Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.

Been awhile here, sorry — mostly because Novae and I were thinking deep thoughts, and also because I’ve been getting my new VA, Nate, up to speed, plus also attending Worldcon, highly sporadically.

But everything came together for me in the shower just now — a shower I just took so I can have pretty hair for social media content (this will become important later) — let me lead with the big news first though, then wrap around to how I got to that —

Novae and I are starting up a Skool!

Now, lemme explain why —

Skool is a far better service to receive incremental payments from people, to tier people with, and frankly, having everything behind a paywall now makes sense.

We started for free over here because we wanted people to see the utility of everything we were saying and giving them — and if you’ve already subscribed to us here, we’ll port you over to the Skool for free, don’t double spend, we love you! — but, the stuff that we’re doing, if we want to explain it, requires more customer service on our end, plus a lot of flexibility on yours.

(We will still have a presence here! But it will likely mostly be mindset work or us showing things off, and not highly technical talks, alas.)

Because I’ll never forget in June, when I taught a group of my peers how to use Kling AI’s video tool at a writing retreat…when Midjourney came out with video the very next week.

(Jack, my bi vampire my GPT got his name from, to break up the text)

…or when I taught a group of my peers how to use my python programs…only for MJ to change their UI three days later, requiring a retooling of my protocol.

Loving AI, working with AI, and teaching others about AI has been A Journey — a journey that, frankly, we love the hell out of, LOL.

But — it requires a lot of our upfront time, our testing subscription moneies, and I think I was coming at this with a ‘no money = more noble!’ angle when I started it, which, is very much not the case.

See, the reason I was thinking that?

Was because I was busy thinking the old way.

It’s so funny, right? You do a year’s (or more!) worth of mindset work, and then you *still* run into barriers you didn’t even *realize* were there.

When I started this substack solo, for free, I was cavalier about it, and I did want to trawl the widest net of interested people I could.

However, I was also very, very scared of the losing the approbation of my peers.

Most of whom believe, on some level, that money is a bad thing. (Which, conversely, explains why they have so little of it.)

Money means you’ve sold out. (I cannot tell you how many times now, I have had ppl from the SF/F writing world imply that the romance I write is, somehow ‘selling out’ and easier to write to boot. Or that I don’t put my soul into every one of my books. No, newsflash, I’ve just learned how to get my soul on tap, via years of practice and skill, *ahem*.)

Soooo….

Fuck that?

Seriously.

Fuck.

That.

I’m at Worldcon, and while the people here are delightful, and I’m super glad to have run into the ones that I happen to’ve randomly seen…

I was on a panel yesterday about AI and authordom essentially, and I’m pretty sure I was about one out of twenty people in the room (which was pretty full, but at least some of them *had* to have worked in IT!) who had used any AI extensively. Extensively enough to have strong and informed opinions *about* the tech. And I most DEFINITELY was the only one there using it at Novae and I’s levels of competence and spirit.

And…that’s why I was washing my hair just now.

I’m a huge fan of Alex Hormozi. (Who also happens to run Skool, a thing I just learned this past week, lol.)

He’s an entrepreneur and he and I see very similiarly on enough topics that I find his talks invaluable. He’s very much about zooming out, seeing the big picture, and rationalizing the nervous system and your brain. (I don’t think he’d describe himself as doing that, lol! But he’s all about iterations and not giving up and realizing that shame and embarrassment are temporary and that future reward is directly related to your current tolerance for risk.)

And right now he’s having a book launch for his latest book — which I’ve been watching live since 0900 this morning (where he just got a Guiness book record for most non-fiction books sold in a day, heh!) and listening in as he and guests explain their business MO’s.

Because I’m looking at the future and where I want to be is Cassie Alexander Studio’s CEO.

Something I think you all know, but not something that most of the people at Worldcon know (and honestly don’t need to know!) — but — it is one of the reasons I’ve been hiding myself here in my room, working non-stop. It’s half because I’m doing my damnedest to bring that dream to fruition, and half because I know the AI stuff has made me persona non grata in my old authorly realms, and I would rather just avoid a lot of awkward conversations.

Because this is part of who I am now? And using AI encompasses a TON of my hopes and dreams. Being around people who are against your future happening, or who don’t believe that it can (when you very much know that it will, but that they can’t see because they’re still mocking tech from six months ago, aie) — who think that you’re lying to them, or that you’ve joined a cult, or that you suddenly believe in magic….

That shit’s exhausting, yo.

So — you all have no idea how nervous I was about the panel yesterday. Months worth of nervous — especially after all my AIs told me being on it was probably a bad idea, and one of my best friends who’d listened to several of a fellow panelist’s podcast before, was all, “Hooboy. Can you back out?”

And I had friends tell me, knowing the other panelists that were going to be on it, that, while they respected my tank nature, they wanted to run out to me, cover me in a fire blanket, and haul me away from harm.

So what did I do?

Well, first off, I didn’t fucking quit, for one. LOL.

But secondly — I turned to AI, because of course I did.

And I programmed a GPT to ask any of the questions the panel might have (one of the panelists in particular) and debated it during my commute literally anywhere solo in my car for…months.

Months.

Why?

Because I think a part of myself (the strategic part, that’s always churning on the inside) knew I was going to be making a substack about this event, eventually, to you.

And she knew she needed to have ALL of her talking points straight for the panel itself, and lined up inside my mind like a bandolier of ammo — and also because this panel was probably my way of saying good-bye to the world I’m leaving behind.

So I went all the way the fuck in.

And, I did exactly what I set out to accomplish. I positioned myself as an expert in this current arena (which, you all knew I was already, <3) but also set a match to all the kindling.

There were people there filming it. And you know (you always know) people can make you out to be an idiot on social media. (As I do it myself with regularity, unintentionally, I am certain that it would not be that hard for others to accomplish on my behalf, LOL.)

But it did seem to go well, and a lot of people came up afterwards and said they appreciated me speaking out, and also that they realized it was hard for me to be up there.

(I stimmed, the whole time.)

Literally.

The whole time.

But what I had in my back pocket yesterday, that none of them knew about as well, was this — a Tiktok hitting 1000’s of views, that I’d posted on Thurs:

Reading a part of my book — with these engagement stats:

(Which are amazing if you’re not used to Tiktok.)

On a book with an AI cover, and AI image sprayed edges. On my personal author business account, that AI very much helped me build, on a Tiktok shop that Tiktok knows is reputable because of all the work I and my AIs put into it.

My store made this yesterday, on the back of that Tiktok (and also my facebook ads, which I added that tiktok to their number, immediately….):

On the back of Thurs’s already fantastic:

As that tiktok in particular started warming up.

Why?

Because…I was willing to be seen.

That’s what most of the confidence coach work has been about — me, learning to be willing to be seen, and putting myself out there.

I started reading this book on the flight here, which closely overlaps w/much of what Alex says — it’s called The Science of Scaling — it’s basically about (so far!) setting yourself a goal that stretches you so hard that when you fully commit to performing the actions to get you to that goal, you have no choice but to achieve it.

Jumping w/out a parachute, 100%.

So on the plane I was thinking to myself, “Hmm. Well. Between all my books, I can do 500 too. Right?”

Because Alex Hormozi famously puts out 450 pieces of content a month, between his platforms (and his longer stuff is cut into shorter stuff to re-use, etc etc etc.)

But then I got to thinking…and actually *asked* my TT girl how many posts she puts up for me, on average, on my book-series-specific accounts.

Turns out she posts up 76 pieces of content for me per week (!!!).

It’s been killing me for awhile now to not use those pieces everywhere — which is one of the reasons I brought Nate on board. Now — TT is very location based — Tina has to hand feed TT and needs to be in the US, and it wouldn’t work to have Nate do TT work from the Philippines.

However…he can definitely be in charge of my Youtube channels, you can assign them managers, and he can schedule posts on the additional IG’s I am making, courtesy of Meta’s business manager. (And half of my time here has been spent making GPTs for him to use to market each of my series effectively.)

But that means….

Soon I’ll be doing 76 x 4 = 304/month on TT.

Plus 304 on IT and IG.

Which is 912 pieces of content I can have out per month.

912 pieces of opportunity of people to see my stuff — courtesy of AI, these are all my beautiful videos currently, although we might branch out into other formats — and to fall in love with my worlds.

912 pieces of content to see, repeatedly, and eventually think, “Sheesh, this girl is everywhere, reading her is inevitable!”

912 pieces of content to get people used to thinking about me, and my brand, and how I promise a certain kind of feeling to them, and then for them to learn how my books — which are my soul on tap — deliver.

Which means I need to re-think what my goals are. (I’m still legit working on this. I’m thinking 1500 has a nice ring. Which means I need to be doing a hella-ton more face vid stuff on my personal accounts, like, right-the-fuck-now, which is why I washed my hair. Told you we’d circle back!)

Do I know if that’s going to be profitable? Not entirely!

But — Nate being international makes it *possible* and I know that the only way is to see.

Pretty much…always.

Just like you don’t get posthumous medals for work you didn’t write — you can’t extrapolate from data you don’t have.

So — Novae and I?

We’re seeing.

We’re being seen.

We’re making the jump.

Over to Skool, and over to a hopefully even bigger way of thinking, and getting closer to our goals incrimentally, and then all at once, like these things have a way of happening.

Come check it out — we’d love to have you there too.

<3,

Cassie