.

I wish that instead of complaining and blaming others we practice gratitude and thank for everything we have.

I wish that we all stop resisting the change and embrace it instead in the upcoming year. Changes will help you grow and bring in new opportunities you can’t get otherwise.

Instead of worrying about the past I wish we get new experiences, meet like-minded people and celebrate our small victories in 2016. Let go and leave things in the past and move on. You’ve got another chance for a  new start. Make this your year.

Let’s not make excuses. Let’s keep going and pursue our dreams without giving up. You are responsible for making your dreams come true. So make things happen in 2016.

Let’s get inspired and inspire others. Let’s motivate and be motivated. Do it with your writings, with your talks, with your speeches, Facebook statuses, Tweets… anything will work.

I wish you to set goals for 2016. Don’t expect immediate results in order not to be disappointed, but set positive mindset and fight back your fear of failure. One step at a time you’ll get closer to your goals, simply make sure you do make the first step.

I hope that in 2016 you will be bold enough to be different. Don’t depend on peoples’ opinion and don’t follow the crowd.

I wish all those who are not in love yet to fall in love in 2016. And those who are in love will keep working on your relationship.

I wish you also take some time to spend it with yourself. Make a date with yourself and think, reflect and listen to your inner voice. Focus on your feelings, find your passion and make decisions. Believe me, no one knows you better than yourself.

I hope that in 2016 you will be fair to yourself and to others. Don’t lie. It’s not productive.

When you reach the point at some stage in 2016 when the stress is high and you are tired, take a vacation and relax. Take a break and get back your balance.

And please don’t forget to daydream and smile on daily basis.

And never get discouraged… but if at some point you do - tune in to the Write to be read podcast and I’ll do my best to inspire and encourage you, so you continue moving forward!

Take care and wish you an awesome year ahead!

Today my guest is Jay Alan Samit. Jay is a dynamic entrepreneur who is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on disruption and innovation. He launches billion dollar businesses, transforms entire industries, revamps government institutions, and for over three decades continues to be at the forefront of global trends. His bestselling book Disrupt You! is a go-to book for starting entrepreneurs. It will help you achieve success that you deserve!

Obstacles are really just opportunities in disguise.

Failing is learning what doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.

If you think you can or you think you can't you're right.

If you want get something done give it to busy person.

A dream with a deadline suddenly becomes a plan.

You can have everything you want out of life - you just can't get it all in once.

The writing is the small piece of the puzzle.

Too many people listen to everybody that gave up on their dreams to convince themselves to give up on theirs.

Motivation is like shower - you need it daily.

You don't get to live forever but what you create can - so why not focus on making what you create matter?

Being a writer means that you believe that you have something that is worthy of other people's time.

Building a global business has never been easier.

The harder I work the luckier I get.

There's always a way to connect your thoughts with the world.

Jay has been throwing value bombs during the whole interview so I strongly encourage you to listen :)

In this episode Adam Bailey from Goodriter.com will explain how and why did they come up with the idea to launch Goodriter and why it will become one of the most valuable resources for all writers.

I wanted you to know about the special limited time offer they have for us and make sure that you don't miss that valuable free bundle.

In this bundle of 50+ resources the most respected names in self-publishing share their best content for free. The bundle contains 30+ Free ebooks, 9+ Free eCourses and 5+ Free audiobooks.

I am proud to be part of that initiative and I am sure you have heard my interviews with most of those, who contributed to this (you can check the list of the interviews below). The special offer expired on December 20th, so make sure you go and grab it now. I assure you it's extremely valuable and you will learn a lot!

Check out Write to be Read podcast episodes with those, whose resources are presented in the bundle

How to Organize a Successful Kindle Book Launch with Chandler Bolt

How to Be An Author Entrepreneur with Joanna Penn

How to Make Full-Time Income with Kindle Books with Steve Scott

How You Should Market to Sell More Books with Jim Kukral

Grabbing Attention with Derek Doepker

Sell More Books with Bryan Cohen

All You Need to Know About Book Covers with Derek Murphy

How to Promote Your Book with Matt Stone

How to Know if Your Book Will Sell or Not with Alex Newton

How to Become a Kindlepreneur with Dave Chesson

How To Be Insanely Creative with Sean Platt

Self-publishing and Writing Live with Johnny B Truant

Horror is Like Pizza with James Thorn

How to Start Writing Your First Non-Fiction Book with Cathy Presland

Publishing and Collaboration with Tom Morkes

How to Gain and Grow Audience with Podcasting with Meron Bareket

Ok, so now hearing them on a podcast you know that what they provide is useful and good.

Write 2B Read Closed Facebook Group

Alex Newton (aka Niehues) is CEO and Founder of K-lytics.com, the leading Kindle market research service on the net. Alex brings more than 20 years of experience in publishing, data analytics and management consulting to the table. Today, we talk about his company K-lytics, publishing trends, and how he made the transition from a "traditional career" to online entrepreneurship. We also discuss how one can predict if the book will sell or not before even starting writing it.

Today I am interviewing Dave Chesson, who like many, is an Amazon Best Selling author, however, using advanced online marketing techniques, he creates books and platforms that keep all of his books at the #1 best seller mark for years.  Dave is a marketing nut and the creator of Kindepreneur.com, a free website devoted to teaching people the marketing side of being an author.

In this interview we talk about the awesome free tools Dave has created for self-published authors, about publishing and of course, book marketing.

Today my guest is Jonny Andrews. My first interview with him about Embracing The Darkside Of Self Publishing Success is still one of the most popular episode of the podcast. This time we did a Blab together and spoke about how to build an author platform.

Food for Thought

Books are a commodity at this point.

You have to create daily ritual around creation of the thing that needs to be sold.

Figure out what you wanna write first.

Running giveaways are the fastest road to get bigger results.

Give away your first book for free. You give it away so people can sample you.

Don't target giveaway sites.

The first book always takes the longest.

You're not gonna make living on one book usually.

Come up with more stuff more often.

Being an author has become about generating leads.

As most of you – especially the fiction writers know – November is the National Novel Writing Month and around 300k people are writing their novels right now. Their challenge is to complete 50k words in 30 days, which may sound hard but I think it sounds much harder than it is in reality.

Many of you were reaching out to me asking if I am doing NaNoWriMo this year or not so I decided to make a separate episode letting you know and providing explanations and thoughts about the subject too. I wrote both of my novels Highfall and DreamDown participating in NaNoWriMo and it was a great experience.

There are few elements to it that I think are very important for newbie writer. Most of us struggle to finish writing our novel – especially if it’s our first novel. NaNoWriMo adds motivation and encouragement to your writing process. First of all you have a deadline and target wordcount + a challenge. And second, the forums with writers like you who have the same struggles and are as excited as you are adds to the emotional support that you will definitely need while writing your book.

So that is why I participated in NaNoWriMo 2 years in a row and as a result wrote and self published my 2 novels. This was the good part.

Now let me continue by saying that this year I am not doing NaNoWriMo and am doing something different instead. Before you think that I am contradicting to what I just said let me explain why. NaNoWriMo is good at making sure that you finish writing your first draft. And as all of us know the first drafts are very bad.

After that you will need to work on it. The first draft is definitely not what you’d like your readers to see. I guess what I want to say is that NaNoWriMo is good in making sure that you put out those words and that you complete your first draft. It is also very good in developing your habit of writing every day and if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while you know how important that is.

But NaNoWriMo has absolutely no impact on the quality of your writing. And that’s what differentiates the good book from the bad one.

So what I did this year instead of NaNoWriMo was enroll in writer’s bootcamp, where I will hopefully learn how to write well. And as a non-English speaker the challenge for me is bigger than for most of you out there. This is the second month I’m learning at the bootcamp and I’d like to give a big shoutout to Randall Andrews, who is putting up with my complicated character and unpolished writing.

The first side effect that I got from being able to differentiate good quality text from the bad one was realizing that what I had written up to now is not written well. It’s one thing when you know it as an abstract fact and it’s completely another thing when you have proofs for that. And believe me, that realization was not a very pleasant one and at some point it even made me think of not writing anymore. But then I understood that by learning how to write well I will be able to correct what was not written well up to now, instead of deciding not to write at all.

So why I am doing re-writes and concentrate on the quality of the writing is because if I did my 3rd NaNoWriMo I would most probably write my 3rd novel in the same manner I did the previous 2 ones and end up with the same results in terms of quality. So what I am doing now is going through my first novel Highfall and applying what I have learnt so far to what I had written back then. Like that I will learn on my mistakes, make sure I am aware of the most common ones and make it easier not to repeat them again in the future.

So I guess this whole episode gets down to one conclusion – NaNoWriMo is good but it is not enough. It’s the first step of the process and there is a lot to come after. Those of you who have not taken that first step – I encourage you to do so. And don’t worry that NaNoWriMo has already started – set your own timeline and make your own challenge. It will still work. And those who already have the first manuscript – work on the text and make sure that you’ve done your best and you’ve worked on the quality.

And if you have – then our self-publishing services can help you with all the rest that needs to be done, like editing, book cover, formatting, etc. Simply visit www.publishmybook.today let us work on your book and save your time, so you spend it on writing. I guess that was all I had for you today.

Don’t give up and keep writing!

Today I am talking to Morgan Gist MacDonald from the Paper Raven Books. She helps people in their writing journey. Morgan truly believe that writers can change the world. In this episode we talk about

[spp-tweet tweet="You write first and then only clarify the idea."] The energy that you bring into writing is as important as what you write. You can get Morgan's free ebook called 12 STEPS TO WRITE AN E-BOOK here