126: Getting a Book Deal & Writing My Book

You've asked, and now I'm here to tell you the story about how I got my book deal with Hay House Publishing and what writing my book was like, the ups and downs, and what life lesson came from all of it. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Hello and welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I've got a little bit different episode for you today. Typically I'm interviewing a subscription box owner, or we're talking about some tactical actionable step that you can take in your subscription box business, but today we're going to have story time. And I wanted— been wanting to do this podcast episode for a while But I don't know, I think I was just still in the process of the book writing and all the things that come with writing a book. And I, I'm now past the writing stage where we've gone to print now and getting ready to record the audiobook. And so I thought it would be a great time to sit down and talk you through the process of how I got a book deal and how I wrote my first book, because y'all, it's coming. It is coming soon. Soon. And when I started the process, it felt so far away, and now it feels like it's coming really, really fast. So I'm going to take you back because this does go back a ways. It goes back to over a year ago. It was December of 2021, and my mentor Stu McLaren had asked me to come out to Scottsdale, Arizona to help him with a charity event. So I was speaking at his charity event for his charity called Village Impact, and we were giving predictions for the next year. So I was giving e-commerce and subscription box predictions to his audience. And in exchange for— and there were several of us that went out there and met some amazing people in that room. I met Robert Hartwell, I met Jasmine Starr, I met Reed Tracy, the CEO of Hay House. I met Dean Graziosi. I met Jamal. Like, there were just so many great people out there that were speaking for his event. In exchange for us coming out there to speak and give our predictions, we all got a mastermind day inside Dean Graziosi's studio. And so we sat around the table and we talked through what we were working on in our businesses and got feedback from everybody. And it was shortly after I had, you know, my discussion of what I was working on in my business. And at that time, I was building my course called Scale Your Box. So I had a lot of questions around, should I have a membership? Should I have a course? Should I have a membership and a course? Anyway, that was my discussion at the table. So they got to really understand my business. And, you know, we were going around the table and Stu looks at me and he says, you are the one that needs a book deal. And let me take this back. Stu was talking about his book. So he is talking about his book and that was his topic of discussion. And there was a lot of discussion between him and Reed and Dean Graziosi about his book. And then he looks at me and he says, you're the one that needs a book deal. And I just instantly laugh. I'm just like, oh, haha, you're so funny. I don't— I'm not writing a book. And it's some vanity thing that people need. Like, I don't need that in my— like, I just— and I just really insulted everybody in the room. Let me be honest, because here I had Dean Graziosi sitting across the table that was a multiple New York Times bestseller. Stu's now writing a book. I've got the CEO of Hay House Publishing across the table from me, like all these people that had books that I just was like, oh, I don't need a book, it's a vanity thing. And so Dean pulls this whiteboard over and he's taught, we had just talked about my business and he was like, this book could be a perpetual opt-in to your coaching programs. And he said, when someone reads your book, they are highly invested in you and your programs. And he just like tied it into Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box and my mastermind. And he was showing me how it could weave all of the things that I do together in this one thing that could be a perpetual lead magnet for my business. And that's when my brain connected it. It wasn't about telling my story, or I felt like I didn't want to talk about myself in a book, right? So that just felt really odd and really hard for me. but if I could create this business book that not only told my story, but also showed people how to start, launch, and grow their own subscription box, like I could get behind that. In my mind, this was about me and I didn't like that. And so that was the conversation that happened. And then Reed Tracy, who is the CEO of Hay House, said, I'll give you a book deal. And I said, what? And I was like shocked. I was really shocked. And And Stu looked at me and he said, say yes. And I was like, what? Like, can we talk about this at dinner? Like, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what it involved. I had not— it was not on my bucket list. It was not one of those things that I said, oh, someday I'm going to write a book or someday I'm going to get a book. It was just completely foreign to me that I would even want that or could get that. And so here I had this incredible group of people sitting around the table, Robert, Jamal, Jasmine, Dean, Reeve, Stu, all collaborating on a book for me. And it was really incredible. And I felt so inspired at that table. And, you know, it was one of those things that I thought, okay, this is all just talk. We're in this room and everybody's excited about this, but it's not really going to happen. And I remember Reid told me that afternoon, he said, email me when you get home and I will get you in touch with who you need to be in touch with and we'll, we'll move forward. I thought, okay, I'm going to email this man when I get home. And he's going to be like, who? Where did I meet you? He's not going to remember this conversation. It was interesting. Like, that night I'm a little bit like excited and nervous and scared. And I remember getting on Voxer and messaging one of the members of my team, Marilee. And I said— she's my copywriter— and I said, hey, how do you feel about writing a book? Or how do you feel about writing a book proposal? She's like, what? And she goes, you know, I'm an author, right? And I was like, No. What I didn't know about my own copywriter that had worked for me for probably 8 months at that point was that she had written 3 middle grade fiction books at one time. And so I knew that I wanted her to help me write this book. And so we— I came home and I emailed Reed and I said, hey, do you remember me? And I had to do it right away before he forgot, right? And I said, I'm interested, tell me what I need to do. And he said, I need you to write a book proposal, and I need it, like, by the end of the month. And I was like, okay, I've never written a book proposal. I don't even know what this is going to look like. And so, uh, Marilee and I got to work, and we wrote a killer book proposal of this book that I was going to produce out into the world about building my own business, about how anyone can do this and what steps you need to take. And then really what inspires me most about writing this book and mostly about what I do in general is my students. And I knew my students needed to be a part of this book because it's one thing to tell my story, but it's, it's another thing to tell my students' story along with mine. Because what I try to make people understand is that I'm not different and I'm not special in any way. I didn't have some giant investor that started my business for me or gave me capital. Like I literally bootstrapped my business. And figured it out along the way. And I know that if I can do it, someone like you listening could do it because there's nothing different about me except I didn't give up. And that's really the only difference that you'll find with someone like me and someone else that maybe is not successful. Maybe they gave up. I never gave up and I will never give up. I just keep problem solving. And I think you have to be a great entrepreneur always is problem solving. We're always pivoting, we're always solving the problems. And when you let the problems trip you up, that's where we get stuck, that's where we don't grow, that's where we start to shut down. And so it was important for me as I was working on the book that every chapter had a story in it from one of my students about that particular chapter and how they use that information to grow their own business. So now it's the end of January. I had a month to get a book proposal together. And I was nervous because a lot of authors have like this really big following and I didn't. I mean, we put my poor pathetic social media stats on my book proposal. I think I had like 15,000 Facebook followers and like 4,000 Instagram followers. Like it, in any normal world that looks really sad and pathetic. I mean, you think about some of their authors, like, you know, Amy Porterfield is one of their authors. Stu McLaren's one of their authors. They have hundreds of thousands of followers. Here I come with my 15,000 followers and they're going to give this chick a book deal? What are they thinking? But you know what I had to put on there and something that I was really, really proud of was my podcast stats. That is probably the highest statistical thing that I have in my business besides the amount of paying members that I have to show that people listen to me, people want this information. And then I have all— I have thousands of students. And so those two things were my driving pillars to show that I was worthy of a book deal. And so, you know, we're almost to 350,000 downloads on the podcast right now. It ranks in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally. I'm consistently on the entrepreneur charts regularly. So I just played up those stats. Like if I could have put them in bigger, bolder letters and then font and then put my Facebook stats really, really tiny, I would have. But we played, we played that up and we said, you know what? 'Podcast is amazing. All these people listen to Sarah. Why wouldn't they want a book from her? She has over 4,000 paying students that pay her month after month to get the knowledge that she has. Why wouldn't all those people buy a book from her?' And so that's what we submitted. And I was on pins and needles. We outlined our chapters, we wrote like a whole sample chapter to show them what we were thinking, and they got the proposal and they were like, 'We love it.' We're going to give you a book deal. And so here I am the next month with a whole book deal. And now I have to write a book, a 60,000-word book. And I'm terrified because I'm not a writer. I knew I had a great, you know, writer with me, but this whole book process was really challenging. And in the midst of it, I'm trying to run both of my businesses. And then I'm just overthinking everything. And I know you guys can relate to me because We overthink everything a lot of times in our business, but for me, I was overthinking writing this book. So I get this book deal and I'm like, yes, now here comes the hard work. The hard work was not the proposal or getting the book deal. The hard work was actually pouring my heart and soul into 10 chapters of this book. And there were days that I cried. There were days that we wrote stuff and then I retracted it because it felt too personal. There were days that we took away and added back in and And then there were days that I just shared all these stories with our writers, and they ended up in the book. And so we went through months and months of writing the initial manuscript, which might be one of the most daunting things I've ever done. The timeline— you think having months to write a book, there's plenty of time. But when you really think about producing a whole chapter every single week, Like, that's a lot of work, like a whole chapter of all your thoughts. And every chapter has my story in it. So whatever the chapter is, like I'm telling you what I did to build my business in that way. And then I'm sharing a story from a student, and then I'm telling you the tactical actionable steps in that chapter. So every chapter had these 3 major components: Sarah's story, the action that I need you to take to do the same thing that I did, and also another student story. And so it was just a labor of love that we went through month after month after month. And then, then we start the editing process. So once we get the script in, I believe it was August of last year, and we finally get the manuscript in. We worked on it all spring and summer, and now we have to start the editing process. So, and that's, that's really interesting because here's the team of people that I had working on the book. I had our writers, which were Merilee and Liz. They were writing the book for me and then also helping with the edits. And then we had the editors at Hay House. So I had an editor that worked through this process with me, and her name is Lisa. And so I would get on the Zoom call with her. We would talk through where we're at with everything. We'd talk through what we needed and where we needed to be. And then ultimately, she's the one that took a look at our manuscript. Then we had illustrations. So another one of my team members, Allison, created all the illustrations for every chapter that had to go through another department at Hay House. Then let's go back to the COVID because I think the COVID was just as hard as the manuscript. But the COVID was hard because this is like my one book cover, right? Like, I've put so much work into these 10 chapters of this book. Now we have to put our branding on it. Now we have to make it the pretty packaging. And we just were not seeing eye to eye. And that was a hard process for me because I'm the creative, right? Like, give me the book cover to design. I'm the creative, but I didn't get to create the book cover. And so their art department, their creative department kept sending me covers and I was just like, no, this is not it. It's kind of like when you buy a house, right? You know if it's the right house for you when you step into it. And I kept getting these covers that were just like, no, this is not the right cover. And finally I had to take matters into my own hands and say, look, this is what I'm looking for. Can you guys get close to this? Because I did not want my face on the COVID of this book because I really, it's not about me. And that's what I just keep saying. The book is not about me. It's about building a business that you can be proud of. And so I didn't want my face on this cover. I wanted a box on this cover because that's what this is about. And so we went back and forth and finally when I laid out exactly what I wanted and I, and I held strong, there were so many things that happened. The title changed. There was lots of things that happened, but I was standing firm on this cover. Like, this might be my only book, and I want to make sure that I am really proud of this book. And I think you guys can feel that way with your businesses, right? Like, this is your baby. You want to be proud of it in every way possible. And I wasn't proud of the covers that they were sending me, and I was actually really disappointed. And so when I finally got the COVID back that I had preempted with them. I was like, okay, that's the COVID And so the book is called One Box at a Time, and it's about how I built an incredible business one box at a time, and all the things that I did and all the fears that I went through, all that self-doubt as I was starting my business, how I overcame it, how my students overcame it, and then all the tactical lessons that I teach you all put into a book chapter by chapter, examples, stories, my journey. And I think it's incredible. I am really, really excited about it. My release date is November 14th, and it's coming really, really fast. And I don't know what to expect from a book launch. I've never done that before. But with everything that I do, you know, I'm going to go all in with it. But it was a lot of work, and it— there was a lot of doubt in me that I could do this. I remember in the process, I thought, this is too hard, multiple times. Why am I putting myself through this? I didn't even want a book deal. I got talked into it. That's what I kept telling myself. And I felt like every issue, every struggle that I struggled with through this book made me stronger. And I remember just being like, I don't like this chapter. I don't like it. Something about it I don't like. Let's redo it. And I think that that's how we operate as business owners. When something doesn't feel right, we need to change it. We can't just accept it and move forward. And so I didn't accept anything I didn't like in the book. And that was a challenging thing for me because there would be everyone else on the team would be like, this is great. And I'd be like, no, it's not. This is my book. This has my name on the COVID And I wanna make sure it's the best possible book it can be. It's not something I wrote in a week. It's not something that— ChatGPT wasn't around when I was writing this book. I— this is, this is my story. This is my teaching. This is my students. And I wanted to be really proud of that. And I wanted to showcase all the great things about our community with this book. And I couldn't be more proud of it. So we went through, after the manuscript was submitted, we went through 3 rounds of editing. So we'd have it a month, they'd have it a month, we'd have it 2 weeks, they'd have it 2 weeks, we would get it for a week, they would get it for a week. So it was like shorter amounts of time each time as we were getting done with all the editing. And so now it's going to print, it's going to print. And I am getting ready to record the audio version of this book. And they asked me, they said, do you want to record the audio version? And I said, heck yes, I do. This is my story. This is my teaching. It needs to be in my voice. They're already used to listening to me on my podcast. So of course, I cannot wait to record the audio version of this book. And I know for me, when I sit down in that sound booth and I start to record the audio version of this book, it's going to come to life for me in a whole different way, in a way that it hasn't up until this point. And just speaking those words that we spent over a year putting on that paper. It's going to be a milestone for me. And I just want you guys to know how incredibly proud I am to just have this Community and be able to do what I get to do every day. Who would have thought I would be an author? It's something that was never on my list. But this is the lesson. If you learn nothing out of this whole conversation, maybe you will never write a book, but maybe the story interests you in some way. The lesson I want you to learn from my book deal story is that you have to keep putting yourself in rooms of opportunity. When I went out to Scottsdale, I knew there was going to be some high-level people there, people that were much bigger than me in their businesses. And I was really nervous about that. And I didn't know anyone except Stu, and I knew he was going to be busy because it's his event. So I was really going out there alone, and I felt nervous about that for a long time leading up to the event. And when I got there, we all met for dinner that first night, and I felt so just calm meeting people, you know, and I thought, I belong here. And I didn't think that the week before. And then sitting there getting a book deal in front of all those people. Felt incredibly special. If I would have held on to the fear of going out there, not knowing anyone, I would have never had the opportunity that I had sitting in that room. We have to continue to put ourselves in rooms of opportunity, and we have to not be afraid to take them when we have them. So when an opportunity is put in front of you, I don't want that fear to build up in you and you say, I can't possibly write a book. I don't know how to do this. Don't have that fear. Just lean into that opportunity. Because now I'm going to be an author. And who knows, I might even be a New York Times bestseller. You never know what can happen. But it's that room of opportunity that I walked into, being scared, being fearful, but doing it anyway. And I'm about to have a book published. Had I not been in that room at that time, there's no way I would have a book right now. Doesn't mean I wouldn't have one in the future, but right now there's no way I wouldn't. That opportunity would've never come knocking for me. So I need you to listen to the voice in your head when there's an opportunity knocking. Stop talking yourself out of it and start leaning into it. We're all scared, we're all nervous, we all feel unworthy and incapable, but I have gained more confidence through this process than I have probably gained in a lifetime. When people read those pages of my book, it's like a whole new vulnerability for me. I do it with the podcast, I do it with a Facebook Live, but it's different when it's in print on paper for life. There's a deep connection there, and I am excited to connect deeply with people, people that read my book, people that listen to my podcast, people that are part of my programs. That's the opportunity that I want to connect deeply with people. And so I want you to just push that fear down when it comes creeping its head back up in whatever way that it is for you and just say, you know, if Sarah can write a book, I'm going to build this business. If Sarah can overcome her fear in this area, I can too. And I want that to be a lesson to you. We can't stop talking ourselves out of being in the room of opportunity. Because we're never going to push ourselves out of that comfort zone. Writing this book, getting this book deal was way out of my comfort zone, but not anymore. 18 months later, I'm more confident than ever about that book, about my content, and about what I do for people that listen or read or watch my content. And so I'm just going to pass that little confidence off to you today, and I want you to Grab it, put it in your pocket, walk around with it, because that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to lift each other up. So walk into those rooms with confidence and get— grab that opportunity. And I cannot wait for you to read my book.