The Motivational Editor

Helping Writers Go from Unpublished to Published

Business

A New Way to Set Goals: OKRs

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Using OKRs as a framework to set and achieve goals.

Have you set SMART goals and continually failed to achieve them? I have. Are you as frustrated and tired as I am of achieving only a small percentage of those goals?

In my last post, “Focus and Direction,” I talked about a new strategy I applied to my business that brought me greater clarity to what I do every day. Today, I’d like to talk about a new way to set goals that supports greater focus: objectives and key results (OKRs).

I learned about this business practice recently from my professional development coaches (Life Is Now, Inc.) and have implemented it. OKRs are set for a year and then broken down into quarters. Since I implemented mine, I feel more empowered to succeed and motivated each day.

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Focus and Direction

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Gaining focus and direction

Do you have the kind of focus that gives you the direction you need to reach your goals?

Back in April, I heard a presentation by Alan Doan of the Missouri Star Quilt Company who developed 15 quilt shops (a 9-figure business) in a town with the population of approx. 1800. He presented with such enthusiasm and fun, and I knew immediately I wanted to apply his strategies to my own business.

As an author, you may not aspire to build a business that you’ll one day sell to someone else or pass on to your children. That’s not the goal I have for my business either. But I imagine that, like me, you want your books (and services) to bring in a livable income. If not, that’s okay too. You can skip reading this post. 🙂👍

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4 Simple Questions for Decision-Making

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4 simple questions to help you make a decision

Just make a decision!

How many times has someone said that to you?

Many people struggle to make a decision. Should I or shouldn’t I do this? Is this a good idea for my business (or life)? What will my friends think of me if I do this? What if I make a mistake?

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Budgeting for Publishing Expenses

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Budgeting your money for publishing expenses.

Budgeting—not a task that many like. And I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve always struggled to make a budget work.

The most important part of budgeting is establishing what things cost. We do it in our personal lives by knowing how much the rent, the utilities, groceries, car payment, etc. is each month. Those numbers tell us how much money we need to bring in each month.

And we need to do the same for our author business. Yes, your writing is a business. If you’re just starting out, it’s likely that money you spend toward getting your book ready for publishing is going to come out of your own pocket. That’s exactly how I started.

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Are you feeling overwhelmed with publishing your book?

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Dealing with overwhelm

Publishing a book can pile on the overwhelm. Let’s face it, there are a lot of things to be done besides writing the book.

Actually any project can seem overwhelming when we consider all that must be done and think we need to do it all at the same time.

A good method to deal with overwhelm is to break your project into smaller pieces. A supervisor I once had taught me this. She called it the swiss cheese method—poking little holes in the project one at a time.

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What Not to Do in Setting Goals

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Goals give us direction.

I couldn’t let December pass without visiting the topic of setting goals.

As I write this, it is still November, but I have set aside December to review my 2023 goals. I’ll figure out where I went wrong with those I didn’t meet, and what I did right with those I accomplished.

Goals give us direction.

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Do You Have a Strategy or Just a Plan?

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Develop a strategy to achieve your goals.

The year 2022 was probably one of the busiest years I’ve ever had, but I ended the year frustrated and feeling like I’d gotten nowhere. I failed to complete nearly every goal I set.

Oh, like most entrepreneurs, I put in an average of over 200 hours of work every month. But I had little income to show for it. I wanted to make 2023 different—better—with more income but fewer hours and less stress.

God’s instructions were, If you want big money coming in, you need to learn how to run a business and properly manage that money. Aka be a wise steward.

I’ve been fully self-employed since late 2010. Has the business supported me? Not fully. Praise the Lord, God provides in other ways and my needs are met and bills are paid.

But I’ve determined that 2023 is the year I’ll make my business self-sustaining. And to do that I need to start with knowing three things:

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7 Manuscript Formatting Programs

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Formatting programs for book publishing

Writers ask lots of questions, and the writing community pays it forward quite well.

I see many questions on a regular basis. One is “what program do you use to format your manuscript?” These writers aren’t talking about how to format their manuscript for presenting to agents, editors, or publishers, but programs to format the manuscript for actual book publishing.

Amazon accepts several file formats for ebooks. Here’s a list. Now that they accept epub files, writers don’t have to fret over converting their files to mobi. That makes things a lot easier!

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