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We believe in what we call the HAPI Compass, a simple system to keep yourself in balance and headed in the right direction. Point it at your work and your direction comse into view:
- (H)eart: the projects and inspiration that give you goosebumps and will resonate deeply with your customers.
(H)eart HAPI Compass related articles and resources
We believe in what we call the HAPI Compass to building a successful career, which revolves around four points. Point it at your work and your direction comse into view:
Russell Nohelty
- (A)udience: the people orbiting those ideas, ready to championing them, amplify your reach, and fall deeply in love with what you create.
(A)udience HAPI Compass related articles and resources
We believe in what we call the HAPI Compass to building a successful career, which revolves around four points. Point it at your work and your direction comse into view:
Russell Nohelty
- (P)rioritization: Deep focus on one high-leverage move at a time, letting it pay off, then reinvesting the space and cash it creates to widen your runway and buy yourself time for what matters.
(P)rioritization HAPI Compass related articles and resources
We believe in what we call the HAPI Compass to building a successful career, which revolves around four points. Point it at your work and your direction comse into view:
Russell Nohelty
- (I)ncome: Generating the money that sustains your ideal life while fueling the creative work that lights you up.
(I)ncome HAPI Compass related articles and resources
We believe in what we call the HAPI Compass to building a successful career, which revolves around four points. Point it at your work and your direction comse into view:
Russell Nohelty
Plot those four points, and you have more than a framework. You have a living compass. When you start to drift in one of the four points, you can use the others to center yourself again.
What’s a 🦄Hapitalist🦄?
Welcome to Hapitalist, where we’re all about helping you find the balance between the work that feeds your soul and money that pays your bills. The question we are constantly asking is “What if all this business stuff was fun and rewarding?”
Russell Nohelty
(A)udience
Audience is all about finding the people who resonate with your work and are eager to pay for it, or at least tell people about it. These articles can help you on your way.
Resources to help you
While we have an extensive archive of articles about building a writing career, we also offer several other resources to help entrepreneurs build better businesses. Some of these are available for free. Others are available only to paid members. Articles are listed below these resources.
Building your audience
- ​​Build a Superfandom course​
- ​​Create Profitable Facebook Ads course​ ​​​
- ​​How to run a viral giveaways to build your mailing list course​
- ​How to set up and run an awesome anthology course​
- ​How to Build Your Creative Career​
- ​How to Become a Successful Author​
- ​Advanced Growth Tactics for Authors​
- ​How to Build an Audience from Scratch minicourse​
- ​Complete Creative data archive
Developing a stronger mindset/strategy
- 🎴Hapitalist Business Tarot
- ​How to Thrive as a Writer in a Capitalist Dystopia​
- ​Publishing is Broken, But It Doesn’t Have to Break Us​
- ​How to Build Your Creative Career​
- ​How to Become a Successful Author​
- ​Advanced Growth Tactics for Authors​
- ​10x your productivity course​
- ​Write a Great Novel course​
- ​Hapitalist podcast​
- ​The Complete Creative podcast archive​
- ​Complete Creative data archive
Articles
Recalibrating your HAPI Compass
Hi, In this webinar, I walked through how to use the HAPI Compass as a diagnostic tool to identify your actual constraint right now.
Russell Nohelty
Everything you need to know to build an audience from scratch
Hi, I have a sizable audience now, but it wasn’t always that way. For years, I launched products to crickets again and again. My first two crowdfunding launches on Indiegogo didn’t even make 20% of their goal…combined!
Russell Nohelty
Creating lifelong customers by embedding psychological buying triggers deep into your brand
Hi, At their heart, successful brands create deep connections through layers of meaning and emotional resonance. Just as a garden grows through careful cultivation rather than mechanical planting, brands flourish when each element is thoughtfully developed to engage customers on multiple levels.
Russell Nohelty
Allow me to re-introduce myself...
Hi, My name is The LA Grind. (rip 2011)
Russell Nohelty
How 30 people can beat 1,000,000
Listen on the app of your choice
Russell Nohelty
Conventions, conferences, and pop-up events for every Ecosystem
Hi, Before you read this, it’s would be very helpful to learn about your SCALE path and your base Ecosystem.
Russell Nohelty
Email marketing for every Ecosystem
Hi, Before you read this, it’s would be very helpful to learn about your SCALE path and your base Ecosystem.
Russell Nohelty
Everything you need to know to build an audience from scratch
Hi, I have a sizable audience now, but it wasn’t always that way. For years, I launched products to crickets again and again. My first two crowdfunding launches on Indiegogo didn’t even make 20% of their goal…combined!
Russell NoheltyThe 2 things that need to happen before you enjoy marketing
Hi, I’ve worked with hundreds, heck, probably thousands, of authors over the years and (despite their protestations) all of them like marketing.
Russell Nohelty
Problem-market fit
Hi, Lining up the right problems with the right solutions is something that everyone deals with all the time. Since this is where I live the vast majority of my existence, I thought I would share with you the three questions I ask all the time, and have been the most helpful reframes inside my community.
Russell Nohelty
How to succeed at live events
Russell Nohelty
How to amplify your message
Hi, At the beginning of my career, when nobody paid attention to what I said, it was helpful to talk a lot to get people used to the cadence of my work, to know I had something to say, and frankly to make them pay attention.
Russell Nohelty
Constructing your value ladder
Hi, What do we actually sell to people who enter our ecosystem? That’s where a value ladder becomes an essential component of your environment.
Russell Nohelty
Stop Playing the Part of a Marketer to Sell Your Books
Hi, Today, I am excited to bring you a new contributor from One Brilliant Arc (OBA) to talk about marketing your book authentically.
Russell Nohelty
The Golden Age of Weird is here
Hi, Melissa Storm is one of my favorite humans, along with being one of the most talented author support humans on the planet.
Russell Nohelty
The Dresden Files paradox
Hi, I love writing very weird books, but weird books don’t tend to sell…except, they also kind of do when people resonate with them, right? So, how do you actually make your weird book work, like Babel, instead of fall flat?
Russell Nohelty
How authors can stand out by defying logic
Hi, The publishing industry, like most sectors of our economy, operates on careful calculations of profit and loss. Publishers need to justify every investment, agents need to secure favorable deals, and authors are expected to treat their work as a product to be protected and monetized. Capitalism's core assumption is that rational actors will always maximize their financial returns. But what if breaking these rules could actually help authors succeed?
Russell Nohelty
The Best Audience Development Tips of Your Life
Hi, I’m delighted to be here guesting for Russell’s community here at The Author Stack.
Claire Venus ✨
From stranger to evangelist in 5 emails
Listen/subscribe on Apple
Russell Nohelty
The exact opening sequence for my Substack>Kit automation workflow
Hi, If you’ve been following The Author Stack for a while, you probably noticed the 14-part email sequence that goes out after you subscribe.
Russell Nohelty
Being so you that no one can replicate it with One Brilliant Arc
Hi, I was a guest on a livestream by my friends at One Brilliant Arc (OBA) this week, and I said a lot of words. Here are some of my best takeaways. I was pretty animated in this one, and I’m still on fire even now typing this bit to you.
Russell Nohelty
11 steps to supercharging your writing career with our Author Stack framework
Hi, I’ve written a lot about author growth in my career. So much that it often paralyzes people from taking action. While we have loads of books and frameworks, I’ve been trying to collect my most powerful concepts together into one place to help you stack processes on top of each other to generate outmoded success.
Russell Nohelty
Three counterintuitive ways to boost engagement during your crowdfunding campaign
Hi, Most writers jump into crowdfunding with high hopes. We want to connect with our audience, rally a tribe of enthusiastic readers, and raise enough funds to bring our books to life. The standard approach is to make a polished pitch, share your campaign link, and hope your community grows. Yet despite good intentions, it can feel like your efforts fall flat. The marketplace is crowded, your inbox is quieter than you’d like, and those well-meaning “launch day” posts often slip by unnoticed.
Russell Nohelty
How can other people like my writing if I don’t even like myself?
Listen/subscribe on Apple
Russell Nohelty
How to Get Actual Feedback from Beta Readers (Not Just 'I Loved It!')
Hi, I get a lot of questions about beta readers — how to find them, how to work with them, and most importantly, how to get feedback that’s actually useful (instead of the classic “I loved it!” with no follow-up).
Russell Nohelty
How to automate importing Substack subscribers into Kit through Gmail
Hi, Substack doesn’t have an API, making it one of the most frustrating platforms on the internet. Seriously, you can’t even use Zapier, which I have honestly never seen before. However, there is a workaround, in case you, like me, want to actually run a business through Substack, and needs things like welcome sequences, segmentation, and/or tagging.
Russell Nohelty
Why Substack growth posts work (and yours don't)
Hi, You've seen them everywhere: those viral Substack growth posts that rack up thousands of likes and shares. The ones that make growing an audience look effortless. The ones that leave you wondering why your posts about growth and success never seem to catch fire the same way.
Russell Nohelty
How clearing blocks and connecting with the right people transforms your writing journey
This speech is adapted from the opening keynote I gave at Writer MBA Con 2025.
Russell Nohelty
From chaos to connection: Embracing audacity and ease on your creative path
This speech is adapted from the opening keynote I gave at the Future of Publishing Mastermind in March 2025.
Russell Nohelty
The power of being soft in a sharp, pointy world
Hi, “Kindness is soft, and soft is weak.”
Russell Nohelty
How to network at a conference
I’ll be at Craft + Commerce next week and my wife is always baffled by how well I network, so I thought I would put it all out there. I’m very good at networking, mainly because I watched the best networkers I know and learned from them and then built upon what they showed me to make it my own.
Russell Nohelty
365 Simple Ways to Talk About Your Writing and Keep Readers Engaged All Year
Hi, Marketing your book can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re worried about sounding repetitive or running out of ideas. But successful book marketing is about consistent, creative engagement, not just pushing sales.
Russell Nohelty
Yes, writing a great book people read is marketing, too
Hi, Lots of people tell me they hate all marketing and "only want to write the next book" which is wild because, and I know this is gonna get your dander up if you're new to this, but writing the next book is marketing.
Russell Nohelty
Always sell the transformation
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
Why (and how) to do a roundup
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
Platform, audience, and assets
Hi, We all want to have a huge book launch, right. What if your launch isn’t a banger, though?
Russell Nohelty
"How do I market myself without feeling gross about it?"
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
The. Only. Good. Marketing. Is. The. Marketing. You. Do.
Hi, The best way to make money as an author is to not to grin and bear something you don't like. It's to find something you already innately understand and obsess about learning how to use it more effectively.
Russell Nohelty
Mastering the art of attention as a writer
Hi friend,
Russell Nohelty
Why (and how) I fell back in love with advertising
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
Birthing a Substack and giving it life with doula Nikko Kennedy
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
The bullseye method for growing an audience
Russell Nohelty
Where to invest your time and money when building an audience for your writing
Russell Nohelty
How to supercharge your growth by putting together a world-class virtual conference... and have fun doing it
Hi, I talk a lot about building a devoted audience that cares about your work. There are several strategies that can help fuel your growth, but one I don’t talk about much is running a virtual conference…even though it’s one of the single best and most cost-effective ways to cement your authority in a space quickly while providing an epic amount of value to your ideal customers.
Russell Nohelty
How to get 5,000-20,000 new readers for your Substack publication every month
Russell Nohelty
7 unconventional ways to succeed as a writer
Hi, We've all come across classic writing advice like be consistent, engage your audience, find your authentic voice, and so on. It's solid guidance, but it’s also what literally every other writer on the planet is doing. If you wanna break through, you often have to break the mold.
Russell Nohelty
The 4 major ways businesses "break", and how to fix them
Hi, Do you know the feeling where you show up, “do the work”, and nothing’s happening. You scroll your feed and see other businesses using the exact same tools, and think:
Russell Nohelty
Turning your natural writing patterns into audience growth
Hi, I spend a lot of time on consulting calls talking people through how to get more people reading their work. Often, this is about turning subscribers into paid members, but just as often it’s about getting people to subscribe to their publication in the first place.
Russell Nohelty
Why I cut 11,756 people from my email list
Hi, I’m the first to admit that the gall of this headline is privileged AF. Most people reading this would probably kill to have a fraction of the people I just cut from my list, but hopefully by the end of this you’ll realize I’m not a special snowflake and you don’t have to be anointed by the growth fairies to grow.
Russell Nohelty
Scale your author business like a startup
Russell Nohelty
Rating popular Substack strategies
Listen/subscribe on Apple
Russell Nohelty
How I grew my Tiktok to 130,000+ #booktok readers before the release of my newest book
Hi friends,
Russell Nohelty
Growth, (online) engagement, and the diamond ring
Russell Nohelty
Empower vulnerability with your audience
What does it mean to truly be vulnerable with your audience? For me, it was exposing something shameful on LinkedIn—about my younger brother’s incarceration.
Claire Tak
My Google Search Console monthly stats
Google is still the #1 search platform in the world by a wide margin, so it behooves you to be listed and found on it, not just sometimes, but every time. You can help that along by making sure your website is listed on Google Search Console.
Russell Nohelty
How I lit $28,000 on fire with ads, and what it taught me about building a sustainable author business
Hi, My saga with ads is long and sorted. There have been over a half dozen articles about my experience dropping over $50,000 on ads over the past year. I think this one will close it out, but maybe not.
Russell Nohelty
The Secret Power of Book Reviews: Why They Matter and How to Get Them
Hi, A lot of you ask me about book reviews and, frankly, I kind of suck at them. I know they are important, but I just have a lot of stuff going on to manage them. However, my friend Rossana Corniel from Booksprout lives for book reviews.
Russell Nohelty
Did you find what you are looking for? If not, you can use the below to try another section.
Or, you can have yourself a reset by going to our resources page.
Available resources
While we have an extensive archive of articles about building a successful business, we also offer several other resources to help authors build better businesses. Some of these are available for free. Others are available only to paid members.
Russell Nohelty
If you’re ready to dive deeper, we have an extensive list of resources to help help you get your HAPI COMPASS back in alignment.