How I WROTE My First BOOK (& Chose the Topic)

How did I write a book? I spent one hour every single day, and after 18 months, I had a published book.

Now, let me rewind a bit. I started freelancing in 2014. This was just right after I had shut down my marketing company. After shutting it down, I didn't know what I was going to do next. I didn't know from a work standpoint or an income standpoint what I was going to do. But through a series of events, I ended up freelancing and getting multiple contract projects with different clients, and I've been freelancing since 2014.

Since that moment, I took the lessons I learned from my marketing company—the things that I learned, the failures, the successes—and I applied them to my business of one. In my mind, I had those insights. I knew how to be successful in this freelancing venture, and I began applying it successfully.

That first year of freelancing, I got multiple projects, and eventually, I realized that freelancing was working. So, this would be the way forward; freelancing would be the path. I decided to respond to the success I was having by fully embracing it and learning to master freelancing, the business of one. And so, I applied all these lessons, these systems, ideas, and in my mind, I had a blueprint for flourishing as a freelancer.

After that first year of freelancing, the second year was really about mastering those things. There were lots of ups and downs for sure, but those ups and downs were all the tests that challenged the different pieces of the puzzle that I needed to develop so that I could be successful as a freelancer.

2015 was my second year where I leaned into mastery, and I began having other freelancers asking me for advice: "How are you doing this? How are you successful? How are you solving this freelancing challenge or that freelancing challenge?" I began mentoring other freelancers, and I wanted to write a book. I had wanted to get into the idea business, creating content. I'd been blogging since 2014, so I was doing that type of thing at a small level.

I built that habit of writing as a blogger, a year and a half, two years into blogging and into freelancing. I had a lot of the habits in place to be able to spend that one hour a day for 18 months to write this book. And this was, out of all the books that I could have written, the easiest book for me to write because I had mastered it. It was in my head; all I had to do was get it out.

So, I started by just vomiting everything I knew about freelancing, all the ways that I was solving the problems I was facing. That led me to build a structure. I said to myself, "Freelancers need a structure so they can flip through the book to the thing that they're facing right now." So, I designed the book not so that you have to read the whole thing, but that you can read the part of the book that will help you today.

And so, I developed these eight achievements that every freelancer must accomplish to succeed as a freelancer. I took all that content, and I put it into that framework, and I did that over those 18 months. Eventually, I had a published book.

Part of the reason I self-published was that my goal was to have a published book. My goal was to finish writing. So, it wasn't about trying to sell a bunch of copies; it wasn't about getting a publishing deal. For me, it was simply about finishing the project and getting it done, and that's why I chose to self-publish. It was easy to do through Amazon Kindle, the KDP program. You can sell a Kindle version, a digital version, and a print version.

That would be my encouragement to you: think about what is maybe the easiest book for you to write if you want to write a book. What is the thing that you have already figured out in your mind? You just have to get it out on paper. You just have to write it out, format it, edit it, and eventually publish it. And that's the project I would recommend that you start with.

If you need help, I have a friend; her name is Denise Renee. She's also a fellow YouTuber, and I met her at a Path of the Freelancer event many years ago. We've met networking and so on over the years, and we've stayed in touch. She's been on the podcast a few times. She will help you get that out of you. She works with authors to get their book out of them and onto pages and into a finished product.

These are the steps that I took to write my first book:  one hour a day. That led me to eventually get this project finished. I published my second book in 2019, and I'm working on my third now. You can do it too. You might have to develop that blogging habit to start; you might have to start setting time to work on it. But eventually, you'll get it done if you take the steps.