“How to Not F*ck Up Your Own Company”
I did it! I wrote my first book! “How to Not F*ck Up Your Own Company” is now completely finished. It’s now uploaded onSubstack and the last chapter will be available on December 27. What a ride!
I began writing the book during the extreme lockdown of COVID in early 2020. As I began writing, I thought, wow this is easy! I could easily crank out four books a year! I was wrong.
It started straightforward enough, with an outline of everything I wanted to cover in the book as then filled in each chapter, one at a time, and it all seemed to be going well. Oh, the first draft was easy, until I had to organize the book. The reality slapped me in the face like Cher bitch-slaps Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck. “Snap out of it!”
It took three of us sitting in front of a big monitor just to arrange the roughly fifty sections of the book into some meaningful order because the points I make don’t all relate to each other and there is some that need to lead others. It was like a Rubik’s Cube. I also found gaps that needed filling and repetitive examples. Sections that had no place to go and small points that shouldn’t be chapters.
Then, I was onto the second draft. That’s where it got even more complicated. I went through some doubt, if I was writing anything of meaning, but after I’d put it down and come back, I still believed in the work.
What I discovered was that I’d repeat my analogies or content in places to make a point and I had to make certain that I was weeding out all repetition. I hate those books that make one point then say it ten different ways. I didn’t want to go that direction. It took me months to get through the second draft and I still kept finding holes. That was tedious!
I was not sure I had good flow and that I didn’t fix some sections while creating new repetition in the process, so while I was deep inside the book, it was time for a third draft to fix the rough spots. I was well into mid summer of 2021 by the time I made that third pass, but I still needed to find the right editor and that wasn’t easy. I found one editor and while very good, it wasn’t a smooth flow between us, so off to find someone else. That was an expensive mistake and an expensive editor.
I didn’t find the right editor until I sold my house and was on the road. That brought a whole new set of changes as the wonderful Laura Thomas provided me with lots of notes to correct sections and points in the book. They were wonderful and she was making me a better writer. That was slow going because I was now working and didn’t have any free time! That brought me into 2022. By now, I had lots of frustration and doubts. Once I left Infrrd in July, I decided to get it done.
The challenge was providing enough substance in each chapter without getting too deep. I couldn’t turn it into a thousand page book, although it was tempting. I could only scratch the surface on most topics, but the points I was making were all from experience. They were all real to me and the reason so many companies fail. I couldn’t leave one section out without cheating the reader out of an important point.
Once I was done, I had two options. One was to try and get it published through a mainstream publisher. I looked and that was going to be expensive, and after giving it a lot of thought, why not put it up on Substack for a low subscription price so that more entrepreneurs on a budget could afford it? It would net me the same amount of money, so why not? After goofing around with Substack under a pen name, I got the idea to release a section every other day and the last section posts on December 27. Everything is now uploaded along with the helpful audio companion.
This book took me at least 1,000+ hours to write. It may have been 1,500 hours for all I know. It was a labor of love, and I learned a lot in the process. Now I’m waiting for approval to put the whole thing on Apple iBooks. The chapters are fully uploaded and ready to go.
I hope you love it. I’m not expecting any awards or it to become any kind of best seller, but it summarizes what I faced and the mistakes I made and how to avoid my errors. Hopefully it’s helpful to your journey.