Chandler Bolt

Bolt grew up in Walhalla, South Carolina. He is the younger brother of Seth Bolt, the bassist of the rock band NEEDTOBREATHE.⁠[1][2]

Bolt attended the College of Charleston. At 18 he ran an exterior house-painting business with Student Painters, a franchise-style internship and painting company, taking it to six figures in seven months; in 2012 the business earned him an “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. During the internship he met James Roper, with whom he later wrote books and started his business.⁠[1][3]

In November 2013, Bolt and James Roper co-wrote and self-published The Productive Person, a book on time management. It brought in nearly $7,000 in its first month, which the two split, and then earned $2,000 to $5,000 a month.⁠[3][1]

As a sophomore, Bolt decided to leave the College of Charleston; he estimated that finishing the remaining two years would cost about $7,000 plus living expenses, and said: “If I finish in three and a half years, that would be miserable.” In January 2014, after returning from a study-abroad term in Austria, he left school, saying: “I wanted to make it tough to go back to school, because I didn’t take the decision lightly.” He then lived in Iowa for six months before moving to San Diego, California, in September 2014.⁠[3][1]

The same year, Bolt launched Self-Publishing School, a self-publishing course; its first pilot class enrolled 44 people and brought in $86,000.⁠[1][3]

By April 2015, Self-Publishing School had about 170 students, with two tiers: $1,000 for lifetime access to the materials and community, or $3,000 for personalized weekly coaching. Its email list had about 12,000 people, and revenue for 2015 to that point was about $225,000. Bolt and Roper had co-written four books, and Bolt said he had no plans to finish his degree: “Since dropping out, I’ve written four bestsellers and built the business to over $300,000 on a steep upswing.”⁠[3]

On May 2, 2026, Hard Knocks Business released the video “Day in the Life of a $2M/Year CEO,” in which Bolt gave a tour of selfpublishing.com’s in-person office in Austin, Texas. In the video he said the company had worked remotely for about a decade before deciding to build an in-person office; it had about 60 people, roughly 25 of them in that office and the rest remote, and had published more than 7,000 books, typically two to five a day.⁠[4][4]

In the video he said the painting business he ran in college was the first time he made six figures and gave him the confidence to drop out; he put the company’s revenue over the past decade at roughly $75 million to $80 million, and said the most he had made in a single year was $2.5 million. He recalled borrowing $15,000 from friends and family, and later borrowing a six-figure sum from his parents’ retirement savings to buy out his business partner, which he said made quitting impossible.⁠[4]

Bolt said in the video that one of his books had brought in about $7 million in sales over the previous 12 months, meaning business it generated rather than royalties, and eight figures in total. He called his approach the “evergreen relaunch”: giving away the ebook, audiobook and print copy to generate leads, and using the book in sales, referrals and employee onboarding. He also described what he calls the “five P’s to the eight figure profit bridge”: paying customers, product-market fit, profit, people and process.⁠[4][4]

In the video he also analyzed how Dan MartellDan MartellDan Martell is a Canadian entrepreneur, angel investor, and business coach who founded and sold three software companies: Spheric Technologies, Flowtown, and the mentor advice platform Clarity. He then founded SaaS Academy, a coaching program for software company founders, and is the author of Buy Back Your Time.Open the full entry, Amy Porterfield, Alex Hormozi and Codie Sanchez used book launches to grow their businesses, recommended five books, Extreme Ownership, The Miracle Morning, Scaling Up, Extreme Revenue Growth and Turn the Ship Around, and named Extreme Ownership as the one that had influenced him most. He also mentioned that he was working toward his pilot’s license.⁠[4][4]

If you want to publish a book, stop thinking about it and start writing: a book that hasn’t been written can’t be published, so mind-map it, outline it and start before you feel ready (video at 05:46)⁠[4]

Starting from zero, find a specific, painful problem that customers will pay to solve, add as much value as possible and get paying customers; without customers you have a business idea, not a business (video at 08:30)⁠[4]

Revenue is not profit: he recalled that when the company hit $1 million in revenue he was earning less than a good job would pay, so a business has to learn to be profitable and manage its cash (video at 09:26)⁠[4]

Keep goals visible: yearly, monthly and weekly goals should be in plain sight, or they are hard to remember and harder to hit (video at 11:14)⁠[4]

Passing on the words of a late mentor, he said to have the hard conversations you would rather avoid (video at 24:05)⁠[4]

Besides The Productive Person, Bolt’s books include Published., How To Not SUCK At Writing Your First Book, Book Launch, Breaking Out Of A Broken System and Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs. He hosts two podcasts, the 7 Figure Principles Podcast and the Self Publishing School Podcast, and has given a TEDx talk.⁠[1][2]

selfpublishing.com’s stated mission is to help authors self-publish 100,000 books by 2035.⁠[5]

selfpublishing.com: Official website: https://selfpublishing.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]