Becoming an entrepreneur may appear daunting. What motivates authors to pursue it at all? Frankly, many factors do!

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If you’ve written a book, then you have fans. You can see from your book sale analytics that they exist, but have you heard from any of those fans? Perhaps you got a couple of book reviews on Amazon?

You may have had a book signing at your local bookstore. Great! How many fans showed up?

I’m not being critical. Having six book reviews and a dozen people at your signing would be awesome! Yet, while I was live streaming on YouTube for my last business, I had an average of 62 viewers at any given moment, 79 messages during the show, and thousands of views over time.

Have any fans spotted you and run up to you? They have for me. It can be a little scary.

“Jon? My wife loves you! Will you be here for a few minutes? She’s right over there. Let me go get her. Here, my son Zach will wait with you.” This is an actual conversation with a fan.

Having a fandom can motivate an author to become an entrepreneur. It’s a great feeling, but more than that, it’s inspirational to authors. By meeting fans online and in person, you can learn from them what they like and dislike.

If you meet and talk with enough of them, you’ll be motivated and perhaps gain ideas for your next book or, thinking like an entrepreneur, your next business product.

You may have written a nonfiction book about history or business. You may be, instead, a fiction author of romance or science fiction. Whatever genre, your fans need you, and you need them.

Do you want to change the world with your fiction or nonfiction book? Then, make common cause with your fans. Support them when they support you, and you will gain friendships that will sustain you for years.

Meet and discuss your topic, like debating warp drive versus wormhole travel versus hyperspace flights in one of my other businesses. Offer an online business course or two, like so many businessmen-turned-entrepreneurs. Have a million fans who want to know about the history of politics to understand how we got to where we are today, like Heather Richardson Cox?

Help your fans by standing up for them. Help them and yourself by learning from them. You may fail in important ways, but it is still the right thing to do.

Join your fans in a shared unofficial common cause. Be someone they can respect and depend on. To be that person, that entrepreneur, you’ve got to join forces with your audience.

None of us can do this alone. To be successful, we need to stick together. Some of your fans will become so close that they’re now family.

Waiting for a hero to improve our lives will not save us. You are the hero your fans need. Work with them to make that happen.

Become the person they know, like, and trust. Write fiction or share business insights. Serve your audience, even if it means showing them how to repair antique socks.

You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to try. You don’t have to go to 1964 Mississippi to work to help people register to vote and then die for it, but people have. They just did it, and so can you.

Unite with your fans. Stay loud. Make a difference.

It begins with discovering individuals you believe in and who believe in you. Foster a community of supporters who know, like, and trust you. Now is not the time to be alone but to create something meaningful.

We could discuss the strategy and human strength it took other entrepreneurs to build a community of fans, but I’m providing those examples elsewhere. Maybe you’re an introvert, or more accurately, an Asperger individual, and don’t like meeting people. Then don’t, because that’s what live streams and podcasts are for.

If you’re an author, you’ve overcome the fear of writing a book. You have that strength. Becoming an entrepreneur is no different.

Don’t know how to podcast or video-record yourself? No worries! I’ll show you how.

Being an entrepreneur is no different than writing a book. The fear is mostly in your mind. You can learn how to do this, too.

One of my hard-won abilities is to teach complicated things in a simple way that makes sense. I can take the difficulty out of anything technical, not by doing it for you but by giving you an understanding that becomes yours. You already have the strength and fearlessness to become an entrepreneur with a community of fans.

Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t that difficult once you understand what motivates authors to do so. It’s fun and worthwhile. Your audience needs you, and you need them.

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