Episode 124:
Learn to Self-Publish an eBook
Tim Lewis: Now before people start complaining that I’m suggesting that we start killing live animals in my podcast, of course I’m being metaphorical or whatever the word is, I always get totally confused with metaphors, for a similar reason all the rest of it.
Tim Lewis: Of course the sacred cow comes from, in the Hindu tradition in India, where cows are considered as sacred animals. And are not supposed to be killed. Hence the lack of beef products from India. And of course, for anybody who knows about the term “a sacred cow”, a sacred cow is something that is kept around basically for reasons of nostalgia or tradition or just because its the way things have always been done.
Tim Lewis: I’ve recently made a decision to kill one of my own sacred cows. Now this doesn’t really got an awful lot to do with self-publishing in general. It’s much more of a personal decision. But in my business journey, I’ve always been very keen just to have products. To sell products. So books, or maybe like create a cause or something, which I never, ever got around to creating a cause. But all my income was going to be from products. And there were very good reasons for why I kind of was very keen on that idea. Because there is this idea that, if you start down the road of selling time for money, then you end up just working enormously long hours. And everything just ends up with this being overloaded from a time management point of view.
Tim Lewis: However, lately, well actually for the last few years, I get so many people coming up to me and asking me for calls and advice on podcasting and self-publishing. And I’ve always been like, “No, no. I don’t do consulting. I don’t do coaching calls. I don’t do any of that. All i care about is products.” But then, I never get around to actually creating the products. I do eventually finish all the products, especially the big marquis items. But it takes a long period of time, because I’m creating all this content and I’m going to conferences. And I’m doing all sorts of things.
Tim Lewis: Now, not entirely related to this, but I’ve got a few large expenses coming in that I need to cover. While it’s not going to bankrupt me and make me have to go and sort of beg and go to waive a paper cup, it does mean that I have to be mindful of what I’m spending on my conferences and the like. So I’m starting to look at alternative income streams. And then, in the last few weeks, I’ve been approached by somebody from the US to help run a large company’s podcast. I didn’t actually get and hear anything further from that. And I’ve also been approached by a few people on the coaching side.
Tim Lewis: I’ve finally decided to slay that sacred cow that I’ve been having, where I won’t do coaching calls and I won’t do one-to-one spot. I’m not going to do it full time, by any means. I’m going to block out just a few days and a few hours a week for doing this. But I’ve gone to the effort now of creating a separate calendar booking system. Because I’ve already got a booking system that I use called Schedule Once, which is a right off the shelf product. It’s actually not too expensive. And it’s not particularly cheap either, but it lets you basically give somebody a link and then they can book an hour or 50 minutes or half an hour of your time.
Tim Lewis: And it’s also, as I’ve worked out a few months ago, but haven’t gotten around to it, actually working out now, it’s got an option to take a PayPal payment when you book a slot. So, I’ve now created a separate calendar for consulting calls. So I have, in effect, started to slay this sacred cow, but I’m not going to be selling my time for money.
Tim Lewis: So I suppose the think I would just say to you is, what are your sacred cows? And why have you got them? I’m certainly not suggesting that we kill any kind of animals metaphorical or otherwise. There are probably very good reasons why it comes down to your principles as to why you do particular things. And I’m sure now I start to accept light coaching calls, I’ll probably be thinking, remembering why I didn’t actually like the idea in the first place. And I’m certainly not quite there yet. I’ve now got a link where people can actually book it, but I need to go to the next stage and put that on my beginselfpublishing.com website and my stonehampress.com website.
Tim Lewis: But what are the things that you’ve always just felt, “I’m not going to do that”? What are the things that you’ve kind of never think about again? Have things changed? Is it really the time that you make a change and you start doing this thing that you said you would never do. Is it time for you to slay your sacred cows? Or are they still valid?
Tim Lewis: I think even if you suddenly decide that, Yeah, you’re going to keep doing what you’re still doing, if you at least look at the other options, maybe you can get a part-time job if you’re running short of money, or maybe you could go to more conferences, or maybe you could achieve on your own conference, or something like that, that you’ve always thought you would never do, but actually things have changed and you’ve not realised. Because you’ve not looked at it for a while. We always tend to just focus on the here and now. And we never look more broadly at everything in our lives. Especially in our business or other lives.
Tim Lewis: So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to be soon putting up a link where people can book me for an hour and pay for that privilege. I’ve also, obviously I’ve got an option for people to book half an hour for free, if they want to talk about consulting. Though that’s not just an excuse for everybody to keep booking the same half hour all the time. So, as far as this broadcast goes, I’m going to carry on doing interview shows mainly. Partly in these old cases where I haven’t got guest booked or … I won’t need to talk about something for very long. I am looking to try and get some people who I’m going to be helping with their books to appear on the show and be interviewed. I’ve got one person in mind, but I need to sort of strong arm them to get them on the show. So, that may be something coming up as a periodical every month or so, I’ll be tracking somebody to help self-publish their books.
Tim Lewis: So, I will talk to you guys on the next show, which I think will be an interview.
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