Episode 157 transcript:

00:04 Okay, are you ready for this? I wrote a book in three weeks. Yes. Really? Okay. So before I tell you more about that, I didn't actually write it first, not in the traditional sense of pen to paper.

00:18 Anyway, I spoke it, it's an audio book. I made an audiobook in three weeks, and I feel like there's a story to be told here or how I did it.

00:31 And I'll share more about that in a second. But first, a little bit more about the audiobook. So eventually it is going to be a handheld, paperback, maybe hard cover version, and I'll be working on that next.

00:42 But for now, I made an audio because speaking is what comes naturally and easier, more to me than putting a pen to paper and writing.

00:55 And I get that not everybody's like that. But also I don't believe that all books have to be pen to paper or typed, typed out first.

01:07 And that's not what the industry of book writing says. I have been, it's been on my heart to write a book for six years, and I knew there was something there, I just didn't know what it was gonna be yet.

01:20 And then last November, if you're familiar with NaNoWriMo, which is, I think that's what it's called in November, there's like this whole writing thing and people who want to write a book, the energy of November is the people write a book in November and I think it's like 5,000 words per day, 30 days.

01:40 Do the math. How many words is that? I don't remember exactly how many words. Maybe it's not 5,000. But ultimately it boils down to like by the end of the 30 days, you have enough words for a book.

01:52 So last November of 2021, I kind of did that. I did not write every single day and I, I found it really a struggle and I kept wanting to speak my book into Otter, which is the app that I use sometimes to talk things into.

02:08 I wanted to do that first and I kept sending myself the transcriptions and then trying to write based on that.

02:14 And even that kind of felt like I was pushing the wheelbarrow uphill, right? And by the end of last November, I had not the amount of words that NaNoWriMo requires or their, their standard, but I had enough for a book.

02:33 And that's actually not the book that I just released. That's a different book that I don't know when, if or when I'll ever share it.

02:42 If I decide to, I'll go back and speak it because at the end of October of this year, it just kind of came in and I felt these, I've been on a creative wave for a little while now through creating all these new courses and such.

02:57 And so at the end of October, I was like, wait a minute. And I had been taking a course earlier this year about writing a book and publishing a book and such.

03:08 And in that course, I remember somebody asking the experts what they think about speaking the book first, like audiobook first.

03:16 And the experts said, you know, that's just gonna make more work for you. It's gonna make it harder because you will need something to read off of when you're reading the audiobook, so you're gonna have to write it anyway.

03:27 And I felt a little defeated in the moment. I was like, oh man, cuz that sounded so fun for me.

03:34 And I sat on that for eight months. That was in February. And then come late October, I was like, you know what?

03:41 Bs I'm not doing it that way. I'm just gonna do it the way that works for me. And what works for me is speaking and everything else will have to fall into place just because most of the industry, and I, I would imagine that I'm not the only one.

03:57 There are probably other people who have done it this way. Maybe we just don't, I haven't come into contact with them yet.

04:02 But most of the writing industry writes, you sit in front of a computer or a laptop or you, some writers will go check into a hotel to be away from the family, you know, and just have some clear space to write and write for like days, weeks, at a time.

04:16 One of my favorite people in the whole world did that. And she wrote a book in like a week and actually wrote it, I believe.

04:22 And that's amazing. And that just wouldn't work for me. I thought about going to get a hotel for a few days just to kind of bang it all out.

04:33 But that actually distracts me more. I find it really difficult to work from a laptop in a hotel. Like I can't, I can do certain things, but I can't like focus and do all my cre, get all my creative juices flow.

04:44 And part of that, part of the reason why is because I take in other people's energy. And so when you're in a hotel, your proximity to other people, even if there's a wall there, there, your proximity to other people is very close.

04:59 You know, hotel rooms are what, maybe 300, 400 square feet for a big one. So like, their people are very close to you.

05:06 And I can feel people when I'm in a hotel, like I can feel that there's a lot of different energies around me and I can't necessarily focus on creating.

05:16 And so for me, I actually create best when I'm in my, my little cave. It's, it's my office. Like when I'm in my home office, and ideally when I'm by myself, like right now I'm recording this podcast over a break from school.

05:29 So some of the kids, some of my kids are like right outside my door, but when I'm doing like the audiobook, I would create best when I'm here in the house by myself and I don't feel anybody else's energy around, it's like I can tune into my own truth much better.

05:49 And then speaking really helps me zone in on my truth. So about the book, I have to tell you like what it's all about.

05:59 So the book is called Just Start, go Beyond Mindset. Bring your business vision to life. Get started online today. And so the book is kind of a combo between it, it touches on mindset, but it takes you a little bit deeper into the gap where logical thinking and mindset work leaves off.

06:26 And traditional business and traditional, even though it's new online business leave off. And it also helps you give legs to your business dreams.

06:38 So one of my superpowers is helping my community and my clients. They have, you probably have all of these dreams in your head of all these things you wanna do and bring to life.

06:49 And that's really where I light up and how I can help in a big way is helping you give legs to it.

06:56 And so when I started to put the book together I thought, how intro does it need to be? Is this for brand new business owners?

07:03 And the truth is, it's not just for new business owners. So this is for people who are either new to the online space or have been doing work in the online space for some time and want to go deeper and want to really unschool and rethink the way that they approach online business and expand the way that they their perspective.

07:33 So expanding your perspective about online business. So that's really what the first three chapters are all about. The first three chapters help you to layer solid foundational understanding of business.

07:44 So number one is the limits of logic, chapter one. Chapter one is the limits of logic. And in chapter one, I really explained to you how mindset work can be a little bit limiting sometimes and how to go beyond that.

07:57 And then chapter two is clarity and your mission to help you get crystal clear on what you're here to do.

08:04 So that when it comes to, well, how am I gonna do this? You have a path, you have your own internal guidance system, your compass, and that's your clarity.

08:14 And then chapter three is own confidence, because I mean we all need that, myself included, to go against the grain and get out here and do the thing that we're meant to do.

08:25 So the first three chapters are really foundational pieces. And then chapters four through nine are all on more tactile, tactful, I should say tact, tactile, tactile, tangible things when it comes to online business.

08:43 So chapter, chapter four is social media presence, online presence, and it's all about establishing and growing your presence. Chapter five is On and finding clients.

08:56 Chapter six is all about strategy and planning. Chapter seven is on time management and organization. Chapter eight is consistency. And chapter nine is super straightforward, take my business online.

09:11 And there's overly simplified steps to just start. And then of course there's two guided meditations at appropriate inappropriate chapters that I think are super helpful.

09:23 And I also wanna say that for all of these conversations in each chapter, I start by bringing you to the surface level understanding, okay?

09:32 And it's not to dumb it down or make it oversimplified, it's to say like, this is what we're talking about at a surface level when we talk about, let's say social media presence.

09:43 And then I take you deeper and I take you deeper into what that really means and what my belief really means.

09:49 And expand your vision and expand your perspective in hopes way beyond that. This expands your perspective of business beyond while you're reading the book.

09:59 But something that changes the way that you think about all of these categories forever is really my hope and plant the seeds.

10:06 And it really is just the start, right? So the book is just start because I want you to just start bringing your magic, your medicine, your important work to your people via the internet, because it's a super cool tool.

10:20 The girls are getting loud. So hold on one second. And I also say it's just the start when you listen to the book, because this is just the start.

10:31 I do take you deep, but it's introducing you to these deeper con conversations and deeper understandings. And then the once we activate and open up and kind of scratch the surface of that deeper thing for you, then my hope is that beyond the book, you go deeper in any of the categories with any people and anybody out in the internet world or in your real life on things that you feel called to, things that you feel pulled to.

10:56 So if there's a certain thing I in the book and you're like, that feels like something I wanna go explore, go deeper.

11:02 Because the book is just the start. It's an activation and it's opening up something in you. And I encourage you to trust and listen to your internal guidance system to guide you and move you to what your next correct piece is on your journey.

11:25 And then the cool thing about, well, one of the cool things about all of that is the book is the perfect example of just start.

11:34 Because I had been sitting on a knowing there was a book coming out of me right for so long, and I was like making it so hard on myself.

11:43 And then I took my own advice. I'm like, just start, just start. And I realized like, what is the path of least resistance?

11:50 What is going to be the most useful way for me to move this thing forward? And it was an audiobook and I'm like, obviously, because I podcast every week.

11:59 I talk every week and share what I hope you find helpful and such. Now, and this was a little bit different because recording for a book felt different than recording for a podcast.

12:10 On the podcast. I might, you know, riff and I might say and I pause, see I say and I pause and the kids are in the background for the audiobook.

12:19 I did want it to be a little bit different because I am going to submit it to Audible once I have my cover.

12:26 So let me tell you a little bit more about the process the whole like concept to having the book done in three weeks.

12:35 And I'll share with you the high level overview of what that looked like for me. So late October, this kind of landed in me, like turn this into an audio book.

12:48 Make the audio book. I was actually sorting through some feedback, a survey, a couple two, I wanna say two different surveys that I got from my community and via email.

13:02 And I had something like, at least 300 people respond to these surveys, like giving me ideas on what their biggest sticky point is.

13:08 What's their biggest struggle when it comes to business? How can I, what do they best need my help with, right?

13:13 Because this helps me to know kind of where you're at and help me find the overlap helps me find the overlap of how I can help.

13:22 So I'm looking through the feedback and I start to highlight certain phrases because I see them over and over and over again.

13:31 And so a lot of people who responded, if you're listening and you responded, thank you because this is, this all came about partly because of you giving me, inviting me.

13:41 And as a projector, I felt invited to do this. And so it was like I had this access to energy in my body to pump this thing out because I was lit up, feeling invited when I was going through all of the feedback I kept seeing over and over again.

13:59 I need help getting started online, getting started online, establishing a social media presence, building an online presence, online presence, online presence, social media presence, get clients, get clients, get, I would say most people who answered, one of the things they mentioned was getting clients confidence, being consistent, consistent was probably number two.

14:20 And then taking my business online was probably number three. I'd have to go back and run the, like, add every, calculate what percentage of people said different things.

14:29 But these all came up, it was like the same, almost the same thing from person to person to person. Meaning if any of these things are things that you're struggling with, know that you're in good company because a, a lot of people are feeling the same way.

14:43 So when I'm reading through all of this, I thought, how can I best help? What are things that I wanna speak to that I feel invited to share?

14:52 How can I best help answer their question in an accessible way and take, introduce them to a deeper level of understanding the way I think about these things.

15:04 So like getting and finding clients, cuz those aren't necessarily words that I use anymore. Like I need to get clients.

15:09 I don't usually say that anymore because I prefer a different a different phrase like attracting clients. And so I thought, well, how can I answer this in a very absorbable way?

15:24 I want, I don't wanna go too deep with an audiobook that's more of a yeah, I didn't wanna go too deep, right?

15:32 Because that would be like a really deep quote. Each one of these topics could have its own book. So I thought, how can I do this in such a way that answers the questions, these common issues that other business owners are having in a way that I am activating something in them and opening them up to the understanding that there's something deeper than what our surface level understanding is.

15:55 And the, the example that I share and that I think about with how I do this in each chapter is it's like you go to a community pool, like the Y M C A has a pool.

16:07 So imagine a neighborhood, and I think of my cousin's neighborhood in Israel when I was a kid and we went to visit, she lived in a <inaudible> it, which is like a, like a small village, and they had a community pool and everybody was always at the community pool.

16:20 Like it was, it was the spot and it was so fun. And I remember like, it was just the best thing in Florida, A lot of people have pools at their houses, but over there nobody had a pool in their yard.

16:31 Everybody went to the community pool and it was so fun as a kid. So anyway, the way I think about this is the surface level understanding is you go to the community pool and you might sit on a lounge chair or like dip your toes in the water.

16:48 That's where I take you first is surface level. And what I think a lot of people might be asking, and then I take you to the deeper, let's go deeper, is what I say throughout the book.

16:58 Like, okay, now let's go deeper. And what that looks like in my head of the pool is going out to the diving board, stepping up onto the platform and walking out to the end of the diving board, diving board and jumping in the deep end.

17:11 That's what that looks like for me in my head. And I'm there with you, so don't worry, I'm not gonna send you off the plank jumping into a diving board where you can't swim.

17:19 Like it's okay, I'm there. So I effectively turned your most common issues with online business into the, the audio book.

17:40 And then I added the first three category, the first three chapters, which was the foundation. Because I know how important this is before you into social media presence, you need to know, you have to have clarity around your mission, and there's gotta be some level of confidence because if you're just jumping into social media without doing any work on your confidence level, it can be a little tricky.

18:03 I mean, you could do it, but it could be a little tricky, right? And if we, let's say for example, chapter six, strategy and planning.

18:09 If you're jumping right into strategy and planning, but you haven't yet gotten crystal clear about your mission, then it's kind of tricky to plan and strategize if you don't really know what you're supposed to be doing, right?

18:21 So like, what do you wanna do? And I, I walk you through those things, but I thought, okay, they also need to know the limits of logic, how to go beyond mindset, getting crystal clear on what you're here to do in the world, and then starting to work on building up your confidence so that you can move forward and do the things.

18:40 So that was kind of how I put together the content of the book. And the way I like logistically, the way that I do that in my head, sometimes I use post-its if I'm building courses and such.

18:55 This time I actually didn't do it that way. I had an outline. So because everything the feedback I got from people in the surveys was already in a Excel file.

19:06 So I would like take those most commonly answered things and put them in a Google Doc as like bullet points.

19:14 And this became an outline, like, okay, a bullet point was on strategy, a bullet point was on getting clients a bullet point on social media presence.

19:21 And then I started to flush out bullet points. Like I use an outline. Usually when I do podcasting, I do it that way too.

19:27 I start with an outline. I don't script it. I allow myself to riff, but I, I like to have an outline because there's certain things I don't wanna forget.

19:36 So I kind of did it that way with the book. And I organized the outline into what felt like sections or chapters.

19:46 And then I had an outline for each chapter, and I just did one chapter at a time. And for the first couple of chapters, I realized like chapter two and chapter three, it would be really supportive and really helpful to have a guided healing meditation.

20:01 So I recorded a separate healing meditation that you can listen to when you reach the end of chapter two and chapter three.

20:09 And then when it came time to record, it was kind of a mind screw at first because I wasn't, I was trying to speak very clearly and different than I do on the po like I'm clear on the podcast, but I wanted it to be more of an audiobook because when you submit to Audible, if you create an audible audiobook and you submit to Audible, their audio requirements are different because, you know, they do wanna have they wanna maintain a certain level of professionalism, which I don't always love that word, but that's, I think, what Audible is going for.

20:43 So knowing that I wanted to minimize the ums and the hums and the, you knows, and the casual way that I am, sometimes I still want it to be myself and speak in my voice, but in a way that Audible would be like, yeah, you're cool, you can get on board with us.

20:58 So I did one chapter at a time, and some of the chapters I would record in like two minute sections, even though it might be a 20 minute chapter because I just, I needed to pause or stop and get clear on what I wanted to say next.

21:12 And then once I had all of these pieces together that I felt really good about, I actually hired the same group that does my podcast editing.

21:23 And if you are looking for a fantastic group, thank you so much guys for doing this help, helping me with this.

21:30 I'm happy to share their information. If anybody needs it, just contact me or DM me on Instagram. I hired them to edit the audios.

21:38 So like, for example, if it was a 20 minute chapter and I had four or five different recordings for that chapter, that one was like three minutes, one was seven minutes, and so on, they would edit them knowing that they needed to be fit the requirements for audible submission later.

21:54 And then they would combine and merge. And then I had chapters. And once everything was laid out and I saw the full outline, and I, it didn't have a name.

22:03 So naming it was one of the last things I did. I looked at it and I, when I was explaining it to people, close people in my, in my life, what just kept coming up was like, the whole point of it is to help people just start.

22:18 Just start. Because there's so much magic that happens when you just start. You can sit on the sidelines and think and read and learn and study for ages if you allow yourself to, but you're not really gonna make a whole lot of progress if you don't get in there and just start applying the things that you're learning.

22:35 And so just start is a phrase that I use all the time, and I'm like, that's it. It's just start.

22:40 And then of course there's the subtitled to make it more clear about what I'm talking about. The last thing I wanna share with you is that this is not just an audiobook.

22:59 There's healing throughout the book that's available to you while you're listening. So I am transmitting energy healing to you through the audible audiobook.

23:14 It is a healing transmission, it is an activation in and of itself. You may or may not notice that while you're listening to the book.

23:22 And if you're not available for it, you can, your, your system will say, no thank you. And that's entirely okay.

23:30 You can actually skip the meditations if you want to, but it's available there for you if you're open and available to it.

23:39 So what's next? What's next is you click the link in the show notes and you started for our listening launch party.

23:48 So this is kind of a super fun thing that I thought about how artists will often do listening parties when they launch a new album.

23:54 And that's kind of the vibe that I wanted to go with here is I wanted it to feel like we have a virtual listening launch party.

24:02 So the book is 50% off during our listening launch party. And there's a code that you can use at checkout and you can find it on the page that I've linked in the show notes.

24:11 And I hope you love it. It's also a really great gift for any budding entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, existing entrepreneurs. If you work with people, if your clients run online businesses or wanna get started online, this would be a great holiday gift because hello, no shipping and for yourself, your friends, whoever's in your life that you are looking to gift something that will truly, I hope, change the way that they think about business.

24:43 Okay? And then after you listen to it or while you're listening to it, to participate in the launch party, screenshot, screenshot what you're listening to, share it with me, tag it on Instagram stories tag me.

24:56 I would, it just fills my cup so much to know if things are landing and if you're enjoying it and if it's opening up something for you.

25:04 And yeah, just overall your feedback means the world to me. So I cannot wait to get in your ear. Have a beautiful week, friends.