Why You Can Write a Book and Quit Repeating Yourself Featuring Jaime Jay

Repeating yourself. Jamie J should you write a book? How can your book help your business? First time author Jamie shares, why he wrote quit repeating. How he wrote it and how he uses his book to help his business, stay with us, to hear all the details, finding ways to get your message to more people is critical for you to grow your business inside the smashing the plateau of community. We share methods to help you reach more of your ideal audience.

We also give you a range of tools and resources to support your business, access to experts, answers to your burning questions and the comradery of supportive collaborative column. Check out the smashing the plateau community so that you can build a successful consulting business on your own terms, doing what you love and getting paid. What you're worth. Learn more@smashingtheplateau.com slash community. That's smashing the plateau.com/community. Now let's welcome, Jamie.

Jamie is the founder and managing director of bottleneck distant assistance founded in 2016. Bottleneck is an outsourcing agency that helps businesses identify, hire, and cultivate their workforce through a carefully designed systematic approach to growth. Jamie is the author of quit repeating yourself, where he shares, how he built a seven figure business by focusing on the power of creating systems and processes. So he could stop doing the wrong things and focus on doing his best work.

After other business professionals kept asking him to explain what he was doing differently. Jamie compiled his best strategies and systems hoping readers could learn from his successes and his mistakes through personal stories and professional examples. Jamie teaches leaders how to build a strong company foundation using small and actionable steps. Jamie, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's so great to have you on again.

And I know you and I have been talking about your book for a long time. And as I was thinking about, about, Session today. And this episode, there are lots of ways that you could have shared what you are doing differently with other business professionals. Why of all things did you decide to write a book? And this is your first book, right? Yes. Yes. It's my David Shriner-Cahn: first book. So why a book?

three reasons actually, number one, I wanted to prove to myself that I could actually complete it. I asked the same questions, quite a bit, very similar, over and over again. And I thought, what's a great way to quit repeating myself. And I figured, you know what, why don't I write the book? And that way I can put the answers out there that so many people have asked me and you start noticing when people ask you the same questions over and over.

Maybe that means something maybe that more people have this same question. So that was the other reason that I wrote the book. And then the third reason was I was challenged years ago by one of my best friends, Rob Robbins, out of Las Vegas, who took me in when I had some challenging times. And let me live with him and his wife and their two kids and supported me. And he said, Jamie, at some point, you're going to have to put this in the buck.

And that was the third reason on why did that I've really wanted to get that done. And initially, when I first got with my publisher, I was actually going to do an autobiography and then I said, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time. I got to live a little bit more life experience a little more life in order for that to I believe so. I said, why not do the business?

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, you actually, to a certain extent answered the next question I was going to ask you, which is whether or not you always had the same objectives in mind when you were planning and writing the book. So initially you were thinking about an autobiography now, was that based on your conversation with Rob? A lot of it was because, and what's ironic about this is Rob is probably one of my best friends. I've known him for over 20 years.

He's one of those guys that he's an attorney it's really on the outside of these really tough, but on the inside, I think he's got one of the biggest hearts in the world. And I think maybe the irony of me writing about another friend of mine who helped me when I was getting out of the army of Rob says, I noticed I didn't get top billing in there, as your best book. And I said, if you don't have, I didn't really know. I still have another book in me. I just don't know when.

And that's where I think I want to dive into more of that relationship that was with him. And I think I need more time in this life to experience more. I'm still so young in the, 15 years entrepreneur, but I still have a lot to learn and I can't wait to see what the next several years brings so that I have much better idea of what experience has, because I will have seen.

By that time, the full circle, starting a company, growing a company, maybe getting investments into that company and perhaps even exiting that company. So I want to be able to live that full life cycle and see what happens before I, I write that David Shriner-Cahn: next book. So I do definitely want to talk to you about the content of the book, but given the. That I know how much of a process guy you are.

I have to talk first about the process, and I know many people who have written books, and I know many people that would love to write a book, but find the whole concept of writing a book. It was just overwhelming. Did you think that the process was going to be exhaustive and expensive before you start. Yes. And I think it got even more exhausted than what I expected. it was challenging. It was hard, but a lot of it, you know what I think, David, and that's a really good question. Actually.

I thought it was going to be challenging, but I thought, wow, I got a really cool publisher. They're going to help me with this stuff. So I thought they'd make it a little bit easier, but I think I had a lot of it built up in my head. I think in my head I was, it was going to be tough. Why? Because I'm not around. I just not a good writer in my opinion. And so in my head, I thought, man, this is going to be hard. How in the heck? Write a book.

If I don't consider myself a writer, maybe I should just hire a ghost writer and tell them about my story. But then I was like, no, I want to do this. I want it to be for me now, of course it's been edited, punctuation, grammar and stuff like that. But the ideas, the research that was, I did that and I'm really proud of that. And it made it the day.

That I was able to get this book published and see it physical copy in my hand that first day it was so I don't know how to describe it, but it's almost like a pamphlet because it's only 184 pages. It's not a big novel, but at the same time, the people that are going to be reading and taking in this information are busy executive. These are the people that are, don't have a lot of time, but I really wanted to touch on that. And I think it was really rewarding.

So by having a hard time and struggling through this process, even more so than I possibly anticipated it, then seeing the end product made it all worthwhile. David Shriner-Cahn: first of all, 184 pages is still 184 more pages than you had written in a book before you wrote this book. It's more than most people. I've written because most people have not published a book and there's actually an enormous amount of really useful information.

And it's shaped in a way that is easy to digest, easy to understand and easy to start taking ideas away from the book and implementing them in your own life and your own business. So that's my takeaway after reading it. And I have to say thank you for that. Cause that was one of my concerns is that. Or that was not one of my concerns, but one of my objectives was to make sure that I made it. So that was easy for people to understand. I tried to, I really tried to simplify it.

And then of course, I got to interview a lot of cool people like you and still to this day, refer to your insight, when people are hiring somebody and what their expectations are. Yeah. David Shriner-Cahn: And I'm touched by that. So thank you. How did you figure out what process to use and who. Could best help you in the books. Yeah for writing. So that was, I can't say that is a lot of research that went into this. I tripped onto this relationship because I was introduced by a friend of mine.

And I think, Ashley, Bergoff, but she's also a systems person. We were just talking one day and she goes, Hey, have you ever considered writing a book? And I said, I'd absolutely love to write a book. I just don't have the time right now. And she goes, maybe you can talk to these pers. So she introduced me to new degree press and I think it's called crazy. Dot Institute is the website there.

If people are interested because it's a very affordable way about, finding a hybrid publisher and there's so much support that goes into it. And it is a fully process systemized way of turning out a book. 10 months later after beginning of the. You can have your own book. It's pretty neat. And the way that you go about it, they have different options for you to go in. They help raise the money. So not all of it comes out of your pocket. They help you do a go fund. Me account. I think it was.

I think it was something like that. It was a fundraising, app. I forget which one it was, but they help you, come up with all of that. and that's how you pay to get the pay the publisher to get your book done. And it's just a, it was an incredible experience. the challenges are deadlines, at one point I met with a publisher and he said, Jamie, you're a little bit behind here. Do you think you want to extend to December? And I'm like, I seriously considered it, but I said, you don't know.

I want to get this thing launched on time, just like I promised. So they all kind of circle the wagons around me and really helped me get my rear end gear. So that accountability was unbelievable having that debtor. yeah. fortunately it was an introduction from, one of my friends, one of my colleagues. Did a great press. It was great. David Shriner-Cahn: Wow. So 10 months start to finish. 10 months start to finish.

David Shriner-Cahn: And how many hours per week would you say you spent on the process? I don't know that every single week I actually worked on the book. There was that there was some points to where I would cause. And then they would give you feedback and the first round and there's five different editors. there's, different levels of editing, but at certain points you would turn in work, they would review it and it would take awhile to get the feedback. And then.

After the first, I forget what they called the first editor, but they would help with structure. And this is how you lay it out. And this is, they would explain a little bit about the story arc of each chapter and how that leads into the next one and all of that stuff. So they'd worked with me a little bit harder on the first four chapters and there's three parts to it. Each has four chapters in it. And so they helped me with the first part.

And then the second, third part, I was more left to be on my own, but that would go to a revision Saturday. And it took a while for the revisions editor. there was 70 some people going through this particular cohort, so it took some time to get all of that stuff done. You might work, maybe 10 hours a week, something like that. And then when the deadlines would come up, you'd work a little bit more. And the revisions and the editing that was even more time consuming.

I had one heck of a time with chapter five and thankfully my wife jumped in and helped me get through that because I was having a hard time, making the transition between part one and part two. And. Yeah. I just really had a hard time. It wasn't making sense. And she just came in and whizzbang did all together and did a great job. And, yeah, that was probably the most time spent on one chapter, probably about a month trying to figure that out.

David Shriner-Cahn: Okay. Now it sounds like it was a good process and a. Yeah, congratulations for getting it done, but let's talk about the content. so you said, basically this was your way of putting your answers to commonly asked questions in one place. Yeah, exactly. So I thought about what is our business entail? we're huge fans of company culture. I think leadership is something that needs to have a lot of time spent on thinking about thinking.

About leadership and then of course, systems and processes. I'm a massive fan of systems and processes. I'm a practitioner of creating systems and processes and workflows. And then of course, for the company that we have, recruiting and hiring is that's what we do. That's our. That's it. That's your bread and butter. That's our bread and butter. So I thought there's a lot of leadership books out there. There's a lot of culture books out there.

There's a lot of sales books, a lot of marketing books, a lot of books on recruiting, a lot of books on hiring, but I hadn't really seen a book that in embraces those six different pieces. So what I did is I have three parts in the. And I want to send a special shout out and thanks to Christopher Lochhead. He wrote the forward to the book and talks about the entrepreneurial journey and what we did by using systems and processes to overcome, the challenges that COVID presented at the time.

And I broke it down into three parts. Part. First part is culture and leadership. Second part is systems and processes. And the third part of the book is recruiting and hiring. And I opened up the book, pun intended, open up the book to our own business. And I wanted to share with other people what it was that we were doing and the systems and processes that we follow, our recruiting strategies, our hiring strategies. And then what kind of culture do we have here and what am I doing?

To become a better leader every single day. What do I keep challenging myself with? So I interviewed a lot of amazing people you're included and got some wonderful feedback and input from them and see you to see what they're doing to make this world a better space in everything from, culture, leadership systems, processes, recruiting, and hiring. And it was a really neat way to bring that all together. I think, yeah, that's the content of the book. Who's the ideal reader.

The ideal reader is either a new or a veteran. entrepreneur that as having problems, they've gotten to a certain point in their business. They can't quite get to that next level or, the experience for the veteran entrepreneurs. What it probably more designed for that maybe a team leader. high level executive people that have been around awhile and they're starting to see holes. They're starting to identify different friction points in the business that they're having problems with.

This book will really help them out and being able to not only identify, but fix those challenges, that many people see in a growing business. And you heard the seventh year itch in marriage. There's the same thing in business that seventh year itch in business. I actually, it could be third three through seventh year. They're just going to that next level. And now all of a sudden, certain things are pointing out.

Your customers are maybe complaining about this or that, and it's starting to occur or reoccur more often than it was before. Those are great examples that your systems or processes haven't been updated, or basically you may lack the correct systems and processes. You might even not even have them. And this is a real opportunity for this book to help you. Get a better direction going, David Shriner-Cahn: Jamie, what are some of the unexpected bits of feedback you've heard from readers?

What has surprised you with some of the things you've heard? This was in the part. I had a massive imposter syndrome. I almost thought at one point I go, I wonder if I should market this as the worst book ever written and that way people. it's not that bad, like I was so afraid to put this out there. I really was because I'm like, who in the heck am I to write this book and put this out there? Who am like, are you kidding me? I started solely hearing, you know what?

It's very actionable, very topical. And you know what? That's what I meant for it to be. Now I heard one person say I read it in two hours. I heard another person say, yeah, I read through it the first time into. But I went back and I really spent some time studying it and I'd learned a lot. And then I'd even get like little messages. And this has happened a couple of times.

And if people have taken pictures of where they were at in the book and one person highlighted, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't even remember actually writing that particular thing, but it was something I said in there that really. Help them and resonated with them. And I was like, this is unbelievable. Or, Hey, I was so entertained by this book. I was on the airplane and I didn't even care that the person next to me was snoring. I was just into your book so much.

And I just was like, that's so cool. little things like that. The people are really getting something out of it. And now, as I can say, I'm an author and as an author to do something like that and get positive feedback, it just makes everything worth it.

Yeah. David Shriner-Cahn: Have you heard anything that was, totally unexpected, like an unexpected outcome that somebody achieved because clearly like you have your themes that you were the six basic concepts that you wanted to include, but I wondered if, there was something that seemed wasn't on your radar that somebody was able to do as a result of reading the book. Not yet. And that's a really good question cause now I really want to dive into that.

Maybe explore it more and see if I can reach out to find that out. I don't know if people have had enough time to implement against reading it since it's so new. That's a really good question. I should really, I have to be more intentional about finding. David Shriner-Cahn: So here's a question that may help.

I don't know if you have an answer to this or not, but could also help other authors, which is when you sell a book, how much do you know about the readers and how can you actually get feedback from. Yeah, that's huge. and this is as many people know, if you go buy a book on borders, I'm sorry. Borders, Barnes, and noble David Shriner-Cahn: stating you, Jamie. Yeah. That is, that is really bad. Amazon, any place where you can go and buy a book, you don't get that data.

Amazon's not going to give you the customer's data that bought the book. They won't do it. Hopefully they'll leave a review and you'll know, but that's why I think it's To set up your own asset, your own website or landing page or whatever it is, collect the name and email and offer them some kind of incentive for giving you their information so that you do know who these people are.

And then after they give you their name and email or whatever information you're looking for, redirect them to the page where they can buy, the book, wherever they want to buy it, whether it's digital or whatever. I think that's really important. That's what we've done here. But I'm still finding there's people that I don't even know that are buying the book on Amazon, that I've never met. I don't know anything about them.

And maybe I'll get an email or a message on Facebook or LinkedIn, or I'll see a review pop up like today, another review popped up and it said, Amazon customer didn't say a name or anything, but you could tell, they read the book because of the response that they left, which I thought was fantastic. I have no idea who that is, So David Shriner-Cahn: you can't reach out to them? No, I can't say thank you. Or I can't say, what did you like most about it was there?

What about this book helped you, overcome the challenges are, what was the challenge in your business? What motivated you to get the book? I lose those interactions and it's a bummer. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. Yeah. you got the first one done. You hinted that this is not going to be your only one what's in your head. What's now. Yeah, my publisher said right as we were wrapping up, they said, okay, so what's the next book you're writing. You want to start in the next cohort?

I'm like, no, let me take a breather from that. Cause it's a lot, it's a very. It's very heavy on your brain. There's a lot of thinking that needs to go into it. So I needed to relax cause, me, my brain doesn't, I'm not the brightest bulb in the, in the room here. So I said, I to know about that. I know my limits, so don't push it, Jamie. So yeah, I would love to write another book and maybe explore, the next.

In, whatever it is that we're doing here at bottleneck, we have some exciting things coming and I'm learning a lot about that process right now. So maybe this is something that I can cover in the next book, maybe in another year or two. And then I think, yeah, when in about another five to 10 years, I seriously like to consider writing an autobiography. There's some pretty crazy stuff that happened in my life. and a lot of people like.

Look at how crazy other people's lives are and hope, David Shriner-Cahn: hope that helps people. Sounds great. Jamie, congratulations again on this, milestone achievement, I've known you for a long time and I know we've talked about the possibility. You writing a book or not writing a book. So congratulations on getting it done.

And, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us again on smashing the plateau and having an opportunity to take a deep dive on what was behind the book and a little bit about what's in the book. My guest today has been the author of quit repeating yourself. Jamie, Jay, thank you again, Jamie for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. David Shriner-Cahn: When you visit the smashing the plateau website at smashing the plateau doc.

You'll find a summary of each episode, along with the links we mentioned on the show, finding ways to get your message to more people is critical for you to grow your business inside the smashing the plateau community. We share methods to help you reach more of your ideal audience. We also give you a range of tools and resources to support your business. Access to experts, answers to your burning questions and the comradery of supportive collaborative colleagues.

Check out the smashing the plateau community so that you can build a successful consulting business on your own terms, doing what you love and getting paid. What you're worth. Learn more@smashingtheplateau.com slash. That's smashing the plateau.com/community. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our show. I'll see you on our next episode.