208: Your Book and Big Idea (Part 2)

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Welcome back to part two of your book and Big Idea. This is a momentum masterclass that I recorded in March that I'm sharing here with all of you. As a friendly reminder, this episode is brought to you by my book Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one. At the time of this recording, we're just a handful of reviews shy from reaching that 200 milestone. If you've read the book, if you enjoyed it, if you got something out of it, even if you've gifted it to a friend and you could help leave a review, I would appreciate that so very much. You know that I'm not often asking for things like that on this podcast, but in this case it really would help future readers determine if this book is worth their time and their hard earned money. With Pivot in the media so much now, not just the book, but the concept overall. There are other books with the title Pivot, so your help in elevating this one would be amazing. Thank you so much in advance everybody. And remember, you can get my free author toolkit@pivotmethod.com authors now onto part two of your book and Big Idea.

By the time readers put down your book, what do you want them to know? How do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do? Shout out to Alexander Franzen, who introduced this framework to me. It's common in a lot of learning and development as well to come up with your outcomes, the ideal objectives. Before you get into the details, I also like to add what do you want people to refer to? So I knew that Pivot was standing on the shoulders of giants and there were some must read books for every phase and stage of the Pivot method that I wanted readers to be able to refer to if they want to go deeper. Once you have a kind of guess at your big idea, imagine that readers put down your book, whatever it is, however it ends up being outlined. When they put it down, they finish engaging with this piece of your body of work. What do you want them to know, how do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do? So with pivot, I wanted them to know they're not alone, they are not crazy. Plateaus are normal and often a product of your success. I wanted them to feel relieved, inspired, and.

Actually feel motivation and momentum. And what do I want them to do? Set up some pilots. The whole pivot method boils down to what can I try? So what do I want them to do? Set up some low risk pilots. They can't possibly know the answer of what's going to work out up front. And so that's it. Set up your pilots and figure out what you can try that are small enough so that you don't feel panicked. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in tactics. You're so clear on your method and your framework that we don't focus on the transformation. Just consider that the really powerful books move us, they transform us in some way. We are a different person once we put that book down. We have been transformed. So don't confuse the tactics with the transformation. You probably want to identify both of these things. And by the way, everything I'm saying applies to if you're creating an online course, if you're creating a keynote speech, figure out how are you going to transform not just people's lives, but even the culture. So when I go into companies, I talk about transforming their company culture in a way that makes career conversations easier, more frequent, more transparent, that everyone can exhale with a sigh of relief that they don't have to solve career change in every single conversation and that if people hit plateaus, that's totally normal. Of course, high net growth people, the best and the brightest, are going to hit plateaus more often. That's okay. And then the tactics are okay. How do we deliver that transformation? I find it really helpful to mind map book ideas again. Going away from a linear process, it's too overwhelming to try to just always think in such a linear manner, especially when you're trying to wrangle a big idea down. So this is one called nonlinear breakthrough that you can just see me starting to mind map the different categories of things I might want to talk about. And what did Each of those mean and what's important about that? And I have not written this book yet, but you can see how I would start wrapping my mind around the process.

If you take this as homework, because I'm not going to leave time to mind map right now. But you want a mind map for your big idea. What are the central themes and what's important to you about each of those themes? What are some of the next steps, key resources and personal anecdotes that you can weave in when it's time to get organized and outline? Writing a book is just one stage of the process. First, what you're doing is harvesting. And that can happen now, no matter when you think you're going to start writing or harvesting is about observing, saving ideas, clipping articles. I use Evernote for this. Jotting down notes, listening to podcasts, reading other books. Then once you've harvested a lot of your research and data, then you can get to thinking and outlining. So the thinking is your unique ip. This is your twist on the field and what's going on. And then the outline is transforming your thinking into the book. How are you going to achieve that? No feel do that you've set out. So how do you need to map the sections of the book with your original thinking to explain and create impact? Then the third step is writing. By the time you're writing, ideally you're not thinking anymore, or you've done 80% of your thinking. So why do we get writer's block? Because you sit down and you're trying to think at the same moment you're trying to write. Whereas if you solve little essays or what you're going to write or how you're going to teach something, by the time you sit down to write, you're actually going to fly through it. So the key here is separating out your thinking and your outlining from sitting down to write it. With two books, you might think that I love writing. I really don't. Writing is not my strength. I mean, I think I'm good enough at it. It's not my zone of genius. I don't sit and romantically write every day, but I write when I have something to say and I want to get a big idea out. So. So for me, big ideas are what I love, and I'm willing to slog through the writing to get there. So don't feel like you have to love the writing. Then editing, by the way, writing, let's say once you get a book deal, writing is about a third. Editing is a third of the process. And then launching and marketing is another third. While you're writing, don't worry about editing. You are going to write a shitty first draft. That's just how it goes with editing. Don't worry yet about launching and marketing. And oh, no, how am I going to get the word out? What if I only sell two copies? You're just not there yet. One thing that helped me with pivot is staying very present to whatever stage I was in of each of these. When I was writing, I wasn't obsessed with marketing, but I was thinking, is there anything that's helpful to have now? So launching the podcast at the same time that I got the book deal was helpful, but barring that, you cannot. You don't have the brain bandwidth to obsess about every one of these at the exact same time. So stay present to the phase you're in and then remind yourself, I'll know what to do when I get there to the next stage, or I don't have to overwhelm myself with all of it. Right now. Right now, my job is just to understand this stage that I'm in. And then when it's time, I'll learn about the next one.

Three parts of a good pitch. Again, this is really important. If you're trying to get a book deal, by the way, and no publisher says yes, the book proposal. And I'll give you a template at the end. It's one of the bonuses, a template for a book proposal. Just writing the book proposal comes in very handy for the book itself. So that will not be time wasted, no matter what you want. To make sure you answer, why now? So the hook. This is from Paula Rizzo. The twist. What's counter to the status quo, and a takeaway. So you're not just saying, hey, listen up, this is crucial right now. We got to think about things differently. But what are we going to do about it? What do people take away?

So as you start to shape your big idea, one thing that helps me is to think about. Imagine I'm being invited to speak at a conference. What is it for? What is the name of your session and who is the conference for? Of course, you could say, I'm invited to speak at ted. Well, what's the name of your talk? I came up with a keynote speech that ended up netting me thousands of dollars because I just did this thought exercise. I thought, if I was invited to the Today show, what would my segment be on? And I knew it had to be kind of counter to the status quo. So I thought, career in the age of the app. Think of your career like a smartphone, not a ladder. That ended up being my keynote speech for the next three years, and I earned thousands of dollars from it. And it was from one simple thought exercise, which was just getting specific enough, because right now, if you don't yet have your big idea, you could just imagine, oh, yeah, they just know how great I am and invite me to speak. But it's much more likely that the more specific you are with who you want to speak to and what even your session would be called, that you can then develop the IP and the ideas to get there.

With pivot, some ingredients that helped it really take off and be successful are having, again, a mindset shift, a method, how to get there, a motto. So my motto that I say in my bio, if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. And my motto within momentum is, let it be easy, let it be fun. Metaphor is so helpful. There's a great book called Shortcut on the power of metaphor. But in Pivot, the whole premise of pivot is it's centered around a basketball player. You keep one foot planted while your pivot foot scans for passing options. Use as many metaphors as you can throughout your work. If you don't have one central organizing metaphor, I recommend it. If you can find that it's going to take some work, Try to get metaphor into every example that you give. Everything you're trying to teach can really come to life through the power of metaphor. When I talk about piloting, I say, think about racehorses. At the Kentucky Derby, your job is not to know who's going to win. You just line up the horses at the starting gates, lift the gates, and say, go. And you see which one starts to pull ahead and get a momentum of its own. So notice how that metaphor just showed you what I mean by piloting from what can be somewhat of an obscure sort of business. Y term.

Even better yet, is there a meme that you can create or that already exists? So maybe you've seen friends. There's Ross with the couch. Pivot, pivot, pivot. We need to pivot. And people laugh. And I show it at my keynotes. And they they, it's memorable. It's part of our culture. So the risk with memes is you don't want to be out of date, like, by the time your book is finished and out. But what can be sticky about your material that helps it spread and helps it go viral? Because that's what memes do. So you want to think what has sticky or funny or engaging factor about your work. Here you see the Pivot method, the process. I ended up distilling it only after the book came out into these four questions. And I wish I had figured that out so I could put it in the book. But I realized, how do I distill every chapter into one question? Plant is two. But what's working? What does success look like? What's out there? What can I try? That's it. So the crazy thing is that once you're years into your project, it gets simpler and simpler and simpler. And now I say the whole point of Pivot is to say, what can I try? Boom. So the goal as you work is actually simplifying more and more and more. Another piece of homework is just outline the transformation. So almost any book will have an intro and a conclusion. We know this. What are the three parts that will facilitate the transformation? And the reason I say three is that three is a common occurrence in our culture. Like three acts of a play, three lights on a stoplight, Goldilocks, and the three bears. Three is memorable. The Lean Startup. His framework is build, measure, learn. It's three parts, and I never had a hard time remembering it. In Pivot, the three most memorable are Plant, Scan, Pilot. Can you distill the transformation that you're trying to take people through into three parts? And then you just know, okay, I need to write an introduction for each part. I'm going to write a part introduction, and then you might have three chapters per part. And then the conclusion. How are you going to wrap it all up? And then what's next for people once they finish your book? When it comes to writing, and this is a long quote, I know, but I think it's so good and it's so important because it can be very easy to get discouraged. Ira Glass, the podcast and host of this American Life, he says nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me, all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there's this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff. It's just not that good. It's trying to be good. It has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. You got to know it's normal. And the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on deadlines so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. It is going to take a while. It is normal to take a while. You have just got to fight your way through. When I wrote the first draft of Pivot, I was so proud of myself. Here it is. Got it down on the page. I then didn't come back to it for at least a week or two. And when I started rereading it two weeks later, I wanted to throw up. I was mortified. I could not believe. I thought, am I this dumb and this inarticulate? Is this the drivel that I've come up with? Like, what the hell is going on? Okay. And I know that sounds mean, but that's really how I felt. I was disgusted, really truly disgusted by the first draft. And I wish I had this quote. I didn't have this quote at that time. And it was only by then having my dad edit it. My brother read it, another friend read it, the editor read it. And by the way, when the editor at Penguin read it, she said, I think you have too much here. We really just need to cut out two thirds of this and focus on the pivot method, which was at the time, only part three of the book was the pivot method. Part one was Surf the Void. Part two is Build to Set the foundation, and part three was the Pivot method. And she said, we got to just get rid of Surf the Void and set the foundation and dive right into the method. And thank goodness we did, because that itself was enough to fill the book. And it's done really well because of it. But I couldn't have got there if I just tried to write the perfect book from the first draft. And there is this gap. I read so many books. I read one or two books a week, most weeks when I can. Or I'm reading the New York Times and the New Yorker. It's the best writing around. So, of course, the first draft, you're going to feel disappointed. And my husband is a fine artist. He's a painter. We've both agreed that the process of creative work is that first you're disgusted, then you're proud, and then you're embarrassed. And what I mean by that is then you evolve even past that work. So now with life after college, I'm a little embarrassed. You know, I read it. It's from 20 years ago. Sorry, 20 years ago. It was from when I was in my 20s, I was 27 when the book launched, but I started writing the content when I was 24 and now I'm 36, turning 37. So yeah, it was over 10 years ago that I started the content. It's a little embarrassing. Like I've lear a lot. I've evolved a lot since then. So that in a way that's a good thing. You're disgusted. The early drafts, you're proud once it launches, and then you get embarrassed because you've learned and grown and moved on. And that's so normal for the process.

Some systems to make your life easier, I used Post Its to organize my idea in a nonlinear way on the back of my front door. I use Evernote for capturing ideas, stories, even on the go, because it syncs to my mobile device and my computer. And then OM Writer is a great app for writing and a really peaceful, serene sound of a typewriter. It's really nice. And even Google Docs so anything again, take the pressure off of just one long, unwieldy word document at a high level. Most chapters in a nonfiction book will include some or all of these. So what's the problem? The current state? Where can we be? What's the ideal? Or the new frame of mind or the new ideal state? What's the data that backs up some of what you're asserting? Stories that bring it to life? Your unique thinking and IP around solutions and what to do about it? Any personal anecdotes, vulnerable parts of your hero's journey, key resources that you have referred to that have been helpful in your journey. And always a chapter. It's good if it starts with a hook, builds suspense or generates interest. Malcolm Gladwell does this. Shane Snow, in his book Smart Cuts, does a really good job of this. And at the end of the chapter you also want to have a question or a hook. So I read a book called American Kingpin about the Silk Road. Oh my God, it was so addictive. I just read it in two days because every chapter ended with such a hook. Neil Strauss is a really good writer for this. In his book the Truth, he does this where you finish the chapter and you're like already hungry for more. So there's an end of chapter question or hook or reveal that has you want to keep going.

When it comes to marketing and launching. I just love this quote from Richard Bach. He says a professional writer is an amateur that didn't quit. That's.

Whether you go with a publisher or you self publish. You see it through and you get your book out to the world, you will be an author. You can be an author. And the only thing, the only thing that separates authors, which a word that sounds so fancy from non authors is that they didn't quit. And I've thought that with both of my books, the only thing is that I didn't quit. I'm no smarter than you, I'm no better than you, I'm no fancier with Life After College. I had no connections whatsoever, but I just didn't quit. And as my brother said to me when I was launching Life After College, he's like, even if you only sell two books, you're still a published author and you don't know where that life of the book is going to take you until you get it out there. You could get picked up by a publisher. You could. By the way, I had a friend who, her book didn't sell very much commercially, but it ended up landing her her dream job, a full time job that she wouldn't have dared to dream. And having written the book helped her land that job. So stay unattached to the outcomes and don't give up. See your project through and it can be an evolving entity just as you are.

If you want the bonus templates that come with this Masterclass, go to pivotmethod.comauthors and if you're looking to generate momentum Even beyond these two masterclasses of book and big idea and then 10 scalable streams of income, I would love for you to join us in momentum. This is a community of heart based business owners who together we're working toward earning twice as much in half the time with ease and joy while serving the highest good. That is our intention and our focus and momentum. It's really for those of you that already self employed and you're looking to create more systems and structure and ease and therefore more revenue with less time. You'll get the baseline, get all your systems in place, catch up on the Pivot to profit course, do this next. We have a lot of material and courses to get you working at a point where you can even free up enough time to work on your book and market and launch it. So this is just for you if you decide to join us early. And again, the URL is Pivot. Love momentum. What's one insight or aha from today's session? I know we covered a lot of ground and what's one small step you'll take in the next week and one next step that would make the biggest impact anytime I lead a workshop or even attend a workshop. I like to distill into at least two things. What's one insight? Or aha, what will I think about differently? And what's one small next step? So Uzma says I'm not crazy. It's normal to be scared. Absolutely. It's we all are. Even if I would write another book, I might have a little more understanding of the process. But it's always so vulnerable and nerve wracking to put your ideas out into the world. It's. You feel very naked doing that and not knowing how they'll be received and what are those one star reviews going to be. But I can tell you it is worth going through all that. It is worth it and there are so many beautiful, serendipitous things that can happen as a result of having the courage to put your ideas out there. Uzma also asked can we join momentum now or do we have to wait for doors to open? I would love know if you are ready to join momentum. You can absolutely join now. It's Pivot. Love momentum if you want to learn more about it. So I would love to have you. And Uzma said your next step is to put together an outline or a mind map. That's a great next step. So for homework, if you're looking for ideas, definitely the big idea mind map. And also thinking through that formula X meets Y for Z or what would be your book rx. What's the prescription? What's the problem that one friend describes to another? Where your book is the Solution? Go to pivotmethod.com authors that's where you'll get the full behind the Book toolkit with every piece of software system and template that I used while writing, editing and launching Pivot. So you'll get a lot of shortcuts in terms of even a writing tracker to track how much you're writing and how many words you need to hit to finish the book. There's also a Pivot podcast on rapid prototyping, a course that you might find interesting if you go to pivotmethod.com RapidPrototype you should find the notes on that. Great. And Usma, I'm so happy you enjoyed this. Like talking to a great friend. Thank you for saying that. And in fact with my books I want readers to feel that they're sitting with me in a coffee shop. So thank you. That's a signal that okay, something must be working and you can think about that too. What's the setting? I've had People say, oh, I want my reader. We're sitting by a crackling fireplace drinking tea together. You know, what's the environment that you imagine? By the way, Nassim Taleb is an author. I really like his work. He says, if you're bored writing, there's no question the reader will be bored reading. So write only what you feel inspired by what you're energized by and excited about. And if there's part of your book or big idea that is not lighting you up like that, ditch it. It's going to be better for the reader anyway. I'll close with another quote from Michael Larson, who I started this workshop with. He said, whenever you're asking for feedback, say to your people who are going to be reviewing, say, don't spare me, spare the reader. So if they're giving you feedback, tell them, don't spare me. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. Spare the reader. Spare anyone who's going to be reading this book in the future. That's my dad is my book editor. He does such a thorough job and he's always gloves off. I've told him, don't worry about offending me, don't hold back, give me the red pen. And he is pretty aggressive and sends me pages and pages of notes. But ultimately it helps you create a better book in the end. Thank you all so much for being here. It's been a joy. Again, I know we covered a lot of ground. Just pick one thing that resonated the most and start there. I wish you all the best on your book and big idea journey and if you want to take this further and really integrate it into a heart based business, I would love for you to join us in Momentum. So just go to Pivot, Love Momentum and hopefully we'll see some of you inside. You'll see on the Overview page, it's 2 to 3 Q&A calls with me every month. Workshops like this one and most of all a community of really smart, creative, generous people in a private Facebook group where we're solving problems, sharing ideas, giving and receiving feedback. Thank you everybody for being here and we'll connect soon. Bye everybody.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.