The Six Figure Author Experiment Podcast

About The Six Figure Author Experiment Podcast

USA Bestselling Authors Lee Savino and Russell Nohelty conduct experiments and talk to experts about how to build a six figure career. www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com (https://www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Six Figure Author Experiment

Category

arts · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 May 2024

Latest episode

6 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

53 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Jul 2026

   Episode 53 - Building a Creative Career Without Permission: AI, Brand Promises, and Choosing the Life You Actually Want

   * Listen on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1vGEixwbXPjHBNzgQIrO4A)* Listen on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-six-figure-author-experiment-podcast/id1745401628)* Listen on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJQ_hrrZHEcCvcF7Fv80O4gvxb7tgkzCU)* Listen on Pocketcasts (https://pca.st/m919xixq)* Book Launch checklist: https://BookHip.com/BDSWRRT (https://bookhip.com/BDSWRRT)* Millionaire Author Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/)* http://hapitalist.com/* Marketing Boot Camp: https://www.skool.com/bookmarketingbootcamp* Marketing Course: https://geni.us/millionaireauthorThis episode begins with a simple catch-up between Lee and Russell, but quickly turns into one of their biggest conversations yet about the future of creative work.Lee shares how she’s experimenting with live writing sprints on TikTok after pursuing an ADHD diagnosis, introducing the concept of body doubling and why simply working alongside other people can dramatically improve focus and consistency for many creative minds.From there, the conversation pivots into artificial intelligence, but not in the way most people expect.Instead of debating whether AI is good or bad, Russell argues that creators are asking the wrong question. Rather than asking how AI can help produce more books faster, he explores how AI can unlock entirely new ways for audiences to experience stories through interactive apps, games, codices, workbooks, and other formats that previously required large development teams.That leads into a larger discussion about permission.Neither traditional publishing nor modern technology determines what creators are “allowed” to make anymore. The only real limitations are imagination, willingness to experiment, and understanding the business realities behind each creative decision.The episode also explores one of the most important concepts for building a sustainable creative career:Every creative goal is built from dozens of smaller skills.Whether someone wants to become a podcaster, novelist, filmmaker, or entrepreneur, success isn’t about mastering one discipline. It’s about gradually stacking complementary skills until seemingly unrelated experiences suddenly converge years later into a career that feels inevitable in hindsight.Throughout the conversation, Lee explains how she coaches authors by breaking seemingly impossible goals into measurable component skills, while Russell emphasizes that many creators fail simply because they confuse different goals, like “finishing a book” versus “writing the perfect book.”The discussion continues into branding, genre, audience expectations, marketing strategy, commercial fiction versus literary fiction, and why understanding your actual goals matters far more than copying someone else’s career.By the end, the conversation becomes less about books and more about designing an entire creative life around what genuinely energizes you instead of chasing someone else’s definition of success.Topics Covered:* ADHD, body doubling, and productivity through co-working* Live TikTok writing sprints* Building creative momentum through accountability* Why the AI debate has become less interesting than AI’s unexplored possibilities* Using AI to create interactive fiction experiences* Games, apps, codices, and alternative storytelling formats* Moving beyond simply writing more books* Escaping the “book-a-month” mindset* Delivering a consistent brand promise* Lessons from Colleen Hoover and her readership* Brand consistency versus creative freedom* Why audiences buy feelings, not formats* Permissionless creativity in the modern publishing world* Teaching yourself instead of waiting for gatekeepers* Everything changes, but nothing is wasted creatively* How unrelated skills compound over time* Why every creative pursuit strengthens future work* The hidden skill tree behind creative careers* Breaking large goals into measurable subskills* Diagnosing bottlenecks in an author’s business* Identifying obvious versus non-obvious constraints* Marketing, branding, writing, and sales as separate skills* Goal clarity versus perfectionism* Finishing a book versus endlessly rewriting it* Coaching authors through creative paralysis* Living in the energy of the solution instead of the problem* Chapter-by-chapter developmental editing* Making stories “hookier” without sacrificing quality* Scene goals and narrative momentum* Book marketing bootcamps and implementation coaching* The five marketing levers:* Cover* Description* Audience* Ad creative* Ad copy* Improving conversion instead of increasing production* Hiring coaches to solve specific problems* Defining what “good” actually means* Literary fiction versus commercial fiction* Hook-driven storytelling* Character goals as reader engagement* Matching writing style to audience expectations* Understanding market size versus artistic goals* Commercial realities of genre fiction* Fantasy, romance, literary fiction, YA, and niche genres* Building businesses around niche audiences* Total addressable market* Choosing creative constraints intentionally* Dense fiction versus highly consumable fiction* Writing beautiful prose without sacrificing readability* Generating traffic versus improving conversion* Lessons from James Clear and Atomic Habits* Creating highly shareable nonfiction* The difference between broad-market products and niche products* Serving a small but passionate audience* Designing a creative life around personal values* Investing versus relying solely on book income* Aligning business models with lifestyle goals* Accepting tradeoffs instead of chasing impossible comparisons* Building a career that fits your definition of success This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com (https://www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   25 May 2026

   Episode 52 - Hypnosis for Authors: Rewiring Self-Doubt, Creativity, and Success

   * Listen on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1vGEixwbXPjHBNzgQIrO4A)* Listen on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-six-figure-author-experiment-podcast/id1745401628)* Listen on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJQ_hrrZHEcCvcF7Fv80O4gvxb7tgkzCU)* Listen on Pocketcasts (https://pca.st/m919xixq)* Book Launch checklist: https://BookHip.com/BDSWRRT (https://bookhip.com/BDSWRRT)* Millionaire Author Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/)* http://hapitalist.com/This episode of The Six-Figure Author Experiment begins like a strange late-night radio broadcast from another dimension:“Welcome to hypnotherapy with Lee.”And somehow… it becomes one of the most emotionally revealing conversations the show has ever had.Lee Savino shares the story of how a single hypnotherapy session shattered seven years of internal resistance and unlocked her identity as an author. Before that session, she believed creativity wasn’t practical, success wasn’t safe, and writing wasn’t allowed. Afterward, something changed permanently.What follows is part mindset discussion, part nervous-system workshop, part guided meditation, and part philosophical excavation of why creatives so often block themselves from the lives they want.The episode explores how humans unconsciously “kneecap” themselves through language and expectation. How the brain filters reality based on identity. How most people are living in constant fight-or-flight without realizing it. And how creativity doesn’t emerge from pressure and strain nearly as often as it emerges from safety, spaciousness, and permission.Then the episode shifts fully into a live hypnotherapy session.Listeners are guided through breathing exercises, body relaxation, visualizations, future-self work, inner-child healing, abundance reframing, and identity reconstruction. The meditation moves through forests, oceans, dragons, future selves, and cosmic-scale imagery while reinforcing a central idea:You already contain the person you are trying to become.The conversation afterward becomes just as powerful as the hypnosis itself. Russell and Lee unpack how identity shapes opportunity, why language matters, how the nervous system affects business decisions, and why most people are tuned to the wrong “frequency” to even notice the opportunities around them.This is less an episode about hypnosis specifically and more an episode about:* self-permission,* creative expansion,* emotional safety,* and becoming someone capable of receiving the life they say they want.It’s strange. Vulnerable. Surprisingly practical.And somehow, by the end, dragons make complete psychological sense.Topics Covered:* Lee’s origin story with hypnotherapy and becoming an author* Creative suppression and inherited beliefs about art and success* Hypnosis as guided relaxation and suggestion work* Alpha, theta, and delta brainwave states* Why creativity often appears before sleep or upon waking* Meditation, relaxation, and the unconscious creative mind* The nervous system’s relationship to creativity and productivity* Why staring at a computer is not always “writing”* The concept of self-sabotage and unconscious resistance* How people “kneecap” themselves through language* Reframing identity statements (“I’m weird” vs. “I’m beautifully weird”)* Why mindset becomes the bottleneck after learning tactics* Future-based thinking: “When I succeed, then I’ll feel safe”* Realizing that what people truly want is the feeling, not the object* Using visualization to communicate safety and abundance to the nervous system* The psychological impact of physically browsing future possibilities (homes, cars, travel)* “I’ll have that too” as an abundance mindset practice* Why opportunity recognition changes after expectation changes* The role of cortisol, stress addiction, and fight-or-flight in creative life* The importance of rest, spaciousness, and “protecting capacity”* Looking into the distance to widen perception and calm the nervous system* Peripheral vision exercises and nervous system regulation* Guided body relaxation and somatic release techniques* Hypnosis and visual imagination as tools for emotional healing* Nature visualization and emotional grounding* Giving yourself symbolic representations of abundance and love* Future-self visualization and identity alignment* Why your future self “already exists” on a timeline continuum* Receiving wisdom from your future self* The metaphor of internal gravity pulling you toward your future* Expanding psychologically through scale and cosmic visualization* “Why are you so successful?” as a subconscious reframing question* Inner-child healing and revisiting painful memories safely* The Hiroo Onoda story as a metaphor for emotional fragmentation* Parts work and integrating abandoned emotional selves* Transforming memory from pain into wisdom* Becoming the source of your own love, safety, and validation* The idea that identity is constructed through repeated language* “Red truck syndrome” and selective attention psychology* The brain as a predictive machine* How belief alters perception of opportunities* The relationship between intuition and modern education systems* Effort vs. ease in creativity and business* Why many people are trying to break through walls instead of walking around them* Protecting emotional and creative capacity* Guided meditations as “nap and grow rich” tools* Why imagination can create tangible real-world behavioral shifts* The emotional aftereffects of hypnosis and meditation* Creativity as expansion instead of contraction* The role of self-love in long-term creative sustainability This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com (https://www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   4 May 2026

   Episode 51 - The Grocery Store Test: Writing Faster, Marketing Smarter, and Finding Your Author “Magic Trick”

   * Listen on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/1vGEixwbXPjHBNzgQIrO4A)* Listen on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-six-figure-author-experiment-podcast/id1745401628)* Listen on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJQ_hrrZHEcCvcF7Fv80O4gvxb7tgkzCU)* Listen on Pocketcasts (https://pca.st/m919xixq)* Book Launch checklist: https://BookHip.com/BDSWRRT (https://bookhip.com/BDSWRRT)* Millionaire Author Mastermind Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/millionaireauthormastermind/)* http://hapitalist.com/In this episode of The Six Figure Author Experiment, Russell and Lee sit down with romance author Celeste Barclay (also writing as Sabine Barclay), and things immediately go off the rails—in the best way possible.It opens with a now-legendary story: Celeste dictating an entire spicy scene… in a grocery store. Produce section? Fine. Dairy aisle? Escalating. By checkout, we’ve hit violence, catharsis, and 3,000 words. It’s chaotic, hilarious, and quietly profound. Because underneath the absurdity is a powerful truth: there are no rules when it comes to getting the words out.But the real engine of this episode isn’t just process. It’s understanding why readers buy—and why they come back.Celeste brings a rare combination of expertise: economics, teaching, and political marketing. She breaks down how authors can think like behavioral scientists, not just storytellers. The conversation moves from demographics to psychographics, from tropes to emotional triggers, from “what is this book about?” to “what does this book do to someone?”And then, like a quiet reveal in the middle of a magic act, Russell introduces the idea of the “magic trick”.Every author has one.The thing they do again and again that makes readers feel something specific.Once you see it, everything changes. Your writing sharpens. Your marketing simplifies. Your brand locks into place like a key turning in a door.The episode weaves between craft and business like a double helix: Emotion drives story. Emotion drives marketing. And consistency of emotion builds a career.By the end, what starts as a conversation about dictation turns into something much bigger: a framework for building a body of work that readers trust, return to, and recommend without hesitation.Topics Covered:* The infamous “grocery store dictation” story and writing without constraints* Using dictation to dramatically increase output (3,000 words in an hour)* Writing linearly vs. “pantser” discovery writing* Why removing friction in your process matters more than perfection* Celeste’s background: economics, teaching, and political marketing* Understanding consumer behavior in publishing* Macro vs. micro psychology of buyers and readers* The difference between demographics and psychographics* How to identify what readers actually want (not just what they say they want)* The importance of emotional outcomes in genre fiction* Asking the key question: What emotions are readers craving?* “Heartbeat moments” and emotional payoff in romance* Why readers return for emotional catharsis, not just plot* How to translate emotional expectations into marketing copy and visuals* Tropes as shopping signals and silent calls to action* Why trope cards outperform generic marketing graphics* Marketing as nonfiction writing (clear, factual, persuasive)* The challenge of writing marketing copy before the book exists* Loglines, positioning, and communicating value quickly* The concept of the author “magic trick”* Examples of magic tricks across authors and genres* How your magic trick becomes your brand promise* Why consistency matters more than novelty for long-term success* When breaking your brand promise causes reader backlash* Pen names and when to separate your brand* Emotional memory as the core driver of repeat readership* Branding vs. marketing: why branding reduces long-term effort* Building a signature series as a marketing engine* How each new book sells the previous ones* Simple vs. easy: why success frameworks are deceptively hard* Distilling your brand into a single guiding sentence* Using reader reviews to identify your brand promise* The “potato theory” of creativity (one core idea, many outputs)* Why clarity of brand creates freedom, not limitation* Final truth: readers don’t just buy books—they buy predictable emotional experiences This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com (https://www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

10 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

76

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting pitches.

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Questions about The Six Figure Author Experiment Podcast