How to Become An Instant Success

In the middle of his peak earning years, business executive Andy Gross quit to become a novelist. He was a turnaround expert used to dealing with formal structures: employees, customers, products to sell, and investors to please. When you decide to become a novelist, you enter a world utterly devoid of structure. You have no income, agent, publisher, readers, or even book to sell.

Andy recalls, "After four positions within about fifteen years, I was a minority shareholder in a Canadian skiwear firm, things didn't go the way I hoped, and I was asked to leave, quickly."

This time, Andy didn't just jump back into another company. For the first time, he felt burned out.

"I was burned out of desire to keep reinventing myself in this industry. So my wife and I went down to Key West, and we talked about my feelings that I had left my blood on the field and I didn’t want to go back onto it. I asked her to give me a year to try being a writer, that we would audit my progress carefully, and that if it didn't seem like I would be successful, I would elbow myself back into another corporate position."

His, wife, Lynn, was extremely supportive - not only then but also in the years of hard work and uncertainty that followed - and they decided to give it a shot. Andy approached his new field in a businesslike manner, and immediately enrolled in several writing programs to "measure if I was any good. If I couldn't convince small groups of 10-12 people I could do this, then I wouldn’t be able to convince the public and publishers."

He spent a year writing a political thriller called Hydra, and recalls, "After a year of writing, I didn't have an agent or a reader. Something like 30 potential agents rejected me. This life change thing - when everyone around you is completely questioning why you've lost your marbles - was starting to seem a bit unstable. My wife was defending not just me but also her own choices, too.

"I did luck out in finally finding an interesting agent. All of a sudden it looked terrific. Got myself on Cloud Nine, the agent put the book out for offers, and we went to Nantucket for a short break. We expected to have a deal by the time we returned.

"The book didn't sell. Eventually I was two years down the road, 20 publishers later, and it was: sorry, we did our best."

Then, luck and hard work joined forces.

"I was sitting around," says Andy, "Wondering what cliff I would drive my car over. Out of the blue, I got a call from someone asking if I would take a call from the author James Patterson. Someone at Warner had sent him a copy of my manuscript with a note scrawled on the cover 'this guy does women well.' At that point I would have taken a call from the mailman if he had anything nice to say about my book.

"We met in a diner. Jim said 'you have the goods, I know why your book didn't get published.' He told me I could spend another year repackaging it and trying to resell it again, or I could help him work on a good idea he had that he didn’t have enough time to pursue on his own."

Andy agreed to work with Patterson, and their first collaboration was a significant financial success. He had successfully found a way to support his family as a writer.

"Working with Jim was like a combination MFA and MBA rolled into one. He knows what kind of stories he wants to tell, has a keen sense of what will appeal to his readers, especially women, and what's vital in a scene for it to succeed."

Over the next seven years the pair collaborated on five other books. All went to #1. Andy’s name started to appear on the covers, at first in tiny type but eventually just as large as Patterson's.

Now almost a decade into his new career, Andy not only wanted to be a successful writer, but he also wanted to build his own brand. A lot of people and companies talk about building a successful brand - something that customers know, like and trust - but it is a very difficult thing to pull off.

"At some point waiting for the seventh project to come from Jim, I came up with an idea for a book. As I told you, seeking an agent for my first book was an exercise in frustration. This time I sent out a fax to the guy I wanted, walked back upstairs, and literally as my butt hit the seat got a phone call back from him. A week later, four publishers were bidding for it, and we sold the book, The Blue Zone, and two others."

And that's how you become an instant success.

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Bruce Kasanoff (@NowPossible) is an Opportunity Shaper; his web site is Kasanoff.com. To see more of his articles on LinkedIn, click the "follow" button below.