Anastasia Schmalz and Tomer Arwas are money mindset and startup coaches, and the creators of the blog Generation Nomads. Having reached financial independence under 30 through real estate and stocks investments, they left their cushy corporate careers to travel the world for 18 months without working or touching their savings.
Before founding Generation Nomads, Anastasia worked as a new product development consultant and Tomer worked as an IT project manager in Fortune 500 companies. Combined, they have over 10 years of experience in mentoring startups and scale-ups in various industries and managing over USD 1 million digital innovation and IT implementation projects.
On their blog, they have garnered a monthly readership of 15,000. Their Freedom Framework is used to teach millennials how to design and reach a freedom lifestyle. In The 9-5 Escape Plan program, they help aspiring entrepreneurs create and acquire passive income assets.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
We meet brilliant minds on a daily basis who feel stuck in their 9-5 job and want to do more with their passions. Most of them hold back because they don’t feel ready to take their passionate ideas to the next level. They are not sure where to start and instead wait for the perfect moment to come along when they can make the transition to bring their idea into life.
We have both worked in Fortune 500 companies and were exposed to the highest standards of systems and techniques used for new product and service development. We were fortunate to experience how new business ideas are turned from a rough sketch on the whiteboard to a scaled-up business.
Anastasia has led and coached multiple teams in creating new services, turning her company’s vision into tested ideas that are ready to launch and scale. She has become a key figure in the Netherlands startup coaching ecosystem and was asked to be a judge during the Startup Bootcamp competition in Berlin.
Tomer has specialized in Design Thinking and Agile methodologies. As an agile coach, he led teams in testing new ideas and implementing them through an iterative process.
Using our combined 10 years of experience in developing new business ideas and bringing them to market, we want to help those who want to bring their idea to the next level do it sooner rather than later.
In our book, we provide the tools and techniques that will help them feel confident and take their idea from a vague vision to a tested business idea that is ready to scale.
The focus is creating a business where freedom is a priority rather than another 9-5 job. By helping those who want to turn their passions into their freedom business, the world will receive the gifts of passionate entrepreneurs.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
The book is a blueprint for turning a vague idea into a tested business. It is a step-by-step action plan with templates, worksheets, and exercises that the reader can use to go through the process. By going through the exercises that we have compiled in the book, the reader will have the confidence to take their business idea to the next level.
We believe that the most important thing you need to do to bring your dreams into reality is to take action. We hope that the reader will feel compelled to take action and create something they are passionate about for the world.
What are the top three tools you are currently using to write, publish, and promote your books?
The book is a self-published e-book at the moment, and we are looking at options for creating a print version as well. In the process of writing, designing, and publishing the book, we have used some great tools that helped us get a professional-looking e-book out to the world.
As we have created the book completely on our own, without an editor or publisher, we found some tools for improving our writing and readability. Besides a word processor to check for spelling errors, we have used the Hemingway Editor to assess and improve the readability of the book. The Hemingway Editor assesses the readability of your writing and highlights parts of the text that can be improved. Running our manuscript through the Hemingway Editor helped us to improve the overall readability of the book.
We aimed to make the book as visual as possible so that it is fun to read and keeps the reader engaged throughout. The book also includes a variety of templates and worksheets that the reader can fill in while working through their idea. This made the design of the book an essential part. For this, we have used Canva, which is a web-based simple to use design tool. It helped us create enticing and unique look and feel for the entire book.
One of our promotion strategies is a quiz that helps a potential reader assess the current state of their passion business idea. Once a blog visitor completes the quiz, they are redirected to the result of their answers, where we also introduce our book as a potential next step.
What were the top mistakes you made writing or publishing your book?
As this is the first book we have written, we had a lot to learn along the way. We have written over 100 blog posts over the last 3 years, however, writing a book is very different.
One thing that we know we could have done better is set a clear scope upfront for the book. Without having a clear scope, you can go on forever adding more bits and pieces to the book. We spent a lot of time adding to the book because we did not have a clear limit of what we should cover and what we should not cover. We did have an outline and we did know what we wanted to include, but the more important part is to stick to that as your scope and also know upfront what you will not include.
Can you share a snippet that is not in the blurb or excerpt?
“Whether you are waiting 5 or 15 years, you will never feel entirely ready to go after a big dream, adventure, or change.
Any transformation starts with making one decision. You can decide now to become the person you were hoping to be one day. You can make the choice to take the first step and trust that, once you start walking, the journey will unfold itself.
Who was your younger self hoping you will be one day?
Good news: You can stop waiting and start becoming that person today.”
Can you share some of the marketing techniques that have worked for you when promoting your book?
During the first week our book was out, we gave our e-mail subscribers and Instagram community an early bird discount. This has worked very well in getting the book in people’s hands at first and start to receive reviews.
Setting a time limit on the early bird discount creates the urgency for people to purchase it faster rather than later.
Besides this, we have also promoted the book before we launched it. We set up a waiting list for the book, where people who were interested could subscribe with their email addresses. We shared the behind-the-scenes of creating the book with our community and we kept our community in the loop as the book was evolving. This created anticipation for when the book finally came out.
Can you recommend a book, a podcast, and a course for entrepreneurs and why?
There are some great podcasts about entrepreneurship that we love to listen to. One that we find particularly inspiring is How I Built This with Guy Raz. This show really digs into the starting phase of a business and allows you to have a real behind-the-scenes view of how the business was created before it was a huge success.
The first stages of a business always seem to be a mystery. We always wonder, what made this entrepreneur so successful. Through this podcast, you get to hear the real stories, which are usually quite relatable.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to finish writing your book?
The main thing that helped us stay motivated to finish writing our book is the desire to spread our message. In our Instagram community, we interact with so many brilliant people that struggle to take their idea off the ground. We wanted to create an easy-to-use blueprint that will help them propel their ideas off the ground and start their passion business. We hope that through this book, we will help many more aspiring entrepreneurs create their freedom businesses.
Having a clear vision of our target persona and our desire to help them was the main motivator.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Systems, systems, systems! Creating systems to do your work and intentionally managing your time will have the biggest impact on your productivity. Especially with writing a book, you need to manage your energy. You cannot spend all day writing.
You need to plan at a certain time of the day that you will work on the book. Limit that time and keep it the same every day. This will get you used to work on the book during those hours, which will help you to bring the right level of energy needed to work on the book. Additionally, having a limited time will make you much more efficient. You will be amazed how much you could write in an hour if this is all the time you had in a day.
If you only had 1000 dollars to promote a new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Paid ads for a freebie that would lead to the book. In fact, the best freebie we find is a quiz that helps potential readers assess their current situation. Learning about themselves and giving them tailored advice is so valuable. Once they receive this advice, they are more likely to be interested in purchasing your book. Make a subtle transition to the book in the advice you provide after the quiz.
What is your favorite quote?
Imagine a new story for your life and start living it.
– Paulo Coelho
How can we get in touch with you?
We recommend a visit to our blog GenerationNomads.com where you can find over 100 blog posts with useful information around online business, passive income, money mindset, and digital nomadism.
For more information about the book, you can visit GenerationNomads.com/book. The best way to keep in touch with us is through Instagram at @generationnomads. Send us a DM and let us know what your freedom business looks like.
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