Author Rebecca Hamilton Shares How Her Most Expensive Mistakes Made Her the Most Money

Anna’s Obsession

I’m very excited to have New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Hamilton on my blog today to share some pretty incredible insights from her career. This post is all about rising above your challenges to become a victor against the odds, and I for one am HERE FOR IT! Really goes to show how your mindset has more influence in your life than your situations alone. Take it away, Rebecca! Thanks for having me here! I’m excited to share this post with you. It’s something that’s been on my heart for a long time, but it took me a while to really sit with it because I want to make sure I share these insights with the sensitivity that people who are struggling deserve. As a little background for those who don’t know me, I started my adult life homeless and lived in poverty for about a decade because I finally took control and changed my life. But before that happened, if anyone had told me I could improve my life or that it was up to me, I would have been pissed! I would have told them they don’t understand me, or that I’m already trying everything I can and it’s just not enough. So, I recognize what a tough topic this is. And to be honest, I had to go through several struggles to learn the lesson fully. Because the truth is, you really CAN’T control everything that happens in your life. You can do everything right, and bad things can still happen. However, I’ve learned you CAN control how you handle your hardships. And that can be what eventually moves you in the right direction. So, I’m going to get a little personal now, and that’s the scariest part of writing this article. Putting myself out there. Especially after all I’ve been through. But (deep breath!) here it goes! Growing up, I went through a lot of rejection. My biological father never had anything to do with me, I was often an outcast in school, and without risking saying anything here that might be triggering for anyone, I was a victim of assault in my pre-teen years. This had a big impact on me, and I remember my therapist at the time telling me that it happened because of the way I carried myself. I was confused and angry by that. How I carried myself? I dressed in baggy jeans and oversized sweatshirts. How could I have possibly attracted that kind of attention? It wasn’t until later in life that I understood what she meant by that. I carried myself like an easy target. I was quiet. Reserved. Too afraid to speak up. Awful at setting boundaries. Those are things that didn’t come easily for me to fix. And in fact, the very first time I tried to set a boundary, it cost me nearly $100,000. I’m not able to get into the specifics, but for me, it came down to feeling like people should honor their word and professional agreements and contracts. But if I’m being honest, the real issue came BEFORE that. It came from not setting a boundary sooner. It came from not trusting my instincts. I was such a people-pleaser, that I was willing to go along with things to make people happy even though I shouldn’t have. That’s on ME, and I own it. M Looking back, I should have cut ties with some people sooner. Instead of trying to set boundaries with boundary breakers, I should have cut ties before they even formed. At the same time, setting boundaries IS important. It was a skill I needed to learn. What I didn’t know, though, is that when you dry a boundary with a boundary breaker, they want to “punish” you. I literally had people saying they wanted to “take me down” and “destroy me” – all because I set a boundary that contracts should be adhered to. At the time, I was so confused. How could I be in the right but be treated like I was the bad guy? It made me afraid to ever set a boundary again. I soon realized that ALL boundary breakers do this. There will always be backlash when you set a boundary with people like this. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set boundaries. What I had to learn about as that I needed to set boundaries SOONER, and that I needed to do my due diligence to avoid working with people who will ignore boundaries in the first place. I also learned how to set boundaries with GRACE. Which isn’t easy to do when someone is being volatile, but in the end, the one thing I walked away with was the knowledge that I couldn’t let other peoples’ darkness change who I am. I needed to stay true to myself. In all of this, however, I learned something SO much more powerful than how to set boundaries or how to avoid toxic people. I learned how much I was capable of. Because when faced with $100,000 in effort to just share my side of the story (which in the end I didn’t get to do), I had to…you know…actually come up with that money. In a very short amount of time. I learned that if you really need to do something because you feel strongly it’s the right and just thing to do, you will find a way. By being forced to find a way, I learned how to increase my businesses success. I have so far made back 10x what that mistake cost me, using the business strategies I only had to learn BECAUSE of the situation that mistake put me in. There’s a little poetic irony in it all too. Because the core of this issue was as never about what it looked like. It was about a group of online trolls who didn’t want me to help other authors succeed, because they feared it would create competition for their own author careers. They thought if they could stop me, they would stop future authors from being as successful as they were. But because I had to stand up for what was right, I had to overcome the damage they caused, and in doing so, I ended up helping MORE authors. Their effort to stop me from helping a few authors a year resulted in me helping hundreds a year instead! I’ve now helped over 500 authors become New York Times, USA Today, or Wall Street Journal bestseller. I’ve helped more authors than any other coach to hit six figures a year. And I now have several clients on track to hit SEVEN figures by the end of 2022, for the 2022 calendar year. I was faced with the biggest financial hardship of my life. There’s nothing I could have done to avoid it (other than not set a boundary, which wouldn’t have been a good choice for me as a person either). I could have let the depression take over. I could have cowered against the threats made against myself abs my children. I could have given in to the thoughts of taking my own life. But I didn’t do any of that, as much as my bullies wanted me to. So much so that they continued to try for years. Instead, I chose to fight back. I decided I HAVE to overcome this, and so I did. And because it was such a huge thing to overcome, I had to grow by leaps and bounds in a short time. Some might have said what I accomplished was the impossible. But everything impossible until someone does it. That’s what I hope you walk away from with this. When you are faced with a terrible situation, nothing will make it not terrible. But how you handle it can determine what happens next. A terrible event doesn’t have to mean every event to follow will also be terrible. Some of the greatest things can come from something terrible. In fact, I even saw this happen recently. An anthology I was running Facebook ads for lost all their preorders that they took a year to gather due to an Amazon glitch. Those authors rose to the occasion, and in 3 days, got over 5000 new orders to more than make up for the ones they lost. They could have given up. They could have said life is unfair and something bad happened to them and nothing could fix it. But they didn’t. My $100,000 mistake (the mistake of doing business with the wrong people) brought me in $1,000,000 in revenue, helped me teach hundreds of authors how to make $100k-$600k a year, and has now resulted in over 30 service providers having regular work providing services to our client base which has now grown from 3000 clients to over 11,000 clients. Don’t let your mistakes define you. How you handle them can lead to the greatest success…IF you rise to the challenge. So I hope you will! If you have any challenges with your author career, I’d love to help. I offer a variety of FREE resources to get you started too! Just join our FREE author group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sixfigurefiction/ New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rebecca Hamilton is known for being obsessed with helping authors reach their publishing career goals. She created her courses to help get authors like you on the path to success, whether you’re a new author, experienced author, or somewhere in between. Her goal for all of her students is to remove the guesswork and get them from where they are to where they want to be, as quickly as they wish to get there.