18: Why I’m Narrowing My Focus

“Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.” — Gary Keller

There’s a point in business where doing more stops working.

More ideas. More offers. More directions pulling at you.

And instead of building momentum, you start to feel scattered.

That’s where I found myself recently.

In this episode, I’m sharing a decision I made that changes how I run my business moving forward—and why it felt both difficult and necessary.

If you’ve been feeling pulled in too many directions or your ideas feel crowded.
If you know something needs to change but you haven’t named it yet…

This episode will meet you there.

🎧 Listen in.

And if you're ready for a next step, learn more about the Outline Intensives! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to For Women Who Write Podcast. I'm Michaela, a certified writing coach, editor, and self-publishing expert with over a decade of experience, helping women turn their ideas into powerful, best-selling books. If you felt the call to write, share your story, share your experiences, how you can help other people, then you are in the right place. Here we talk about the real process of writing and publishing, from finding your voice to structuring a book, from overcoming resistance and imposter syndrome to launching it into the world with confidence. My mission is to show you that becoming a published and best-selling author isn't just possible. Absolutely. Your story matters, and chances are you're closer to holding your finished book in your hands than you did. Hello, welcome to another episode of For Women Who Write. So this week's episode is going to be a little bit different than most of our episodes. Most episodes are very educational in nature. I've got teaching frameworks and next steps and things like that for you, but this week's episode is going to be much more personal. It's going to be a peek behind the curtain on what's going on behind the scenes, specifically with my business. And I want to take you on a little bit of a journey today and share kind of some disorientation and confusion that I have felt about my business and what I've done with that and where I'm going from here. And I want to share all of this to you first so that you know what's going on with the business. How can I actually help you move forward in your goals? But number two, really, I also want to share all of this because I think it's really important that we talk about some of the sticky parts of entrepreneurship and the hard parts about creating something. It is good and beautiful to create, but as we all know, when we create something, when we build something, there's inevitably roadblock blocks. There's inevitably things that we didn't expect to come up that can sideline us and sometimes can even bring us completely to a halt. And I want to talk about this because I think it's really important that we have these conversations, that people feel like it's actually a part of the process to hit stumbling blocks, to hit roadblocks, to hit seasons of confusion and disorientation. That is part of the process of building. And it's good. If you're not having those seasons, if you're not having those times of confusion and disorientation, then you're probably not really building. You need these times. And I really want to talk a lot more about that today in this episode and use my story to uh normalize some of that confusion and disorientation. So in order to do that, I'm gonna bring you back just a little bit to tell you my story and then where we are today and what it really all means for you. So I never really saw myself as an entrepreneur. I always knew I was a writer and I wanted to be in some kind of a writing book space, but I never really knew exactly what that meant. I wasn't able to get any PR jobs, any writing jobs when I graduated. And so I felt some confusion around all of that and didn't really know what to do. But then I got slowly introduced to this idea of online entrepreneurship. I actually read a bunch of uh Day in the Life Etsy articles. If anybody ever read those articles, it was essentially interviewing Etsy artists and what their lives were like. And I loved the freedom and creativity that they had in their life. And it really planted this seed for me that, hey, maybe I could actually start my own business. Maybe I could be my own boss and do whatever it is that I wanted to do. So fast forward several years and I started to actually take some action on that, but I didn't really know what I wanted my business to be about. I tried lots of different things, worked for lots of different people, kind of trying to figure out what is it that I would even want to write a business, have a business on. And it never really dawned on me that I could have any kind of a business like writing or editing. I was still writing, freelance writing. I was editing, and I had been doing that ever since 2013. So I had been doing that work, but it never really clicked for me that it could actually be a business. And honestly, I don't think it clicked for me because I didn't really have belief that I could do it. I thought that I had to do something else instead of writing and editing. I just wasn't sure I could actually be successful. There was a lot of just limiting beliefs that I had to work through first before I could actually take that leap. And it was in 2020 when I actually decided to make that leap. And I recognized I could actually make money editing. I enjoy editing. I've been doing it for a really long time and I want to actually get paid to do it. So I started to get more certifications and actually started charging for editing. And that was when the world flipped upside down in 2020. And I knew that was what I needed to do for my family. I was about to have my first son in 2020 as well, and it would be more flexible for the life I was walking into. And I wanted to actually do this thing, and I decided to move past a lot of that fear of failure, a fear of not being good enough, and to just go and dive straight into it and make it happen. And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I have loved editing, and it's been such a blessing to be able to help authors in this way. One of the things as I was editing people's manuscripts was that they would, you know, come to me with a fully written book. I would edit it for them. And then they would be like, okay, great, now what do I do? And I'd be like, I don't know, good luck. I Google it, I guess. I don't know. And I recognized that I could really help a lot of people if I helped them with their next steps. And I could essentially become a self-publishing coach. I could coach people through the process of self-publishing. It's so overwhelming. There's so much that you need to learn. It's so easy to get scammed. Why don't I help people through that process? And so that's what I did. I started coaching people through the process, but that quickly snowballed into people not actually wanting to be coached. They actually just wanted somebody to do it for them. They just wanted somebody to hire the formatter to have the cover designer to upload onto Amazon for them. And so very quickly I started to help people do that instead. I actually started to become more of a self-publisher than actually a coach. And I started to create a team of formatters, cover designers, and eventually hired two incredible women, Whitney and Miranda. If you've ever worked with us, you've definitely worked with Whitney and Miranda because they're amazing. And they have come on as coordinators to also help through the whole process with all of our authors, to coordinate with the formatters and cover designers, all of that. And it was turning into this really, really cool, incredible publishing company. And it wasn't what I had initially set out to do, but it was turning into this incredible company of helping people actually publish their book. But was really interesting that I didn't see at the time, but I am now recognizing happened was during that time I kind of switched between being in the writing world and being in the publishing world. Those are two very different worlds, publishing and writing. Emily P. Freeman, who's an incredible author, once said that writing is more of an art and publishing is more of business. She didn't say it exactly like that, but she essentially said, like the art of writing and the business of publishing. And there's really two sides of the same coin. You need the art in order to write, and you need the business in order to publish. And there can be a really healthy union between the two of those to where you can still honor your creativity, honor your art while still making it commercially successful. But when I started to help people on the publishing side, was when I started to travel to the other side of the coin. That's when I started to be more in the business side of books. Now I love that. I love talking about marketing. I love talking about strategizing, and I fully believe that you can and should bake marketing into your book so it's easier to sell. But what happened for me was that I actually ended up starting to work outside of my zone of genius. I started to be more in places of talking about and being more in the publishing business side of things and in actually what I'm really great at, which is the art of writing and structuring writing and being strategic on how you write. And I started to recognize that I was operating in a space that wasn't exactly where I should be operating. There's a principle called the Pareto principle. Other people call it the 80-20 rule. And it basically says that 80% of results come from just 20% of the action. 80% of results come from just 20% of the action. So in order to continue to grow as a person and as a business, you have to identify what is the 20% of the action that is bringing you the most revenue or bringing you the most life. And as I asked myself this question, I was reading a book called 10X is Easier Than 2X by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And it was such an incredible book. And he asked this question of what is your 20%? And I recognized on a purely passion gifting level, I was not operating in the 20% of action, producing the 80% of the results. I was operating in a completely different space that was not giving me the results that I wanted. I was no longer operating in my zone of genius. And that was a really difficult thing for me to recognize. I actually kind of knew that was what was happening. I just didn't want to acknowledge it. But it was earlier this year that I started to recognize that I needed to address this. I needed to see that I was not operating in my zone of genius. I was not operating in the 20% of actions, giving me the 80% of the results. And I don't mean by revenue results. I mean passion. I mean purpose. I mean living in my gifting and in my calling. I had moved from the art of writing into the business of publishing. And it wasn't where I was supposed to be. So it was very, very difficult for me to recognize that. And I took a couple of days to just be stunned, honestly, when I finally recognized and owned that. It was something that I had kind of been flirting with a little bit, the idea, but I hadn't fully owned and recognized that I was no longer operating in the way that I should be. And it, I spent a weekend just being very sad, honestly. I let myself cry. I let myself just go on really long walks and pray and try to just feel the emotion, feel the sadness. I felt also a ton of questions. Did I fail? What could I have done differently? What did I do wrong? Is this the right decision? Lots of second guessing, lots of questions. But by the end of the weekend, it was very clear I had not failed and this was the right decision. It was time to do something about publishing. So I gave a call to one of my team members, Miranda, and I said, Hey, here's the situation. I cannot do publishing any longer. So we have two options. One is to just cancel publishing entirely and we are no longer publishing at all. Or number two, would you be interested in taking the publishing side of my business? And Miranda is incredible. If you ever get the chance to work with her, which I really hope you do, she handled it so beautifully. Number one, she sympathized and empathized with me. And then number two, she said, uh yes. Like 99% yes, let me talk to my husband. And within a couple of days, we had decided that I would sell the publishing side of my business to her and we would have a partnership. It has brought me so much joy and excitement to do this. When it all first started unraveling around my feet and that disorientation happening, I had so many questions. I felt so sad. And yet, the more that I've talked to Miranda after signing the contract with her to sell this side of my business, it has become so clear to me that this is the right decision. I recognized that I was the person to start publishing. I wasn't the person to keep it going. That was someone else's job. And one of my callings, one of my purposes in life is to create spaces to help women come alive and thrive in their creativity. And this is something that Miranda now gets to do. This is a dream she has always had to own a publishing company. She and her husband are doing some really cool things, and I cannot wait to see everything that happens for them. My job was to start it. Her job is to run with it. And I am so honored and grateful that she's gonna do that. But it took a lot of like confusion. It took a lot of deep inner work. Me and my therapist had lots of conversations. If you're listening to this and you're one of my business besties, you know the conversations we've had about all of this. It took a really long time and lots of conversations, lots of soul searching. And yet it was the absolute best decision that I could possibly make. And so if you're feeling that right now with your business, with something in your personal life in which you are really scared to step into it because you know you will feel disoriented, I encourage you to do it. Get disoriented, get confused, walk into a space where you don't have all of the answers. In time, most likely, those answers will come, but even if they don't, your character will be built in the process. You will grow closer to the Lord. It is an incredibly scary and beautiful place to be, incredibly disoriented. So, what does all that mean for you? What does that look like? So I am going back to my roots. I am going back to writing coaching. You likely won't notice too big of a difference here on the podcast because I am still going to talk about self-publishing, because I still strongly believe in self-publishing. I'm still going to talk about marketing. I'm still going to talk about some of the business of publishing because I have lots of experience in event, lots of thoughts on it. It's just not going to be part of my overall offers to people anymore. I'm going to be focusing solely on writing coaching. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I have a book and I'm ready for it to be published. And by published, I mean some editing work, formatting, cover design, uploading it onto Amazon, all of that. That is absolutely something Miranda can help you with. And I uh send me a message if you are interested in that and I can get you connected with Miranda. But if you're listening to this and you haven't yet written your book or you've started writing it and you're getting stuck, that is absolutely where I can help you. That is my sweet spot. And what that looks like is doing outline intensives. I've talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but I want to talk to you way more about that because these intensives are something that happened kind of spur of the moment. As I was talking to a client back in September, she was telling me a little bit more of what she needs. And I was like, well, what if we just do a two-day intensive and we outline your whole book? And the light bulb just went on for her. And she said, Yes, let's do that. And so I have done eight of those since uh September. And they have been so helpful for people. They have moved them in a way that nothing else I've done before has moved people. It's been really cool to see so much progress and competence happen because of these intensives. Really, the way that I see writing a book is a lot like a closet. So let's pretend that somebody is coming over to your house. You have a guest coming over to your house, and you are looking in your guest room and you're like, yikes, this is super disorganized, and the closet is just full of a bunch of stuff that we put in this closet because we didn't really know what to do with it. Before you have your guest over, you're likely going to go through that closet and sort and organize so that it's super easy for your guest to be able to grab what they need from the closet, right? Writing a book is like inviting people into your brain, inviting people into the way that you think. And if you want for them to have a great experience, then you want for them to know exactly what they need and how they can get it. So these outline intensives are like organizing a closet. There's a lot of stuff, lots of thoughts, lots of beliefs, lots of experiences that you've had over the years, but you've kind of just jammed them into a closet. They're really good, but you just kind of put it into a closet for like later. What these outline intensives do is they take everything out of the closet and they help you get it organized. What do we need to keep and what do we need to get rid of? And how do we need to organize it in such a way that people can easily grab what they need in order to have a transformation? That is what makes a successful book, is something that is clear. It's easy to read, it's easy to understand, and easy to get that transformation. Or at least you give them the steps to get the transformation. So these outline intensives, you and I get on a call for over the course of two days. Each one of those days is a three-hour long session. We review all of your content and then we create an outline for your book, but not just for your book, for each one of your chapters as well. Many of my clients who have done these outline intensives have walked away with half-written or even fully written chapters because we go through each chapter and say, okay, what do you need to start off this chapter? What needs to be included in this chapter? What stories do we include? And then how do we get them to the next chapter? And so we just kind of like dump everything out. If you've ever organized a closet, you know that you just take everything out and it's way more messy than you actually like think it will be. You know, it's like kind of overwhelming when you take it all out. That's what we do initially for the outline intensive is we just take everything that you've got, all the stories, all the ideas. If you have content from webinars, speeches that you've given, courses that you've had, we just take all of that out and look at it and find the overall theme. What is it through the thorough line that you want to take your uh talk about for your book? Then we decide what to keep and what not to keep. And then we put it all back in a very organized manner. It's really, really cool to see clients who have done the outline intensives. And whenever they sit down to actually like fill out the outline and work through their chapters, they know exactly what they need to write. There's no second guessing, there's no should I add this or should I not add this in? Because we've already talked through it all and everything already has its place. So the writing process goes so much faster because you're not second guessing. I honestly feel like one of the hardest parts of writing is not actually writing, it's second guessing. Because when you are writing well, you are thinking clearly. That's good writing, is clear thinking. But you need to think through things first before you actually start writing it. And that's what an outline forces you to do. A good outline forces you to do is forces you to think first, then write second. Then third is editing. It's really kind of three phases. So that's what the outline intensives do. They help you think clearly first so that you can write really well. And these are one of my favorite things to do with clients because so many light bulbs come on for them. So much confidence comes in for them because it's not just them sitting down at a computer to write an outline, it's them having an editor and a writing coach work with them on their outline so they're not stuck in their own head. They have somebody that they're inviting into their brain, a professional organizer inviting into their home to show them how to organize it well. And it's just so important to have somebody like that with you throughout the process. Because if this book is going to be something you're going to use for a really long time for your brand, or if it's something that you want to really use as part of your business, or something that you're just really proud of because you've lived through a lot and you really want to help people, then having the help throughout it is going to get you so much further, faster, and with more pride. You're going to be so much more, you're going to enjoy the process more, and you're also going to be more proud of what you create because you got the help to get you there. So that is what I'm going to start doing now is outline intensives. I've been doing them for a while, but that is going to be my sole focus is outline intensives. If this is something that you are interested in, then I would love for you to shoot me a message. I'm going to include my email in the show notes. You can also visit my website, www.mikaylamatthews.com. And Send me more information if this is something that you're really interested in knowing more about and saying if you're ready for an outline intensive. Some people are ready and some people aren't. So shoot me a message and we can talk through whether or not you might be ready for an outline intensive. So that's a little peek of what's going on behind the scenes of my business. We are officially no longer or I am no longer officially taking on any more publishing clients. This is all now going to be directed towards Miranda for publishing from here on out. So if you are ready to publish, again, send me a message and I can get you connected to Miranda. If you have not yet written your book or you've started and you're not quite sure if it's going the right direction, you're getting stuck, then you are absolutely eligible for an outline intensive. So I hope this is really helpful for you guys. Thank you so much for letting me be a little bit more vulnerable about what's going on in my life and in my business. And I'm just here for the ride with you guys. I'm in it with y'all. This whole entrepreneurship journey is beautiful and sanctifying and challenging. And yet when we lean into it, when we embrace it and we own it, that is when the good stuff happens. That's when the change happens. That is when we grow into the people that we are called to be. And so I'm so excited and so grateful to be along on the journey with you guys. We'll talk soon.