How clearing blocks and connecting with the right people transforms your writing journey

Explore the hidden strategies that spark unstoppable momentum and gain the insider edge for a thriving writing career, as shared in this opening keynote from Writer MBA Con 2025.

This speech is adapted from the opening keynote I gave at Writer MBA Con 2025.

Hi,

By any measure, I think at least the people in this room would say I have had a successful career. I mean, if you can’t say that standing up in front of 180 people who gathered in a city because you and your business partner manifested an idea out of thin air, then when can you, right?

That said, I’ve never signed a deal with a Big 5 publisher, I’ve never had a book #1, or even #100 on the Amazon store. If you looked at my rank, you would laugh.

I’m doing pretty alright, though. The last time I looked, I’ve run something like $1.8 million through Quickbooks between all my companies since I started tracking it in 2016. Yet, if you polled 1,000 random readers, there’s a very good chance all 1,000 of them would say “Never heard of that guy.”

Which like…rude…

…Jokes on them, though, because I am the one standing on this stage right now, so there.

Yes, part of saying that was about straight up bragging, because this is frankly very cool and I can’t really believe it’s happening, but mostly, it’s to show that success metrics are dumb, algorithmic success is only one kind of success, and you don’t have to be known by many people to change the course of your whole life.

I’m good, like really, world class good, at about eight things, and every year I add roughly one thing to that list. Spoiler alert, probably this year it will be conferences, but that is still only like 9 things.

Do you know how few things nine is? There’s only like 8 numbers before it, (not including negative numbers or fractions. Don’t @ me. I know numbers-ish).

And yet, here I am.

It turns out, you don’t need to be great at many things to be wildly successful. When I started doing this work, I wasn’t good at any of the things.

When I went full time, I was good at one thing, and that thing was not sales. My first $100k year, though, was because of sales, but it was a rickety table that wobbled precipitously for years. Since then, every new skill I mastered helped stabilize that table(ize).

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.

Five years ago, I made about $100k and had around 2,500 unique customers. Last year, we made $400k across all our companies, and I had 3,000 unique customers. It really doesn’t take much to make a solid company, and it doesn’t take much more to scale it.

This is the place where I usually add a clever transition to make this about you, but I’m very tired. So, can we all just pretend I made a really witty transition here, please? Thank you!

So, how do we make this actionable for you?

This conference, at its core, is about clearing your biggest blocks in the least steps possible, so you can add at least one highly transformational skill to your toolbox every year that will change everything for you.

Hey, actually, that transition wasn’t half bad. Nice.

This conference isn’t about giving you the most information, it’s about giving you the right information and connecting you with the right people in as few steps as possible.

It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but for authors, and if you didn’t get that reference, then ask an elder Millennial. It was a meme before memes were memes. Gen-Xers, I didn’t forget about you, I just thought you would feel more comfortable being ignored so you could complain about it online later.

So, how do we clear blocks at scale while still individualizing transformation to every person? That is a really good question.

We focus on locks and keys.

Every one of you has a block that’s preventing you from moving forward. Most of you probably don’t know what that block is, even. We talk to so many authors who start with us saying “I don’t have any blocks, obvi I’m perfect.”

To which I say “Then why are you here? I’m charming, but not that charming. Something inside must have called out to say they were in crisis. Otherwise, you would sit home in your underwear watching cartoons.”

No? Is that just me?

Guess what? Every one of them eventually comes back and says “I had no idea I had so many blocks.”

And like…obviously. Monica and I are very smart. Thank you for acknowledging that.

But so are you.

Maybe you don’t know how to listen to your body, but that doesn’t mean it’s not screaming to you.

So, if you don’t think you have blocks, then I can tell you that every single one of my seven-figure author friends has blocks. Acknowledging them was the first step to clearing them and clearing them was their first step to becoming a seven-figure author.

We call those blocks locks. I know, very clever. We’re writers.

Every single one of you has a lock.

That’s the bad news.

But every one of you also has a key.

That’s the good news.

But that key will not open your own lock.

That’s the bad news.

But somebody else here has the key to your lock.

That’s the good news. Wow, that was a roller coaster of emotions.

If that is true, and it is true, then our goal as a collective conference is to connect with as many people as possible so we can clear as many blocks and open as many locks as possible, both for ourselves and for others.

If you don’t care about both of those things, then you’re kind of a selfish git, and like…we have enough of those around, so just for this weekend we’re going to pretend that we’re all endlessly altruistic, okay?

Yes, that means connecting with speakers and vendors, but it also means connecting with other attendees. Some of you may be debut authors, but you probably also live amazingly interesting lives, and we are going to bring every facet of you to bear in the next few days.

To do that, we need to be open and vulnerable with each other, and there are several ways we help facilitate that as a conference.

First, we have these cool green and red bands. If you’re open for conversation, then put on the green band. If you need some space, then put on the red one. Unless you actively see the green band, please proceed with caution, but if somebody has on the green band, they are open for conversation.

Unless it’s me. I will never have the red band on, even if you can’t see the green one…partially because y’all paid me money to be here, and partially because I only gain energy when people pay attention to me, which isn’t my favorite part of myself, but it is my least favorite part of myself that I openly acknowledge.

Second, we have created the Author Ecosystems. How many of you know your ecosystem?

That’s awesome.

How many of you think their ecosystem is right?

How many of those people who don’t are Forests?

If you haven’t taken the new quiz, you can do so here.

There are four parts of our system. First, your ecosystem. Second, somebody else’s ecosystem. Third is your evolution stage from 1-5 that shows the health of your ecosystem. The fourth is the evolution stage of the other person.

If you’re a stage 2 Tundra, for instance, your goal should be to stabilize your own system, which means your key is probably held by another Tundra, or a Tundra platform like Kickstarter.

If you’re a stage 4 Grassland, though, you are rocking and rolling, so your key is probably held by somebody in another ecosystem. In the Author Ecosystem course, which you all have access to, we talk a lot about this…

…and it is also the key to the ecosystems that nobody talks about. Our system is not a personality test, it is a growth system designed to get you to success faster without getting you overwhelmed.

So, there are stickers somewhere that denote the ecosystems. Find them and stick the right one on your lanyard. Find a Sharpie and add your ecosystem to your badge…

…and this will be the hardest part.

As you are meeting other people, actually listen to their ecosystem and level. I know everyone wants to talk about their ecosystem, but we’re trying to clear blocks and pick locks here, which means we have to project our attention outward for a bit.

I know it’s hard to think beyond yourself, but I promise it will come back ten-fold if you do.

We also set up focused networking time in the form of speed networking and key conversations, among other things that can help you introverts feel invited. I know y’all are like vampires. If you aren’t expressly invited to the party individually, then you eat dinner in your room.

Please don’t do that. I will literally stand up here tomorrow morning and personally invite all 180 of you individually if I have to, but even I’m not that desperate for attention. I mean, yes I am, but don’t make me look that desperate, y’all. Just accept you are invited, okay?

We also scheduled 30-minute breaks between talks to give you a chance to decompress, chat, and collect your thoughts. These are little networking events in and of themselves, especially since you all have those nifty bands.

We also have the smartest vendors and sponsors in the industry here to help you, and like…they want to help you…but they can only do so if you meet with them, connect with them…and say words to them.

Those words don’t have to be positive (though they do need to be polite), but they do have to come out of your mouth in a way that allows them to understand and comprehend them.

Monica and I are two of the most keyed-in people in the industry and are constantly floored by the things we learn about companies we thought we knew really well. So, meet with them all, every one of them you can, and ask them “How can I be a bestseller using your platform?” or “What am I missing here?”

Or even “Help, I’m overwhelmed, and I need you to tell me how you can make me less of a hot mess disaster.”

No shame here, some of the most successful people I know are hot messes. It turns out that having your ish together has almost nothing to do with success, which I find endlessly comforting.

Finally, we all have some responsibility to each other. You might not think you can be a key yourself, but I guarantee even the newest among you have heard of a person or solution that can clear somebody else’s block.

So, now I want you to be brave.

I want you to turn to the person next to you, and take turns saying “I’m having trouble with X. Do you know anyone who can help me with that?”

But like…replace X with your problem.

I’ll start. “I’m having trouble not making my business harder than it needs to be. It seems like at every turn I make things more difficult than it needs to be and can’t get out of my own way, even if I know I’m about to crash. Monica, you know anyone who can help me with that?”

Now, you do it.

See, you didn’t die. Now, turn to the person on the other side of you and do the same thing.

Wow, you still didn’t die. How many of you got an answer to a question you’ve been struggling with for six months?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Like I said, we are very smart.

If you meet six people this week, and each of those people moves you slightly forward toward the person who can open your lock, you will likely open that lock while you are here. With any luck, you’ll open several.

And here’s the best part. Once you find that key, you get to keep it…and so do they. You can use it to unlock other locks in your business, and you can help other people clear their own blocks.

Every time you use that key, it gets stronger and stronger.

And every time you open a lock, you’ll find there’s another one behind it, which is great, because you’re surrounded by key masters right now. At our mastermind, some people opened five or more locks.

I honestly don’t care what you learn here, but I do care how many locks you open. I want every single one of you, from attendees to speakers to sponsors to organizers, to open at least one lock, and hopefully multiple.

If you’re still struggling in a couple days, I will literally introduce you personally to people until you find your key, whether you want me to or not, and I am very annoying about it. I will literally stop you mid-sentence to introduce you to a person and feel zero guilt about it.

No, that’s not true. I will literally stay up at night thinking about how embarrassing it is, and then wake up and so it again the next day. I will not have any shame about it in the moment, though.

Only in retrospect. So, please, don’t make me do that. It’s embarrassing and rude and yet, I can’t help myself. If I don’t see it, then I can lie to myself that it doesn’t exist.

Finally, there are lots of people who decided to sleep in this morning, and missed this, which means it’s all our responsibility to read them in on how this works. Just please skip over the part where you tell them I’m a hot mess narcissist that’s desperate for validation.

Let them come to that realization on their own. After all, it’s not a well-hidden secret.

So, we all have two jobs to do this weekend.

Unlock one of your own locks and use one of your own keys to help somebody else open theirs. If we all take that responsibility seriously, then we can make this the most impactful week of your life.

Now, let’s do the thing.

What do you think?

• What is one “lock” in your writing or business right now, and who do you think holds the “key” to help you unlock it?

• If you could add just one new skill to your toolbox this year, which would it be and why?

• Have you ever discovered an unexpected solution to a big problem through a simple conversation, and how did it transform your journey?

Let us know in the comments.

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