Nearly October already! Each quarter, I try to do a little quarterly review, so here’s what’s been happening over the last few months. Clearly this isn’t everything, a lot more (good and bad) happened than I’m sharing here. But I hope you enjoy reading the highlights. If you haven’t read the other posts this year, you can find links to them below.
Last quarter’s intentions
My intentions in Q2 were to slow down a bit for the summer, deliver great value to the Book Launch Club members, get the digital product shop back up and running, and launch a digital product with The Empowered Author.
I did NOT get the digital product shop back up and running, but 3 out of 4 isn’t bad.
I took a big break over the summer to go on a few holidays and just insert some more ease into my work schedule while the kids were off. This was great, and I’m glad I did it AND there were a few things I will definitely do differently next summer, particularly around my holidays with the kids. Essentially I slowed things down on the work-front, but we ended up having a really hectic summer, with far too many plans packed in. Next year I need to remember to slowing down means slowing down on the personal side, too!
Two things that did keep running over the holidays were my existing client work and The Book Launch Club. I enjoyed running that so much, and this week I have my first session with the autumn intake. This programme is bringing me a lot of joy, so it will definitely be back BUT one thing I didn’t love was ending up work with one group at the same time as promoting the next group. From now on, there will be more of a gap between groups, so the next intake won’t be until March 23.
And finally, I put together and launched a report into author newsletters for The Empowered Author. This did really well, and had some great feedback, so I am about to start work on another report all about helping authors use social media to promote their book. More anon, I hope!
Intentions for next quarter
- Deliver great value in The Book Launch Club again. I put the price up for the last round, and I still think it’s more than worth the money. I want to make sure that all of the authors taking part get a lot out of the sessions and our work in between workshops.
- Grow the mailing list. This was a big focus at the start of the year, and it’s really fallen off my radar. I want this to be a definite priority before I launch Book Launch Club again next year. Ideally I would like to have another 200 ideal authors on the list by then.
- Get paid for my writing. This isn’t something I have ever put out into the world before, but one thing I am really coming to learn about myself is that I love to write. Not anything as long as a book, but I’ve been blogging for as long as I can remember, and I love to put my thoughts together and share them online. This quarter I would like to actually pitch a piece somewhere and get paid for my writing. A big one! We’ll see how it goes…
The best of the quarter
I thought I would add a new section here to share some of the highlights of my month.
- Service: Netnerd*. This is my website hosting provider. I don’t normally need to have anything to do in the back end of my website, but when I do, they are just so helpful. I should have mentioned them at the end of Q2, after I relaunched my website – they helped me set up a test area and helped me get the whole thing live. But as I type this I’m writing because I had a tech issue earlier today, and they replied to my query within minutes, and it was all fixed. I just think they are brilliant, and really inexpensive, too.
- Movie: I loved, loved, loved Do Revenge on Netflix SO MUCH. I am a huge fan of the late 90s teen movies, and this was cut from the very same cloth. In fact there are loads of nods to those movies throughout the film, which I had fun spotting. Really fun and ridiculous and just pure enjoyment for me.
- Book: The Pathless Path*. This book actually inspired a whole blog post over on my personal substack, but basically: if you are working in an unconventional way, or have aspirations to do so, this book is a must-read.
- Podcast: This two-part episode of We Can Do Hard Things, about parenting (I’ve linked to part 2, but part 1 also brilliant), with Dr Becky Kennedy, is absolutely wonderful. It was so reassuring, but also super practical, and thoughtful and… everyone should listen, even if they don’t have children.
PS: My blog and newsletter are free, but if you ever want to send some support my way, you can buy me a Ko-fi. They are always hugely appreciated!
PIN FOR LATER
