PP 294: What Works For You? with Jenn Taylor

Kim Sutton: 

Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and I’m so happy to have you here to join us today. I’m also thrilled to introduce our guest, Jenn Taylor. Jenn is a Book Coach. And listeners, I’ve been on a journey with writing my book, so I can’t wait to dive in and learn more about your journey, Jenn, and just go wherever the conversation takes us.

Jenn Taylor: 

We’re excited. Thank you.

Kim Sutton: Oh, you’re so welcome. Listeners, you know that Positive Productivity is not always about perfection, so I just want to give a heads up. I know it’s gonna be fine on Jenn’s side, but we have our kid challenges today, which is as mompreneurs sometimes that just happened. So if the phone happens to ring on my side, please forgive me. I’m just gonna put it out there because life has to go on. Jenn, would you mind sharing about your journey, how you got to become a Book Coach, and what your entrepreneurial journey has looked like?

Jenn Taylor: Absolutely. It’s changed, I think, I have a couple things that I think are secrets, and they’re not secret. It’s not like they’re classified, and no one can know. Actually, everybody should know. But things that really, really worked for me kind of my toolbox of what helped me be successful in different areas. I was one of those people that said, I want to write a book. And if I had a conversation with someone about my life growing up, I did foster care for 12 years. For 20 years, we have a total of 18 kids, which is a totally different conversation. But it’s an interesting story because I grew up on the street very similarly, or exactly the same as any of the foster kids that came into my home. So I wanted to write this book and get the story out thinking if it just helped one person win, that’d be great. And it’s easy to say, I want to write a book. And I have had a blog for six and a half years, kind of just about our life. I’m a runner. So about running, and gear reviews, and races that I’ve done, and stuff like that. And then I’ve written for several publications like shorter blog type pieces articles. So writing has been kind of a passion since I had this crotchety old woman, never married, never had kids, still living with her dad and cats, teacher in high school. She was probably 70 when I had her in high school, and my 30th class reunions coming up this summer. 

So she was just a crotchety woman, and I loved her. She was my writing teacher. I realized how cathartic it was, and how much of a blessing it just was to be able to write things down and get them on paper from journaling, which I do. But I don’t do it traditionally to the blog that I started to writing for the companies. I didn’t go into journalism in college. Because back then, you have to remember that we didn’t have internet. So everything was, you type out your manuscript and you send it to publishing houses. It was very, very different. And if I had known then what I knew now, I would have absolutely follow journalism, but it just didn’t look then like it looks now. So I was just that person that said, I want to write a book, and I lost my job. It’s been almost two years ago, and Dane who is my partner in life, and crime, and kids, and everything, he looked at me and he said: “Well, why don’t you write? Why don’t you take some time off financially, we can do it, and write the book you’ve always talked to me.” I thought, oh, crap. Now I have to decide, am I the person that says I want to write a book? Because it sounds like such a great idea. Or am I actually the person that gets off my button does it? And I was faced with this, actually a dilemma. Do I really want to write a book? And I realized that I really wanted to write this book, and I felt like I was given this tremendous gift. And it was a gift of time, which is the commodity you can never get back. The thing we always run out of and never have enough of, and people complain about being too busy. As a side note, I hate the word busy.

Kim Sutton: I’m about to ask about that, busy being busy.

Jenn Taylor: I think it makes us feel important. And I’m not putting anyone down because I’ve been in this category also. But I think it makes us feel important to be busy. And to me, that word elicits a lot of stressful emotions. I don’t want to be busy. I don’t want to feel like, oh my gosh, there’s just too much to get done, and I just can’t handle it. I don’t like that feeling of that emotion, the content it conjures. I am very deliberate with my time. So if I had said, Kim, I’m sorry, I can’t do the podcast. It’s not because I don’t want to. It’s that right now, I’ve been deliberate with my time, and it doesn’t fit in right now, period. And I have no issue saying no, and I think a lot of us feel so much guilt if we say no to anything. I mean, I’ve raised 18 kids, we’re down to four at home so nobody’s going to tell me that you’re too busy to do something. Because I can guarantee, I can throw that in your face. There’s no reason to stop being busy and be deliberate. So I was giving this given this gift of time where I had this tremendously supportive man and family in a situation where I had the time to write the book so I set myself a schedule because I didn’t want to take for granted that gift. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to utilize it to the best of my ability. 

So all these teenagers leave for school at 7:00, and our youngest one leaves for school at 9:00, and the first one comes home at 2:30. So from nine to 2:30, that was my job. And having a job is also not a negative thing. I’ve had jobs I’ve absolutely loved tremendously. I think our fun part of it is a paycheck. Part of it is health insurance. There’s lots of reasons that we have the job, but I’ve really enjoyed it. I never wanted to feel like, I hate Monday, and I can’t wait for Friday ever in my life. I wanted to just enjoy it. And the weekend was different from the weekdays. I like it when my kids leave for school and I’m alone in my house. I don’t feel bad about letting everybody know that. So I would get the youngest on the bus at 9:00. And from 9:00 to 2:30, I wrote. Now, we have writer’s blog, and we have days that are off, or we get sick, or whatever. I allowed that to happen, and I don’t feel any guilt about that. The days that things were not flowing or different, I would write a blog post. I mean, I would just kind of do different things, but it was all sort of geared towards getting this book written. I wrote the book in two months.

Kim Sutton: Two months? Oh, my goodness.

Jenn Taylor: Yeah. 9:00 to 2:30, it was my job.

Kim Sutton: You’re inspired. Oh, my gosh.

Jenn Taylor: The average. So there’s some numbers I want to throw out there, not to discourage and actually encourage me, but this is what it is. 85% of people who say they want to write the book never write a book. I decided I wanted to be 15%. Books are not something that is money making. If you go on Amazon and buy my book for 14.99 right now, I make about $2.21 off that book. And 90%, if you walk into Barnes & Noble, 90% of those books in Barnes & Noble will sell a thousand copies or less in their lifetime. Now, that wasn’t discouraging to me. That made me feel like, cool, I got it. I want to be one of the 15%. I may not ever even hit 1000 books sold. I’m not not gonna make almost any money on it, but that’s not why I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. I was more altruistic than that. If I thought, if I read a self-help memoir about my life growing up and I share all the nooks and crannies of how horrible things are, and I give people hope, anybody, one person hope or inspiration, I’m giving my story of voice and win. It was incredibly empowering and helpful for me. So it was part of my personal journey in my self development and growth. And my goal was to make a difference to that one, which was my same goal in foster care taking kids. You just want to try to make a difference to one.

Kim Sutton: That was the same goal that I had with Positive Productivity.  And when I got that first email, I had tears in my eyes. I’m not much of a crier now, but it gave me tears. And then I was like, okay, I got one. Let’s get two and the same thing happened. The same thing has happened with each additional consecutive. Positive Productivity does not mean I have the right words at any given time, which is why my book is still stuck in my head, or maybe part of the reason is because I’m not dedicating that time. But anyway, that was the same reason. I agree that I don’t do what I’m doing to make money with the Positive Productivity Podcasts, and I love that you’re saying the same with your book.

Jenn Taylor: Yeah. I have my own podcast, I have my own blog, and I have the book. And then I have a website where I coach people to write books. And again, none of it is making me enough money where I don’t still need to have a part time job. And people have, we have our Facebook personality. However you want to call what we portray to the world. Everything that I have portrayed to the world is 150% genuine, but it’s not the full story. They can be all money making ventures. And part of that is I would love to not have to work a part time job to supplement income. That is a goal. But if you have that expectation that you’re going to be the next JK Rowling, maybe you will. I’m not discouraging that possibility. I’m just letting you know that that’s probably the wrong way to be geared to do it.

Kim Sutton: Right. May I ask you a question?

Jenn Taylor: Yes. You can ask me.

Kim Sutton: I have friends who have a lot of kids, and I think they’re up to 11. 10 or 11. Which is still still a lot of kids. Oh, my gosh, I feel like I have more than my hands full on any given evening. I don’t know how you do it.

Jenn Taylor: You just do it.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, you just do it. My biggest goal every night is just not to burn dinner on the nights when I’m cooking.

Jenn Taylor: Yes.

Kim Sutton: [inaudible] my house is not burning dinner. So my friends have been asked on numerous occasions, have they considered their own TV show or YouTube station where they’re behind the scenes. And I know from some other friends who have had foster children that they had to be really careful with taking pictures of their foster children, and video, and sharing any of that. But how do you feel about people who are doing like the YouTube stations? Because I feel like some of them, sorry, I’m answering my own opinion before I give you a chance to respond. I feel like some of them are still only showing us what they want us to see, and we’re still not getting a true idea of what’s going on in the real life of such family. You know what I mean?

Jenn Taylor: Yeah. I was asked once if I would do a reality TV show, not by a director or producer, but someone who said you should do a show. I said: “No, I actually have a YouTube channel.” I have a lot of videos, I have to kind of transfer over to the, I just changed my email and stuff, and I need to pick and choose what videos from that original channel. I did. I actually have a son who’s autistic, and I was pretty raw about it. So I think there’s a difference in personalities. I swear like a trucker in my real life. I haven’t been on your show because I forgot to ask. I’ve gone through probably almost every scenario with kids that you can, teenage pregnancy, and drugs, and running away, and suicide attempts. If you name it, I’m most likely to have had the experience. And here’s what I think, I don’t have foster kids anymore, I’m not doing foster care. I haven’t for almost about eight years. So all my kids are, I call them permanent residents, which is not politically correct, but I don’t care because they’re paper. I have five that aged out, or were in foster care with me that I didn’t adopt but didn’t reunify, so 5 of the 18. But they’re all almost pretty much adults. So the pictures aren’t an issue. But yes, for foster care, that is true, you can’t take pictures. So that’s one issue that I wouldn’t have to deal with. 

The other issue is I think I’m a pretty good person. I really have tried to give 150%, some days 150% looks like 200%. And sometimes, it looks like a fraction. And it doesn’t mean we’re not giving 150%, it just means that some days, we have less to give for whatever reason. From illness, to being stressed, to not sleeping well, to having issues people don’t know about. And no matter how good of a person I tried to be, I am divorced. So something in that went wrong, and I was 50% of that problem. And there are going to be skeletons in everyone’s closet and I feel like on TV in life, we want to see the train wreck. That’s why everybody rubber necks in an accident. We want to see the devastation, the disaster and the horror. And then we want to hope everyone’s okay, and then it works out, and then we have some success story. 

Now, I don’t want that to be my life. I’m sure even though I can’t off the top of my head and never have been able to think of any major skeletons in my closet or anything, I’m there. And that’s not the life that I want to live, feeling like I’m on a tabloid. And then there’s the other part of it where it’s really hard, but it’s really monotonously day to day. And that’s not very exciting. So if you want to make it exciting, you have to make it either super awesome and kind of fake, or you have to be a train wreck. And I don’t want to be either of those. I think if you came to my house, when we had 14 kids at Christmas, you’d say it’s not as loud as I thought it was going to be because it’s not as loud as you think it’s going to be. And that everyone seems to get along pretty well. And for the most part, everyone gets along pretty well. And my issues are the same as somebody with two kids. I just have a higher, I have more backpacks than you do. But really, it’s just a day to day monotony of life. It’s not super exciting with a lot of really exciting stories thrown in the mix,

Kim Sutton: I think I love how you said, there’s the days that we’re putting in 200%, or it looks like 200%. And there’s days when it looks like half a percent. Some of those days, when it looks like we’re putting in half a percent where the dishes are still dirty, and the house is a wreck those days, we might actually be putting 200% of our energy into making sure that we’re still seeing the same.

Jenn Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always tried to put the same amount of effort in, but that effort looks different on different days.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely.

Jenn Taylor: So I think we don’t cut ourselves enough slack. Especially women who are moms who are trying to do their own business and writing that book. And I’m gonna go back a little bit. You can reel me in any direction you want. But as far as the book goes, I knew I couldn’t stay out of work for very long. I ended up staying out of work for about four and a half months, and the book was written in two. But there was another two months before it got released of all the stuff that you have to do to get a book published, and I self published, that you don’t realize that you had to do. And part of what my, I have a meetup group here locally in Reno. I want to help people, like give you all the information not to be overwhelming, but so you’re like, oh, that’s the next step. Where for me, I was like, holy crap. Why? I mean, seriously? This was another step? Sometimes, if I had known going into it, what I didn’t know, maybe I wouldn’t have done it, and it would have been discouraging. But also at the same time, if I had a checklist where I knew this was going to come up next, and this was going to come up next, and I could figure out how to tackle it, it would have been a little less overwhelming in my own process. So that’s what I tried to do. 

If you want to write a book, I want to give you that checklist and the information, and be able to talk you through it. And as far as me coaching, I’ll do that as little, which is we just have conversations every once in a while because I try to be a nice person and just talk to you about your process. I point you in the right direction, and you do all the legwork to ghost writing your book, which is you’re doing almost nothing but interviews, and I’m doing all of the work. I mean, anywhere in between there. But I want people to feel like they can be part of that 15% that write a book. And we don’t always have 90 to 35 days a week for a couple months and stay on track. 

So if you’re working a full time job, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. You may have to have some early mornings, your deliberate time may be 5:00 to 7:00 AM, or 4:00 to 6:00 AM. I’m a runner, I’m up at 4:30 a couple days a week. Three days a week to go running with a group of women that I run with, and we’ve run at 5:00 in the morning. I didn’t run well today. We had a weather warning today. And on Tuesday, it was below 10 degrees and windy. I mean, I’m out there in almost every weather because it’s a priority. And most people who, especially if you’re not a runner, will think that that’s totally crazy, and I’m out of my mind. But running is important to me, and I have a group I can go with. And that’s the time that they meet and it does not interfere with my family. So that’s when I go. So writing a book or anything else that we really really want to do sometimes has to be, we lose some sleep, and we’re doing it from 9:00 to 11:00 at night when our kids go to sleep.

Kim Sutton: You brought up a really interesting point there, and I know it could be stepping on eggshells with some people who are listening. But we will find time for what’s most important to us.

Jenn Taylor: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We’ll find money too. I’m not working again right now. I’ve been doing part time tech jobs which have been really fun. I’m in between right now which is great because we’re in the process of moving. So I don’t have income coming in right this second like I usually do, and I heard about this new coffee and I’m kind of thinking, you should pick a couple things that are important to you. This is a self care tip. I know we’re all over the place, but you should pick a couple things that are really important to you. One of mine is lotion. I just love hydration. So you pick those couple things, and you spend a little bit more money on it because it’s important enough to you, and maybe you cut back on other stuff that’s not as important to you. And coffee is one of my things. I don’t drink a lot of it, but I want it to be really good. And I heard about a coffee, and I got a discount code, it was $35, and I did it. 

And why? I’m not working right now. I shouldn’t spend maybe $35 on something that I don’t need to have, except that it was a priority for me. we’re moving and imagine that the first package that we’re going to get at the new house location, and I’m going to be trying this new coffee that I’ve heard a lot of great things about, and I had a really great discount code on it. So I justified spending $35 with all of these reasons because it’s one of my self care tips at a time I’m not working. So it is human nature, whether it’s time, or money, or whatever that we will prioritize the things that we want. If I want to binge on Netflix because I’m moving into a show, I’m going to carve out the time to binge on Netflix. I’m gonna say I’m gonna lose sleep, I’m gonna get up early and whatever. I’m going to do it because I want to. So I think it’s a matter. That’s why I say I’m not busy, I’m very deliberate. So what is your priority? What are they? Because some may have to take the backburner so others can shine for a little while. And if writing a book is really a priority, then you have to look at your schedule and start saying, no. Not because you don’t like Kim Sutton’s Podcast, but because you have to be deliberate with your time, and you have to put that thing that’s first first.

Kim Sutton: I love that. And I have to share just last night, as of the date of this recording, I found an app. No, they’re not a sponsor or anything like that. But I found an app called Focuster, F-O-C-U-S-T-E-R. Listeners, it will be in the show notes, which you’ll be able to find at thekimsutton.com/pp294. And it has already kicked my butt today and last night, because it’s synced with my Google Calendar. I’m putting in the task most important for me right now. And it’s actually, and I tell the Focuster how long each task should take if I’m focused on it, and it’s dropping it on my calendar. I have been saying, so focus today to get those tasks done because I don’t want to tell it that I didn’t get it done. So it moves it to a different point on my calendar. Like I want to feel it like, yay. But it made it made me think about the fact that I did need the schedule in time in this app that I’ll be spending with my littles tonight between 5:00 and 8:00 when I picked them up from daycare, and when I put them to bed, that is their time. And for such a long time, because I’m in my sixth year of business now, for such a long time, I was doing that to myself. I was putting my work tasks, my business tasks right on top of that time, and it wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t fair to my kids. And complete deviation from that, but I do agree. We have to have those things that are important to us. There are those days, even if I shouldn’t be eating sugar, there are those days that I know that I need, and NEED might be a strong word, but I’m going to use it again, I need the sour watermelons from the grocery because that’s just what my body is saying. Eat it now, and you’re gonna feel good.

Jenn Taylor: I have a super healthy diet, and I run three or four times a week. I’m 47, and I’m still a size four, and I was pregnant seven times and certainly possible for anyone. If I could do it, anybody can do it. There are moments when it’s okay, we need to have balance in our lives. And that’s the same thing with everything you’re saying. It’s all about balance. And it’s about self care. And sometimes, the gummy watermelon things are about our self care. Sorry, I don’t think sugar is healthy for you, and we don’t have very much of it in our house. But when it happens, I don’t have to apologize for it at all. And we shouldn’t have to do that. We should be deliberate, and we should have balance in our lives. And we definitely should have self care. I think we kind of let go of some of that and said, we have guilt and we run ourselves ragged. And that seems silly to me, because I started down that path and I was like, nope, this is not the person that I want to be, this isn’t the example I want to be to my kids, this isn’t how I want to live my life. 

So part of that, for us, was minimalist. Not having as much stuff makes life a lot less stressful. So we live that part, and we spent a lot of time outdoors which I think is a big endorphin thing. So you have to figure out what works for you. You know, not everybody wants to be running at 5:00 AM and be a minimalist. And that’s cool. It doesn’t have to be what works for you, but I think it’s important to figure out what does work to eliminate as much stress as you can. Because a lot of it we have control over. But we’re relinquishing that control. And then we’re not writing that book, or starting that business, or whatever. We really are spending time with our kids at dinner, which is huge for us too.

Kim Sutton: You have me so intrigued right now by the word minimalist, because my house drives me crazy so much. When the kids and my husband are not home, there will be days that I will take a garbage bag. And if it’s on the floor, it goes into the trash. And the funny thing is that nobody asks where it is when they don’t find it. If it was on the floor, then obviously, somebody hadn’t taken care of it in the first place.

Jenn Taylor: Right. So again, be more deliberate with it. I start in a room that’s easiest. Mine was the living room, and other things that were easier were closets. So I started with closets, and I started with our living room. And I looked around at anything that, if we used it or it brought us joy. So some of the stuff that my kids have made over the years brings me joy, and some of it quite honestly didn’t just because your kid makes it doesn’t mean that you love it, or that you want it, or that it needs to be on your fireplace mantel. So I was very deliberate about what artwork, what knickknacks do we love that bring us joy because they don’t have a function, they just kind of sit there, but their function should be to bring you some sort of joy. And we have some paintings that just, I truly just love having them hanging in the room, they make me feel happy. So there’s that side of it. And then there are things that you use all the time, and everything else can go, and everything else is, probably almost 80% of what’s in most people’s houses. It was for us. We would dread coming home because I knew the tornado that was waiting, and everything was cluttered, and everything was well, we just needed more rubbermaid containers to organize stuff. Now, you don’t. You don’t. 

If I showed you a picture, and I can send you a picture of our eight year olds shelves that have toys on it, you’d be like, that’s it. Think about your kids, you wear what’s in your closet probably 10% of it. They’re playing with probably 10% of it. In your living room, you use the couch, a TV that, there’s stuff that you use, and then the rest of it, you don’t and it all got boxed up and donated, period. So I started kind of small, but then I’d walk into the living room, or I’d actually deliberately go and open that closet and be like, oh my gosh, that feels so good that I got rid of all this crap that we never use, didn’t want, didn’t fit, didn’t serve a purpose, didn’t bring me joy. It’s gone, and everything what remains either has a purpose or brings me joy, period, end of story. I’m telling you, my closet, 90% of my closet did not bring me joy.

Kim Sutton: I can’t even get into my closet right now.

Jenn Taylor: And you probably wear the same stuff over and over again.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. In full disclosure, it’s not a matter of a mess that keeps me out of my closet. My husband moved his office out of the office, and then to the bedroom because it was too loud and too distracting. And he was making noise all through podcasts for me, so he just chose to move into the bedroom. So there’s the internet cord that stretches across the closet door. But since I’ve realized the clothes, it’s been almost a year now. The clothes that are in the closet hanging, I have not touched in a year. So you’re right. I can pick those up, put them in a bag and donate them to the Goodwill that’s right down the street.

Jenn Taylor: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So a huge thing, especially with a lot of kids, three, four years ago, we had 12 kids at home. Three years ago, we had 10 kids at home. So clearly, there’s probably 24 pairs of shoes with 12 kids because they each at least have two, and there’s one backpacks, there’s 12 backpacks. So I was doing it like a family Costco style. It was a volume business just because we had a higher number of people living in our house, but they don’t need to have four backpacks each. They only need to have one. We very deliberately, four years ago, I know I use that word a lot. I use a lot, deliberately, because it’s a different mindset than being busy, or being stressed, or I have to do this, or whatever. I’m not a PTA mom, I love doing field trips with the kids school, but I hate PTA, and I don’t like bringing crap to parties. I’m not that mom. And try to force mice around peg into a square hole type thing just made me miserable. So guess what? I don’t do PTA or bring cookies to the school because there’s 100,000 moms who will stress themselves down to do it. I do not need to compete with that. I will go on every single field trip I could possibly go on though, because I think that’s a blast. And I will be very big part of the reading program because I think that’s the biggest part of kids education, learning how to read and read well, and loving it and being voracious. So I think it’s really important no matter what the subject is, whether it’s your closet and your bedroom. My rule with my closet was, I had to try every single thing on because you are going to find treasures in that closet that you just didn’t remember you had because you were so overwhelmed by all that crap. So I had to try everything on and decide, do I like it? Does it fit me? Does it make me happy when I put it on? Do I feel good in it? And 90% of it went, and 90% of it can’t. 

And when you think about, oh, I spent all this money and blah, blah, blah. But for me, donation means that I’m giving it a life somewhere else with someone who can maybe appreciate it instead of collecting dust in my home. So if you’re minimizing because you want to de-stress your life and declutter, start in smaller rooms. And with kids toys, people really panic about kids toys, I didn’t so much. But my recommendation would be the buckets that there’ll be this stack that you’ll get rid of, and you won’t even blink. And there’ll be a stack that you’ll keep because those are the core toys your kids play with. And then there’s this middle ground, put them in the garage, or stack them in a closet. And if your kids have not asked for them in three months, let them go. And if they have, then it’s more important, and you can kind of rotate through.

Kim Sutton: Put them in one of those rubbermaid boxes that you bought to collect the extra crap in the garage. Yeah.

Jenn Taylor: Yeah, and set them there. I’m telling you, you will not miss anything, and you will love how distressed your life is if you decluttered it. I mean, your brain, if you clicked on every email you don’t want and scroll to the bottom and click unsubscribe, within a couple of weeks, you would realize that your email used to stress you out and it doesn’t anymore.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I just did that Jenn. I zeroed out my inbox about two weeks ago. And every morning, I’ll have maybe 25, which isn’t as bad as it could be, but I have 25 emails. And I’ve unsubscribed from so many, and it feels so good. I didn’t realize how stressed I was getting by my inbox.

Jenn Taylor: Right. And that’s a minimalism technique. That’s all that is. That’s just you minimizing in a digital way instead of in a physical way. So on my Facebook feed, I have a large IP, I hate the word following. You know what I mean? There’s a lot of people, and I’m not personally involved with all these people. So anytime somebody posts something like that, and I’m not saying their political views are different from mine, I actually like that. I’m saying the people that just do negativity, or if you read this and don’t hit like a reply, I’ll know that you’re not my friend. Really? Get therapy.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, really? Like the instant unfollow.

Jenn Taylor: Unfollow, instant unfollow. I do not need any negativity in my life. There’s enough stuff that I can’t control that happens. I am going to take control of anything that I can. That would be my suggestion there, and that’s part of how I got to write the book. In two months, I didn’t have the clutter of physical belongings or digital overload in my life because that was gone. So I didn’t have those stresses. So my kids will leave from work, I mean for school, and I will work on the book. I want to make sure that I don’t forget, for people who are writing a book, the single biggest thing that I did that helped me write this book. 

And again, the average time my editor told me was nine months. That’s what somebody’s been pretty consistent and dedicated to. I did it in two months. Don’t let that be a gauge. There’s no barometer there. It’s not bragging, it’s just what it is. That’s how long it took me because I felt like the man that I love more than anything in this world gave me this gift of time, and I wanted to capitalize on it. I definitely did. But the single biggest thing I did to make me successful was to hire an editor that clicked with me, and I have the most amazing editor. If you’re writing a story, anything about your life, she doesn’t do fiction. If it’s not real, if it’s not a real story about your real life, she won’t. She’s not the girl for you. But if you’re writing anything that’s about you, and who you are, and your story, or skills, or whatever, she is phenomenal. It’s the best money you’ll ever spend because we do it backwards. We have to think of the title, write the book, don’t think about the title, don’t even care about the title, the title will come to you. And as a matter of fact, you’ll probably change a couple times during the course of writing your book. So stop putting that first, like I can’t write my book until I have a title. Bullcrap. The other thing is we try to write the whole book and then send it to an editor. Don’t do that. Have an editor on board from the beginning and do it in smaller chunks. My book, I broke it down into three sections, it was chronological. I didn’t write it chronologically, I bounced around chronologically, but we can usually look at our life, like the college years or elementary school. We break it down into blocks of time kind of naturally, or by subject. 

My son who is autistic, for example, would be a subject matter that maybe I would write on specifically in another book. So when you break those, when you break your book down into those chunks, you need to do an outline. I’m talking old school number one letter A outline, and I printed the outlines, and I use the outlines constantly. My editor said: “You need to do an outline and not a fan.” So I wanted to dig my feet in and not do that. I thought it was a dumb idea, quite honestly. It was the best thing that I ever did. The only thing that I have saved from writing my book in a folder because I’m almost totally digital, but I kept those outlines. Because you poured so much of yourself into writing this book that those outlines became like the guy, I don’t even know how to explain it. But every time I see him, I smile and I feel good about how much work I put into it. So you will actually do an outline for every single section, and you use that URL. And I had three outlines. I did the outlines and three sections first, and I printed them because I’m still an old school sticky note person. I would be writing something, and I remember something from a different chunk, a different time period so I could write notes on that time period outline so I wouldn’t forget because I tend that if I need one [inaudible] the store, I have to have a list. I’m not going to come home with [inaudible].

Kim Sutton: Me too. So your outlines were not, I mean, they weren’t Moses 10 Commandments. They were fluid, and they changed, and they got updated because you were adding notes.

Jenn Taylor: Oh, constantly. Constantly, because you’ll remember some. And when people have read the book, the feedback is that it must have been so hard to write about the tough stuff. Actually, I came to terms with the tough stuff a lot of years ago, or I would be a blithering idiot in a mental institution. I mean, there’s not really a question about that, that it was tough stuff. It wasn’t. I had to really tap in emotionally to the tough stuff because I had kind of, I don’t believe in closure stuff is always there, really. But it’s not stuff I think about, or that affects me on a day to day basis, I kind of gotten through the tough stuff. So what was harder about writing the tough stuff was really going back and tapping into the emotion that I felt at the time that it was occurring. Because I don’t feel those emotions anymore. What was the most? I don’t know if they were challenging, it was the biggest blessing, but it was the most emotionally draining . If it was someone negative in my life, I changed their name. If it was somebody positive in my life, I contacted them and said, you are a positive influence in my life. I’m writing a book and I like to use your real name. And I will send you the section like, Kim, when I’m writing about you and I’m kind of done, I’ll send it to you and I want you to edit it. You may have a different, it was my perspective. So you may have a different perspective, I want to hear that because I can get a bigger picture of our time together from you editing that and telling you your perspective. 

But the other thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to thank them. And holy cow, if you think about the people that have been positive in your life and you take a minute to write down who they were, why they were positive in your life, and then you take a second to contact them and thank them, there will not be anything more powerful in your life. It was so emotionally draining. I can’t even begin to tell you how emotionally draining it was, but in a really super great way. So it’s like the happy tears kind of, I dated a guy my entire junior year of high school, we were on Facebook and we were in touch, and we’ve kind of touched base and stuff. I knew what was going on in his life and we touched base, but we’d never gotten rah, rah about like, why did you dump me in high school? And what happened? And really, how is your life going? And when I contacted him and he said, yes, I’ll be in the book, that will be great and it will be all wonderful. I said okay, I’ll write the section about you and then I will send it to you or email it to you. And holy cow, I’m telling you, people should do it. Whether they’re writing a book or not, there will be nothing more powerful in your life. We just don’t say thank you enough.

Kim Sutton: We definitely don’t. And I found even with my kids, chores are expected. My older ones have their chores that they’re expected to do, and I found that I don’t even thank them enough. So whether it’s somebody from your past, I lost my job, Jenn, in 2008. I ran into my former boss at the grocery, and I thanked her because had she not fired me, then my life wouldn’t be like it is today. Craziness and all. So yeah, gratitude is so important. I have so many more questions that I want to ask, but I think that we definitely need to have a part two to this.

Jenn Taylor: Okay.

Kim Sutton: But before we get to part two, I know that there’s listeners who are wondering where they can find you online and what the name of your podcast is so they can listen to you. Would you mind sharing all that great info?

Jenn Taylor: Yeah, it’s Jenntaylor.net. Jenn is two N. So it’s J-E-N-N-T-A-Y-L-O-R.N-E-T. And basically, I have a Google phone number on there that forwards to my phone, and I have a contact form that should go to my email, and I have all my social media there. So I always get worried about the contact forms, honestly, on websites because I don’t know if I don’t get it.

Kim Sutton: I’m going to test it out for you after we’re done chatting.

Jenn Taylor: Okay, okay. But basically, just go on my website and contact me, they’re on Facebook, I prefer my [inaudible] over my personal. They’re both Jenn Taylor, but my page is jenntaylor#rerouting, and #jenntaylorrerouting is my, I think it’s my Instagram, it’s like my Twitter.

Kim Sutton: Even in your email.

Jenn Taylor: My email? Yeah. So rerouting is basically what happens in life. I was in my best friend, and I had my GPS up and it said, rerouting my,  that’s a story my freakin life. Gonna be routing. I just looked at her and went, I got it. Because I was trying to figure out what should my business name be, And it’s jenntaylorrerouting. Because you know that life changes and throws curveballs. And in the last couple years, my business has morphed, and that’s the stuff that just kind of happens because we’re living life. It’s a good thing if we can roll with it in a positive way and not be overwhelmed with it. So yeah, rerouting is my life. So that’s how people can find me.

Kim Sutton: Awesome. I was going to ask you for a closing piece of parting advice, but I love the rerouting. I don’t think we could have any better message than that. Go with the flow, people.

Jenn Taylor: Just roll with it. Yeah.

Kim Sutton: Roll with it. Jen, thank you so much for being here. This has been a blast.

Jenn Taylor: Yeah, thank you. I’ve loved it.