It's 9AM.
BAHG.
Big.
Audacious.
Hairy.
Goals.
I’ve shared some with you before.
But this morning, I read something awesome and I wanted to share some more.
I’m part of an authors group on Facebook.
When I joined there were only about 1,000 members.
Today, there are over 70,000 and climbing.
It is an evolution of watching something grow and it started as a brainchild of one man.
A writer who wrote a book and it earned $7.50 a day, and he thought, if I could write 20 that did that, I could retire on $50k a year.
So he did.
But book 7 turned him into a 7 figure author, and he helped a few other writers along the way by sharing exactly what he did.
Step by step.
And those writers who found success shared what they did.
Step by step.
Of course, any time you have success, you have all the excuse makers piling on with complaints.
They wrote 20 books and didn’t make 50k and so it can’t work!
Or they tried writing romance or fantasy or whatever the genre where success was happening, and it failed so it was all a scam.
Naysayers and haters.
Every industry has got ‘em.
And they thrive off each other.
He set a bigger BAHG a few years later.
Release a hundred books in a year.
You should have heard the haters then.
“You’ll flood the market!”
And my favorite, “Ain’t nobody got time for that much reading.”
But what happened was, more people started to read.
Not just his series, but others written by other authors in his universe.
“Fluke!” they cried.
And foul.
Dear God, they cried foul.
“It’s not fair,” was another favorite.
And it wasn’t.
He was writing eight to ten hours every day, and hired out the rest.
Covers. Blurbs. Uploads and ads.
His job was creating the world, writing the stories, and passing out outlines to other writers to do some heavy lifting with him.
He said he was going to “Patterson the shit out of his writing.”
From James Patterson, the best selling author who is puts out a lot of books co-written with other authors based on his ideas.
Funny thing.
The more he worked, the more success he had.
This morning, he made another BAHG.
It’s Big. It’s Audacious. It’s Hairy.
And oh boy, what a goal.
Write and publish over four thousand books in a year.
More than that, in truth.
He outlined a little bit of the method, which is the system he built for releasing 400 books in a year.
It includes
ebooks,
paperbacks,
hardcovers,
audio books,
graphic novels,
and other versions.
It includes translations in Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, French and other markets.
Basically, what he did is a question I asked before.
How can you take something that is working or has worked and 10X it?
It is a huge undertaking.
And it will probably move him from 7 figures a year to 7 figures a month, or more.
I read it and got stoked.
The same way I get stoked every morning when I read about a friend in Arizona who set a Guiness World Record Goal and on Jan 1, started running 30 miles a day.
Which she has done every day so far this year, with a plan to do it through Dec 31.
Can you imagine the cajones on this chick?
Every day, she’s lacing up and heading out on a trail system, and doing the damn thing!
It got me to thinking about how people all across this country are doing “IT” whatever their IT might be.
And the way we think about it.
She’s nuts. She’s crazy. Or my favorite, “I don’t even drive that far.”
Which begs the question WHY?
Why set big, hairy, audacious goals?
Aren’t little goals enough?
My book writing inspiration says that there are many paths up a mountain, and that some folks want to stick to the marked trail, and some folks want to forge new paths, and the mountain is big enough for both.
For anyone, really, by whatever path they choose.
He just happens to share his, in a very public forum.
Where the arguments against were the exact same they were in 2016, and in 2020 and will be in 2024.
“It’s too much. It’s not fair. No one can read that much.
You’ll flood the market. There’s no way this will work.”
I can’t wait to see what he does.
And I’ll be sharing my own BAHG through It’s 9AM, which is itself one of the pillars.
Now I need to know your big hairy goals.
Share with me in the comments so we can all get inspired together.
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Ah, well I've been reading your 9am posting for a min now, (they tend to pop up for me at 7:30 am and it's been damn motivational at times.) But my big hairy goal is to do audio dramas. As much as life gets in the way I'm still working on script writing and building a few ideas for what to yea know, do. I'm shooting to have at least one tale written, recorded and posted on the web by my birthday so I have till dec 31 lol.
Yep! I was plodding along reading Star Wars books. Some good alot not so good. Then then something pointed me to Galaxy's Edge series, which beget 4HU which led to Fighting Tomcats, Void wars. And a whole bunch more. Mostly ex military mostly hate politicians, ( I don't know how I got to Goose Truman and Bloody Sally. But prepper relatives howled at some of ideas from books) and at least 3 alternative history series.
Thanks to all those Writers and you, the fact my body messed up and I can't travel, I fly thru the stars. read and listen to books. By way its what got me through middle school 63 years ago. Our library put a atomic symbol on sci-fi and baseball player symbol on sports books. Like Yogi Berra story or stories like Good Field no hit. I'd read 4-5 books a week. Books got me through military West PAC cruises too. G