I announced at the beginning of this year that I would be releasing a new book soon. It is well under way, and nearing completion. While I won’t go into detail about it just yet, I will say that the focus of the new book is creating workshops. I have observed more and more small businesses using instructional workshops as a means of marketing themselves, and I don’t expect this to change any time soon.

I’m planning to release the pre-screen edition at the end of May to select participants in a pilot program that I unveiled earlier this year. The date for the final release to the general public is to be determined.

If you think that this blog entry reads too much like a press release, I’m inclined to agree with you.

I recently connected with Carolyn, my high school classmate on Facebook. We have kept loosely in touch over the last few months. Just last week, I found out that she had written a children’s book. I was highly interested to hear about this, specifically because I have noticed that a lot of people are starting to take an interest in writing their own children’s books. I did a virtual “interview” with Carolyn about the book (below).

You can find Carolyn’s book on her web site, CarolynCrownDesigns.com.

Where did you get the idea to write a children’s book?
“When Patrick was only a month old, he was diagnosed with severe acid reflux. The poor little guy was basically uncomfortable all the time, cried every minute he wasn’t eating or sleeping, and had to remain as upright as possible at all times. We tried everything we could think of to soothe him, and reading seemed to work well because he could sit upright in our lap and be held and rocked. We read to him a lot during his first year. Even though Patrick was too young to understand what we were reading, we still wanted to read educational books to him. We often reminisced about what an important role those books had played in our lives. I thought one day about how great it would be to have a book where Patrick was the main character! His best friend, Royal the elephant, is based on a blue stuffed elephant I had as a child, and whose name actually was Royal—which also happens to be Patrick’s middle name. I wanted to create an educational book that encouraged interaction between parent and child and that other families could enjoy. My book is meant to be read together—the left hand page is written for the child, and the corresponding right hand page is written for the parent.”

What inspired you to go ahead with it?
“I just had to get it together and go for it. There was nothing stopping me except myself. What was the worst that could happen? No one would read my book? So what? I was writing it for my family more than I was for anyone else.”

How difficult was it, compared to what you expected?
“It was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. In my naivete, I thought, ‘This is a children’s picture book. How hard can it be?’ I think I had grandiose expectations that I would be able to complete this project over a couple weekends. That did not turn into reality.”

How long did it take?
“Well, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It took a long time. I have a full-time job, my own business (CarolynCrownDesigns.com), a home, a husband, and a one-year-old! I think it took about nine months from start to finish, including time to create the illustrations.”

What advice do you have for someone else doing a children’s book?
“I think the most important thing to remember is that you can do this! Writing a book is like anything else we do—it’s a process. Try to think of it that way. I went step by step. First was solidifying the idea for the book. Then securing someone to do the illustrations—fortunately, a very talented former colleague of mine, Mike Antonio (MikeAntonioGraphics.com) was willing to help me out. Then writing the text. Then doing the layout. Once that was done, I actually took a break for a while and came back to proof/edit with fresh eyes. And because I was writing this book for my son, I was always thinking about the smile he’d have on his face when he was able to read this book by himself.”

As you can see, my blog updates have been infrequent of late. I would like to change that.

If you are an introverted entrepreneur, or if you know a good introverted entrepreneur who has a great story about how you’ve produced results in your business without doing icky sales stuff, I’d love to hear from you. I’m sure that my RSS readers would like to hear your story as well.

Some things to think about:

1. Have you gotten customers or clients who found your web site? How have you made this happen?

2. Have you been successful getting referral business? How could someone else do what you did?

3. Do you have any amusing stories about how NOT to sell?

I’d love to publish your stories on here. If you have a great story, please e-mail me.

They say a good overnight success is two years in the making (or something like that). I’m now starting to see what they meant by that. Specifically, I just did my first workshop this past Saturday with Alice Osborn, and while it was exhausting to put together, it was well worth the effort. We’re now doing a second workshop in February.

There are several reasons why this is going to be a lot easier the second time around:

1. I partnered with several people to put this together, and we got the wrinkles smoothed out.

2. I documented how I ran the workshop with an instructor’s manual.

3. I got some great feedback from the participants about how to improve it.

4. Alice collected video testimonials, which we’ll be posting online in the very near future.

5. During the process of making call-outs for the first workshop, we found a number of people who were very interested in attending but couldn’t make the time and date work. In other words, we’re coming out of the gate with some hot leads pre-loaded.

6. Rose Wilson of Wilson Marketing helped me get my sales calls done. Look at the title of my web page. I’m not good at that sales stuff. I realized I needed to bite the bullet and hire somebody.

The main point here, though, is that it’s always easier the second time around. You don’t have to figure it all out the second time, and you don’t have to drum up interest from scratch the second time.

This is basically a shout-out to all startup entrepreneurs who aren’t making money yet. Less than 2 years ago, I was right where you are. It gets much better, and it happens very quickly. All you have to do is stick in the game and stay in action.

2009 was a great year to be an Introverted Entrepreneur.

While a large chunk of the planet was wallowing in doom and gloom about the economy, some of us simply realized that the rules of the game were different than before. It’s a lean, mean economy now. Being mediocre is no longer sufficient to pay the bills. Being great is now a matter of survival. Going after your passion and your dream is no longer something you can afford to put off until “someday.” If you aren’t doing something because you absolutely love it, people won’t give you the time of day and you’ll go broke.

For me, it took most of 2009 to get that through my thick skull. But now, I’m fired up and ready to play. I’m now planning my books for the rest of the year. Let’s just say that they look a little different than they did when I wrote Pied Piper Entrepreneurship, but I’m basically on track with my original plan.

The next book, I think, will be about writing a team book. The clincher: is there any integrity in trying to write it by myself?

Details to come.

My latest book, Get That Book Out of Your Head, is in its infant stages of marketing. The classical solopreneur’s challenge has shown up once again. How does one market a book with a shoestring budget?I thought you might appreciate this little trick. I killed two birds with one stone. My laptop has a tendency to overheat if it’s placed directly on top of a hard surface with no space underneath it. When I’m at coffee shops, I typically prop up my laptop to create some air flow under its hottest components. A thin book works well for this.A picture is worth 1,000 words. Hey, it’s got to grab some eyeballs, right?

I’ve just recently put up a Facebook Fan Page for my new book, Get That Book Out of Your Head! We’ll see how this works.One thing that I’ve noticed right off the bat, from an introverted entrepreneur’s perspective; I felt bolder about shamelessly promoting a Facebook Fan Page than I do when it comes to most things. I still staunchly refuse to “select all” and send. That is just sloppy. I hand-picked everyone who received an invitation to become a fan of the book, and I ended up with just over 150 people. For me, that’s a lot.I even had hesitations about doing this. However, with people on all sides consistently criticizing me for not self-promoting enough, I figure that I’m in no imminent danger of being marked as a spammer. So, I bit the bullet and clicked “send.”I wonder if I should be less sensitive and just start sending e-blasts for every dang old thing. That’s what a lot of people are doing, and it still works.If anything remarkable happens on my Facebook Fan Page that you can easily copycat, I’ll be sure and post it here.

Note: I’ve never posted a “theme of the month” before, and may never do so again.

I always remember my sales trainers and coaches telling me that the key to success is consistent action. Pick an action plan, and execute it consistently over time. So they said. These past few months, I’ve really begun to doubt the wisdom of this. I have noticed that it’s easy to get consistently crappy results, or a consistent lack of results whatsoever. But on the few occasions when I felt like I’d hit a homerun, it didn’t happen as a result of anything I’d done consistently.

I’ve decided to start acting like consistency doesn’t matter. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve always been acting that way. Granted, there are some things we can’t avoid doing consistently (breathing, etc.) But it’s the inconsistent spikes of unpredictable fun that make life juicy, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, with my self-diagnosed ADHD – look at that bird! – consistency is pretty boring.

I’ll be putting out my first newsletter issue soon. I may be publishing my newsletters at highly irregular intervals. We’ll see.

I’ve decided that as my business expands and I become involved with more and more groups, e-mail is just not cutting it. I was hoping that Facebook and Twitter would solve the problem, but they’ve been inadequate. Don’t get me wrong; the ability to put out a status message to 600+ people at one time has had its benefits, but you have to be careful not to abuse this level of permission. If you keep putting irrelevant, over-promotional, or uninteresting things into people’s feeds, they’ll hide your posts (or just ignore you). I haven’t found a great solution to this.

When it comes to e-mail, this hasn’t been ideal, either. I’m not going to e-blast everybody every time I have something to share. I’m not going to copy 200 people on an e-mail in the hopes of getting 5 of them to respond. That just doesn’t work either.

I’ve decided to start using blogs in a new way. For example, I’m involved with a training program with Landmark Education, and there are over 800 people in the program with me in North America. I am going to have a lot of things to say to this community over the next year. I was thinking of posting something on this blog, but I was concerned about diluting my core message. This blog is my place to be fully transparent about what I’m up to.

So, I created a new blog just for the training program. I may create other blogs like this for other groups if this goes well.

Seriously. I have a swirl of things going through my head, and I’m terrible with to-do lists. I notice that when I had a boss, I was handed a list of priorities. Today is one of those days.

The book. The newsletter. I could post some more articles on EzineArticles. I could make some follow-up sales calls. I could post on InSide919. I could invent a system for prioritizing what things to do. I could kill my whole day on indecision. Or, I could just pick one thing to do, and then do it.

As you can see, I chose to do a blog post. This won out, for the moment, among all of the choices of things I could spend these five minutes doing. What was my motivation? Gut instinct. When all else fails, I follow the rabbit trail. One idea usually emerges from the mental fog, and I follow the thread to see where it goes.

This blog post is embarrassingly incoherent.  However, I’m going to publish it. I have a policy of100% transparency on my blog, and a zero-editing policy as well. (I do fix spelling and grammar errors, but that’s it).

I think that’s about all I have to say on the subject.