What do I have left?

The quicker you can plant yourself after a staggering loss, shake it off, analyze what happened, and rebuild, the better you will do for yourself. It’s hard at first, but if you do nothing but master this still, then you will be okay.

It’s not just about rebuilding. It’s about analyzing quickly, pivoting, and rebuilding better based on what you learned.

Most of my life is about making lemonade out of lemons, and it always starts with “what assets do I still have?”

You would be surprised what you can do with nothing, especially once you’ve been through it before.

One time, I didn’t have the funds to make another book, but I knew a lot of creators, so I decided to make a cool anthology using those contacts and my skills as a publisher/editing. That book became Monsters and Other Scary Shit, which blew up (in a good way) and really solidified my career, but I remember pushing that thing to the finish line, barely able to make it there because everything in my life was burning around me.

It’s successor, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, is still our best selling book.

Getting thrown for a loop is hard, but there’s always a core that remains of something, and the thing that separates success from failure is usually the people who can find that core and make something with it, even if you’ve got very little left in the tank.

This becomes much easier over time, as you build assets and have completed projects, as you build a team of creators and friends, and as you build clout. Someday, it will be very easy to recover, but I swear this is the biggest secret. I come back to it over and over again. You will fail, and the quicker you can regroup, regroup, and relaunch the better, as long as you’ve taken time to analyze the problems you experienced, learn from them, and relaunch better the next time.

At this point, I give myself 24 hours to lick my wounds, and then, I survey the damage. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m analyzing problems while they are happening, and already know 2-3 potential fixes should something fail. This is a very hard skill, being present during the train wreck and cogent enough to keep your wits about you, but if you can do that, you might be able to recover nearly immediately, and come back stronger before almost any time has passed.

It’s never, ever, ever, ever easy, but it does start with saying “what do I have left and what can I do with it?”