(title sung in my best Barenaked Ladies, "One Week", music parody voice).
I’d put away six months of living expenses before I quit. I knew it would be a minute or two before I’d see a sale and even longer before I was generating enough revenue to pay bills and sustain my business. That six months ends in September. Here I am in month five, and it's time to get a job.
I had (have) a side hustle all figured out - I was going to be a loan signing notary. They make good money or so I’ve been told. I got my certification and everything. But, being a loan signing agent means pressure to not make mistakes; as the notary, I’m responsible for proofreading the paperwork and calling out any mistakes; there’s making sure the signers know enough to legally sign and making sure their identification is legit and on hand at the time of signing. All the proper paperwork must have the proper signatures— mind you, gotta know what constitutes a proper signature under the different circumstances so you can instruct the signer how to sign their name. Signing agents ratings and whether or not they get picked for jobs depends on their level of perfection in the execution and return of the documents. Dings for mistakes happen and can damage a signing agents reputation.
Experiences throughout my work career, and most recently on my last job, I’m cool with avoiding the pressure of having to live up to someone else’s perception of perfection or being in an environment where I’m judged negatively (and in some cases treated rather disrespectfully) when I make a mistake.
Moment of honesty here, after having this five months away from environments where I’m under pressure from all the “isms” and “ogynies” that come with being a 54 year old, bald, Black woman in the US., I am STRUGGLING to get past the anxiety around going back into those environments.
But alas, until my business revenue reaches a consistent $5K or higher each month, I’ve got to get some steady money coming in.
But alright, enough about all of that. I want to spend this month chatting about the tools and systems I’ve put into place these past five months that have moved my business forward. Each of the systems / resources I talk about is designed to maximize the time you have available to dedicate to your writing pursuits. From the actual writing to marketing and creating content, each of these proved to be time savers across the board.
With the resources in place, I managed to:
Produce (record, edit, upload) 18 videos—that’s a consistent three to four videos, three to four vlogs a month on my YouTube channel.
Produce (write, edit, format, upload) 14 blog posts
Get my once monthly newsletter (written, edited, formatted, scheduled) out to my community consistently on the 1st Tuesday of each month.
Write over 35K words, finishing two book drafts that had been languishing on my hard drive for years.
Release two publications—the Simply Self-Published Guide for New Writers and the novella, Eat Prey Blood.
Keep in mind, if you’re looking for any of these to [insert typical get-rich-quick, click-baity words here that imply you’ll suddenly be a millionaire and able to ‘live the life of your dreams’ if you implement these things], you may be wildly disappointed. Although, if one or two of them do net you major leaps in your business revenue, let me know. PLEASE! Lol…
Oh my goodness, I’ve rambled on enough for this post. So, as I mentioned, August is all about the tools / systems / resources I’ve used to up my productivity in my business.
Schedule:
Analog Tools & Systems: Video - Aug. 9, Blog - Aug. 11
Digital Tools & Systems: Video - Aug. 16, Blog - Aug. 18
Additional Resources: Video - Aug. 23, Blog - Aug. 25
Subscribe (Blog, YouTube) so you’re sure to get the notifications when each post goes life.
(sigh) Welp, no use in putting it off. Time to find that job. I’ll let you know how things turn out of course ;-).
Until next time.
PS - in case you were wondering how my Camp NaNo project turned out...
