The Truth About Writing a Book While Running a Business with Jessica Lackey

Think you need to have it all figured out before you write a book? Think the words will just flow once you finally sit down to write? Think you can't possibly juggle a book project with everything else on your plate?

Well, it's time to stop wondering and start taking action if you are actually interested in writing a book for your business.

I hear so often from clients and colleagues that writing a book has been on their to do list for quite some time. And with an MFA in creative writing, I'm all too aware at the effort it takes to get a book—especially how long the process can take from ideation to an actual book in your hand.

Which is why I invited a former guest back on the show to tell me all about her experience of writing a book while running a business.

Jessica Lackey joins me back for another Talk Copy to Me episode (after her episode 123 appearance about building thought leadership) to talk about her new book, Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works.

If you've ever wanted to take a glimpse behind the scenes to see what a book-writing process was like for someone else (or get inspo to finally sit down and write your own book), you're going to want to tune in.

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EPISODE 181.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/writing-a-book-while-running-a-business

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Get to know Jessica Lackey, author of Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works
Jessica Lackey is the founder of Deeper Foundations, a consulting and training firm that helps expert-led business owners grow and scale sustainable companies rooted in stronger business foundations. She brings a unique blend of corporate expertise and soulful business building, drawing on an MBA from Harvard Business School, a coaching certification from iPEC, and experience at McKinsey & Company and Nike, Inc. Jessica has supported over 200 entrepreneurs through her programs, blending systems thinking, operational rigor, and deep values alignment. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband.

She can be reached at https://deeperfoundations.com/

Here's the info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about working with me or just book a strategy session to get started right away
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

0:05

Jessica, welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to have you here. We're gonna start at the very end for a second 'cause I have a question that I love to ask people who have written longer bodies of work., I'm not sure you remember this or we even talked about this the last time you were on the show, but I actually have an MFA in creative writing. That's how I came to the marketing world. Truly thought I would just be publishing book after book and teaching, college class after college class. And here I am marketing for small businesses, but. I am always amazed at the process of writing, and I don't think people truly understand anything about what it looks like to go from an idea to an actual physical book in your hands. So the question that I'm leading up to here is the book that you can hold in your hands, the book that you set out to write? Yes. And Yeah. Okay. so the book i I set out to write is the second half of the book. So, for the audience, my book is called "Leaving the Casino, stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works". writing the book thinking about how I was gonna do big of what I consider the entrepreneurial casinos games, the high ticket hustle, the followers and funnels fallacy, all the. Crap they tell you about hiring and things like that. And I thought it was gonna be mostly going pillar by pillar through some of these decisions. But as I was writing the, what became the back half of the book, which is more of the frameworks for decision making, I realized how much. The decisions are so dependent on the kind of business you wanna build, and the more I was seeing different entrepreneurs with truly different health concerns and financial goals and things like that, the more the first half of the book, which is the big decisions, came into play. So that's really the how do you decide. What you want your business to be, for who you are and have to take that into all those decisions. One of the chapters was on responsibility and the first time I wrote it was basically just like, don't do crappy things. Don't have non-disparagement clauses, not deliver things. And I was like, Okay. well reading this book is not gonna do Unethical. Terrible thing, like there's a bar here, but beyond that there's a realm. So that's where it was the book that I started to write and then it morphed into the book I thought I was gonna write plus a whole other half Yeah. And would you say that you discovered that the, there was an entire first half of the book in the journey of writing or in the journey of ideating? in the journey of writing it. Yeah. And. I think that one thing people like don't understand or they have a hard time giving up is, the belief in what you set out to write and how that might not always be what the end reader needs. Sometimes you have to cut your darlings,, and sometimes you have to say okay, I worked really hard, I have a massive body of of draft, and I now know that it's actually just the back half. There's a whole first half that has to come here. Was it hard for you to work through those phases of editing and maybe realign your goals with what you want to say in the book? Well, I set out to write my book. It's called, I call it The Quest. So I knew what I wanted to write about two years ago, two Okay. or three years ago at this point. So I set out writing pieces. Teaching classes that would go into the book, right? So, I didn't write a big book and then cut it down. I, I don't wanna say wrote to spec as it were, but I kind of had an outline of what I wanted to cover was writing things towards that general outline, teaching classes and things like that. And then I figured out my outline wasn't complete, so I think there was, like with my, creative coach and development or editor, there was , a final chapter in their book, which is like the Million Dollar Dream. that actually deserved to be cut from the last chapter of the book and put in the first half, which is the, which, became the chapter and what is enough. So many of the elements were there because, I'd been writing pieces to build up to a book and teaching things over two and a half years versus sitting down to write the book and then realizing I wrote four books. Actually I have a clarifying question here that I think could be. Interesting for people., I love that you taught the ideas that went into the book. That one, everyone ding, ding, ding. That is exactly what we talked about in Jessica's last episode on the podcast. We talked about how she grew her audience by hosting free round tables and sharing ideas and answering questions. But more to the point it. People already have these ideas inside themselves, right? They already have the expertise, the experience, the education. So I like to think that there is a lot of books in people's heads that could get out into the world. You did so by practicing those ideas. Do you think that you knew before you were act actively doing these workshops and round tables that you truly wanted what you were teaching to become part of a book? Or do you think that maybe that happened while you were doing the teaching in the round tables? I would say about six months into the round tables? I'm like, "oh, okay. Like Yeah. these need to start laddering up to be something". Um, a lot of the material I teach is also in a cohort program. I will say that there were a couple of new chapters, as it were, that I was a little hesitant to teach. Because they have now have a class associated with all of them. Mm-hmm. but I would say like , about six months into teaching these live classes and things like that is when I started working with writing coach.'cause I said I wanted to write more Okay. and then I'm like, "well this is my system's brain talking. why am I gonna write something and have these classes on something different?" I'm like, "I don't have time for that. I'm a Totally. If I'm writing it over here, I should be teaching it. I should be putting it in the YouTube channel. I should be creating illustrations that go into the book, Mm-hmm. got time to have many disparate projects? I'm like, they're all Oh my. because no one, no one has the time for it to be spread too thin. Sure. And, but I love that you did that because I don't have a systems brain. If when I am shown a system, it clicks for me and I truly think this is part of A DHD in the sense that , I have to see the end result to be able to work to an end result. So if I cannot see that. It does not exist. So I love hearing people think of things differently because then let's put the opposite, not necessarily how my brain processes the strategist who helps clients do things like this in their marketing in general. That makes perfect sense. Like I wish people went in a little bit deeper on what they want to focus on. You mentioned this when you talk about the entrepreneurial casino and all these flashy things that are thrown at us all the time and these messages that if we only do this, we can succeed in that way. People go so hard trying to get that next rung on the ladder or their next level of visibility. Doing things in their work that they don't even want to do, and there's such a dis dissatisfaction that's being built from the early days or just continuously being nurtured that I think it's hard for people to see outside of that. So the idea that you knew this was something you were interested in, you knew this was something that was actually helping your clients and your audience and just knowing that you are gonna be organized. With this content creation was actually something I think was really refreshing to, obviously hear now, but to see how like happen in those early stages of the book. I was interested when I was reading that you had, I think this might have even been the first or second , chapter you talked about where you entered. From corporate world into entrepreneurialship and that you originally wanted to be a life coach, of sorts. And then you talk about like different business structures and these messages you're hearing. And I think that you described yourself now as a creator entrepreneur. Is that how you described it? Yeah. I would say I, sped run through almost every single service-based, delivery based model, is what I call it. So I started out wanting to become a thinking, I had a step before this. I didn't even make it? in the book. I started out. To be a holistic nutritionist 'cause I Okay. hard in corporate, to be a holistic nutritionist, then decided I wanna be a life coach. Tried hustling as a life coach. Moved out into, entrepreneurship, trying to position myself as a fractional COO. Mm-hmm. As I was trying to do that, I got, I basically paid my bills through subcontracting consulting, through other, basically doing old stuff I used to do for my corporate life. And I'm a constant learner, so as I was learning things, I was realizing, what you're teaching. Doesn't apply to a fractional COO business. And what you're teaching doesn't apply to selling like this and what you're teaching over here ignores platform and market arbitrage. So becoming a, a, I don't wanna say a historian, but Meg, case bold, my podcast, , co-host. She and I were talking about how my book kind of became like a literature review of all the strategies and things because I've built an audience, and I think this is also nothing, people don't talk about this enough. The business model I have now, I could not have pulled off five years ago. I have a community now. I have a cohort now. I have 1700 people on my email list when I started and I needed to make money super fast. I had a hundred people on my MailChimp mailing list four years ago. I, I, I couldn't make any kind of money with a $30 month membership or a substack or anything like that. I had to go sell my time. Such an important point. I had to earn my way into the creator side of the house. Now, some people can do this because they have a side hustle. They're treating it as they have a job or they have a part-time. My delivery based businesses were the job, the banker that subsidized my creator activities, and now I've built up enough. Momentum still. Most of my money comes from one-on-one consulting, even now, but I'm moving more towards more leveraged offers because I built intentionally to do that. Which is so huge and obviously this is obvi what your book spoke, and I highly recommend reading it. I started it recently and I'm enjoying all of it. And I think that,, as someone who is extremely critical. Towards any book, just from, not in a negative way either, just critical, because that is what I studied, that's where my true expertise is, is all in writing and publishing. So I read books very critically and I often find that, non-fiction, which is literally my exact niche in my MFA program, nonfiction books have a tendency to either be a couple things preachy. What's that word? Like separate, there's a big gap between the writer , and the reader that it's not, they're not really building that level of connection. Or educational, but not interesting. And I haven't found that in your book. And I'm not saying that just to sweeten you up. There's nothing, there's no benefit to me to sweeten Jessica up on this podcast, but I'm saying it because, I find it easy to read and I find it easy to recognize so much of what we see day to day in this online world that we live in. But the key here really is, you knew that, in saying what you just said, like of your business, you knew that you couldn't have this years ago, but we're taught in this online business world that if you just take this course, you can now be a seven figure business. Or if you just invest in this type of training, you can, hire four staff to offload all of the service based work and just lead the business. Like all of these messages are thrown at us and people jump into them. With hope and with excitement, and that's what's so sad to me to see so many people, believe in what they can achieve based on things that are not right for them at that moment in time. Because I say this all the time in marketing, like it depends. I think literally, I don't plan on having a gravestone, but if I did, Jessica, please be in charge of my family writing "it depends" on it because. Everyone's life, everyone's business, everyone's expertise is so different, you know? But if we go into the massive noise that we hear, , in communities that are good too. This is not just, , the bro marketing world of people trying to like force, these pyramid schemes on us. This is with good people who have maybe gone down the wrong path of trying to align their own business. We hear so much of it has to be done this way. So I think part of what I'm enjoying while I'm reading is just this refreshing tale of it actually doesn't, because we all have different business models, abilities and it's interesting to see how you've also stepped into that, coming from that career in consulting in corporate and now starting your own business. If someone's listening, and they can recognize some of these things that we're talking about, but they would like to maybe create a larger body of work or maybe have a publishing goal, or even if it's something as simple as more blog posts. Do you think that there's any way to separate their creator part of their business from that service aspect? Maybe I should phrase that better. As in did you have to separate your work that was getting done and your end goal of producing a body of work? So I have a, this is not in the book,, but I have this a couple frameworks on how I think about building authority. I do think that depending on what you do it, it is can be, it can be challenging to transition from a pure services. People are paying you to copyright. People are paying you for graphic design to a creator based business model because. The client base is different. There's people who want to learn how to do this on their own and people who just want you to do it for them. And those are two different client bases and so it is difficult to mix and match I will say. But this is where I started thinking about, "okay, how can I start categorizing all of the topics I talk about on a regular basis and start over time codifying. What do I talk about my clients? How do I work? What are the milestones that they go through? What are the steps they go through? What are the mistakes they make? How can I help them?" If I'm thinking about like in the, bowling, you've got like, you know, duck pin bowling with the guardrails."How can I create content that serves as a bit of a guardrail and can be like, oh, this is something you're struggling with. How can instead of me. talking to you on a live call. How can I send you a video? How can I send a" you know, you start thinking about how to create assets that, free up your time. But those are also creative assets. You're not splitting them up. One is in service to the other. I think it's just really important to know, one, where are you in your business journey? I can say now that many of the strategies in the book, like the casino tropes, they're not wrong. You're just. They're just at the wrong stage for your business, right? This whole charge more money thing. I'm like, you're probably under charging. Full stop. But also if you've never what I charge now and what I charge five years ago, even though I have a Harvard MBA, I worked at McKinsey, like I had the credentials, but I didn't. Know how it was gonna work. I didn't have the chops proven in this body of work? I didn't have the reputation, so I don't charge it didn't charge now, or you know, five years ago what I charge now. I now have a whole asset library and things like that., I think it's important to think about like, where am I on the journey? Legitimately, be honest with myself, regardless of like my past credentials, but what are the building blocks I need to put in place how do I use those building blocks strategically over time so that I'm not just writing newsletters to write newsletters, I'm thinking about what are the topics I talk about? How do I document things? How do I, build these structural foundations so that in five years I will have a body of work? I won't have it now. And , it's like like building a, you know, growing a tree. It's like every ring, how can I think about rings versus trying to get to the five-year endpoint in year one? You cannot speed run through that. So I think that's where it's like you, you just do the activities today, but you're always thinking about how can I do more with what I'm doing now? How can I make it more long lasting? How can I make it a leverage point in my business? How can I make it something that will. Outlast the ephemeral, you know, weekly newsletter and social media post. Yeah, and it's so hard. I like, in all honesty, that is such a difficult thing. Shiny object syndrome is. Everywhere. And I think that as humans we're just conditioned to naturally want to see the return on investment, want to see the wins as we are, um, growing, as we are changing and as we are building a business. There is nothing wrong with that at all, however. You know, I think, well, I, I don't remember what year I started my business, maybe 2016. I had already been working like halftime, self-employed and halftime with my last employer in 2015, and I remember that was when I entered, the real true working for myself. That was the age of the Facebook groups, which I will state was a lovely time to start a business, but it was also extremely overwhelming. And one of my personal frustrations was I felt like a baby in business because I did not know how to do anything. I didn't even know what some of these most obvious things, were or , for example, sending a proposal to a client. I worked as a managing editor before I sent tons of proposals, but it was created for me, like I filled in the blanks. I and I did a great job. They were so well, written to , their individual needs. So they, they sold. Now I'm supposed to send someone a proposal and I'm like, do I open Microsoft Word and type their name in? It was very frustrating to be someone who had already achieved a decently high level of success in their young career to feel those feelings of like, being a baby in business and. That makes you desperate to chase that shiny object syndrome because you want to get past that hump of not feeling like you don't know what's what you don't know. And I think that it's really good to go through those feelings and it's good, good to not chase shininess as you learn because what is it, 10 years now almost in business. And I feel like for different reasons and different projects and different changes in my business, I've gone through that again and again. I remember starting my podcast a couple years ago and I was so frustrated 'cause I'm like. I don't know what button to press here. I, I just wanna cut this part out, like, why do I not know how to cut this part out of the audio? It just felt like I was so stupid, but then I was like, dude, 'cause I was doing it on my own at the time. I wasn't, I didn't have an editor. I didn't, I had never taken a course in audio management or audio editing, but I expected that I should know these things because of my own education. So I think it is a really good practice to be open to learning new things, and to be open to feeling that feeling in business that you are figuring it out and not chase these little tiny goals. In marketing I think that's where I see people go wrong all the time, or I see a lot of wasted time in business because, someone says like, oh, carousel reels are the thing again. Okay, great. Now they're gonna restart their entire social campaigns because now they need to go back and do things and carousel reels or, you know, we need more lifestyle content. And then the next year it's, we need more professional content. I'm not suggesting any of those things are wrong or a waste of time. It's just that you are wasting your time if you don't go all in on the expertise that you have and follow a strategic path that works for your business and writing a book. You said in the beginning of, of this conversation that this was something you had the idea of about two years ago and after, it still took about six months in from that to really maybe start to get more, , strategic from the direction like, okay, these are the gaps that I have that I need to teach, or here are the things I need to practice a little bit more. Two years is a long time to go in on something.. For the average online or entrepreneurial business person, they want a lot quicker wins. Even though you knew that long-term things might help your business, did you struggle with those feelings of not seeing like the big change right away? Or do you think you just had the faith in knowing that it would all come out? So I actually started three years ago on the book. I looked at my Google doc. I started at April something, 2023, and then I actually turned the entire manuscript over to my publishing team. After the first round of beta reviews, like April of 2025. So two years after I had started the Google Doc, which was a few months after I'd started thinking about the book, and then the final mile was insane. It took me weeks to figure out? how to like, ' I'm distributing it myself, but also put it on Amazon. But that was the whole thing, like how to do the, um, commerce stuff. So it took me much longer to finish it. I'm like, oh, the book's done right., I've got the illustrations, I've got the manuscript. That was in April and it took, . Six more months till I had a book in my hands. And that was the hardest part. But, , I think, going back to the beginning of that, , segue , I was working with a writing coach and. I was working and I was paying , , a monthly retainer. And my dad's like, so how much are you paying this person? And when's the book coming? And there were times where I'd make a lot of progress. And there were times when I'd get really overwhelmed with client work and I wasn't making progress. Thankfully I had, , my coach in my ear being like, all right, the next like, she was, I was always moving forward, but, . Was really, it was both hard and also, I wasn't ready yet. I, it's like some of these, like the chapter I wrote on hiring, I had a visual for how I wanted to, like I knew the problems because everyone tries to delegate stuff too soon and they delegate the wrong things, early on. And so I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn't know what I wanted to say yet 'cause I hadn't thought deeply enough about it yet. I put it on hold, I put it on hold, I put it on hold. Eventually I got there. But I don't know if I would've gotten there if I hadn't paid someone to hold me accountable. And I, as soon, once I got like in for a year, my dad's like, all right, when you gonna have this book?. Last Christmas was when I was, I said, okay, I just have to finally, I cleared off. I didn't have, I don't have kids. So I cleared off the two weeks. I parked my butt in the coffee shop four. Five hours a day for four weeks, and I just brute force finish it. And that was the hardest part. But , it was easy to keep writing the chapters. It was very hard to finish. That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my business is actually finish the book. Yeah. Yes. I, I completely understand that. And you know, I love that you mentioned this because sometimes I think people, idolize the idea of book writing and think that it will be like this romantic thing that, I can sit down and I can write, and I have these ideas and I'm gonna get them out. And I'm sure that some chapters for you felt very easy, right? Like you, you probably worked through some chapters and you wrote them quickly, or you felt very inspired while you were writing. But it is so important to point out that you struggled even with the hiring chapter or whatever it is, that like, it wasn't that you just sat down with all of this motivation and inspiration. It was that you ruminated on it for a while. You thought about these things. Then you just force yourself to do the work that, 'cause sometimes that is what happens, , book writing or anything else creative , you might love what you do, but sometimes you just gotta force it. And yet when you look at a book as a whole, it all comes out beautifully like the end reader does not know that you for, unless they listen to this episode that you felt like you had to force your butt in a chair and really dedicate weeks of time to completing certain things They don't know that. It's just a little piece with inside that book that transitions and flows for them. And it goes back to what we were saying earlier is like, it's exciting and yes, you've built up all this, um, knowledge and expertise, but it still takes effort to take it out of your head and to put it on onto the page. Again, would it have been easier if I had written it more quickly? Probably because then, but it wouldn't have been the books. There's sometimes you write the book when you're done Mm-hmm. you write the book to figure out what you think. Oh, absolutely. I was the, the latter in that. And so that, I think was like, book was always the book was always the end game, but never, was like, oh, I can't publish this stuff until I have a book. And I'm like, well, I can't wait three and a half years to Mm-hmm. my thinking on this and start testing it and trying it with people. So I think it was like meant to be a way to build my body of work and thinking publicly with an end goal in mind. Yeah, did you find that it was hard for you to stop writing? I know you, you know, you had, you got all the way to the end and you kind of had to like force yourself to finish certain things, but I find that when I'm writing creatively that. I don't know if it's perfectionism or, or true. Just inspiration. Especially when you're thinking of a nonfiction book. Did you find that you were, thinking, well, I could add this, or I, or did you think that there, you finally got to a good stopping point of just feeling like I feel like this is complete now. I got to a good stopping point. There was only one thing I added after the beta readers. Almost every chapter has like some kind of framework, right? So it's like, the four parts of the hiring matrix, or the four zones of enoughness,, once the, once my illustrator made the image, like we're at four, Yeah. but hiring, but pricing. I had a chapter on pricing and I had like four approaches to pricing. And then one of my readers was reading it and he says, what about courses? And I'm like. I didn't cover that. That's actually a miss in the framework. So I went back and added a fifth framework, but a lot of, again, like the way I was writing was I don't wanna say writing to spec, but I was Mm-hmm. to an outline. And so, if it was gonna like break my outline, it didn't make it in, if it was Mm. additive and I could get it in and it made sense, then I, I, I typically added it., But that's kind of where I'm like, well. I wrote the chapter on resiliency was resilient delivery, resilient marketing, resilient finances. Okay. Like I'm gonna put things in those buckets and if it falls into some other kind of resiliency, it doesn't go in the book. Yeah. that was I, because I was, I had a framework in mind for what I wanted the book to be, and I started filling in the pieces. I'm like, okay, well this doesn't fit in the pieces. It needs to go somewhere else. Yeah, that, that's, that makes a lot of sense. So I find something interesting here when I'm thinking of your situation as a whole., You had the idea, you knew that you needed to. Figure out what your thoughts were on things. Teach some things to be able to figure out what's in the book. But in the process of writing and publishing the book, you also started a podcast that you co-run with Meg, and if I am correct, this could be old news now I feel like you redid your website maybe a year ago. Is am I right or am I wrong? I did that this spring. Okay, well listen to me. I'm actually keeping up with, with you right now. So. How do you feel about the fact that you were juggling different creative things at once? Did you feel like you needed to segment, or did you feel like it was natural enough for you to jump in and take on these different projects? Oh no. This year has been an actually, like I had to dial back on some of my, revenue goals for Mm-hmm. because I had to, I had to dial back on my, my, fractional COO clients. So I Yeah. do that anymore. So this was actually like, I was like the book. Is coming out fall,, I figured it was gonna come out in the fall of 2025, which it did. Which I'm like, okay, if I finish at Christmas, I knew it was a valid six month timeframe. So basically I had to jam an entire rebrand, copy rewrite, new website, and then book so that by the time the book came out, I was done. Right. And, doing that while also finishing the book when it took me a much longer time to finish the book. 10 Outta 10. Do not recommend doing all these things at the same time, but literally, I had the hard deadline. Like Mm-hmm. has to be done and updated before the book comes out. And for the website to be done and updated, the copy has to be done, the brand has to be done. I can't publish the book under my old brand, Right? was like I was. managing an entire creative overhaul this year while also delivering fraction COO work and one-on-one work in a cohort of membership. And literally, I had I outsourced so much of that. None of this could have done , they handled so much. Mm-hmm. that was how I got it done was basically I hired amazing people they were consummate professionals. The team was amazing. And I also, , had to dial back dramatically I stopped my YouTube editor at the time. There was no other in investments. But I, I had planned for it Mm-hmm. Totally. last fall, but still it was. A lot of weekend work on , let's review my website copy and let's review the website. I'm really excited to have my weekends back now. Yeah. Well I think this is so, so important, right? Because we can't segment our life. That way we only focus on one thing at a time, right? For the most part. Obviously privilege plays a large factor into this, but , you have to run the business while you write the book, , and you have your personal life and all of these things are happening at one time, and very important, what you just said is you do not want to launch a book under an old brand if you know that there are changes happening. That is very foundational to get these things done before the day those physical copies, , go into people's hands, especially visually branding because the book needs to match. So all that needs to happen and it is. Very hard to stay on top of it all, but it also needs to happen. So I think part of it is just making sure that if you're interested in your listening in writing a book or doing some other massive project, creative project like this, it's recognizing that, there are gonna have to be cuts in certain areas, or there are going to have to be people brought in to help you stay on task because a lot of things happen at the same time and a lot of things build on each other and it feels like a lot. I didn't realize this at the time that I was doing this, but , my copywriter was temporarily living in England because ooh, fun. Her husband was doing sabbatical over there and my web provider was living in England and I didn't choose this, they're like, can you hop on a call to review things? And it would be eight in the morning. The only way I'd got to keep this, like my entire creative project on track was choosing providers that didn't work in my time zone. Yeah. like my, like my afternoons, my 12 to fives are booked Right. with client calls. And I think it's also. I'm, I don't wanna say much more planful than most people, but like October, I'm like, if I am going to launch the book in the fall, Hmm specific timeline I need to hit on all these things. mm-hmm. was like having a major publishing house, Yeah. me accountable, except i'm having to be that major publishing house. There is no slippage in my book date. There is none because , my publisher was very clear with me, so they're like, for you to release it in the fall, you have to hit has to be done by the end of July. Like, no. And if, or buts, which means you have to get us final pages by the end of February. And so I hustled hard to meet those deadlines but thankfully, I was working with providers that were with me they weren't operating with mythical deadlines either. They were Right. this to happen, here you go. Here's the timeline, here's the budget. Prepare for some rush fees, and that's what we budgeted for. For those providers out there who give accurate and reasonable timelines and stick to them yourselves, I say thank you and Yeah. providers who do that. And , again, even looking at that example of working with a designer, working with a copywriter, working with your book editors and publishers. They all have needs that have to be met by specific times, and some of them also are overlapping. So it's not just you having to be strict with yourself on deadlines. It is if you miss one, it can derail many other things. If you go into this world of choosing to create a book for your business, it's also kind of being aware that you can't be your worst enemy and you can't hire people who are not just as committed to getting things done well in the time that you need them to. When you talk about the creative practice and like the original ideas and creativity. That was so much fun. I'm Yeah. like written that book forever. Mm-hmm. The true birthing process the stuff that no one really talks about. Sure. know, the operational execution of birthing a project like this in the world. Very few people talk about the requirements and of actually completing not just the last mile, but the last miles of the marathon. That's the, where you're like, well, my ideas are done now. And then you're like, but , if you don't finish it, no one will see it. So it needs to get done. Which kind of brings me to where you are right now, because it's a, you're in a flux period, right? So the book is done however, you are actively promoting the book, and that is its own job. That takes a good amount of time and dedication. Also once that major promotion is done, there is, a slide into the what's next. So those are two different things, but do you think you could talk maybe about like how you are handling promotion as well as the, like what's next for Jessica Lackey here? Yeah, project managing the launch part has been. One, I wasn't totally sure when this was, the book was gonna be, I didn't know I was gonna have the Kindle edition ready until I thought it was gonna be ready in January. Surprise, it's ready now. That was a surprise for my book publish, I'm really like getting it into as many hands as I can and then seeing what happens. So I'm paying for sponsorships. Some people and I are doing like book clubs and in 2026 I'm doing a whole book tour. I'm gonna go to a bunch of places where my, friends live, or I'm just gonna be, and we're like, book tour. I love. Because, , in the age of ai, our IRL and real life connections are gonna be sort of the, the moat as it were., So how can I keep it going?, But it was really important to me like. To not just make a splash on launch day, but to make a splash after people have had a chance to read it. People can get it. Word of mouth. How Mm-hmm. capitalizing on it for the next six to 12 months? Yeah. and then for what's next, there's a number of things that, like were launched this year that I haven't yet closed the closed loop loop on. So like I launched a course over the summer that I need to make evergreen. Mm-hmm. Some. Modules in the book that I need to make into some like formal trainings that people can buy. So I've got three to six months left to complete. I would say this arc Yeah. And I've already started to like and I have some like creative ideas for what's next. But I don't know. And I think that's the, for the first time in the last five years. There is no concrete next step yet, which is wild and wonderful and fun. Yeah., I'm going to embrace hobbies again and then really see what like emerges like I'm studying. There's some things that are on the docket, like I've, I've got like six astrology books that are just derived to my house. House Fun. something I wanna learn more about. And then, , I have some ideas of like what's next for the business, but I think what's next for me creatively is still three to six months out for being able to have time to think about that. And here's the beauty of what you did here is like, yes, there might be this period after the book promotion really. Starts to close up that you think to yourself, well that's done now. Like what is happening? Like, what's next? However, like everything from your book funnels still back into your business, and that is, there's a lot to say to that as well, because you don't lose, it's not like an old version of your business. It's not , here is what I have learned and I shall stop presenting this. This is what your current clients, people in your communities are working through regularly. So the body that was in your head and that was in these, things that you were studying, I love that you and Meg call it like a literature review. That body of work now is just printed. It is just living somewhere and it still fits perfectly into the work that you are doing with clients. So, sure, you might find that you're interested in X, y, z that you're working on, in the future or that you're just interested in, like crafts and astrology. But you can still do that without having to burn your business down or start from scratch at this point because you've completed something that feels like it's so tied up because it's not, it still works with your business. I feel like I'm living in two time zones right now. I feel like this a lot. So there's Jessica of the next arc of Jessica, right? There's the next, what am I interested in? How am I pushing my own learning edge? then there's the, okay, I've left the casino as it were. am I the breadcrumb for people to not just. follow my path. And so a lot of that's going back in rebuilding again. Like really adding some things to the membership that I have. Adding some like gateways. So like I've left the casino, how can I give you, I don't wanna say the step-by-step plan because a whole kiss like leaving the casino is like antithetical to the step-by-step plan. But how can I give you easy pathways to say, if you've just found my book, here's easy pathways. Fill in the gaps. what do you do before my cohort program? What do you do before the one all work together? Once you found this book, what next? And so I have to go back and fill in those gaps so that, if I was bush whacking my way out as it were, how can I like go back and like lay , very clearly signposted paths while also. Pushing my own learning boundaries. So again, I'm split into the part of me that's looking for the next five year arc. What's gonna define, you know, a lot of that's gonna be like, I incorporate this learning with ai? Do I have like my own signature CRM or something like that that makes it easier, like what's the next thing? And then going back and filling in the, the building blocks for people who. finding me on my journey.'cause I have some clients that have been with me for three years and they're like, cool, what's next for us? And then I have some clients that are finding me, they're starting their business. or finding me and they're like, cool, how can I follow and more quickly on ramp to the world of your ideas and how can I, make more progress by following a, not a well tried in path, but at least a tried in path versus having to . Force your way through the, the wilderness as I had to do, I think a little bit like I had to compile all the research. Well, how can I make it easy for you to digest so you don't make the same mistakes that I did?. And again, you know, you're cognizant in that everyone is going to travel that own path on their own, but just having someone where you can say like, oh, I can see why this didn't work for them. So it's valid for me not to try that, or I can see why. She keeps saying put your head down and not, look for these shiny objects. Having a guide like that I think is what makes people maybe continue that motivation when they struggle with seeing all of these outside shiny objects in their business. So that, that's really cool that you're looking at different ways that you can not necessarily like attract them, but that you can like, invite them in based on where they are. Well, I'm so excited for you, Jessica. The book is great. I will obviously make sure I'm sharing it with my audience and linking out to where they can buy it. I highly recommend you read it. I am really, really liking it and I think that there's a lot to learn for many different types of businesses on what's on these pages. So I wish you the best and thank you for joining me today. This was super fun. Thank you so much.