Most writers wait until they’ve completed their manuscript before starting to prepare their query and synopsis. A manuscript will take many shapes before it’s ready to pitch, so it’s not efficient to start prepping the pitch too early.  Writers also have enough to juggle while writing their manuscript without worrying about how they’re going to satisfy the pitch requirements and make their submission stand out. Then there’s all the emotions that a writer inevitably expects will surface while getting ready to share their work with agents – when things will feel real. So, it makes sense that many writers think it’s better to kick the pitch down the road as long as possible.

But I believe waiting until a manuscript is written to begin thinking about the pitch is too late, and it’s highly likely prepping the pitch will highlight holes and roadblocks a writer missed in the drafting process. While sometimes these misses are minor potholes that only require minimal revisions to what the writer believes is their final manuscript draft, other times these can be sinkholes large enough to keep the writer from preparing a strong pitch package without first completing a major overhaul of their manuscript.

This installment of the Book Coach Corner series discusses how brainstorming your pitch while planning your novel can help you build a stronger manuscript and pitch while also saving you time and energy in the long run. 

Pitch Preview

When preparing the query and synopsis, many writers think that once they pull together the laundry list of required items for each, poof, they have a pitch package. But the magic of these two documents is how they strategically present the most important aspects of a writer’s manuscript in three double-spaced pages (one for the query and two for the synopsis). That means a writer has roughly 750 words to summarize their entire story in a way that hooks the agent quick enough that they will want to request the first few chapters of the manuscript.

Advantages to Brainstorming the Pitch Early

Drafting a strong pitch package requires more than just including the component parts of the query and synopsis. Instead, it requires a higher level of analysis to present the building blocks needed to paint a powerful picture for the agent. A writer is not just rattling off a description of the characters, plot, and a timeline of events. Rather, the writer is describing how the main character transforms between the opening and closing pages, why this transformation is important, and why the reader should care. Writers who identify these targets before they begin writing (or while they’re still writing), instead of waiting until their manuscript is written and must be backed into, create advantages for themselves.

Stronger Foundation

Brainstorming the pitch early gives a writer greater clarity, so they can build a stronger foundation for their story idea and structure. This allows them to focus better, streamline their ideas, and write smarter. This is likely to save them time and minimize their frustration during the revision phase, as well as reduce the chances of writing a first draft that’s not salvageable in revision.

Emotional Bandwidth

There’s also the important (but harder to quantify) advantage of freeing up emotional bandwidth because the writer won’t have the unknown of the pitch process and the dreaded impostor syndrome feelings hanging over their head while they write their story.

Three Pitch Points to Strategize

You too can benefit from the advantages above by focusing on the pitch during your planning stage, but it’s important to focus on substance over form. The intention of this planning exercise is not to prepare a usable query and synopsis at this point. Rather, it’s to focus early on a few key points of the pitch process that create guidelines to help you mold your manuscript in a way that keeps your story design and manuscript writing on track. 

Three pitch points I recommend strategizing early include your story’s genre, point, and structure.

Genre

It can be easy to take for granted what genre you’re writing in. We’re often superfan readers of our story’s genre, so we believe we know what we need to know. But this is not always the case. Take the time to know your game rules before you start playing the game, so you don’t get disqualified before you reach the finish line.

Action: Research your story’s genre to: 

• Validate your genre, 

• Identify the genre characteristics your book is expected to follow, and 

• Determine the genre’s typical word count range. 

Agents will assess your pitch to determine how your story aligns with your genre’s market and the likelihood they can attract a publisher who will want to buy your book. So, although you may choose to defy genre conventions when you write your manuscript, knowing the rules will help you make an educated decision before you intentionally (or unintentionally) break one.

Point

It is not uncommon for writers to write an entire first draft (or more) before they figure out their story’s point. But starting with a target in mind and then refining it as your story unfolds is preferable to backing into it after you write your story. It’s easier to focus on what will change for your protagonist, how it will happen, and whose help they need to get there when you know what you’re trying to prove to your reader. 

Think of your story’s point like the bullseye in a game of darts – you need to know where you’re aiming the dart to have any chance of winning the game. So, being clear on your story’s message at the start will help you more efficiently make story design decisions both before and while you write, which should increase your odds of proving your point and limit the revisions you need to make later. 

Action: Write down your point if you already know it. If you don’t, brainstorm some ideas, write them down, and circle the one you like best. Does your point make sense with your story’s genre? If not, brainstorm some more until you end up with a point that both makes sense and resonates with you. Use this one as your starting point.

Structure

You will need to describe your story and everything you want an agent to know in your target 750 words. If you compare that to an average word count of 80,000 for a manuscript in many genres, you quickly realize how strategic – and stingy – you must be with your descriptions. 

Action: 

• First, break down your protagonist’s journey into 4 sentences: where they’re starting, where they’re ending, what’s their biggest struggle or roadblock, and how do they overcome this obstacle or learn the lesson that proves the point. 

• Then, identify the 1-2 most important supporting characters that will aid your protagonist in overcoming their obstacle. Identify what their role is in the protagonist’s story. Knowing this helps you avoid including extra characters or scenes needlessly.

• Finally, brainstorm how you would describe the story’s arc and the characters involved using the information above from a big picture perspective. Note your thoughts in bullet form – do not write long-form descriptions. The goal here is to think about what’s going to be the most important information to include in the pitch. Then review your bullets and think about what’s missing. What else must your pitch and/or your story include to convince the agent (and eventually the reader) that both your protagonist changed, and you proved your point? 

This analysis can help you streamline your story design and characters and identify possible structure and/or plot holes you might run into later if you don’t stop to develop those ideas and characters now.

Next Steps

Planning with your pitch in mind can provide you the high value benefits described above for a low-cost entry. This framework is not time intensive, so you can see results in as little as 1-2 hours. This tool is also a great way to assess where you are (especially if you aren’t sure what your next steps should be), and whether you’re ready to start (or keep) writing or would benefit from additional brainstorming and planning time first. 

Once you complete the analysis, you’ll have a barometer that identifies initial areas you can focus on and a gauge of whether you would benefit from additional resources, such as writing craft books and classes or a book coach’s support.

Regardless of whether you’ve started drafting your manuscript or not, I hope you’ll open your calendar now and block out one hour to begin implementing the action steps above; so, you can gain more clarity on your story and next steps.

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever considered the pitch in your story planning?

Richelle Lyn is a writer and an Author Accelerator certified book coach. Her Mind Your Gap Trip Book Coaching focuses on women writing their first book after 40 because she believes it’s never too late to start. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. 

You can check her out on www.MindYourGapTrip.com, Instagram, or Twitter.

The post Book Coach Corner: Plan Your Novel with the Pitch in Mind appeared first on DIY MFA.

Book Coach Recap

Book coaches can support writers throughout the novel-writing process because one of their superpowers is determining what a writer needs to move forward. They will meet a writer where the writer is at any point in time: when the writer is first starting to work with them; when the writer shifts from one phase of writing their novel to the next; and at any time the writer needs to pivot—a mindset, writing process, story structure, story line, or character that’s no longer working for them.

This flexibility is one of the key advantages of working with a book coach since it allows a writer to work with a partner before they have completed a draft, much less completed a revised manuscript that’s deemed clean enough for another’s eyes. This is when most writers first reach out to work with a book editor to get feedback on what they’ve written. 

Instead, a book coach can be there to back up a writer to make sure they finish that first draft or round of revisions and don’t succumb to the internal and external forces that will inevitably throw up roadblocks before a writer finishes writing their book.

The “I Must Be Ready Before I Start My Novel” Roadblocks:                      

1. “My Novel Must Be My Top Priority. I Must Have the Perfect Writing Routine.”

Many beginning writers think they must make their novel their top priority, and they must have everything figured out before they start to write it—or before they ask someone else to support them in writing it.

One way this attitude manifests is that some writers take an all or nothing approach, where they feel pressured to take time off, toil away in a cabin in the woods, and write a best-selling novel. This is one shared by many writers, yet it’s a reality for very few published authors. 

Rather, most writers must juggle writing their novel with their already chaotic life. It’s easy to get down on ourselves when we can’t stick to a perfect schedule for something as important to us as our own dreams.

Another way this attitude appears is when writers feel like the universe is the enemy, putting up roadblocks everywhere. And sometimes that just might be the case for a short while, but using this as an excuse to avoid making progress on your dreams will get you nowhere fast. 

In fact, most of us would be hard-pressed to find any aspect of our life where we’ve shown up 100%… forever. So, why should writing a novel be any different?

New Perspectives To Try

• Fluid and Flexible: Start writing your novel now even though you know that your writing life and goals will need to be treated with the same fluidity and flexibility that apply to the rest of your life’s responsibilities and aspirations. 
• Open-Minded: Be open-minded to new ways of doing things and reimagine what writing productivity and progress means to you. 
• Recover the Fumble and Try Again: When you drop the ball, mess up, or fail, cut yourself some slack, pick up the ball—or yourself—reboot, and start over. 

How Can a Book Coach Help?

• Roadmap: A book coach will figure out what you need to move forward, design the roadmap, provide guidance and recommendations on next steps and new things to try, and identify how to course correct and get you back on the road when you hit a detour. 
• Slow and Steady Scheduling: Many coaches recommend one to two submission deadlines per month (instead of weekly deadlines) to give their writers the space they need to meet all their responsibilities, including their writing assignments. Although you may take twice as long to complete a draft, you will still reach your goal faster than waiting until you think you have enough time to focus on your story to start.

2. “I Must Have a Fully Baked Story… I Must Know Every Step in The Process…”

Some writers think they must have the plot, every storyline, and every character figured out—plus how to get from idea to publication—before they start to write their novel or share anything with anyone. There are three ways this roadblock rears its ugly head.

First, some writers will delay starting a novel because they lack clarity on where they’re headed. This can be as simple as not knowing what next step to take. It can be as complicated as not knowing what happens in the story, or why they can’t shake the story even though they don’t know why they want to write it. And everything in between.

Secondly, many writers hope that writing their novel will be a straight line from start to finish. Instead, the writing process is a constant state of creation and iteration. Each idea becomes words on the paper that ebb and flow over many rounds of revision. 

Ideas rarely end up in the same form as where they started, assuming they don’t end up on the cutting room floor. Trying to figure out every step at the start is inefficient because the steps will change over time. 

And, if a writer’s goal is to wait until their ideas, much less their words, are fully baked before writing or sharing, they will inevitably be waiting until they’ve completed multiple revisions of their draft manuscript before seeking feedback. 

Finally, writers who decide to delay asking for feedback often wait until they can no longer deny that something they’re doing is not working. Ultimately, they need to pivot and change their approach. But it’s much easier for a writer to pivot when they’re in the idea-generating zone and brainstorming a novel from 30,000 feet than after they’ve invested months or years in writing a draft manuscript that doesn’t work.

New Perspectives To Try

• Just Start: Start now, regardless of where you’re at, knowing that you will need to problem solve as you go. 
• Stay in Motion and Curious: Keeping your mind and ideas in motion is critical to writing the best story you can. Looking at your writing from different angles throughout the drafting process, and not just at set intervals (such as a new round of revisions), will help you avoid detours down dead-end streets.
• Keep Pivoting: At times, you will need to discover and implement a new perspective, whether it’s one you come up with on your own or with help from others.

How Can a Book Coach Help?

• Focused Framework: A book coach can provide a methodology for brainstorming and structuring a novel before you begin to write it, which will save you time in the long-run. Then, they can design an individualized roadmap to move you through the novel-writing phases as efficiently as possible. 
• Increased Bandwidth: Juggling ideating and writing forward while also assessing where you are can be challenging to do in a vacuum. A book coach can help you by supplying extra hours, brain space, and fresh perspectives focused on your novel in real-time as you brainstorm ideas, write, revise, and assess whether your draft is working.

Next Steps

If you’ve been holding yourself back from writing a novel, I hope the new perspectives recommended above help you reframe and break through your resistance, so you can start writing your novel now, not someday. 

Take some time to revisit and identify which common attitudes described above are your biggest roadblocks. Pick one to start with and identify one action you can take that will move you forward from where you are today. For example, if you don’t know where to start, you can start with a writing handbook or an online course, such as the ones offered in the DIY MFA universe—DIY MFA by Gabriela Pereira, DIY MFA 101, or one of the other programs offered. 

You can also research and interview some book coaches to see if one might be a great fit for you. If you are new to book coaching and are interested in learning more about what book coaches do and how they can help you and your writing, check out Book Coach Corner: Book Coaching 101 and Virtual Writers Sabbatical: Discovering the Art of Book Coaching.  

Remember, you just need to take one step forward at a time to see progress. But you must take that first step to start you on your novel-writing journey!

Until next time, happy writing!

Tell us in the comments: What’s been your biggest roadblock to starting a novel?

Richelle Lyn is a certified Author Accelerator book coach and a writer. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. 

You can check her out on Instagram, Twitter, or www.MindYourGapTrip.com.

The post Book Coach Corner: Reframe Your Resistance and Start Your Novel Now appeared first on DIY MFA.

Why Might You Need a Book Coach?

Historically, publishing houses employed editors who worked closely with their contracted authors on revising and finalizing their manuscripts prior to publishing. Over time, many publishers have either cut their marketing budgets and/or shifted them to the big-name, revenue-generating authors in their book of business, leaving little to no dollars or editor focus for first-time or early-in-their-career writers. 

Instead, publishers are in search of manuscripts that are ready (or close-to-ready) for prime-time before they are pitched to them. Agents have become pickier when deciding whether to take on manuscripts for representation since they will now have to do much of the heavy lifting that the editors once did if the manuscript isn’t already polished. 

As the snowball rolls downhill, many writers have selected alternate publishing approaches, such as self-publishing or hybrid publishing, for their books. While others who want to continue with traditional publishing have chosen to address their skills and story gaps by hiring a book coach to help them navigate the story writing process, so they can put forth the best manuscript and pitching package they can when they begin pitching to agents.

What Does a Book Coach Do?

A book coach is the partner that rounds out your writing journey regardless of whether you’re just starting out, stuck in the middle, or ready to start (or have already started) pitching. A book coach will assess where you are at and determine what you need to move forward. Book coaches focus on multi-disciplines, including the story drafting process, pitching, and cheerleading, as explained below.

Story Drafting Process

Brainstorming and Concept Development

Book coaches help you get your creative juices flowing and think outside your bubble. They can hold up a mirror for you, push you to dig deeper, tease out your ideas and creativity, and help you gain more insight into you and your story that you’re too close to see alone. Book coaches also help you focus on the key elements of story structure, so you can more effectively plan before you begin writing. They can help you develop your story idea into a story roadmap, so you will spend less time writing with no clear destination.

Writing Methods

Book coaches study what agents are looking for, so they can help writers focus their time on the things that will move the needle for their story. There are many effective writing and story methods available. You may have discovered one you think works, but no method is one-size fits all for writers or for writing stages. For example, what works for you in concept development and your initial draft may not work for you during revisions. Book coaches can introduce writing methods that can add to your writing toolkit and keep you moving forward productively.

Drafting and Revision Feedback

Book coaches evaluate initial draft pages and complete manuscripts to assess whether your story works on both the structural and story level. They can identify opportunities to improve your skill gaps earlier in the drafting process than if you work solo. They can also determine if you have writing patterns that will turn agents off if not corrected before pitching. 

Many writers take advantage of the common feedback options (e.g., alpha and beta readers and critique partners) prior to pitching to get a second set of eyes and different perspective on their story; but since most of the time their selected readers are not being compensated, the writer is fighting for attention and quality input. 

Plus, the feedback provided is often not structured, so the comments lead to chaos and angst for the writer. Whereas a book coach is a dedicated partner who knows the writer and their story almost as well (if not as well), is focused on the needle-moving items that will make the manuscript stronger and provides constructive feedback in a controlled framework that can be digested and implemented.

Project Management

Book coaches design project roadmaps to move you through the writing and publishing paces as efficiently and effectively as possible, so you can focus on the work and not where you’re headed or what’s coming next. They keep writers accountable to following their story roadmap, which allows you to focus your time and energy on writing and minimizes time spent on planning and administration.

Pitching

Some writers can’t pull the trigger to pitch, while others rush too soon to contact agents. If you’re a cautious writer, a book coach can help you determine when your manuscript is ready to pitch, as well as help you prepare your pitch package and identify agents to query. If you think you’ve jumped the gun because you’re batting .000 with your agent pitches, a book coach can help you reassess your pitch package and your manuscript to identify what might be preventing agents from being interested and then design a roadmap to get you back on track. Book coaches can also help you manage the pitching process once you begin querying, including how to deal with interested agents.

Cheerleading

Accountability and Leveling Up

Book coaches are your (not so) secret weapon if you need or want to be pushed to prioritize your writing time—or yourself—move forward when you’re stuck, move faster when you have some traction, discover a new perspective, and/or improve your writing. 

Emotional Support

You share your heart and soul when you share your manuscript with someone else, so it’s preferable to have in your corner someone committed to helping you write the best story you can. Book coaches are there for all the possible ups and downs of a writing journey, from wanting to quit instead of facing one more agent rejection to screaming from the rooftops when an agent offers you representation, and everything in between.

Selecting a Book Coach

If you’re interested in working with a book coach, here are some things to keep in mind:

Be Open

You must be open to trying new things, receiving constructive feedback, and digging in and doing the hard work if you want to maximize the coaching relationship.

Good Fit

Book coaches are often solopreneurs who bring different skills, expertise, and genre focuses to their businesses; so, it’s important to do some “good fit” research upfront. If you already know your writing gaps, seek out a book coach whose strengths will help you fill in those gaps. Many coaches will ask you to complete a questionnaire and provide a writing sample to assess you for fit as well. Some book coaches also provide free consultations to determine what you need and whether you and the book coach would be a good fit.

Coaching Services

Book coaching services are as varied as the coaches themselves, so it’s important to ensure the book coach’s workflows and scheduling sync up with your own. Although some book coaches enjoy coaching across the story writing spectrum (i.e., idea generation to agent representation), others prefer to focus on specific phases of the writing process based on their own skills and interests (e.g., story concept to completed manuscript, but not pitching – or vice versa). 

Matching Service

If you are short on time to research or feeling intimidated by too many options, Author Accelerator provides a book coach matching service that pairs writers with one of their certified book coaches for a minimal fee.

I hope you found this introduction to book coaching helpful. Future columns will focus on specific aspects of book coaching, the book coach/writer relationship, and the story drafting and pitching processes. If you have additional questions about book coaching, please leave them in the comments below. 

Until next time, happy writing!

Tell us in the comments: Have you worked with a book coach before?

Richelle Lyn is a book coach and writer. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Instagram, Twitter, or www.MindYourGapTrip.com.

The post Book Coach Corner: Book Coaching 101 appeared first on DIY MFA.

This final installment of Tales of a Solopreneur explains how you can combine strategic planning for your business with your personal planning using my Reflect, Reboot & Re-prioritize (“RRR”) framework to set you up for long-term success and short-term fun.

Reflect

Running a solopreneur business effectively requires an alignment between your mindset, skills, and determination. You can learn what you don’t know. You can develop your skills and double down on your strengths. But self-reflection is key to determining where you should be focusing your time, versus where you’re spinning your wheels or wasting your time. 

Spending one hour up front to reflect on the past year will help you more efficiently plan what steps you can take next year to move your small business forward without sacrificing your personal happiness and satisfaction.

The first step is to ask yourself the following questions about this year:

Completed Goals: Which goals did you complete, when, and how long did they take?

• Did you finish them sooner or faster than planned? Were they time-sensitive, or something you loved to do or played into your strengths?
• If you started them later or they took longer, why? Did other projects or self-doubt get in the way, or did you fail to plan right (i.e., underestimated how long things would take or failed to identify the action steps needed)?

Open Goals: Which goals did you start but not finish, and which goals were never started?

• Why? What roadblocks did you run into?
• Did timelines change, did the goals stop making sense, did you fail to plan right, did you get side-tracked with something else, or were your eyes bigger than your year and you just ran out of time?
• Which goals do you want to do a final year-end push on, carryover to next year (“Carryover Goals”), back burner for a future year, or eliminate completely, and why?

Themes: Identify themes that keep popping up.

• Did you complete the most important goals to move you and your business forward, or did you focus on the easiest goals because you were good at them, the other items were too scary, or you just wanted to check something off your list? 
• Did you delay goals because you were undermined by your mindset?
• How good were you at identifying smaller required tasks and estimating work time?
• How good were you at staying focused?

Progress: What progress are you most proud of, and why? Do you feel like you could have done more, or did you have unrealistic expectations? 

Resistance: What was the toughest challenge, biggest surprise, and biggest disappointment you faced and why? 

Lessons: What did you learn about your business or yourself this year, and which was the hardest lesson you learned, and why?

3 Roadblock Busters: Make a list of three actions you can take to bust through your roadblocks. 

• For example, do you need to start or stop something, to learn a specific skill, to hire an expert to complete a task that’s holding you up, to recalibrate your mindset, tips on developing an effective action plan, practice showing up and keeping a routine, or a reality check when setting expectations for yourself and others?

Your Wins: Celebrate where you are, what you’ve learned, and the progress you’ve made. Cue your happy dance!

Reboot

The hard part is over. Now for the fun part. 

Cast Your Vision

I’ve discovered planning for my business and personal life together provides a more holistic life perspective and is a better gauge of what I can reasonably fit into a year. 

Spend 30 minutes brainstorming what you desire for you and your business. Be bold. Do not self-edit. Only you will see your answers. Start with these questions:

• What’s your pie in the sky dream for you and your business?
• Where do you want you and your business to be in 1, 3, and 5 years? 

• What must you accomplish to achieve your vision? Is there a clear path forward, or do you need to design it? 
• What’s your WHY (or why do you want what you want)? 

Claim Your Goals 

Now, review your vision answers, and identify the goals you want to complete by the end of next year for you and your business.

Your Business.

• Top 3-5 new business goals that will move you closer to your vision.
• Carryover Goals.
• 3 Roadblock Busters.

You: Identify at least one goal from each category below to build balance into your upcoming year.

• Passion project (e.g., start or focus on a hobby, sport, or nonprofit organization).
• Physical and well-being (e.g., build and strengthen your health habits)
• Social and relationships (e.g., build and strengthen your connections and community). 
• Fun (e.g., add more joy, more often).

Re-prioritize

Finally, it’s time to re-prioritize your perspective and your task list and plan for next year’s goals. 

Adopt a Four Quarters Perspective

Focusing your energy and building your implementation plan on a quarterly basis provides you wiggle room to refresh and pivot throughout the year. 

• Quarters Grid: Draw a four-box grid on a piece of paper and label the quadrants: Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Assign your new goals in chronological order to the four quarters based on when you need/want to work on each of them. Limit each quarter to 1-2 big goals or 3-4 smaller goals, so you can maintain your focus and gain traction.
• Bonus: Plot out your annual vacations and build them into your calendar and your four quarters now. It will give you something to look forward to, help you refresh periodically to avoid burnout, and help you be more realistic about what you can accomplish in a three-month period without sacrificing your time off.  

Plan Your First Quarter 

On a new piece of paper, prioritize each goal you assigned to Q1. Then, for each goal, ask: 

• Milestones: Identify the 3-5 action steps (“milestones”) you must take to complete the goal. If you’re stuck, try working backwards from the last step you need to complete the goal until you get to where you are now.
• Timing: Estimate how long each milestone will take to complete and then multiply it by 1.5 for a built-in buffer. 

On a separate piece of paper, write 1-12 down the left side and add the dates for each week in the quarter. 

• Commitments: Note for each week the days you need to block out for previously scheduled work and personal commitments, such as school breaks, work travel, and scheduled vacations.
• Weekly Targets: Assign your milestones in the order you plan to work on them across the 12 weeks, using your milestone time estimates and how many weekly hours you plan to devote to your goals. If you run out of weeks, decide which goal(s) to move to a future quarter.
• Bonus: Build in days for you to brainstorm and strategize for your business, as well as days for you to decompress. Also, build in at least one buffer week to knock out tasks on lingering projects. 
• Weekly Planning: Review your Weekly Targets for each new week and update them for your prior week’s progress. Consider what information, education, or resources you need to learn or acquire to keep moving forward on your milestones. Then identify which actions you will take that week. 

Refine Your Next Quarter

At the end of Q1, spend 30-60 minutes thinking about how your progress compares to your initial quarterly plan.

• What did you complete? 
• How close were your time estimates? 
• What challenges did you face? 
• What changed in your business that requires changes in your planning for next quarter?
• Will incomplete milestones be carried over or eliminated? 
• How do you feel? 
• What are you excited about?

Repeat the ‘Plan Your First Quarter’ steps for the goals you initially identified for Q2 and add in any Carryover Goals you identified from Q1.

Repeat this ‘Re-prioritize’ step for Q3 and Q4.

Then restart the entire RRR process at the beginning of December for the next year.

Implement

I will be finishing my 2023 planning over the coming weeks. I can’t wait to see which business and personal goals I decide on and the fun activities ahead.

I hope you find the RRR framework helpful as you strategize for your business and decide where to focus your time and energy in 2023. And remember to celebrate your wins now and throughout the year. Keeping your eyes on your prizes is a great way to create your own long-term success and personal fulfillment.

Richelle Lyn is a compensation & benefits attorney and HR executive, who now spends her days focused on the writing life. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Instagram.

The post Tales of a Solopreneur: Plan Early for a New Year’s Success appeared first on DIY MFA.

Making friends with other entrepreneurs early on can be more fun, plus working with others who understand the challenges you face might even give you some extra runway. This Tales of a Solopreneur installment discusses some additional benefits that you can gain from teaming up with other entrepreneurs, opportunities for making connections, and communication platforms you can use to stay in touch.

Connecting the A-B-C Way

Many solopreneurs already have a built-in self-starter gene which sparked their entrepreneurship in the first place. But two heads are often better than one, and everyone can use a cheerleading section occasionally. These A-B-Cs are additional advantages you can gain from forming new friendships with other entrepreneurs:

Accountability

First, no matter how good (or not) you might be at strategizing and scheduling tasks, there’s something magical about declaring to someone other than yourself what you need, or want, to complete. Even if it takes me longer than I’d like to complete and mark a task off my list, I find that I finish the items I’ve declared to my confidantes quicker than I would otherwise; often because it’s more fun to share my wins than my setbacks. But setbacks are part of the process, so having friends who will (gently) check in on me and my progress is worth its weight in gold. It also makes it easier to restart when I get sidetracked or occasionally derailed.

Brainstorming Beyond Your Bubble

Next, there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to be all the things to all the people. Like homing in on your ideal client or your niche audience, it’s also helpful to focus your time on the skills and knowledge areas that will provide you the maximum benefits. But there will be other areas you aren’t skilled in that you will either need to learn or hire someone else to take care of for you, and you might not be able to afford to hire experts yet.

Dividing and conquering is a great way to leverage your skills and strengths and avoid getting stuck in quicksand trying to learn and implement required tasks that you don’t understand, like doing, or have time to do. Sharing knowledge with other entrepreneurs, especially when they are skilled in areas that are your gaps, can be a win-win. For example, if you love setting up systems but are petrified of marketing, and a member of your Team Solopreneur is a whiz at branding but doesn’t know which technology to use to run a back office or how to manage data, then swapping expertise can move you both forward exponentially. 

Also, brainstorming with others about where they focus their time or what resources are on their wish list introduces you to other ideas, strategies, technologies, trends, and opportunities that you might never discover otherwise.

Check-ins

Finally, sometimes we get so deep into our rabbit holes that we lose the forest through the trees. We may think we know where we’re headed; but a gut check can help save us lots of time, money, and emotional energy if we are way off the mark. Bouncing your ideas off someone else who has experience in the area, has strong strategic skills, or is just an independent thinker who isn’t tied emotionally to your idea the way you are can be priceless. And if you choose to move forward with your idea, even if you’ve received a thumbs down, you will likely have some additional data points to use in your planning.

Making Connections Is Easier Than You Think

There are many opportunities for making connections with other entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs and their businesses come in all shapes and sizes; so, challenge yourself to think broadly and meet people with different product and service focuses, client demographics, skills, interests, and goals. For example, my Team Solopreneur includes writers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and knitters; and I learn completely different and wonderful things from each of them. 

Some of the best places I’ve made my connections include:

• Classes – Whether classes are online or in person, there are usually opportunities to meet other students in either breakout sessions, live Q&As, group assignments, or closed social media groups or networks. Also, some classes take it to the next level and recommend (or even facilitate) teaming up with other students to create accountability pods. If you get the chance, take advantage of this opportunity. Although you may feel out of your comfort zone at the beginning and setting up your pod may take a little extra time, you may end up with friends and confidantes that last long after the class is over.  

• Private Membership Communities – Some teachers and coaches run private membership communities focused on a specific topic and/or client demographic that they offer only to their students and clients. Often these types of communities provide the ability to meet many individuals at once along with additional opportunities for smaller group interactions. 

Make a list of the activities you already participate in (or plan to participate in the short-term), identify what community-related activities they offer, and pick one to start with.

Choosing Your Communications Platform is Key

Connecting should be fun, but sometimes our typical technology options cause challenges that make it feel like a chore; so, make sure you select a communications platform that will work best for you and the other members of your Team Solopreneur based on your preferences. 

Although email, texts, and social media groups are always possibilities for staying in touch with new friends, they are my least favorite solutions to use. Email can feel like snail mail for real-time (or close to real-time) contact as compared to texts these days; but I don’t always have time to respond to texts, and it’s too easy for them to fall through the cracks. I also find going on social media to check group messages can be too time-consuming with all the other shiny objects on social media.

My favorite way to keep in touch is using instant messaging platforms, such as Discord or Slack. Both platforms have mobile capabilities, allow you to invite friends, set up different threads, organize topics and groups so it’s easier to focus your attention, and make it easy to jump to the point in each thread where you left off. Plus, both have free plan options. 

Next Up

I’ve been splitting my focus lately between progressing on my book coaching certification program and learning new skills in an online class, both of which will keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Lucky for me, both provide community opportunities to help keep me on track.

I hope you are ready to set up your own Team Solopreneur if you don’t already have one. But just remember…starting out slow is fine since you only need one new friend to start benefiting from your A-B-Cs.

Tell us in the comments: Do you have a Team Solopreneur? 

Richelle Lyn is a compensation & benefits attorney and HR executive, who now spends her days focused on the writing life. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Instagram and Twitter.

The post Tales of a Solopreneur: Teaming Up with Other Solopreneurs appeared first on DIY MFA.

After some enjoyable downtime over the summer, I’m back building my small business with renewed energy. So, I decided to start with tackling some of the areas that I’ve had resistance with in the past – primarily setting up my first website and drafting and designing the initial content I need to get it up and running. For me, this includes my logo, about page, welcome page, lead magnet, and setting up my email list database. 

Yes, that’s right. Basically, my task ahead is setting up my online presence from soup to nuts; so, I decided to tackle it one step at a time. I started with creating my logo. 

Selecting my business name was a relatively easy exercise for me as I discussed in Tales of a Solopreneur: To Trademark or Not to Trademark. But from the start, I’ve had no idea what I wanted to do with my logo. Selecting the design that was going to represent my business (and me) was daunting. From color scheme to fonts and graphics, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted. My mind went blank every time I tried to focus on it. I thought about hiring a graphics designer to help, but that didn’t make sense to me since I wasn’t sure what to ask them to create. Instead, I kicked the can down the road for a long while… and then for a little longer until I finally decided to crush the can and get started. 

This Tales of a Solopreneur installment discusses the process I followed to generate multiple logo designs for me to test run for my business.

Brainstorming a Logo

Once I accepted my logo wasn’t going to appear to me in an epiphany like my business name had, I decided I would start with the following action steps to help me brainstorm my logo. Then I would loop back at the end to assess where I was and what to do next.

Creating Inspiration Using Templates

I created my own inspiration by flipping through stock templates on Canva to see which ones I was loving and if there were any trends I could identify. Canva is an online graphic design tool that can be used to create many types of media content, including logos. The Canva website is very easy to navigate, and I was selecting sample logo templates within minutes of signing up. I signed up for a 30-days free trial to test it out, but I was so impressed with Canva’s capabilities that I plan to purchase a membership at the end of my trial.

These are the steps I followed on Canva to develop a cheat sheet of design elements I wanted to incorporate into my initial logo designs:

• Scan and Star Stock Templates – I spent about an hour searching various keywords related to my business name and starred the templates that jumped out at me. I ended up with several hundred possibilities, which was probably way more than I needed in the end; but it did help me easily identify trends when I scanned my starred folder as described below. 

• Pick Colors – First, I looked for the color schemes that I loved the best. Did I want a dark or light background? Which color schemes were popping, and did I want it to pop or something that was more subtle? 

• Focus on Text – Then, I looked at the typeface. Which fonts were my favorites? Did I prefer words in all caps, all lower-case, or a combo? Did I want the words to be the same color or different ones? 

• Select Pictures – Finally, I went back through and focused on the graphics and word placement. Which type of word placement and sizing did I prefer – horizontal or vertical, large or compact, one or multiple lines of text? Did I like graphics that were integral in the name or those that were there simply to accentuate the words? 

Although this might sound like too many steps, I found that focusing on one element at a time while scrolling through the templates made the process go quickly; and I narrowed down my design elements wish list to one page of notes within 45 minutes.

Designing Personalized Test Logos

Next, I was ready to start designing. Canva’s creation tool was very easy to use. I spent about ten minutes exploring how it worked; and then I was ready to get down to business and create my logo designs, which felt more like Arts & Crafts play:  

• Create Five Initial Designs – I used my one-page cheat sheet from my template research above to create five logo designs in an hour. I mixed background and typeset colors, graphics, and fonts throughout the various designs.

• Print and Preview the Designs – I printed off my five designs and tacked them onto a bulletin board. One thing to note is the printouts didn’t print true-to-color as compared to what I was seeing on my computer screen, but the printouts were close enough to help me compare the elements between the designs. I have the bulletin board propped against a wall near my desk, so I can glance at it often; and I’m figuring out what I think is working and what tweaks I might want to make. 

Refining an Ideal Client Avatar

I was excited to finally have logo designs to work with. Plus, rolling up my sleeves and creating my initial designs reminded me that I needed to consider what my ideal client (or customer) would think about my designs as well. I’ve brainstormed and researched my ideal client several times before, including my most recent brainstorming session discussed in Tales of a Solopreneur, but I hadn’t looked at it recently. 

After a couple of months away from building my business, I thought it was important to reconnect with WHO I was building it for. So, I thought this was a good time to revisit my client avatar, especially since I knew clarity on this would help me home in on the visuals for my logo, as well as the design and content for my website, which I would soon be working on.

I discovered my ideal client description wasn’t as specific as I remembered – or would like, so I challenged myself to get more specific on a minimum of 3 characteristics for this round. I was surprised to find that drilling down after some time away was easier than it had been for me to initially develop the characteristics. It also made me realize that I’ve developed my business ideas so much in recent months that the individuals I’m focused on are a much smaller subset than where I was earlier in the year.

Regardless of whether you’re starting out or you’ve been building your business for a while, 

I recommend revisiting and refining your ideal customer often. I plan to revisit my client avatar at least monthly while I’m building out my business to see where I need to make tweaks, and then I will switch to quarterly reviews after I launch the business.

Next Steps

After all my silent protesting and procrastinating, I completed phase 1 of my logo design in just over 3 hours and had a blast playing with the color schemes and graphics. I need a little more time to sit and stare at the logos before moving to phase 2, which will include narrowing down the initial five designs and creating some additional designs if I think something is still missing, which I expect will be the case. Then I will share those designs with some friends who are ideal clients to generate some feedback. After that, I will determine if I need to test a few more designs and whether I might benefit from hiring a graphics designer to create the final design.

In the meantime, while I ponder my bulletin board, I’ve started drafting my about page. Writing about myself is not something I enjoy doing, but I’ve discovered some great resources to get my brain percolating. More to come on this in a future installment.

I hope sharing my art project exercise with you has spurred you to either start designing your own logo if you’ve been putting it off, or to dust off your ideal customer avatar to see if anything has changed that might impact your brand.

Tell us in the comments: How did you design your logo, or what’s holding you back?

Richelle Lyn is a compensation & benefits attorney and HR executive, who now spends her days focused on the writing life. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot, and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Instagram.

The post Tales of a Solopreneur: Designing a Logo from Scratch appeared first on DIY MFA.

My last installment, Tales of a Solopreneur: Building Your Brain Power, focused on learning and self-discovery and provided an action plan for building your brain power, so you can maintain your mental momentum year-round. This installment provides a framework for you to take the next step and acquire a virtual mentor who can help you get closer to your goals.

There are many responsibilities and tasks that solopreneurs starting out inevitably have to juggle alone, so it’s important to look for shortcuts to help you complete items faster and more efficiently and allow for greater rates of success. One way to do this is to engage in a virtual mentorship.

From my experience, if you surround yourself with people who have similar aspirations, an open mindset, and are ready to put in the work, you will be fueled by their motivation and momentum. Exercise boot camps, writing groups, and business masterminds are some examples of ways to turn big dreams into big goals that result in real-life achievements with the support of others in a mutually beneficial relationship. However, a one-sided virtual relationship with an expert in an area you want help in can be just as important to your long-term success even if you never meet them in real life. 

You may be lucky enough to have real-life mentors that you can bounce ideas off of and gain real-time feedback on your thoughts and ideas and whether they think you’re headed in the right direction. However, the advice these mentors might provide you (despite how well-intentioned it may be) may not be relevant to where you’re headed with your start-up business, unless your mentors themselves have experience in your areas of need or the mental mindset to help you grow and fill in your own skill gaps. 

Instead, consider setting up a new support team to help you up your game for what’s ahead. There is no shortage of advisors with content at varying price points in the virtual space to help you do this. Your support team will grow and evolve as you and your business grow – and as you continue to challenge yourself to operate further and further beyond your comfort zone. But you can start your support team now by acquiring your first virtual mentor.

Selecting Your Virtual Mentor

I would describe a successful virtual mentorship as a combination of you finding the right person or group to provide you with the right content at the right time in a format that works well for you. You can benefit from a virtual mentor at any point; and as your needs change, your mentors will too. 

The key to starting is to figure out where you are today and what you will need in the short and long-term. Although there are times when learning about many topics can be helpful, this is not that time. Drilling down and learning as much as you can as quickly as possible in your area of choice from the mentor you’ve selected is the end game. Then once you’ve mastered, or at least become skilled in, what that mentor has to teach, you will be ready to graduate and select another mentor.

The following is an action plan for selecting a virtual mentor. 

Defining Success

How would you define success with your virtual mentorship? For example, are you looking for: encouragement, motivation, or momentum; a new or improved skill-set; a fresh perspective; or a fast-track set-up or a way to push through a road-block in your business? Although you may have many growth opportunities to consider, the key is to identify what outcome would be your best result now, or what your biggest pain point is.

Discovering Virtual Mentors

Brainstorm a list of speakers, coaches, and/or authors, including niche experts, personal development gurus, and/or business builders, who might help you achieve success. Then research the following questions for each:

• Do they have a platform, business organization, or service offerings that might help you? 
• Do they teach virtual classes; or do they publish online content via webinars, videos, or podcasts? 
• Do they host virtual communities or Ask Me Anything sessions? 
• Have you purchased content from them that you have yet to listen to? (I recommend keeping a list of all online content purchases for easy tracking.)
• Does their personality, brand, and teaching method resonate with you?
• Would they be a good role model for you? 

Selecting Your Virtual Mentor 

You are most likely excited about the possibilities you identified while brainstorming, so it’s important to narrow your list before you are tempted to go down the rabbit hole. Go with your gut and focus on the mentor options you believe will be true contenders for your attention and time. Your ultimate goal is to identify which mentors you would benefit the most from spending time with and then selecting who you want to learn from first. 

I recommend setting a timer for 30 minutes to complete the Research and Cost & Benefits Analysis prompts below and then setting another 30 minutes timer to complete the remaining prompts. 

RESEARCH: On a new piece of paper, answer the following questions for each of the mentors you think are contenders: 

• Will you learn something new or how to do something different? 
• How much will the mentor’s content cost you in the short-term and long-term? Is there free content you can use before purchasing their content? 
• Will the learning be self-paced, or will there be a specific timeline to follow? 
• Will this format work with your current circumstances, budget, and preferred learning style?
• Would you or your business benefit from this information immediately, or would the payoff be in the future (i.e., 6-12 months, 1-3 years, or over 3 years)? 

COST & BENEFITS ANALYSIS: Highlight the names where you answered there would be either an immediate or a 6-12 months payoff, and use a separate sheet of paper to prepare a Cost & Benefit Analysis for this short-list of mentor options. Use the following headings and questions for each: 

• ACHIEVEMENT: What will you achieve by learning from this mentor, and how will it benefit you or your business? 
• SCHEDULE: How and when will you consume the content? (Already have too much on your plate? See Building Your Brain Power for suggestions on how to squeeze in learning without carving out extra time in your day.) 
• COSTS: Does the cost fit within your current or future budget? If not, how will you fund it?
• OTHER OPTIONS: Is there another way to reach the same Achievement without this mentor; and if so, why would you choose this mentor over the other option?

FINAL RANKING: Compare the answers on your Cost & Benefits Analysis. 

Rank your list starting with #1. Focus on which options will provide you the best result based on your current circumstances and list them in descending order.  

SELECT & START: Pick your first virtual mentor. Start with #1 on your list unless there’s a timing or budgetary constraint that prevents this. If so, move on to #2 (and so on).

Get started. Sign up for your virtual mentor’s newsletter, subscribe to their YouTube channel or podcast, follow them on social media, buy their book, enroll in their program, join their community, etc. based on their applicable content.

I suggest sticking with one virtual mentor at a time until you know you can maximize that relationship before focusing on a second mentor, especially if it will require a more intense or longer time commitment to work through your mentor’s applicable content. 

REVIEW & REFRESH: Add new mentor options to your list as you discover them.

Revisit your analysis at least annually to refresh and reprioritize. Also, note the following: 

• What you’ve accomplished (happy dance!);
• Where you may have stalled, so you can decide whether to restart or not (honor your reality…); and 
• What new areas of interest or mentor options you want to add based on your (new) current circumstances. 

Next Up… Back to School

As summer ends, I’m looking forward to the Fall (which is my favorite season) and the start of a new school year, which for me includes happy memories of new school supplies and endless possibilities. The upcoming school year for me will include working on the final course requirements for my fiction book coaching certification course and then starting the non-fiction course.

I hope you’ve had an opportunity this summer to fit in some time for yourself and your loved ones and you’re looking forward to the possibilities ahead for the second half of the year.

Richelle Lyn is a compensation & benefits attorney and HR executive, who now spends her days focused on the writing life. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Instagram and Twitter.

The post Tales of a Solopreneur: Acquiring a Virtual Mentor appeared first on DIY MFA.

Backing things up…The solo part of solopreneur is a double-sided coin. Despite its many advantages, there are also some challenges to working alone, including stricter limits on time and resources when delegation isn’t an option. There will be times when you choose to slow down or go into a full-stop hiatus (think vacations, holidays, and summer breaks) to rest and recharge, so you can bounce back stronger. 

Unfortunately, there will also be times when life happens to you, and you are hit by a curveball that forces you to turn your attention to something even more important or pressing than your business. I’ve learned that it’s not if, but when, the latter will happen; so it’s helpful to be prepared. 

Although the end of the school year arrives the same time each year, it always seems to sneak up on me. The house buzzes with activity from morning to night as the school schedule is abandoned. A change in schedule can cause a ripple effect for solopreneurs, especially for those who work from home. It often starts with an interruption in targeted completion dates; but it can quickly spiral into loss of momentum and then motivation resulting in mind games that open the door to self-defeat. 

But being off schedule, or off all together, for a little while doesn’t have to knock you off track; and in fact, it can be a game-changer long-term if you use the time to maintain a positive mindset and keep challenging yourself.

Building Brain Power: The Under-rated Business Asset

I believe your brain is one of your most important business assets even though you’ll never see it listed on a balance sheet. Being a solopreneur is not for the faint of heart, and you need your brain to show up at the station on time and stick around for the full adventure. 

Sometimes your brain can be your greatest supporter; but it can also be your worst enemy, often when you’re down on yourself or your situation. It’s easy to slip into the mindset that nothing is being done to move your business forward if you aren’t logging hours in daily, or at 

least on a consistent basis. But this doesn’t have to be the case because building a business requires more than just completing a series of tasks listed on a spreadsheet or a course handout.

I believe aspects of a small business’ growth will always be tied to the solopreneur’s personal growth, and it’s important for solopreneurs to actively seek learning opportunities in areas such as effective brainstorming, optimizing strategic goal setting and tracking, increasing efficiency and productivity, discovering new perspectives and new ways to do things, and learning how to pivot. Being successful in each of these areas requires a solopreneur’s mental focus—and the greater the focus, the higher the probability for a successful outcome.

You can set up back-office systems to keep your business running while you’re away from your computer. But establishing and growing your business requires much more of you and your brainpower than business maintenance does. 

Despite my dreams of being able to split myself in half to get double the work done, I’ve learned the hard way that my brainpower is not a bottomless well, it requires both positive generation and constant protection, and it’s much harder to restart from a stop position than if I keep things moving along at a slower speed. Plus, when my brain has idle time, that’s when the weight of the world feels heaviest on my shoulders and when impostor syndrome starts knocking. 

For all of these reasons, I make it a priority to learn new things year-round that generate more brain power. I also preserve my brain power during more difficult hiatuses when my brain is susceptible to draining but distractions are welcome. 

This approach helps me keep my mental focus and my business development moving forward whether I’m working at maximum speed on projects or I’m just managing the musts and have put a pause on the nice to haves. 

Plus, life interruptions aren’t as destabling since I always have a plan in place to keep my mind engaged until I can kick back into a higher gear. And just as important, I’ve figured out how to fold this plan into my daily life without carving out extra time.

Designing My Brain Power Builder

The three pillars of my Brain Power Builder are: mindset, habits, and creativity. 

Focusing on a positive and open mindset helps me to create targets and move toward them without being defeated when I face challenges. Developing better habits helps me do more with less. Sparking creativity helps me stay resilient and responsive and think out of the box. 

I ebb and flow between these three pillars depending on how I’m feeling, what’s been going on in my life, and what’s on my mind (or not on my mind); but they all remain on my radar even if I’m not actively working on them since an area that was under control last month might be out of sync by next month. 

There’s a wealth of knowledge available both for free and for purchase for each of these pillars in multiple formats to match learning styles and situations. I’m an advocate of literary citizenship, and I still love to hold a book in my hands and mark important pages; so I purchase my books in print. 

But I also use my library card to check out the audiobook version, so I can listen to the book on my phone while I’m doing household tasks, exercising, driving, or during my daily knitting sessions (which also help me spark my creativity). Relying on audio formats has become a game-changer for me since I can squeeze in learning while multitasking, and I don’t have to carve out separate time that feels selfish. Plus, I love listening to authors read their own books since it feels like I’m taking their master class. I also listen to related podcasts, videos, webinars, and online classes. 

Here are some of my recent reads and listens that I recommend:

Mindset

• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
•  Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• GrowthDay, which is an online subscription platform providing access to personal development master classes

Habits

• The High 5 Habit by Mel Robbins
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard

Creativity 

• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life by Twyla Tharp
• Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace. (See Virtual Writers Sabbatical: How Creativity, Inc. Inspired Me.)

Building Your Brain Power Plan

Are you ready to prioritize your brain power, so your mind will support you and your business long-term? If so, follow these easy steps to create your own Brain Power Builder:

• Write down a bullet list of the pillars you want to focus on, or borrow my list (mindset, habits, and creativity) if you’re not sure where to start.
• Star the bullets you’re most interested in learning about or think will help you move the needle the most.
• Prioritize your starred items, select your top three, and rank them as pillars 1, 2, and 3.
• Write down a list of three things you can do for each of your three pillars.
• Select an item from pillar 1 and get started, working your way down the list as you go. 
• Keep notes or journal entries on important takeaways or action items. 
• If your preference is to focus on one thing from start to finish before starting something new, then I recommend selecting the next item at the same time you reshelve your book or check your loan back into the library; so you will keep your momentum going.
• Check off each item you complete and record the date.
• Add to the list as you discover new ideas. 
• Periodically revisit your pillars to see if they need updating.

Building your brain power can lead to epiphanies that spark both your momentum and motivation, so don’t forget to celebrate your wins when you apply something you’ve learned to your business or your personal life.

Next Up, Summertime Reading

I have a short list of business formation items that I plan to work on in July and August, but I’ve opted to slow down during summer break to rest and recharge, focus on family, and have some fun. But I’ve updated my Brain Power Builder to make sure I maximize my free time and listening opportunities to keep focusing on mindset, habits, and creativity. 

My current read is We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers, and I was immediately hooked by her introduction. The other brain power books I have queued up include: 

• Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead by Tara Mohr
• Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• How to Live a Good Life and Sparked, both by Jonathan Fields
• A Curious Mind: The Secret To a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman
• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

I hope you have some exciting summer plans for yourself that will help you recharge and get ready for the second half of the year. And don’t forget your summer reading list at home…

Tell us in the comments: What do you read to build your brain power?

Richelle Lyn is a compensation & benefits attorney and HR executive, who now spends her days focused on the writing life. Her favorite fiction reads involve leading ladies who push boundaries and conquer their fears while preferably digging for secrets, learning magic, and/or saving the World. She’s also a fan of non-fiction reads focused on personal growth and transformation. She loves her tea hot and her coffee iced. She calls South Florida home, but her favorite place to be is on a trip. You can check her out on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Tales of a Solopreneur: Building Your Brain Power appeared first on DIY MFA.