Yesterday, I invited Karen Salmansohn for a live conversation.
I knew her as a brilliant Substack writer. Witty. Deep. Slightly irreverent in the best way. What I didn’t know was this:
She has been writing books for 35 years.
She has sold over 2 million copies.
And she has built a platform of more than 51,000 subscribers on Substack in one year.
Her recent book is called “Your To-Die-For Life: How to Maximize Joy and Minimize Regret . . . Before Your Time Runs Out.”
When I asked Karen why she wrote Your To-Die-For Life, she said something that stopped me:
“I didn’t write it because I had a near-death experience.
I wrote it because I was having too many near-life experiences.”
By near-life experiences, she means:
Scrolling instead of living.
Sitting at dinner while mentally somewhere else.
Worrying about the future. Replaying the past.
Being adjacent to your life instead of inside it.
She wrote this book soon after her father passed away. That shock made Karen come face-to-face with her own mortality. Everything shifted. She gave her father his eulogy.
And afterward, she had a haunting thought:
“You can sum up a life in minutes. What would mine say?”
So she wrote her own eulogy.
Not the one that would be read if she died tomorrow.
But the one she wanted to grow into.
That became the seed of the book.
When death becomes an alarm clock
I had a similar story to share with Karen.
I had been wanting to write for a long time, but didn’t have the courage to publish anything I wrote. I thought it was not “good enough.” I was writing anonymously on a blog I had created. I kept promising myself that one day, I would start publishing my stories under my own name.
In July 2018, I bought a domain name with my own name on it. That very day, I went to visit my father in the nursing home. Within two hours, he was gone. One minute here. One minute not. I couldn’t comprehend it.
In the days that followed, I journaled through grief. And I made a decision. If life is this finite, I will stop postponing what I love. I would write. That moment shaped everything for me.
Karen and I came to the same conclusion from similar tragedies.
Mortality awareness doesn’t depress you.
It clarifies you.
Karen reverse engineered seven regrets of the dying, that she decided to address while living.
Karen did something fascinating. She researched the top regrets of the dying. Then she reverse-engineered them.
Instead of asking:
“What do people regret at the end?”
She asked:
“What must I live now to prevent that regret?”
From that came seven core values:
Authentic – Live true to yourself.
Brave – Get uncomfortable.
Curious – Ask better questions.
Discerning – Stop wasting your time.
Empathically Loving – Love expansively.
Fun – Yes, fun is a core value.
Grateful – Especially when life is hard.
When she listed them, I felt something shift. Because here’s what struck me: At your funeral, no one reads your LinkedIn profile. They don’t pass around your Google calendar.
They tell stories. And those stories reveal your core values. That insight alone is worth the price of her book.
A book is never just a book
Here’s where our conversation turned toward business.
Karen said something I’ve been telling my own students for years:
“Your book is not just a book.”
A book is:
A speaking career
A coaching practice
A movie deal
A newsletter
A platform
Her first novel was published by St. Martin’s Press.
It was eventually optioned by Miramax after actress Marisa Tomei personally called her.
Yes. Called her.
Why?
Because Karen did something most people are too afraid to do.
She walked her manuscript to a theatre box office where Marisa was performing.
Left it there with a note for Marisa. And months later, the phone rang. Marisa was on the line. She read her book and loved it.
That is bravery in action. And that pattern continued throughout her career. She wrote the bold business book How to Succeed in Business Without a Penis
It became a bestseller. It opened global speaking doors for her. It connected her with people like Madonna and Arianna Huffington.
Not because she was louder. But because she was braver.
Authority is not a polish. It’s courage.
I asked her, “What would you say to writers who are not brave enough to reach out? To pitch? To build?”
Her answer was simple:
“Be more afraid of dying without living bravely.”
That is mortality awareness applied to marketing. And this is where so many authors get stuck. They hate the word “marketing.” They associate it with manipulation.
Karen reframed it beautifully:
“It’s not marketing. It’s sharing something you’re excited about. I call it exuberance.”
A brilliant replacement for the word “marketing.” When you believe in your message deeply enough, sharing becomes generosity. Not selling.
Why this matters for you
On Substack, you often only see the present version of someone. You see Karen as a sharp writer with tens of thousands of subscribers.
What you don’t see is:
35 years of writing
Rejections
Bold outreach
Reinvention
Personal loss
And continuous courage
Substack is an equalizer.
It doesn’t care how many books you’ve written before. It cares how you show up today. And Karen shows up with humor, depth, and clarity about what matters.
The bigger lesson
Here’s what stayed with me after we ended the live:
Personal tragedy can become creative clarity.
A book can crystallize your philosophy.
And that philosophy can become a platform.
Karen didn’t just write about mortality. She embodied the lesson.
She asked:
“If life is finite, what must I say?”
If you’re sitting on a book idea…
If you’ve been postponing it…
If you’re having near-life experiences instead of real ones…
Take this as your alarm clock.
Because one day, someone will summarize your life in five minutes. What do you want them to say?
That is exactly why I run the 30-Day Write Your Business Cohort.
The next cohort begins on 5 March.
Over 30 days, you will:
Clarify the message you want to stand for
Structure a short, strategic book around it
Draft your manuscript
Map how it turns into influence, income, and impact
You will not be doing this alone. You will be guided step by step, with accountability and support, just like Bernadette.
Need more information, check it here.
If you are ready to design your second act deliberately, instead of drifting into it, join us.
This could be the month you stop wondering what’s next and start defining it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Thank you Geetika, Gunnar Habitz, Dana Laquidara, Marjorie Pezzoli, Nabanita, and many others for tuning into my live video with Karen Salmansohn! Join me for my next live video in the app.
