Ruby Dhal is a bestselling author who has written five books of poetry and prose. When she isn’t working on her next book, she’s sharing content with her social media following of over 500,000 people. Her posts get millions of impressions each week, putting Ruby’s words in front of more people every day.
Ruby shares raw and honest content about love, heartbreak, moving on, and starting over. Readers around the world turn to her social media accounts to find words of healing. She’s also written guest posts for notable women’s health, lifestyle, and wellness magazines. Ruby also hosts writing and mental health workshops and performs at poetry nights.
Ruby’s Road to Success
Ruby immigrated to the United Kingdom with her parents and brother when she was only three years old. A mere year later, her mother passed away. Although her dad did his best, Ruby usually felt alienated from the world because of the things she experienced.
From a young age, books were an escape for Ruby. They allowed her to take short vacations from her life, where she’d be swept away in the words of a book. Books eventually became more than an escape for Ruby, who developed a deep love for reading and writing. Even when she was a young girl, Ruby knew she wanted to write stories for other people to read. She dreamed of becoming a published writer.
In 2016, Ruby was a part-time employee and a full-time student working on her master’s degree. As a way to heal from some hurtful experiences, she started an Instagram account with the intention of sharing her feelings.
In her wildest dreams, Ruby didn’t imagine her social media page gaining the traction it did. Within a year, several of her posts went viral. Her words were shared by well-known celebrities and personalities from around the world.
Although Ruby was working on the first draft of her novel, her sudden social media success took her on a detour. In 2017, she published her first poetry book. Ruby paid £250 for the cover design, printing, and distribution costs for this self-published work. In the first month, she sold 350 copies, an amazing feat considering she hardly had any followers at that point! When she considered the fact that the average novel only sells 900 copies in its lifetime, Ruby was thrilled with her results.
Ruby put the proceeds from her book into a separate bank account that she used to build on her publishing success. She used a portion of her sales to buy ads on Facebook. When those ads led to more sales, she reinvested some of the money into purchasing more ads.
Growing Success
Those 350 copies were only the beginning. Today Ruby has sold over 30,000 copies of her books in less than a year. That includes selling 20,000 copies of her most recent book, which put her onto the bestseller list. She continues to write and publish about one book each year, with five books now under her belt.
Ruby is one of only seven South Asian women in the world to be featured in Harper’s Bazaar Writer Hotlist (2017). Today she continues to write content about love, heartbreak, moving on, letting go, healing, and mental health. She’s actively working on writing her sixth book, which will be her first easy-to-digest self-help book.
When she isn’t writing, Ruby provides one-to-one healing sessions on Zoom and teaches workshops at schools and universities. She is an ambassador for two charities and wants to use her platform to make the world a better place.
Ruby’s Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Ruby’s writing may be a six-figure business today, but she started with nothing. She has personally funded everything she’s built, and she’s happy to share her roadmap to success with other aspiring entrepreneurs.
Her biggest piece of advice is this: find your purpose and run with it. She discovered that writing and helping others was her purpose, which made her business a lifestyle choice instead of a mere job. She doesn’t dread work because she loves what she does and why she does it.
She encourages people to make a detailed plan once they’ve discovered their purpose. Make a 5-year or 10-year plan and break everything down into small, actionable steps. Once a person has those steps written down, they have their own roadmap to success. All that’s left is carving out some time every day to work toward their dream.
