Amanda Jetté Knox, writer, speaker and LGBTQ advocate, joins me on The Biz Studio Podcast to talk about the belief that you can’t make money from work you love. Amanda does a lot of advocacy work, a lot of writing, and she and I have had many conversations over the years about what you can do or how what you do works in terms of making money.

For a long time, Amanda did not think she could make money doing what she is doing. According to Amanda, I was the first person to sit me down and say, “Hey listen, you might be wrong about that. Let's talk.” She didn’t believe me at first. The belief that you cannot make money doing something that feels good is one I hear a lot of, and I am glad I was able to help Amanda work through that belief.

Amanda’s story

Amanda is married with four kids. A few years ago she thought she had only sons and a husband, but she was wrong. In 2014, her daughter came out as trans and said she needed to live as a girl. That was a big learning curve for Amanda. And the following year, her spouse of then 18 years came out as well and said, “I'm actually a woman.” Trans issues and LGBTQ issues, in general, became really important to Amanda because her family's safety and wellbeing rely very much on people understanding, accepting and embracing LGBTQ people.

But she really didn't think that her advocacy work and writing was something that was going to make money and as her platform grew and as her family's story grew, it overtook her life and she found herself working for nothing, and any other types of paying jobs she did took away from the important work that she wanted to be doing.

This is something that a lot of advocates deal with. A lot of artists deal with this too because they believe they can't make money off of their art, their writing or doing what they love. Amanda has since learned to challenge that. Doing what you love and what you are passionate about may not make you rich, but a lot of people can at least make something off of it and be able to support themselves and their families.

Making money doing what you love

Many people feel like they have to not make money doing something that feels good or that feels important because there’s no correlation between those two things. But there are a lot of people who will pay to hear your voice and making money when there is money is not a bad thing. It a belief dissonance in your brain; you’re not supposed to be able to make money – you’re just trying to do good and those things don't go together.

Amanda’s bestselling book, Love Lives Here, tells her family's story. Because of this book, people feel connected, people learn, and people understand more about how to step into the world. “It’s always been my hope in all the work I do that I just have people being able to relate to it on their own level and take whatever they need to take away into their lives.”

Believe in yourself

For a long time, Amanda didn’t believe in herself. She didn't think she had anything of value to offer the world. She became a mom at a really young age. She dropped out of high school and unsuccessfully tried to go to university and college. Life just wasn't set up for her to do those things at the time.

For a long time, she thought parenting her children was what she had to offer the world and not much more, and that was heartbreaking to her because when she was growing up, she always had these ideas that she was going to do something and that she was going to help people. She was willing to make a difference and seeing an opportunity where she could make a difference and still keep the lights on is a really wonderful thing.

There is more than one path to success

Amanda graduated high school at age 38, with honours and with the English award. She proudly shares that story with people because people need to hear that they don't have to take one path to success.

In fact, the standard route doesn't work for a lot of us. Amanda became a bestselling author at age 42. And that was when she had her first published book. If she had told herself that it was too late the book never would have happened. Giving up on yourself and thinking that you’re never going to accomplish anything because of this or that is just a story that we are telling ourselves that has no value. We all have value. But we have to believe that and we have to pull it out of ourselves. It’s never too late to achieve your dreams.

Look for opportunities

There’s this idea that when somebody has a bestselling book they're automatically rich and they're making all this revenue. In truth, books are not a great money maker in and of themselves. Having a book is a great accomplishment. Amanda wrote her first book because she felt that her family had a story to tell, and everyone wanted her to write it. But writing books, unless you're Margaret Atwood or Stephen King, you're probably not making millions of dollars off of them. But books open up other opportunities. You can speak and earn money speaking and you can launch other platforms. You can tell your story in different ways, which can lead to other books. They can also lead to teaching opportunities. There are so many ways that you can use authorship to build up your own platform in your own career.

But don’t write a book just to build your brand. Amanda believes it’s disingenuous and it's going to show in your work. You have to have passion for what you're talking about. So, if the side bonus is that it raises your credit a bit, that's awesome. But when readers read your book, they want to feel that you put your heart into it. So, put your heart into it. And anything else that comes out of that is a bonus.

Find support

It took a long time for Amanda to feel like this is something that she should do and to realize that she doesn’t need a “real job.” But, thanks to the support of her wife, family and close friends she believes it now. She has learned it is important to have two or three or more people that will pick you up because it can be hard sometimes to get there, but it feels really good to get there.

We all have that little voice inside our head telling us we're not good enough. We need to acknowledge and be mindful that it's there and also realize that it's not telling the truth and then we need to know how to come out of it instead of listening to it.

Amanda easily gets 10 times more love online than she does hate. And she gets a lot of people that she knows in her personal life make sure to tell her all the time that they care about her and that they love her and that they're here for her. The work she is doing is really important and she believes to her core that this is what she is supposed to be doing with her life – even on the hardest of days.

Amanda’s advocacy work and writing are paying the bills. It’s an amazing success story and she has lots more to come. For more information on Amanda’s work, visit https://www.amandajetteknox.com/