By the end of this email, I promise to pay off that subject line.

But to set the scene, let me tell you about one of my guiding principles when it comes my work.

That principle?

I do it MY way.

There’s no better example of this than quitting my job, taking two years to recover from burnout, throwing myself into the world of coaching and personal transformation, then going back to the exact same job I quit two years earlier.

You won’t find that sequence in the latest airport bookstore bestseller.

Yet this sequence sits at the heart of everything I do.

It underpins my daily emails, my 1 on 1 coaching, my coaching programs, my workshops and my soon-to-be-released book Don’t Quit Your Job.

So wherever I can, I actively turn a blind eye to the parroting, the scripts and the step-by-step, cookie cutter instructions which might’ve worked for one person once upon a time but sure as eggs as eggs won’t work for me because it’s not coming FROM me.

“Why don’t you start a podcast Tom!?!”

No, thank you.

I’m doing it MY way. I’m following my nose, my wisdom, my intuition, my inclinations and my own inner sense of direction.

I like how the owner of history’s most epic moustache Frederick Nietzsche put it when he said “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. There is no “right way” to do anything”

The only thing I’ll add:

(which is implicit anyway)

Your way IS the right way. Your way will work for you because it’s yours!

Someone else who does things his way is my pal Jim Roberts.

Jim has just published his second of three dystopian rainforest thrillers and what I love about Jim’s approach is that he’s done it HIS way.

For instance:

*** Jim’s penned a clever critique of modern workplace culture using fiction and MONKEYS when everyone else is theorising and playing the armchair philosopher on Substack, LinkedIn, Facebook and the like

*** Jim took 6 years to write The Monkey State at a time when my inbox is swamped with emails about how to write your book in 7 days using AI

*** Jim’s trilogy is inspired by his personal experience of living life his way (leaving corporate law, going backpacking, taking all manner of random jobs like waste disposal, freelance English tutoring, HR, investment consulting and gardening)

*** Jim’s created HIS world, HIS universe and even HIS lore in his books. For instance, each chapter begins with an epigraph from his own fictional characters and philosophers (incidentally, epigraphs like these are something you usually only find in the merry world of non-fiction, but Jim’s done it his way here too)

*** Jim’s books have eye-catching covers which were created by a real human being (imagine that)

*** Jim’s finishing what he started. He’s just published book two in his trilogy (In Search of Maya) and the third & final book is just about wrapped up. Most budding authors never publish a book. Most budding trilogy writers never get to book three

*** Fittingly, one of the themes running through Jim’s books is the power of trusting your OWN judgment. This isn’t Harry Potter where there’s a right path and a wrong path, where good beats evil and where a scrawny kid who lives under the stairs ends up being fawned over by his magical fan club. Jim writes fiction to show “a” way forward. Not “the” way forward which everyone else is following too

So there you have it.

To celebrate the release of In Search of Maya, Jim has dropped the price on the kindle version of The Monkey State to zero until tomorrow evening.

He’s dropped the price on the kindle version of In Search of Maya to 99p until tomorrow evening too.

If you like the sound of breaking from the pack and doing things your own way, now's the time to explore Jim's jungle.

This link will take you straight to The Monkey State Trilogy at your local Amazon branch:

https://mybook.to/TheMonkeyStateTrilogy