Instead of publishing in 5-steps, he said the real world journey may circulate a dozen times among the steps back-and-forth before the process is complete.
Photo credit: marsupium photography on Best Running / CC BY-SA
Musing what Leo da V would do triggers a meandering tour through unconnected feelings, thoughts, ideas, memories and fragments of story ideas.
I’m cursed.
I find it very difficult to stay focused.
And, to follow a linear process when it comes to writing.
You know the sequence “they” teach.
Prewrite
Draft
Revise
Edit
Publish
Matt Renwick in his blog, “Reading by Example” made me feel it was OK for me to skip around.
Photo credit: marsupium photography on Best Running / CC BY-SA
Instead of publishing in 5-steps, he said the real world journey may circulate a dozen times among the steps back-and-forth before the process is complete.
On a good day, here’s my path.
Prewrite,
Draft,
Revise,
Draft,
Revise,
Draft,
Revise,
Prewrite,
Draft,
Edit,
Revise,
Publish,
Revise,
Edit, and finally
Publish.
If That, Then This …
Do you need to take classes or earn certificates before you can write?
No says Helen Jackson in an article from The Writing Cooperative.
But, then how do you get started?
Helen recommends journaling.
Photo credit: r.nial.bradshaw on Best Running / CC BY
I began journaling long-hand in spiral notebooks years ago and noticed how life passed through my pages.
It was exhilarating.
It became an obsession.
It became so important that I forced myself to walk away for breaks.
I had become addicted to forgetting to live my life unless I took the time – hours – to write-up a memorable 15-minute experience.
Today I’m happy to say my journaling is confined to answering one question.
What would Leo da V do?
Not Michelangelo, but Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo kept stunning notebooks which revealed his wide-ranging scientific, artistic and human anatomy curiosities.
Walter Isaacson wrote about Leonardo’s genius, but didn’t gloss over how, due to his unrestrained creative inquiry during the Renaissance, Leonardo left many sponsored projects unfinished.
Musing what Leo da V would do triggers a meandering tour through unconnected feelings, thoughts, ideas, memories and fragments of story ideas.
Or what might be called my Prewrite.
“What would Leo da V do? Relish what the interviews reveal in Judd Apatow’s book, “Sick in the Head”. Like Marc Maron’s WTF podcast interviews, these are people who are in their 40s and 50s who are established in their careers – Gen-X – and reveal what it’s like to keep going, be creative, take newer risks, reflect on what’s going on around them now.”
If That, Then This …
Helen says, “Anything that comes to mind that you don’t want to forget — note it down. Sometimes re-reading your ideas can trigger another idea and it just snowballs from there.”
Leo led to a couple of surprises.
“Two organizing principles – Legacy and Taxes.”
The taxes symbolized a reminder that it is that time of year.
And, working on those taxes points out a need for making money – different business models to explore.
Legacy reminds me I need to return to my tagline – “How to Live, Love, Work, Play, Invest and Leave a Legacy” – and flesh out what it’s like to keep going and developing in the latter phases of artistic lives.
If That, Then This …
I may be cursed.
But, I’m also lucky enough that I recently took time off to trace Leonardo’s footsteps in Italy.
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Package and repackage your deposits into new products.
Next Steps:
On Amazon / Kindle publish “On Your Own Terms: Pack More Meaning and Passion into Your Life”
Promote it as Book One of a five-book series in Volume One on all of my sites and on Flipboard and LinkedIn.
Join the Writing Cooperative and take their challenge covering all the mistakes I made in my first year (plus or minus) as a reluctant website administrator.
Repurpose those and drafts from The Knowledge Path – Volume Two and Three on Patreon.
Get MailChimp working as my primary vehicle for getting subscribers and supporters to review and leave comments on Amazon. Add Patreon link to my websites and my email, Flipboard and LinkedIn.
Automate a consistent process of content aggregation, curation, composition, and circulation.
Master the chain reactionof Awareness – Interest – Liking – Desire – Trial – Repurchase and Regular Use. Make it easy for your fans to buy a piece of you, and then advocate on your behalf.
Achieve the long-term goal of subscribing, sponsoring, then buying books and reports, joining membership.
What if I apply the research I’ve already deposited into my knowledge bank over the years?
The Knowledge Path Series
What if, then, I can engage a following, both locally and online?
What if I can attract a large enough fan base to build other products they find unique and valuable? The second volume of “The Knowledge Path” series will be about finding the right fit in company cultures for you as you compare 16 organizational talent cultures.
What will you be able to do?
Cultivating “True Fans”
Subscribers, members and patrons learn from my experiences and follow step-by-step details for packaging and repackaging their expertise to generate passive income.
By creating a community, I’ll be able to learn from their experiences too.
We’ll find out what worked and what didn’t work together.
They’ll follow along to learn from my mistakes and I’ll be able to incorporate lessons they learned as well.
What are your expectations?
Only modest income once the websites are fully functioning and attract enough followers.
Mostly from crowdfunding rather than from book sales.
This lifestyle business serves as startup with tax write-offs and low initial costs.
My ROE (Return On Effort) slowly and incrementally builds to a longer term sustainable income stream.
How will you feel?
Knowledge Products for Making Money While Your Sleep
As an amateur muddling through and testing my self-help, do-it-yourself process I’ll finally figure out how to offer websites as products through WordPress multisite.
By following along email subscribers can profit by following my steps and missteps.
With a member community we can refine our learned lessons and offer in the virtual world what I offer to executives in the real world.
Conduct a laboratory. Bank new knowledge and expertise mastered. Package and repackage your deposits into new products.
“There are always some new strategies, some of them are good while the others are not really worth my time because I saw no results.
I believe what Katherine did was to simply define what I mean by “conducting a knowledge laboratory”.
We don’t always know what to believe and what not to believe when we cross into new territories (real and imagined) – territories filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).
“… I would suggest trying EVERYTHING and testing what works for you.This is what works best for me.”
Periodically I revisit my approach for creating new (for me) knowledge that I can apply more efficiently and productively.
I strongly feel you have to stay relevant and more marketable than your competition.
My approach unfolds in three phases.
What’s going on?
The Knowledge Path Series
What is your situation?
What are the knowns?
What are the unknowns?
What are the threats?
Why?
Where are you going?
What if?
What will you be able to do?
What are your expectations?
How will you feel?
What will you know or understand?
What happened on your journey so far?
What did you discover?
What surprised you?
What insights have you learned?
What are new opportunities you are better positioned for?
So how does it work? Here’s what I’m experiencing in this journey so far. Call it part one.
What’s going on?
What is your situation? I’ve been in the advising, consulting and expertise peddling business for more years than I’d like to reveal. Here’s what I realized. And what I wanted to do.
Make a Million Dollars
You either work for someone else or for yourself.
What every consultant I know wants is to make money while they sleep.
They already sell an expertise.
They needa website to attract new clients.
If so, why not combine their online marketing with a way to earn income from it – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year?
What are the knowns? In my day job at the business school I developed a curriculum, but realized most executive students weren’t attempting to build a lifestyle business.
I’m guessing you aren’t an executive.
You might play one on TV.
But I do know plenty of ex-executives who have been put out to pasture in their late 40s and mid-50s and now face these choices.
If Only. What if?
How to choose the ‘Preneur’ business model by weighing the pros and cons:
I’ve already identified 12 steps (from the master list of 34) described and illustrated in Volume One of “The Knowledge Path: How to Live. Love. Work. Play. Invest and Leave a Legacy.”
Phew.
Start down a path with a lifestyle business that you can take anywhere in the world “at the intersection of passion and quality-of-life“:
Choose a business model that brings out the best in you.
Conduct a preliminary marketing study about the best places on your bucket list
Activate a “Brand-as-an-Expert” campaign
Maintain a consistent process of content aggregation, curation, composition, and circulation.
Engage and nurture your audience of followers.Grow to 1000 (2000?) raving fans
Make it easy for them to buy your expertise and advocate on your behalf to others.
Automate the chain of awareness, interest, liking, desire, trial, repurchase and regular use.
Practice daily to master your story telling process to engage your customers imagination.
Cultivate a voice that is uniquely yours and delivers on your “Brand-as-an-Expert.”
Sketch scenarios in five-year time frames to highlight potential risks and rewards, threats and opportunities.
Prepare to pivot and thrive when key moments during your five-year scenarios arrive.
Monitor and anticipate shifts in your environment. Swim with the new currents and clue your fans in to what’s changing.
What are the unknowns?
Building a website that will describe my work-in-process.
Figuring out a way of capturing the knowledge and experience in a way that results in another knowledge product.
I didn’t know how to write and publish a book.
I knew I had a story to tell.
Figuring out what the step-by-step process is for self-publishing, hosting a website and blog, submitting a book to Amazon, determining all the moving parts to a social media strategy and crowdfunding campaign.
If the return on my effort ROE may not be worth the time to master it from scratch. (Or, for you).
Costs: Incurred expenses for registering domain names over two years with additional for confidentiality, hosting my 6 sites
What are the threats?
For example:
My learn-as-you-go DIY project takes too long.
Rearranging Creative Ideas
Is it analysis paralysis? The research and writing parts vary between the extremes of terror and bliss.
My book content ages by the time it takes to successfully self-publish the series. The perceived value tanks and no-one buys my books.
I lose focus and move on to Volume Two prematurely. I self-sabotage as I near the end – what’s that old song – Slip Sliding Away?
The content business isn’t sustainable and you can’t really make a living following this business model.
Why?
Even though it’s a cliché I hear frequently from almost all of the mentors I’ve recruited over the last decade, I too want to give back.
And, I wanted to learn something new by testing the process for creating new knowledge and innovation – called knowledge banking.
How you can choose the right resort community just for you in the Western Region of the United States – all you needed was fast wifi connection and a method.
Write Volume Two as a new series of books – selecting the type of organizations with talent cultures as clients or employers – that bring out the best in you. Optimize the entire process by applying what I’ve learned so far.
Integrate a project plan. Test what works and what doesn’t. Grow your reading audience by igniting a marketing plan and social media campaign.
Pick the best crowdfunding platform.
Publish on Amazon – give it a way individually and as a five book series to experiment with pricing (Volume One) – creating a bucket list of best places attracting people like you in quality-of-life communities.
Offer exclusive reports and bucket list updates.
Conduct a laboratory. Bank new knowledge and expertise mastered. Package and repackage your deposits into new products.
Or at least offer your next book at a much higher price.
3. Partner with the In Crowd
Find and participate with large-traffic blogs, websites, newsletters, and social media writers.
On July 9, 2013 almost 5 years ago Rob Eager, On Digital Book World, wrote “How to Sell Ebooks: 5 Proven Tips” and listed seven of the most influential back then.
According to Eager in 2013, getting your e-book mentioned help gets the word out leading to more downloads than you could have grown organically on your blog.
Basically, he said, “You can write to the administrators of these e-book blogs and request a feature on your book.”
Look for sites with free listings.
Or those that will feature your book for a fee.
He also said “Kindle Nation offers author sponsorship opportunities to promote your book for $99 to $400” (check for today’s fees).
Don’t overlook web-based ads.
You can run them on GoodReads and IndieReader.
4. After experimenting with all avenuesof “Free” and “near Free” check outpaid book reviews.
Besides book mentions and paid advertising, independent authors can pursue literary reviews of their work for a fee.
Why?
You boost your legitimacy as an unknown author.
While a lot has changed over the last five years, here are two of Eager’s recommendations to get you started on your trial and error testing:
The mutual benefit accrues when you agree to offer your sponsor advertising space or promotional activities for them.
Eager profiled Al Pittampalli who “landed Citrix Systems as a sponsor for his new ebook called, Read This Before Our Next Meeting.
Citrix invented the popular GoToMeeting videoconferencing service (www.GoToMeeting.com), which is used by companies around the world.
As a sponsor of Al’s book, Citrix got exposure to thousands of potential new customers.
Likewise Al got funding through Citrix, legitimacy from their brand, and exposure to a much wider audience”
Great gig if you can get it, right?
How do you get it?
Begin by jotting down all the likely suspects you can even loosely associate with your book’s content.
People.
Companies.
Nonprofit Organizations
Oh, right, you may need to do a little Googling or ask Siri and conduct a little market segment research too.
The key is to surface what each might have in common with you.
Like they want to reach their customers or donors with something new to keep them engaged, that you want to reach as readers and purchasers of your book.
Then you contactthose organizations and pitch your value proposition.
That you’ll become a spokesperson for them.
Or your book is the ideal product placement opportunity for them.
Really?
Wait, what’s in it for them?
An avenue for marketing in a non-threatening, more authentic manner to their potential customers or donors.
Seriously, you can do that?
Yup.
But the burden of proof falls on your shoulders.
You have to convince them that your book’s audience appeals to their target market.
And that you can sell a lot of books.
6. It takes a knowledge laboratory to test what works and doesn’t. Now you tell me.
According to Eager:
“There has never been a more interesting time to be an independent author.The opportunities to self-publish and sell books are unprecedented.”
Is interesting time enough?
Run a Knowledge Laboratory
What worked well 5 years ago may end up wasting your precious time today.
In fact, what worked well even a year ago might not cut it.
However, some of the fundamentals probably remain the same.
You must write a great book that provides tangible value to the reader.
Test that assumption with 20 of your friends and relatives.
Start small, use a low-cost pricing approach to gain new readers,
FREE or near-FREE.
Grow your platform.
Connect with the in crowd of influencers.
And if you dare, find a sponsor.
But, keep Katherine Milkovich’s comment in mind (written in 2016).
“There are always some new strategies, some of them are good while the others are not really worth my time because I saw no results.
But there are some basics that never change, such as starting your blog and building your audience, using forums, guest posting…
But I would suggest trying EVERYTHING and testing what works for you.
This is what works best for me.”
What works for you?
Steps:
4) Nurture your passions and express your uniqueness — no one else can or will, for that matter.
11) Maintain a consistent process of content aggregation, curation, composition, and circulation.
12) Nurture your audience of followers striving to increase the number of your raving fans to 1000.
13) Make it easy for your fans to buy a piece of you, and then advocate on your behalf.
14) Synchronize your selling process with their buying process — master the chain reactionof Awareness – Interest – Liking – Desire – Trial – Repurchase and Regular Use.
Walter Isaacson wrote about Leonardo’s genius, but didn’t gloss over how, due to his unrestrained creative inquiry during the Renaissance, Leonardo left many sponsored projects unfinished.
As an amateur muddling through and testing my self-help, do-it-yourself process I’ll finally figure out how to offer websites as products through 
Time Out.
And, live happily ever after.
Drag a comb across my head.
But, wait there’s more.
Since it’s free with a capital FREE you can test your content without draining your bank account.
At the right price point it motivates your potential audience to take a chance on your book.
Citrix invented the popular GoToMeeting videoconferencing service (
That you’ll become a spokesperson for them.