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The Modern Independent
The Modern Independent
The 7 Figure Playbook: A Deep Dive on Publishing w/ Jenn T Grace
What if you could unlock the secrets to turning your manuscript into a polished, published book? What if you had an insider's guide to navigating the complex world of self-publishing? Well, stay tuned because you're in for a treat in this episode with our special guest, Jen T Grace. As an award-winning author, top-notch speaker, and an expert strategist in publishing, Jen's insights are a treasure trove for anyone with a creative endeavor. She candidly shares her journey from being an advice-dreaming teenager to a publishing strategist, and how she successfully handles imposter syndrome.
We don't just stop at the journey. We also delve into the process of planning for a book, debunking the misconception of waiting for inspiration to strike. Instead, we underline the importance of discipline, a robust support system, and a pre-set plan to tackle difficult scenarios. Drawing from neuroscience and cognitive behavioral therapy, we'll explore how the brain works and how framing can significantly affect your success. As we navigate through Jen's inspiring story, we'll see hands-on experience and the ability to face challenges play a significant role in achieving success.
And as the cherry on top, we dip our toes into the intricate process of transforming a manuscript into a published book. We explore the paths to publishing - traditional, self, and hybrid. The value of investing in a professional team to handle the complexities of self-publishing cannot be overstated, which is why we discuss it in detail. This episode is a must-listen, especially for aspiring authors, to understand the importance of a team of experts in a successful self-publishing journey. So grab your headphones, settle in, and listen up as Jen shares her unique perspective and invaluable insights.
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Welcome everybody to another episode of the Modern Independent. I am your host, as always, the head of community here at Indie Collective, Jan Almasy, and today we are going to be interviewing a dear friend of ours here at the Indie Collective Community, Jen T Grace. She is an award-winning author, nationally recognized speaker and, sadly, publishing strategist. She's also the founder of Publisher Purpose, the acclaimed hybrid publishing company that gives first-time authors the secrets to getting their books written, finding an ear, audience and marketing their place in the publishing world.
Speaker 1:She leads ambitious authors through every aspect of writing, editing and publishing so that their book strategically aligns with their business objectives. Whether it's a business guide that shows the breadth of their expertise or an emotional memoir that takes readers deep into life's challenges, she helps authors articulate their purpose and fulfill their mission. She has published the books of nearly 100 individual business owners, entrepreneurs, speakers and memoirists, so more diverse stories can exist in the world and her authors can make a positive impact. She is the author of six books, including her memoir House on Fire. She has been featured in Forbes, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal and, like I mentioned, is a dear friend here at the Indie Collective community and presents to our cohorts, every cohort. Jen, thank you for taking the time to hang out with us today, and I'm super excited to spend this next hour with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always fun to be in your presence.
Speaker 1:As you could tell, we always have a blast together when we're rocking during the cohort. So I want to start off because obviously we have a vibe, and the vibe in the community is its thing. But for those that are listening, some are Indie Collective graduates, some have never heard of the program before. So to kind of set the stage so that people can get to know you a little bit, we just that intro. You did a great job of talking about all of the things that you've done at this point, but I would like to rewind a little bit and maybe start where you fell in love with literature or writing in the first place. You don't accomplish a lot of the things that we talked about inside of that list in your introduction without having a genuine passion for the thing that you are trying to build, which in this case is publishing and writing. So where did that all start for you?
Speaker 2:It's such a good question. I think it's often if I'm on someone's show or having a conversation. I feel like it's not often couched in like literature itself. But if I go back in time and I think one of the early things that I wanted to do for a profession and so if anyone knows anything about human design, so I'm a projector in human design and it's kind of like the people who are here to kind of be a shepherd, if you will, of others. And this is information I now know in the last like four or five years.
Speaker 2:Clearly I did not know this as a teenager in the 90s, but if I look at, what I was interested in is that everyone always came to me for advice. It was just always like my friend group, people I didn't know, people I didn't know. Everyone just always asks for my opinion on things, whether they listened to it or not complete other story. But I noticed when I was probably in middle school that I was just obsessed with the Dear Abbey column and wanted to be Dear Abbey, like that was my thing, in addition to being very projectory of myself, of wanting to do a bunch of other things at the same time that had nothing to do with each other. So I wanted to also be a meteorologist as well as Dear Abbey Two very different things, zero connection whatsoever.
Speaker 2:Clearly, I went the path of writing and creativity versus science, which I found out very quickly that math is not my strength, and so I really kind of leaned into the creative side of things. So it's just one of those things that wanting to be like an advice columnist is really kind of what was really a catalyst for my writing and just I've always enjoyed writing on a personal level, and I'm actually about to release my seventh book, which will come out in the fall of 2023, which is around. It's called Publish a Purpose, a step by step guide to write, market, write, publish and grow your big idea, and so it's just kind of my new thing now is how am I helping other people get better and do better with their writing as well?
Speaker 1:I love that. It's reminiscent to me and I also am a projector, which is also something that I didn't realize until the last couple of years, especially over the last two. So it's been two years since I graduated my first indie collective cohort and I've already been the head of community here for a year, which is mind boggling for me. But one of the side benefits and my favorite part of being in this position is that I get to continuously attend workshops and I'm caught. My full time role is being a designated hype person, having 30 minute three to five 30 minute coaching sessions with indie collective members on a weekly basis and getting to hear our experts really kind of dive into the areas that they're passionate about. So it's been learning about my Aneagram type and frameworks or learning about literally anything other than a Myers-Briggs format. There's all of these different layers and connections.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering as a projector sometimes and I know that there are other projectors out there listening to this show as somebody that feels like others continuously come to them for advice. Was there a period in your life where there was a lot of imposter syndrome associated with that, where you were like, ooh, why is everybody always asking me for advice, or did it always kind of feel natural for you that, oh, this is a superpower of mine. I do lean into this and I kind of accept that and move through that as you started to come into that realization? What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:That's such a great question. It's interesting because I feel like it's so rare that I find other projectors. Number one there's probably people listening to us who are like what are these two talking about right now? But it's definitely. I think it's a rabbit hole worth going down because it really shows a lot about how we show up in the world and how we operate. I would say and I've never had this question before, so I'm really thinking about it I think it has been always just part of the DNA of who I am as a person that everyone just comes to me. I mean, and I've always had a wide friend group with people with very different backgrounds. If I grab three friends from complete extreme scenarios, people will be like how could one person be friends with all three, like those three different types of people Exactly? Is it the same way?
Speaker 1:Yes, 100%, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say. I empathize with that so much. I consistently get that it's been part of the reason why I think I've been able to flow between different job fields as well, Between military, being an RN and now owning a marketing agency and being ahead of community. Those are very different. I've had to embody different parts of myself in different ways, but in every single one of those positions what I noticed is that I was whether I wanted the and I don't even I think spotlight is the wrong word but whether I wanted the weight of leadership on my shoulder or I wanted people asking me questions.
Speaker 1:I couldn't avoid it and I spent a good chunk of my life kind of like moving away from it, not wanting to accept it or like, hey, I'm kind of introverted, low key, I don't want to be the person that everybody comes to all the time, but the more that I started to lean into, like you mentioned, that this is a rabbit hole worth going down in the human design kind of space. If you're listening to this right now and again, you don't have any idea what we're talking about. Just Google, human design projector, and that will start your rabbit hole. You can find the different categories there kind of gave me that solace where I'm like, oh, this is part of me.
Speaker 2:Yes, mm. Hmm, yeah, I feel like validating or liberating or something, where, because I feel like for so long and going back to kind of like the imposter syndrome, I feel like there's a piece of imposter syndrome that I think sneaks up on all of us regardless of what's going on, like I, even in writing my book that's coming out, that's about writing and publishing. Even in there, I kind of wrote it in a way where it's like writing it in real time, so that way the reader can be experiencing my emotions while I was writing it. And I actually have like things that I write in there where at one point I'm like, even as I write this, I don't know what my editors are going to think about this, and it does make me nervous and anxious and all of those things, because I, you know, because I'm questioning am I a good enough writer, even though I've been writing pretty much my whole life and I'm on the seventh book. So I don't think it excuses any of us from it, but I do think that there's some level of pressure when you know that you are the go-to person for everybody around you, where I have friends that are feuding, I have, you know, different kind of dynamics and relationships, and everyone still always comes to me because I'm the vault and I'm the the keeper of everyone's secrets, and so there's always that kind of comfort level.
Speaker 2:And I think having a label or a title of a projector To kind of overlay on top of that I think has been very freeing, because it's like oh, that's just who I am, this is how I'm, this is how I show up in the world, this is how how others see me. Why am I? Why am I fighting it right? Because I think that there's like some level like why are people asking me, I don't know what's going on? Like I don't know any more than you do, but there's some way of kind of synthesizing whatever's going on around, to be able to say, hey, this is what I would do if I were in your position, and that in and of itself is typically enough of what someone's looking for. But I think there's something freeing about not having to feel like you have all the answers, because I certainly do not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am. I had a great conversation with a psychologist friend of mine and he mentioned that because I have a Immigrant mother that is not a native English speaker, that I was, you know, through being raised in that household, was gifted, by Kind of nurture, the Gift of metaphors and analogies.
Speaker 1:Right, because we had to figure out how to explain things in a couple of different ways Sometimes for them to make sense, and that basically translated into, to your point, synthesizing something complicated. If it's been useful in the nursing field, it's been useful in complex business situations and, yeah, so definitely take time to explore that. I, without risk of us just continuously like I feel like we could both just spend an entire hour talking about this topic, and so I you said something right there that that kind of sparked something in me as well, which is that the emotions and the, you know, the Resistance or the imposter syndrome, whatever we want to call it, was present not just in book one, not just in book two, but also in book seven. Right, and I'm sure are you familiar with Steven Pressfield? So, yeah, so most writers are.
Speaker 1:If you're not, if you're listening to this and you have no idea who Steven Pressfield is, I highly recommend looking up his book, the war of art, and he talks about, you know, this Thing that you encounter as a writer or as a creative called the resistance, and that it's a Necessary part of the creative process.
Speaker 1:And you know there's some people that are listening to this and I know I was this person for the longest time that just assume that Writing happens as like a lightning bolt of inspiration. You know you're, you're drafting it out, it's coming freely, whereas I think when you're on the other side of it, whether you're a consistent newsletter writer, like I am, you're a author Of a book and you know there, you're a columnist In a newspaper. If you are a writer, that requires a deadline, you know, or has a specific angle in mind, there's a piece of discipline and routine that kind of comes into that. How have you been able to face the resistance, not just across one book or two books, but now Leaning into your seventh? What does that look like for you as far as your writing process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's another good question, I think. I think it really is the discipline right. I think in so many ways we Do believe that inspiration is just gonna strike and then out of nowhere it's like poof, here comes a book. It's not how it works, and so much of what I actually write in this newest book is how do we find a system, a rhythm, a flow, a process that works for each individual person, versus the, the cliche adage that everyone hears, where it's like oh, take a sabbatical and go lock yourself in a cabin in the woods for six months. That doesn't work for anybody, right like, and it probably doesn't even work for Stephen King. So it's one of those things that I think. There's all this very cliche and corny advice out there that actually does not work for anybody.
Speaker 2:So for me, it's about having a plan in place and knowing how you're going to move through that plan and factor in the ups and downs as you go through, because I think a lot of times what happens and a whole kind of framework we use it at PYP is Having the right support system in place. So for me, what I have seen over and over again and I've worked with hundreds of authors at this point is there needs to be someone who's focused on strategy, someone who can act as a therapist and someone who can act as a cheerleader. Those are the three primary roles that anyone who's, I think, taking on any creative endeavor most likely, but in my opinion, especially for books, we need to have that type of support system, and if we don't know who those people are at the start of the process, then how are we going to reach out for help when we need it, or how are we gonna reach out for that type of support when we need it? And I think there's other things, such as All right, it is at the time of this recording the last week of summer vacation, and so for me, I know that this week is a little bit, a little bit more hectic than others. So if I were trying to get any writing done which thankfully I'm not, because I'm in promotion mode at this point I would say all right as it stands right now, if I am interrupted by my teenager, then I'm not gonna get mad, I'm not gonna get annoyed, I'm just gonna focus on it next week instead. So, having these kind of statements in preparation of if this happens, then I'm gonna do this to make sure I stay on on track and on my plan.
Speaker 2:I think it's little things like that of having the right support systems, having the right planning in place, knowing what your end vision is. If you can kind of package all that together, none of it's knowing how to use proper. You know commas or colons right, it's very much around. What is it that we need as people to be able to hold ourselves accountable and get external accountability to actually get this process done? So I think it's so much less about the actual Writing and the creativity part of it and more about just kind of the discipline and knowing what type of discipline you as a person benefits the most from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. I'm gonna double click on like two different statements that you sent there and I always try to add in I'm obsessed with neuroscience and you know, for my nursing background I I worked as a psych nurse for multiple years and two things that really stood out to me. There is that there your brain is pre-wired, especially if you're a creative. Typically you're creative because you're a pattern detector. You are in an open state of consciousness and so getting into a narrow, focused state of consciousness is generally Generally difficult for a creative individual and your brain has this natural barrier to entry Into that creative headspace. And it generally takes between five and ten minutes For your brain to actually regulate and say oh, we're focusing now, um, it fights you, it genuinely fights you for the first ten minutes or so, um, and then it'll slowly start to release the neurochemicals that are necessary for you to focus. And just that acknowledgement that, like the first ten minutes of this, are going to be terrible. Every single time I do this, no matter how often I do this, um, and I find that that I learned that initially, um, from somebody that's in martial arts. It's, you know, no matter how many times you get on the mat. The first couple of times that you roll, I, you know, enjoyed your jitsu thoroughly. The first couple of times you roll, your body's not awake yet you need to activate all of those neurons, um. And then the second thing is, um, that discipline, the creativity and kind of pre-setting the difficult-sisted scenarios and pre-scripting Um solutions to those scenarios inside of your head. That's, you know, kind of in the realm of a cognitive behavioral therapy, a CVT type of mechanism there, um, and and what that does.
Speaker 1:There is actually multiple studies. I, I want to say it was at the University of Memphis, um, but they took two groups of people and one group of people. They spoke to them and said this is a difficult task. No one has successfully completed it yet. Now go out and attempt to complete this task. The second group they said this is a difficult task, it is difficult but it is accomplishable. Now go out and attempt to, you know, complete this task.
Speaker 1:And just the framing caused a drastic difference in the success rate of those individuals. So I think, um, whether it's, whether you're listening to this and you're like, well, you know, yeah, I don't want to be an author, like, how does this actually even apply to me. If you are just thinking about going independent, starting a business, it doesn't have to be a book to be any creative endeavor, um, and I do think that launching your own business is is a creative endeavor, um. It's framing that and allowing yourself the forgiveness that not everything's going to be perfect. You know there are other things in your life that are going to require your attention, um, and that's okay. And and it's not the end of the world if you get it done next week, you know it's. It's being able to stay in the game the longest and the most consistently. It's not about OCD level hitting it every single time, um, you really only need like an 80 percent to pass the class, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think some of us struggle with that side of it of the. What is the, the minimum viable? Right like there's the minimum viable product, but then there's also kind of like the minimum viable number, data point accomplishment that we will accept as a human. Just because others will accept it doesn't mean that we will accept it. So I think that there's some that kind of really struggle in that gray area too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed, agreed. So this kind of you know takes me into another place. You know you've mentioned that you worked with so many authors and that was did you start working with authors before publish your purpose was a thing, or did you kind of was publish your purpose kind of a mission? That was created and then you started working with the authors, like was it the cart before the horse? How did that situation play out and what was the you know? Walk us through the birth of PYP.
Speaker 2:I will try to give you the abridged version. So and I have been able to make it all make sense, even though at the time it was very, you know, like they. They we've all seen that meme we're on the left side, it's like here's the path to success and it's just like you know the stairs going from one you know, very clean, clean shot, and then like the reality where it's just this big scribble disaster of a mess. Yeah, so it sounds like the stairways currently. However, at the time it was very much that scribble.
Speaker 2:So if I go back in time, I used to do consulting work within financial services and insurance for fortune companies and around marketing and communications, and when I was doing that work I had a lot of clients who were like, when are you going to write a book? And so I hadn't really had it directly on my radar, but I had already been writing a blog for probably two years at that point and it was very much a dear Abby style blog. So that kind of ties that back in where it was. I called it questions from a friend and it was a friend of mine who was a nurse practitioner who did not know how to treat or speak to or communicate in any way with her LGBTQ patient population, and so I was like I am not in healthcare in any way, shape or form. However, the question she's asking are very basic, like there's nothing complicated about this, but she wanted to be sensitive and intentional with the folks that she was working with, so I started writing that blog. That blog still, to this day, has like 600 blog posts on it, and it's all still crawling the internet. And so when I had clients who were like hey, when are you going to, are you going to write a book? And so I was like all right, I had this question been asked enough. Sure.
Speaker 2:And in addition to that corporate consulting work, I was also working with small LGBTQ owned businesses as well, and I noticed a pattern at the same time that I had like three clients that were all working on books. In addition to like I was supporting their businesses in a lot of different ways from a marketing standpoint, but they were working on books, so I'm kind of in the trenches with them, I'm working on my own. It all started to kind of organically unfold, and so this is probably early 2012, 2013, 2014, somewhere in that timeframe, and so around 2015,. I was like all right, so many people have asked me to help them with their book and I don't know what to like.
Speaker 2:At the point, at that time, I knew what I was doing and I had the imposter syndrome of like well, why is it? How is it that I'm doing something that is not like? I searched the internet, right, I found other people. I figured out a way to figure it out and so, in February of 2015, I launched a program that was, at the time, a three month program. It still runs today. It's now six months, but it was basically teaching people how to publish their book, and it was, you know, 14 weeks, and I grabbed seven people that I knew and I was like listen, I'll give you your money back if this doesn't work for you. However, I'm committed to making this work and I'm going to make it up as I go.
Speaker 2:I did not have anything like like I was. I was doing it in real time with them to just kind of see the results, and even now, we kind of iterate over and over again. But it was that early 2015 period of time where I was showing people how to do it, that people had gone through the program and they're like this is such amazing information I can technically go off and do it on my own. However, I would rather just pay you and have you and your team do it instead. And so it was a very quick, a very quick transition of wow, I have this great program, it's scalable, I can serve a lot of people. I'm doing this really awesome work to.
Speaker 2:Oh, now I have to figure out how to run a publishing company, because that's what people are specifically asking me for, and so I started PYP in 2016, after having that kind of year of working with people and trying to help, kind of showing them how to do it, but at this point in 2016, I had already written four books, so I had already gone through it a lot, and then helped a couple of other friends do it, and so it all kind of like came together and all makes sense.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of other factors kind of going on around me at the same time that are not as relevant to this, but yeah, so it very much kind of landed on me.
Speaker 2:And then, if we go back to the whole projector thing for a minute like the whole concept with projectors that you have to wait for the invitation and when I look back in hindsight, I was invited by multiple people to start this business.
Speaker 2:I think if I had started it Without having that invitation, I don't think it would have been successful. I think it's because I was invited in to start this business because there was a demand by a number of people. It's really what made sure that I was in exact alignment for where I was supposed to be and that's also now where I get to be, you know, the CEO, which is a beautiful position to be in, where I have a team that is in the day-to-day kind of weeds of all the work, but I still get to be top level strategy, knowing exactly where all of our authors are at in the process, knowing exactly what their goals and their visions are. So it's kind of this beautiful creation of all of the things that I need as a projector, kind of all coming together in just a really beautiful way.
Speaker 1:I love that. I actually just heard a story on a I believe it was the diary of a CEO podcast with Stephen Bartlett Great podcast for those of you that are listening, if you have never heard of that podcast, he's I believe it's called the Dragon's Den. It's basically the UK's equivalent of Shark Tank, fantastic entrepreneur and he was telling a story about a gentleman that was college roommates with the son of the Kohler family, ie like the plumbing company, right, and he mentioned it. This person that was being interviewed mentioned that the roommate who was the son of the Kohler family. He asked him why are you in school? You know, like couldn't you just be getting a business degree? Cause they were going to school for, like the trades? He had already been a plumber, but now he was like going to get his business degree.
Speaker 1:And the gentleman was asking you know why haven't? Why didn't you just skip and go directly to the higher level positions? You, your family, is already successful and he mentioned that his father said that it you know these positions are waiting for you, but you have to be a plumber first. You have to have done it, you have to have encountered the resistance, you have to have been able to quote a project you have to have, you know, found pipes that you don't know what to do with and call somebody for help, and experience that humbling moment. There is all of these things that you had to experience to get to the place where now you are able to strategize and have the bandwidth and the in-depth understanding and empathy to talk to. You know multiple authors and multiple phases of the process at the same time, because you've tread that path already, which is something that really stands out to me, and it stands out to me every time you give your presentation during the cohort as well, because you come to those workshops from such a place of I have experienced this and I want to make your path a little bit less squiggly. I know how a squiggly mind was in that beginning. And then the second piece that I want to double click on that I think is super important to not just people that have, you know, a projector personality or somebody you know, even if you're listening to this and you're like, well, none of my friends constantly come to me for advice, like, how does this apply to me? I think that when you are looking to launch a business or you're looking to launch a new service line or product within your existing business or really anything. Right, You're looking for that next MVP. You know it generally starts with some type of intuitive impulse, right, you get this intuition that your brain picks up on a pattern or you know something starts to click. But I love what you said about receiving the invitation and that's what made it successful.
Speaker 1:I find that one of the best ways to destroy imposter syndrome is to walk people through reverse engineering why they feel this pull towards this specific product or service, and most of the time, like dollars to donuts. I've had 150 plus coaching sessions with Indie Collective members at this point. Almost every single time there's three to five people in their life that are like actively putting pressure on them to come out of their shell and do this thing, and I always say, hey, we always try to. You know we're a little bit self-bias. This humans, that's what our brains do, and so we tend to try to trust our own opinion. Right, and if your opinion of yourself is a little bit off, why are you mistrusting five other people's opinions of the thing that you have a superpower in? Like, how dare you doubt them and allow them to kind of be that push, to kind of push you out into the market.
Speaker 1:So I think that that's beautiful, right. It showcases that you not only have this talent that the world was recognizing, but because you received the invitation, you were able. The path may have been squiggly, but you were still able to find a path, and a bunch of factors came together and you said it two or three different times. It felt like it just landed together, right, like all of these pieces in the periphery started to connect to the next thing. You knew like you had this thing and didn't even know exactly where it was gonna end when you first started, right? It's like Michael Scott starting a sentence in the office, right? So you start a sentence that you're not really exactly sure where it's gonna go, yeah, but if you never start, then you won't know where it ends up.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes when you know too much, you know too much, and I think that that's what stops people from actually doing the thing that they need to do. And I feel that is absolutely true in my case, because I look at this writing program that we still have, that we run cohorts in the spring and fall and it's a six month program that gets people. It gets them the manuscript at the end of the process as well as knowing what goes into the publishing process. And if I look at that and how that kind of has evolved and I think about just all of the ways in which I have been, I don't know, I guess sometimes we like we stand in our own way sometimes too. And so if I look at that program and I think it's scalable, I have facilitators, I facilitate every now and then. It is a beautiful thing that just kind of can stand independently and run on its own.
Speaker 2:Why did I have to throw a publishing company into the mix? Great question, because I was invited into doing that. If I had said, all right, I have this really awesome, profitable, scalable program over here, you know what I wanna do? I wanna throw in a whole other business, a complicated business nonetheless, with very low profit margins, that sounds like a great plan. So I think for me, if I had actually looked into what resources to take to create a publishing company, what profit margins like, how reduced those profit margins are, because it takes a lot of people to create a good book, and so if I looked at all of that, I feel confident it would have deterred me from doing it. I would have just stayed, I would have played small, I would have stayed in my lane, been like all right, I'm just gonna keep doing these writing programs. They're very effective, they work, they do the thing, but it obviously I didn't know what I didn't know and I think that was the biggest blessing in this entire scenario.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Yeah, one of my favorite things to talk about with my team. So Apex Communications Network is my agency and I went to school for nursing and clinical psych. Right, like part of the reason why I needed to join Indie Collective is because we hit our first six figures in revenue and I was like, oh shit, this is real. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even know the lingo. I felt so overwhelmed, my first cohort, just hearing all the acronyms, I'm like what is the CTR, what is all of these different things?
Speaker 1:And I always liked to say that one of the reasons why we were successful quickly because five years later we've got seven staff, we're working across multiple states, we've got a great book of business and I really love my team is that we didn't know what rules we weren't allowed to break, because none of us were trained. Like I came from a nursing background. My co-founder that is my integrator, but my bread like if he did not exist, the company would not run because I am disorganized as hell. He came from a sports management background, but we all had this common theme of being really passionate about empowering people. So we came up with this building relationships, realizing dreams and that became our foundation, and because we were able to circumnavigate and look at it.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, I get that all of the marketing textbooks say that we have to do it this way. Why is that? What? Like, we're seeing, this way makes a lot more sense, it's cheaper, it's more effective. Why don't we just do it this way? Um, and to your point, I definitely would have not done those things if I would have been indoctrinated into like well, this is the format, here's your, here's your formula for success. Um, the other thing that I want to dive into, because I know that there's probably people listening that are Are less familiar with the publishing process. So when you say you know we go from zero to ending with a manuscript, what is a? What is a manuscript and what does that set you up for in the publishing process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. It's one of those words that I kind of take for granted that everyone would know. But why would you so? A manuscript is really the, the written first draft of someone's book before it become, before it turns into a book. So the manuscript writing processes, you know, sometimes it's done with an individual coach, sometimes people are able to write it on their own, sometimes people need a group setting lots different ways in which it gets created. But at the end of that process, which for some people can take decades, you know, like some people are, you know, some people can kind of sit down, write a book in 30 days. Some people take, you know, three years, 10 years, whatever it happens to be. But then once you actually have that first draft of your Manuscript, that's when you can go and figure out what publishing path is going to make the most sense for you To then figure out okay, how am I actually going to take this, this basically stack of pages that are in a word document, and turn them into something that somebody can read?
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Okay, so is the manuscript you you mentioned it's the first draft, so is part of that program to get you from zero to manuscript. And then I'm assuming that manuscript needs to go through multiple editing passes and things of that nature. You're gonna have to probably create like a cover For the book and things of that nature, so. So, once the person has that manuscript, what does the process look like? From manuscript to Book is now available for purchase.
Speaker 2:That's a another great question. So it really Depends on depends on what path the person is choosing. So everyone's a little bit different. There's three kind of paths that are available. So there's traditional publishing, which is finding an agent, going to the new york publishing houses Creating a book proposal, trying to pitch it. That's a multi-year process and the the odds of actually getting a publishing deal through traditional publishing are very, very low. It's like less than 10% at this point. So it's not really a path. It's a viable for everybody. So when people kind of go that route and they're like, wow, this doesn't work for me, let me switch and let me go self-publish.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of moving pieces and parts that go into self-publishing a book. So it is you have that manuscript. Now you need to know what type of editors to hire, because there are four different types of editors and most people just think of like editors being like one person. There's actually four different phases of editing and then Cover design, then there's the interior design, there's getting isp n numbers, there's registering with the library of congress. There's getting copyright protection, there's categories, keywords, your book description. There's so many. I think our project plan last I saw was like 206 steps, like there's a lot of moving pieces and parts that go into publishing a book, and so Some people hear that and they're like, oh my, how am I going to do this on my own?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to run a business, trying to manage a team, I'm trying to help my clients. How am I going to do this all on my own? And that's where hybrid publishing, which is kind of the third option for publishing, it comes in. And that's what. What p? Yp is, where it's more of a pay for services model, where you're getting the strategy and expertise from the traditional publishing side of the industry, but the expenses are much more in alignment if you were out doing it on your own, and sometimes they end up being less expensive Because now you're actually working with a team who knows what they're doing, rather than you know. Like I'm working with somebody right now who Basically had their entire book typeset, which is basically what the the book looks like on the inside, but then didn't have anybody edit it, and so now he went back and had somebody edit it, but it's already been laid out, and so now trying to do that process costs like three or four times the price Because it was supposed to have been edited once. It was when it was still in a word document, not when it's in a PDF.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's things like that the end of costing people a lot of extra money that's unnecessary and when you're trying to become basically your own publisher, you have to learn all of these nuances.
Speaker 2:But there's these big boulders that are so overwhelming like editing, cover design, interior design that you miss all of those grains of sand in between that are really the things that are strategic and intentional, that actually sell books, and so the information is just not really readily accessible.
Speaker 2:Or you go to Google and you try to find information and you come back with four hours of research and nothing conclusive. And so that's where kind of just working with a company of some kind can be a lifesaver, whether obviously it doesn't have to be PYP, but like just some company. That's in kind of a stewardship type of role where they're like all right, this is what you need to do, this is how to do it. Let me walk with you doing this, rather than you and Google trying to figure this out on your own, because it's not an easy task, unfortunately. I do everything I can to simplify it and try to like break things down for folks, but at the end of the day, the internet is not friendly when it comes to finding the right information. You need to do this the right way. That's actually gonna improve and help businesses succeed.
Speaker 1:I find that that's such an interesting topic right now of discussion, especially with AI hitting the market and information being as readily accessible as it has ever been and is gonna continue to be. Really readily accessible is that there's no longer this barrier to access of information, right? They used to use the term right. Oh, now it just escaped my brain Dang it Basically that the currency used to be ideas. Right, that somebody that thought leadership there we go, that's the term right. That being a thought leader meant that you had unique thoughts and that was extremely valuable because information was not as accessible as quickly. So somebody that had a high skill set of pattern detection and, pre-google, was able to come up with new innovative ideas and stuff like that, that was a very high value. At this point you could really go onto Google and find as much information as you want. It's the contextualization of that information for your specific circumstance, along your specific journey, with your specific budget, set of issues, the type of book you're publishing, all of these nuances to your point, those grains of sand in between, all of those steps that really only an expert can find, and to change it into an analogy that maybe, outside of publishing it might make sense. Imagine you're putting up a wall and there's a lot of stuff that happens behind a piece of drywall. Right, there's electrical wiring, there's plumbing, there's carpentry, there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into a house. Imagine how frustrating it would be to lay it all out and then not pass code over and over and over and have to cut that drywall out and rewire and cut it out again and rewire. And that's exactly what you're saying with skipping the editing process, getting that type based on.
Speaker 1:I think that that's really part of the value and to kind of bring this full circle back to the beginning part of our conversation, finding somebody that experienced the squiggly line and figured out a 200 plus step process to make that line less squiggly is an extremely valuable person to have inside of your corner when you're going through this process. You don't pay somebody to come in and know which screw to turn right. It's knowing how tight to turn which one specifically. That is like the most high value piece because you can learn it through trial and error if you'd like. But you start to get into attaching value to your time and how much extra time are you actually spending? And if I'm charging $150 an hour for my clients, or a hundred bucks an hour, and I'm spending 10 hours a week trying to figure this publishing stuff out on my own and it's taking me six months. That really stacks up really, really quickly.
Speaker 2:It really does. And I think if we look at just the amount of damage that can be done to a brand from a book, it is incredibly high. Like the stakes are pretty high when we actually look at books and because you never wanna be on the receiving end or on the hearing it like, oh wow, their book just isn't as good as they are right, like when you have someone who's super dynamic and amazing speaker, who's standing on the stage, who's commanding an audience and commanding a presence, and then they go and read the book and the book just lands completely flat or it wasn't edited properly, or the cover just doesn't look. The cover doesn't look like the slides that were on the screen. Like I mean, like there is so much that goes into an intentionally created book that elevates a brand versus detracts from it.
Speaker 2:And I think, unfortunately, this is why there still is a little bit of stigma on the self publishing side of things is that people don't know what they don't know, and it's not even a criticism, it's just it's life.
Speaker 2:We don't know what we don't know until we experience it.
Speaker 2:And so when people are like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna create a cover in Canva, it's like you can, but how much damage to your reputation is that gonna create? You're better off just hiring someone who knows how to design a cover and someone who knows how to edit a book, rather than just saying, oh, I'm gonna have this retired English professor edit my book. It's like sure they can do most of it, but they're not a trained book editor and they're not a trained book cover designer. And when you're not working with the right pieces and the right people, it can really be really damaging. And it breaks my heart when I see it happen, because people will send me their book after they decided to do it on their own and I don't have the heart to tell them how tragic it is, like because you know and it stinks, because you're like, wow, this person's so amazing, their story is so amazing, their business is so amazing, and yet now they've created the disconnect that didn't need to be there.
Speaker 1:I feel that with websites, all the time too, with people self-design and they're like look at this, like I made it all myself, and I'm like, ha ha ha.
Speaker 2:Or a logo. Right yeah, logos too, and your own logo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I think that there's just really a beautiful thing having especially the way that you have PYP set up and I've noticed this in the first workshop that I ever watched you do that like having a team and I noticed this from the marketing side, the branding side as well having a team that all understands here's this author, here's where they're going, and the cover editor, the four different types of book editor, the person running the strategy, the whoever like that entire team is all on the same page, all aligned towards the same goal. It's so much more beneficial Even just trying to self-publish. And if you were to go out and say you had that knowledge base and you knew there was four different types of book editors and you knew you needed the higher cover editor, you knew you needed a strategist, you were still kind of the PM inadvertently on that Versus having a team of that all enjoy each other's company, that know how each other work, that know how to empower each other the best.
Speaker 1:I think that's something really special. We're getting close to our time here and I wanna make sure that we have a little bit of space here for these last like questions. A couple of questions, and the first one is really I think we already kind of hit a lot of this throughout the podcast episode, but I always like to kind of open up the floor here at the end which is is there anything timely or up and coming in your life that you would want to highlight or let people know, and where can they connect with you online? Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:So my new book, as I kind of mentioned a little bit, is called Publish your Purpose a step-by-step guide to write, publish and grow your big idea. We'll be out on October 11th, and the intentionality behind this book is to really package all of my processes and to really help people see that they can actually get this done. So it's broken into three parts, which is mindset, which is all the things that we're kind of talking about at the start of this interview, then it's kind of writing and then it's publishing, so anyone can kind of come into it with an idea of all right, I know I have a book in me, but I have no idea how to get from point A to point Z, and so it really covers all of that. And I did it in a way that it's not because there's a lot of books out there that are written and it makes sense for me that they're written and it makes sense for books to be written this way, where you're showing the why but you're not giving any of the how, whereas in my case I'm doing it's the why and the how, because I want people to be successful and I want it to be.
Speaker 2:I want to make this information accessible to others. So that is, it'll be available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook. It's in all of the formats available on October 11th and I'm doing three orders on publisherpurposecom. If anyone cares to have a signed copy of bonuses or things like that but I'm excited about that and if anyone's listening to this and you don't have the economic means to purchase a book, you can certainly reach out to me and I'm happy to provide one at no charge Because I just I really want to make this information as accessible as possible.
Speaker 2:And then in that book, if someone's like, hey, I read the book, but I need more help, we do have our Getting Started for Authors program. We have two of them, starting September 12th and October 24th, and that is the six month writing program that I was mentioning before. The September 12th one I happened to be leading because we're making some updates and modifications and I haven't led a cohort in years, so I'm really excited about that. So if anyone wants to work with me directly, I will be in that group setting starting on September 12th.
Speaker 1:Part of me is like I want to be in something like that, and then part of me is like that is mid-cohort delivery.
Speaker 2:It is a lot of work too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna keep that in mind. And then the final question that I always like asking, and I have a hunch that I might know the answer to this, but I'm all about providing resources, and it doesn't have to be anything business related either. I kind of opened this up to just something that you might be passionate about, and so I always like to ask do you consider yourself an avid reader, watcher or listener, and, depending on which one of those three you lean towards most, could you recommend a book that you found interesting, a podcast or a YouTube channel that you thoroughly enjoy?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God. Okay, so my, of course, because I work in content all day, my answers vary, but my preference is leaning toward audio. So I like to listen to memoirs, but I like to read fiction on a Kindle and I like to read nonfiction in a print book. So it really just kind of depends on what I'm up to.
Speaker 1:But audio is cool. I think that's the first time that I've ever had somebody divide that that way. I love that actually, because I think that I can really empathize with that, like it's different formats for different types of things that you really enjoy consuming. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just to interrupt, but that's just like really quick.
Speaker 2:No, to me it's different purposes, but my default setting, I think, is audio, because I love listening to audiobooks, I love listening to podcasts. So from a podcast standpoint, there is along the lines of writing. There is a podcast called the Creative Pen and Pen with two ends, and the host of it is Joanna Penn and she's been in this kind of indie publishing, self-publishing. She does like thriller, she writes thrillers, but she also teaches authors how a lot of the ins and outs of kind of self-publishing their books. I just find her absolutely delightful and she's been. I think her podcast is on like episode 700 something. So she's just kind of like a good source of industry information for me. But if someone's like, hey, I'm kind of thinking about writing fiction, which is not something I have expertise in, we focus on nonfiction. But if you're like, hey, I'm thinking about getting into fiction writing, she's an amazing, amazing resource. So I highly recommend her podcast.
Speaker 1:Love that. Well, we are at our time together. So thank you again for taking the time to hop on. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I really feel a calling to authorship. I also and I write constantly I've been writing newsletters for multiple years and save as you. There's a blog out there with, you know, 100 something, 200 something blog posts on it that's just permanently crawling the internet, and so this was very interesting for me, because it's not every day that I get the chance to dive deep on something like this with someone that is in that space, right, and I know that that's also the vibe that our listeners will have. You know, this is a very unique place and something to talk about, so thank you for writing your expertise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my pleasure. This is fantastic and I love that we now know that we're both projectors. That makes my day.
Speaker 1:And so, for those of you that are listening that may want to learn more about the indie collective experience or experienced Gens Workshop in real time in the indie collective cohort, we are launching our next cohort October 6th of 2023. It is a 10 week curriculum called the launch pad. If you want to learn more about that, you can go to wwwindecollectiveco, or you can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to set up a 30 minute call. I'm always into introducing people, meeting people. If there's anybody in the community that you can be connected with, I would love to have the opportunity to connect you with them. We do not gatekeep our members. We just empower them and love connecting good people to good people. You can find me at yonlookslakejam J-A-N Allmassy on LinkedIn, and that's probably the best place to connect. So until next time, this has been another episode of the Modern Independent here at Indie Collective.