My second book is here! I started writing this post and answering your questions when I first made the announcement about my book pre-order. In three weeks, my Kickstarter campaign was fully funded meaning this book is officially heading to print in early 2019. I am so thankful for everyone who reads and supports this growing small business. In honor of Small Business Saturday, I’m sharing a bit more about this work that is so special to me and why it might be a great read for you or a special entrepreneur in your life. This Little Thing I Do Sometimes has been in the works for nearly two years and I can’t wait to see it come to life in print.
Below, I’ve answered all the questions I received via social media about this process. If your question didn’t get answered in this post, leave me a comment or email me!
What is this book about?
In a nutshell, This Little Thing I Do Sometimes is a blueprint for small business owners. It covers a lot of often overlooked business fundamentals, but focuses on how strategic language and communication must be at the core of your business values. My book addresses various business stakeholders (owner included) and how specific types of communication yield greater success and effective transactions. I share many personal anecdotes from my own experiences as a young business owner – including big wins and major fails – and I shed light on why business ownership is a personal and professional undertaking.
How do publish, format, promote, and do everything it takes?
Outsourcing. I could not make one book – let alone two – happen without hiring an incredible team to help me. For this project specifically, I worked intentionally to hire many local, women-owned businesses to help me create my final product including graphic designers, editors, PR-support, videographers, photographers, etc. I explain this process in a bit more detail in this blog post about my first experience with self-publishing, but I definitely sought out more support in this second endeavor.
How do you carve out time to create this when you have a full time job?
It sounds all too cliche, but I believe you intentionally and unintentionally prioritize things that are important to you. This book matters to me. I’ve started and stopped and started working on this project dozens of times over the last two years. When I decided I wanted to be more serious about making it happen, I wrote 1,000 words a day for 30 days. That gave me a tremendous foundation for getting the first draft ready for editing. I also made the most of down time and recorded myself while driving using voice to text. Doing so helped me use time more effectively so that I didn’t feel like I was working 24/7 to make it happen. Giving yourself a little grace on the timeline when it means that much is so essential. Also, if you’re creating something this intricate, make sure it is not so ephemeral that it will be obsolete if you have to take longer than you planned.
How do you know you have something important to share?
Your intrinsic motivation to create something and confidence in yourself is where all productivity begins. The validation of that creation then comes externally. I was really motivated to pull this book together when I started teaching sold-out workshops for small business owners in my area. Every month for almost a year, I had dozens of individuals sitting around a table who paid to hear me talk about my experiences and provide advice. I also started to receive more requests for individual consults that I simply didn’t have the time to take on. Writing this book allows me to serve those people who I can’t take on as clients right now or that don’t live close enough to attend a class. This book has all my best advice rolled into one neat product.
Between receiving copious requests and simply feeling really compelled to invest in myself and one of my biggest strengths (writing), I decided there were enough reasons to put my work out into the world. There is always going to be some element of risk involved – emotional, financial, professional, etc – but identifying a need or gap in society that you can genuinely contribute to filling makes it worth the risk.
How many words is too many?
Lengths of books totally depend on genre. For me, I’m aiming for this final version to be roughly 60,000 words. My first book was closer to 40,000 because it was intended to be a quick read for a younger audience looking for snippets of advice and reference. While still experiential and anecdotal in nature, this book has greater detail and covers a wider range of topics than my first title. I knew I needed to consider writing books after several blog posts became thousands of words long. Quickly, blog posts developed into full length chapters that made much more sense for print audiences rather than internet readers.
Feeling tiny in a big sea of other people’s successes is part of the process you have to trust when you put your work into the world.
As someone with so many passions, how did you pick one topic to focus on?
While I have a lot of passions, I think business communication is what I know most about and still excites me. You can possess a lot of practical knowledge, but it doesn’t all light a fire in you that motivates you to write 60,000 words. Being able to help business owners address fundamental problems they have communicating with customers and with themselves brings me so much joy and I have had the privilege to watch my advice play out positively for so many of my own clients. I knew a book about starting a business from scratch was a little too broad and has definitely been done before. Plus, I didn’t want it to feel impersonal and I definitely didn’t want to teach people how to file business taxes. Bleck. Effective communication strategies coupled with my stories and experiences really helped me feel like I had a narrow enough topic under which I could still provide great detail, but not lose readers or have them feel like they were mislead on the premise.
How long did it take you to write?
While not *totally* finished yet, this book has taken a little under two years – off and on. I wish I had a tally of how many literal hours have been spent actually working on it, and a separate tally of how much time I spent thinking about it and creating it in my head. This book took much longer than my first because it felt more personal to me and I had to be more vulnerable to write it by letting people see what I’m really doing inside my small business.
How did you know where to start?
The internet is your friend! When you don’t have a lot of money or *think* you don’t have a bunch of mentors readily available, you have to be willing to do tons of research on the process before making any rash decisions. I knew I could start writing immediately once I was inspired, but I spent months doing leg work and comparing advice from various sources before I made any big purchasing or hiring decisions. Setting a budget and a timeline helped me tremendously. I started with templates and checklists I found online, and modified them to meet my project’s needs and my capacity. Although I changed a lot of my process, taking on book writing a second time was much easier because of my previous experience.
How do you organize your thoughts to be cohesive?
I will admit, I am not the most organized person out there. I work out of dozens of Word documents at a time, cutting and pasting sections here and there until I have something I like. I also forward myself transcripts of voice records from when I use talk to text in the car while driving. From those two “workspaces”, I have a master draft where all the sections that are close to final/ready for editing live. I also always back up all my documents regularly in multiple locations (local and cloud) to protect my work in the event of computer crashes or file corruption.
In terms of cohesion throughout the book, I think framing your ideas with preliminary chapter titles/section themes is a great start. I’ve found myself really prepared to tell a specific story that I felt was important enough to be a full chapter. Often, the story doesn’t make sense alone or I can’t build enough robust advice around the topic, so it needs to be woven into a different section instead. To make it fit, you have to be really willing to rework sections, ideas, and stories and be willing to cut concepts altogether if they don’t seem to have a home. Don’t get too attached to any one small part!
First mock-up of my new book cover by small business Octane Designs
How much is it and where can I buy?
Once in print for public sale, This Little Thing I Do Sometimes retails for $19.95. Right now, you can pre-order a copy here to be one of the first recipients in early February 2019. On my Kickstarter page, there are various reward tiers that can get you some fun products and services as a thank you for backing my book project at various dollar amounts. In mid-February, my book will be for sale via Amazon and other local retailers to be announced soon.
Photos in this post by Ariana Jordan Photography.
