Reading time: 4.12

996 words

Hey Reader,

At Higher Voltage in London a couple of weeks ago, I heard Teresa Heath-Wareing speak on the current landscape for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

She had a lot of truths to drop and a lot of optimism to offer.

It’d be easy to think the future looks bleak, especially when the media is full of nothing but doom. And I’m not here to be a pollyanna; things are genuinely tough in a variety of fucktangular ways.

BUT.

We have more agency than we realise with our own actions, despite the current timeline.

So let’s take a look at the reality:

• Almost everyone is in a crowded market online. There’s very little brand new under the sun. And that can make it feel like we’re screaming into the void, just trying to be a little louder than everyone else.
• Attention is harder to earn. Feeds are fast and the algorithms are… unfriendly. They’re designed by people who do not have our best interests at heart and they are inherently biased against anyone who is not straight, white, and male because that is who built them.
• Buyers are more sceptical — as they should be. There’s a lot of shadiness out there and as people grow more desperate to stand out, their claims will become more outlandish and their results less impressive.
• Effort no longer necessarily yields results. I know so many people working SO hard with their content and marketing and they’re still struggling. It’s not like the good old days of the internet where anyone with a half-decent blog could get a good audience and monetise it. Times have changed.

And the cherry on this shit sundae: AI is pumping out content faster than ever. Every day, AI podcasts release something like 40 new episodes. Every. Day. We have fully AI-created courses and podcasts now, which frankly makes me want to puke into the “creators” pockets.

There is too much content. Too much information. An absolute firehose of BS fakeness online.

FUCK that.

There is no point in trying to compete, because we simply cannot do it.

But we can do something AI could never, ever do.

We can speak in our own voices, about our own human experiences, and make real human connections.

My AI — Claude — cannot write what I write. I know, because I’ve tried to get it to do so, out of morbid curiosity. It just cannot get into my head and it cannot use my turns of phrase the way I do. No matter how good the tech gets, it will never have lived MY life or thought MY thoughts or felt what it’s like to hold the entire audience in the palm of my hand at a comedy night in Bristol on a wet Sunday.

That’s why my email newsletter is growing slowly yet consistently — because people know I’m real. They know my writing is real. It’s my voice.

That’s why my books sell at a gentle trickle, even though I don’t market them nearly enough. Because an AI has never been anywhere near them.

And that brings me to the antidote to all this bleakness:

Use the voice you have. Unapologetically. Unashamedly.

I’m not saying step away from the internet entirely. I’m still active on LinkedIn and I kinda show up on Instagram. My email newsletter is thriving.

And I’ve made lifelong ride-or-die friends because of the ‘net.

But my real connections exist offline too. In my books, my zines, the conversations I have, the rooms I put myself in despite my fears and aversions to being in rooms and at events. It’s worth it for me.

I’m a book coach, so of course I’m going to say this, but I believe it with my whole heart and soul:

Write a book.

It can do for you what screaming into the online void never can.

Because a book gives you authority that actually means something. Relationships built on substance, not algorithm luck. A body of work that exists independent of whether a tech bro woke up grumpy. Your voice, permanently on the record, saying exactly what you mean and nobody can interrupt you until you’ve finished saying it.

I have three spots available right now for a one-off 90-minute coaching session to get you started:

Kickstart Your Book - £1,450

You’ve been thinking about writing your book for months, maybe years. You’ve got ideas swirling around but can’t pin down exactly what your book is actually ABOUT. You sit down to write and either nothing comes out, or everything comes out in a confused mess that doesn’t sound like you.

In one 90-minute intensive session, we’ll nail down your Big Idea so you can explain your book in one clear, confident sentence. We’ll map out your reader journey — who they are, what they need, and how your book will transform them. We’ll create your rough book structure so you know exactly what to write and in what order. We’ll identify and demolish the specific mindset goblins that are keeping you stuck. And you’ll leave writing-ready with a clear plan you can actually follow.

You’ll complete a detailed questionnaire before our call so we can dive straight into the meaty stuff. Then we spend 90 minutes together on Zoom getting you unstuck and crystal clear.

You leave with a one-page book blueprint you can reference every time you sit down to write, clarity on your book’s core message and structure, confidence that your idea is actually bloody brilliant, and the ability to START WRITING instead of endlessly “planning.”

If you’re sick of thinking about your book and ready to bloody well write it, grab one of these three spots.

Reply to this email and let’s get you writing.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

p.s. If you’re not ready for coaching yet, I wrote a whole book about this. It’s called How the hell do you write a book? and you can find it on my website.

p.p.s. Know someone who might enjoy this email? Please forward it to them and get them to sign up here.