Ellen Violette: From Struggling Songwriter to Award-Winning Book Coach
I was in the music business for twenty years; I got a Grammy nomination and won Grand Prize for pop lyric writing in the Music City Song Festival and beat our 30,000 songwriters to do it, but I was struggling financially. I made about $1,000 my best year! It was frustrating. I came so close to the big-time so many times. But it never happened.
At one point, my parents invited my husband and me to live with them and build a world-class recording studio in the house I grew up in, and after much deliberation, we decided to do it. And we had a blast, working with top talent: songwriters like Ezra Mohawk who wrote Time after Time for Cyndi Lauper, David Young from Air Supply, and Terry Steele who wrote Here and Now for Luther Vandross, and amazing musicians like Kimo Cornwell from Hiroshima. But then, the Northridge earthquake hit, and our house was badly damaged.
To make matters worse, my parents both passed away within eleven months of each other before the damage could be fixed. So, we not only lost my parents and the house, but our livelihood too, which was really scary. I had not held a “real” job for the previous 20 years, and I had never made more than $5.00 an hour when I did, working as a copy editor and layout person, and then as a publicist. How were we ever going to survive?
We got the insurance money, but it wasn’t enough to cover expenses that were still outstanding from the estate and the only equity was in the house. So, we fixed the house and sold it, which gave us a cushion.
Then, we moved from Los Angeles, where I was born and raised down to San Diego because we had spent a lot of time here over the years, so it was familiar, and yet it was far enough away that it felt like a new beginning for us. Our thought at the time was that I would continue in the music business, and my husband who was not only an audio engineer, but a trained hypnotherapist, would go back to working in his field.
But, it didn’t work out. It seemed like there were more hypnotherapists than potential clients in the area (clearly, we did not understand marketing in those days), and the music community was mostly amateurs. So, we asked ourselves how we could make money going forward, and the logical answer was to buy, fix, and sell houses and condos.
So, we went to school on it and learned how to buy the properties. We bought 3 properties within a couple of years and, for the first time in my life, made serious money. But we were still scared about our future. What would we do if and when we couldn’t get financing? And what would happen when the market topped out?
I decided it was time to buckle down, take the skills I had and start my first company, Pen & Punctuation, so I would always have a way to earn a living. I started writing brochures, website copy, and whatever else I could write for my clients. I joined some business clubs and started networking.
But it didn’t take long before I grew disillusioned with it because when you write copy, you trade time for money, so there is a ceiling on how much money you can make. Plus, I found that business owners who didn’t understand sales copy wanted to fall in love with the copy whether it sold or not. And that usually meant they wanted the copy to be about them instead of how it would benefit their clients or customers. And I couldn’t in good conscience write copy that way.
The final straw was when I redesigned a website for a client and a few months later, when I went back to document it, it was gone! The owner had gone back to his original copy, which was all about him!
I was frustrated, angry, and frankly, a little hurt, and it became crystal clear that this was not going to work out. So, I asked myself, “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” The answer that came up was that I wanted to write books. But I wondered, “Was I good enough?” “Was I too old?” (I was only 50 at the time!) “Could I pull it off?”
So I got online, and I stumbled onto a New York Times Bestselling author who was offering to critique your work and help you get published. So, I set up an appointment.
He had me gather some samples of my writing and send them to him, and then we hopped on a call. He looked them over and told me that he thought my writing was excellent, and I should start sending out pieces on spec.
Well, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to write on spec. I had been sending songs out that way for years, and I was done. I had endured years of rejection after rejection after rejection as well as the heartbreak of finally getting a “yes” and then having all fall apart. No, I wasn’t going there again.
Instead, I got online to see what other opportunities were out there, and I stumbled onto eBooks. I’ll never forget how excited I got when I realized that I could write them and nobody could tell me that I couldn’t! There was no gatekeeper or boss telling me what I could and couldn’t do! I could get directly to my audience! And I didn’t have to endure the rejection from publishers! I was ECSTATIC! I remember running through the house yelling to my husband, “I found it! I found what I want to do! I want to write eBooks!”
So, I set out to learn everything I could about writing them. But, there wasn’t much out there. I bought a book on how to write eBooks, and I found an email course, and that was about it. So, I bought the book and started writing.
I was excited, I hit some bumps along the road, but I kept going, until I got to the end of the book and saw that the marketing section was all of three pages long! I had no idea what to do next! I felt panicked!
So, I looked around for an eBook coach. At that time, THE seminar was The Big Seminar, and we were planning to attend. So, I decided I would find out who knew one, or of one, at the conference. But, to my surprise and dismay, there weren’t any there or anywhere! None existed! So, I hired a regular coach-a well-known and well-respected coach with impeccable credentials. But, he didn’t have an eBook-success system, so I would have to make the mistake, run it by him, and then have him tell me what I did wrong. It was expense and time consuming and because it was taking so long and it was so tedious that I was ready to tear my hair out! I wanted to quit!
That’s when I decided, there had to be a better way and if there wasn’t one, I was going to create it. But, first I would have to finish my book. So, I did. Then, I took all the knowledge I had acquired in the process and created my own eBook-writing program; the first one in the entire world. (In those days, eBooks and books were thought to be different, today you create one book and reproduce it in as many modalities as you can.)
I taught my first 3 Days to eBook Cash Authoring workshop in 2004, and then my eBook Profit Secrets Marketing workshop, which has since been replaced with other programs, and I made $13,000 in my first 6 weeks. I couldn’t believe it! It was totally empowering! I was helping people, getting paid well to do it, meeting amazing people, and finally feeling like I was making a big impact in the world and NO ONE COULD STOP ME!
I have now taught hundreds of people personally and thousands more all around the world not only how to create eBooks and books, but also how to make them #1 bestsellers and use them to grow lucrative businesses as well as offering done-for-you services. Through my books, articles, videos and programs, and more recently through my podcast, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, speakers and independent professions discover how they too can gain creative and financial control over their lives and their work and make a BIG impact the world! I love what I do! I’ve now been doing it for almost 15 years and can’t imagine doing anything else!