38: Behind the Book: Pre-Launch Rollercoaster Climb

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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 jennyblake Me podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody, JB here. Back with another behind the Book episode of the Pivot Podcast. I cannot believe it, but we are just six weeks away from having Pivot be on stands and in a bookstore near you. This is insane. If you haven't already pre order your copy, you can get more details about this amazing pre order bundle that I have assembled for you and@pivotmethod.com pre order you will get assigned Book Plate Access to my behind the Book Toolkit with every tool, system and template that I created while researching, writing, editing, revising and marketing the book. You'll also get early access to the Pivot Toolkit, your choice of up to three classes for a $500 value that I've created in the past, like Speak Like a Pro P Systems Ninja and Book Ninja. Access to the Pivot Playlist, which has all my favorite songs from not just working on the book, but my past Pivots and what kept me motivated. A lot of the lyrics speak to themes in the book itself, so head over to pivotmethod.com preorder grab your copy and I will love you forever. Today. I'm talking about what it feels like and how I'm getting ready and ninja fying my business as much as I possibly can in these next six weeks.

I worked really hard leading up to the safari to get ready to go off the grid for two weeks and what really surprised me was when I was coming back from the safari, I had this moment of overwhelm and excitement when I realized, oh my goodness, there's no more chunk of time to prepare for this book. Like working up to the safari was its own milestone. I've been working on this project. It will be Three years from working when I first started the proposal to when it hits bookstores. And as I was coming home on the plane ride, I realized this is it. The book is going to launch in the next two months. And as much as I'm prepared and I'm not a procrastinator, I've done so much in advance. I'm really working hard on this. It still felt like there was this huge mountain of tasks to do. I also noticed that I felt that this wave of anxiety that I've since moved past. But for about a week I felt that similar feeling to being on a roller coaster. And you know, the ride is going to be fun, but there's this part I remember going to Great America. For any one of you in the Bay Area, Great America is this roller coaster park near where I went to high school. We used to go there for fun. And there was this roller coaster that was on this wood, I think it was called the Grizzly. And, and it would just climb up, up, up, and it's ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking. And it just feels so nerve wracking when you're on that uphill climb and when you, even when you, before you get to the peak, you can't see over and you know there's going to be this huge drop on the other side. That's kind of the feeling that I was experiencing when I first got back from the safari. I felt like this nervousness that, okay, I'm climbing, climbing, this thing is going to be fun. I know it's going to be exhilarating, but oh my goodness, I can't see what's on the other side. And that's what this crazy, it is kind of a crazy thing about launching a book that there's all this buildup and so many of my best ideas and certainly my best writing has been in the computer for the last three years and in my head and I've been developing them and working on them and talking about some of them, but for the most part it's just going to be this big explosion, hopefully onto the marketplace and then I have no clue what's going to happen. Many of you have heard me say on this podcast before that it feels like buying a serendipity lottery ticket, which is cool. You know, I'm looking forward to that. But I have no idea who's going to find the work, who's going to read it, who's going to reach out, who might want to hire me to partner or do business. So it's really an interesting time how have I handled that rollercoaster feeling? I definitely stick with my daily practice of meditation. I just hit my 200 day consecutive milestone, which is a big deal. And the other thing that I remind myself, which is my own mantra around systems thinking, is that so much of business stress is a systems problem. If I'm feeling overwhelmed by my to do list, well, I can look at that list and say, what can only I do? What do I need to drop altogether and not worry about? And what can I delegate? My practice in the last month has been delegate, delegate, delegate more than I ever felt comfortable with. In the past, I've written up how I work with my va. I've written how I work with my communications director, Marisol, who is a dream and a lifesaver. And I'll link to those in the show notes of this episode. But even still, even with all the systems in place, there's this feeling of releasing the next grip. So the next layer of tasks that I might have done myself in the past and it's just not going to be foreseeable anymore. So that's been really good practice and I feel so lucky to have someone like Marisol and Mandy helping out. And then the rest of it is this exercise in every day, picking the most important tasks and doing that every week and then from now until the launch. So I try to prioritize. I still I use Asana for project management now with both Marisol and Mandy's team, and that's been a lifesaver. I used to hate Asana when I first tried it, it was really clunky and hard to use and, and now it has been a game changer. I use it for work tasks and personal even in my personal Asana board, I have things like medical, travel, financial, personal friends that I might want to follow up with. And so that's been keeping me super organized so that I know nothing falls through the cracks. But still, at the start of each week, I pull down from Asana my biggest priority tasks and I even do that at the start of every day. I know that within a given day I can usually get two to five big things done in the morning before I start my meetings. And so that's been really helpful. And again, to really critically examine what can I let go of. For example, the last time I did a book trailer video and I put a lot of thought into it and a lot of effort and this time around I felt like, you know, people are not the way to spread the word about books now doesn't really happen on blogs the way that it used to. It's a lot more on podcasts and hopefully traditional media as well. So the idea of having a book trailer, unless it's something really sexy and snazzy and shareable, which mine most likely will not be because I just don't have a book trailer thinking kind of brain, then it's gonna be a ton of work and expense for not as much return. Probably what I'll do is film something of just me talking for a minute and keep it really simple. But something like that was a huge relief to let go of.

One of the other really big principles that I've been operating on is anything and everything that can get done before the launch should. If you haven't already, I highly encourage you to pre order the book so that you can get access to my systems Ninja course. It's five days where I talk about all the mindsets that I apply to building systems and staying sane. And this is a huge one. So it's when you're launching something, I do not want to be concerned about small tasks. When it's launch week, things like writing the email that I'll send out to my community saying, hey, the book is out. Go buy it at a bookstore near you. That can be done right now. There's no need to wait until the launch week to scramble to try and draft something what this will allow me to do. And so I've really focused. July has been behind the scenes Book sprint month. I'm doing email accountability threads with my friend Alyssa where we have an email and the subject line is all caps July accountability. And we send it back and forth pretty much every day. We say, here's what I'm going to work on today. And then at the end of the day we respond and we say, here's what I got done today and here's what I'm going to focus on tomorrow. And we also set a midway goal of what we wanted to have done by mid July and then an end of July goal with ideally one way to celebrate each of those two chunks of time. So having this accountability has helped both of us focus on our July sprint and everything that we want to get done. And mine is nesting every little thing that I can organize clean up on my websites. I would call it digital nesting. I know they talk a lot about expectant moms who kind of nest around the house and create the baby's room. Well, I feel like I'm creating Pivot's website and its web home and cleaning up Jennyblake Me. And like life after college, I recently moved both of those sites over to Rainmaker so that they would be mobile responsive. That was a huge project and it took several months. You may have noticed a pause in how and when podcast episodes went out, the feed was down for three weeks. That's exactly the kind of thing that I don't want to be dealing with when the book is launching. So even as early as January, I started mapping out what huge projects I needed to get a real head start on so that I was not dealing with them closer to launch. Part of this is so that in August, when we're then four weeks out from the launch, I can focus on incoming requests and particularly that will accelerate even more after the launch. So pre launch, yes, we're getting buzz. I mean, amazing things have been happening. I have to give a huge shout out to Stephanie Rosenblum at Portfolio, who is a super publicist and has done such an incredible job already. We are six weeks from the launch and just this past weekend. In fact, today as I'm recording this, Pivot and I were featured in the New York Times in the Workologist column about climbing down the corporate ladder. Side note, that's a topic I really love. And I love that I got to weigh in on this idea of not feeling like you have to just climb, climb, climb for the rest of your career. And if you don't want to be a manager and climb the ranks up to CEO, you don't have to. And that's certainly the realization that I had. I became a manager at Google when I was 24 and I pretty quickly realized that this thing I thought you were supposed to get a job and then just try and get promoted basically as many times as you could throughout your career, which is a really silly mindset. But I was new to the workforce. Pretty quickly I realized I have no desire to manage teams of 20 or 30 people or even to be the CEO of a company that had 100 employees or 1,000 employees. I worked under Share Sheryl Sandberg in people operations when I was at Google until she moved over to Facebook. And we all admired her so much. We loved hearing her talk and do all hands meetings. But when I thought, do I want to be a Sheryl Sandberg and be in her type of position? The answer was no. And that started planting the seeds for me to eventually leave about two years after I had that realization. So this is a long tangent now about the article, but needless to say, I was really excited that the reporter Rob Walker reached out and so something like the New York Times mentioned. I mean, that's a dream. You can't. Nothing can guarantee getting opportunities like that. I have written the best book that I possibly can, and now so much of it really is up to serendipity. And of course, Stephanie and I and the rest of the marketing team, we're working our tails off behind the scenes as well to keep planting these seeds. I told her it feels like pivot popcorn. It's kind of like quiet, quiet, quiet, and then the popcorn kernels start popping. And that is happening. I also got interviewed for an article from my friend Kim for AARP magazine, which will go out in October and that'll have 35 million readers. And I got to geek out. It was all about tools and apps. So really fun to shift from hermit mode of writing and thinking so intensely into right now I'm kind of in squirrel mode. I'm like working so diligently behind the scenes. And then it will shift into more public mode where my day to day job is really about responding to requests and talking about the book and the concepts. That's an interesting shift in itself because. And it hasn't been. It's not difficult. I mean, as you often hear me say, all of this is a privilege. I just try to shed light on some of the minor ups and downs that come with it. And some may be more major, but one of them is it is a different mode. I noticed going from writing and editing so intensely into even planning for the launch. Like the last few months. My brain is buzzing so much, even sitting still for meditation is more challenging. I'm not feeling as quiet and calm as a baseline. Instead, I feel kind of like really jacked up and like there's so many emails and small tasks and small things. It's like a hive of bumblebees zooming around in my brain. And so that's like a really different energy and state of working to be in. And then that's going to shift yet again that once the book is out and many more people are hopefully reaching out, then it's really in. Not just respond mode, like kind of respond and react and reply, but also super extrovert mode. And I feel that I've changed over the years. Like many people, I'm probably ambiverted, but mostly introverted in that I love spending time alone. I live alone, I work from home alone. When I go out with friends, I really enjoy it. But I enjoy small, intimate groups more than big gatherings. And even when I do hang out with people, I Love having a lot of time alone to recharge. So it will be very interesting once the book launches to be engaging in so much more conversation and meetings and speaking events. And I'm really excited for all of it. It's just going to be yet another mode. And so through all of it, it's really important to me to keep my physical fundamentals completely at their a game. For me, there's this four legged table of sleep, exercise, nutrition and meditation. And those are my constants. That is my priority every day. The moment I start sacrificing any one of those four things, I know I'm not headed down a good path. So again, for me it's sleep, exercise, nutrition and meditation. I build my day around those and I remind myself that we all know this. I'm not saying anything new. But the to do list never ends. I mean, even though I'm saying oh I'm so busy, I'm working all this stuff for the book. Again, that's a privilege to do all these things. And a lot of it is nice to have. The book is written, the book is going to come out. Even if I did nothing else between now and September 6th, the book will still hit stands. Of course that is not my plan to do nothing else. But it's keeping perspective that so much of work and email. It's a process. There's no done. I think it's so funny, this goal that we used to see in the productivity space and still sometimes do around inbox zero. I've hit it maybe five times in my life and the thing about it is that it feels great. It's amazing for the the five minutes that it stays at inbox zero and then it builds back up again. So the point is not to get to to do List 0 or Inbox 0. It's to find joy and ease within the day. And of course I'm all for ninja level focus and productivity as well, but to keep them in perspective and keep them balanced. And when I start getting really anxious, number one, I go exercise and number two, I check in and I just say what's going on and what's the one thing that's going to ease this feeling? Maybe it's a conversation I need to have, maybe it's more stuff that I need to drop or delegate. There's always a solution. And for me the trick is catching it early and then quickly resetting back to gratitude that I'm so thankful to get to work on a project like this book like Pivot and to have my business and all of you here listening and my health and my family's health, that, that life is good, all is well today, just as everything is, is amazing. And I think that's really important too, when we look at something like a launch that can be so easy to project into the future. And when this happens, then X, Y and Z. Don't get me wrong, I do this too. Oh, once the book launches, these things will be happening in my business. Who knows? So I really try and enjoy the entire process and not just fixate on not just launch day, but even what external metrics of success might be. I hold space for goals, of course. Like, yes, would it be a dream? And would I just absolutely faint if Pivot makes a New York Times bestseller list? Yes. But I'm not going to overly obsess over those sorts of things or let them define me or the success of the project. Remind me I said that when it's a week after the book launches. But the point is just to enjoy the whole thing. And for me, I see it as stretching out a moment into a life and into a business and into the span of a project. And there are going to be these natural waves where, yes, we're really focused and on purpose and launching and then I know, and I don't know when it's going to hit, but I can almost guarantee that at some point after launching Pivot, I will want to go into an epic retreat mode. I might even feel down or depressed about it. That's typically been my pattern in the past until I remember that it's a totally natural state of being and that after these big surges, there is a retreat. And so I'm even holding space for that already that at some point after the launch and the book tour, yeah, I'm probably going to want some quiet and retreat. And maybe it means taking. Usually for me it's the month of January kind of going offline and then coming back in February. And when I really think about it, what is so urgent that it would have to happen in that month and that month only? And I'm down to do light checking in, but carving out space in advance I think is going to be really helpful. One of the things I'm most excited about, that I've been building behind the scenes with a team of six amazing people, is Pivot coaching program. So this is a little bit of a side note, but if any of you want to do a one month Pivot jumpstart, these are six very long time friends, colleagues, a few of them are even featured in the book itself. And I've been training them in the Pivot coaching method for the last few months. And so we're just about getting ready to release this publicly. But if you're listening on the show and want to get in early, head to pivotmethod.com coaching and you can sign up to work with any one of them for a two session, one month jumpstart. And it's gonna be a really fun way to get one on one coaching support. If you want to continue on after the one month and do monthly retainer at a reduced rate, you absolutely can. I am really thrilled because as I'm on the book tour, I'm gonna be on the go. It's gonna be really hard for me to work one on one with people. But I'm so thrilled to know that we have this amazing team of Pivot coaches that can support anyone who reads the book and wants to plan their next pivot and do that with support. And I specifically chose people who, who I could relate to who had really, you know, huge heart and warmth matched with business badassery and really strategic systems thinking. So that's kind of the criteria for how I picked everybody. And we're just having so much fun. So again, would love to work with any of you who are listening if you want to pivot jumpstart coaching session. That's@pivotmethod.com coaching all right, that's all I got for you in this behind the book episode of the Pivot podcast. Again, pre order your book@pivotmethod.com preorder you'll just order it from any retailer that you want and then submit your confirmation number in a form on that page and you'll get access to two pretty epic new toolkits that I've been building for for the last year and again, three of my courses. That is a $500 value. Systems Ninja in particular. I think you'll all love Book Ninja for sure. For anyone who wants to write and or publish a book someday and speak like a pro is really helpful. Even if you're not a professional speaker. It goes into physiology and how to calm your nerves. So you get all. I decided to just why the hell not just give promo codes where you can get all three of those for free? Because I want to share the love. And this is about giving Pivot its best jumpstart as we can into the world. So thank you again all for listening and for being here and for everything. I am so grateful for all of you every day. And it is all of you who I had in mind as I was writing Pivot. And it's all of you who I have in mind as us walking these Pivot paths together, side by side, today and in the future. All right, thank you again and have a wonderful week.

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 at jennyblake Me pivotlist, Get show notes from this episode at jennyblake Me Podcast and connect with me on Twitter Ennyblate.

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

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