Emily Thompson 0:00
The Being Boss book is officially available for pre order,
Kathleen Shannon 0:04
and you can buy it wherever books are sold.
Emily Thompson 0:07
Let us know that you bought it and we'll send you some goodies just go to being boss club slash book for more details.
Kathleen Shannon 0:17
This minisode of being bosses brought to you by twenty20, where creative entrepreneurs get inspiring photos. If you're looking for authentic images to illustrate all of the hard work you've been putting in lately, twenty20 has millions of real world photos proven to help you tell a more engaging story, whether that's on social media, your blog, or your website. And they're all available under a simple royalty free license. twenty20 is partnering with being boss to support all the creative bosses and is offering you a seven days five photo free trial. That's a seven day access to license five photos for free to start your trial now go to twenty20.com/beingboss. That's the word 20, then to zero.com slash being boss to get five free photos.
Kathleen Shannon 1:07
So we were recently on the secret library podcast with Caroline, one of our favorite bosses.
Emily Thompson 1:13
It was such a fun time. I love talking to her.
Kathleen Shannon 1:15
And I was kind of thinking about, you know, like my biggest takeaway from that conversation. And I think my biggest takeaway is that every author out there needs systems and processes to get organized enough to write a book. And I think that the fact that we co authored our very first book together in such a collaborative and productive way, I think it kind of makes us unicorns.
Emily Thompson 1:41
It certainly seems that way. I'm always so blown away by how blown away everyone is when they talk to us. And they hear that not only did we write a book, but we wrote a book together, and we did it as quickly and as efficiently and well as we did.
Kathleen Shannon 1:58
Yeah, and I think one of the points that you made in that episode was that it was that we use the very tactics that we write about in our book, in order to write a book while also running a couple of businesses, raising families having enough time to cook meals and go for walks.
Emily Thompson 2:18
It was super meta busness, where we're literally writing the book on being boss while or being boss, and using the content from the book to write the book. Whoa, whoa. But it's really important. I think, going out a book, like getting your thoughts out of your head and organized in a book format that's like going to be great enough to get published. It's it's not technically a business endeavor. But it's kind of a business endeavor. Like it takes the sort of focus and streamlined activities and processes and efficiency that it takes to run a business to sit down and write a book. Okay, so
Kathleen Shannon 2:56
let's get back into this book writing thing. Because I think that so many people want to do big projects, like a book, or even launching a course, or launching a business, these really big things that feel like really big things, and they are really big things. But we see so many people let thinking about it, get in the way of actually doing it. And I think that thinking feels really productive. And it feels like work. But it doesn't actually move the needle.
Emily Thompson 3:27
Right? It doesn't move the needle until you're actually doing the work. I think that they're like thinking is important. strategizing is important. It's how you really like, hit the ground running and like, really have the rubber meet the road. I feel like I'm using all the metaphors at the moment. But like, it's how you get it going like smoothly and efficiently and all of those things. Because if you don't think and you just start doing, you're just what are you going to be doing?
Kathleen Shannon 3:51
You know what, that's such a good point, I felt like I was always so fast that doing things in college because I think that I allowed a lot of my projects, time to marinate. And even now, whenever I'm going for walks, I'm thinking about different business solutions. And I do a lot of thinking probably more thinking than I give myself credit for. And I think that's what allows us to work a little more swiftly once we do get to work. But again, I think that people get stuck in that thinking phase and that they haven't thought about enough and they're buying another notebook to jot all their notes down in, you'll do more thinking.
Emily Thompson 4:27
Right? It's that process you think and then you do like you have to do both of them. But you have to do both
Kathleen Shannon 4:33
you think and then you journal and make a to do list. And then you do
Emily Thompson 4:41
true that I mean I love that we were able to bring to bring our business processes and to the writing of this book. And I am glad that we were able to write the like mindset and boundaries and habits and routines that we're writing about into the writing of the book. Not only to like help us do it, but almost to like prove to our ourselves while writing it that these were important and imperative parts of the creative process, and imperative parts of the creative process that gets you paid, if I can, like, liberate the hell out of that, because that's what we're all here to do, and you don't show up and do those things willy nilly. I mean, like, maybe you can do it once and get lucky. Like, there are certainly people in the world who just get lucky doing those things. But most of us, for most of us, that's not how it happens. So it is, it was an amazing experience. And again, very meta, and very like, proof building for us to to write the book in that way.
Kathleen Shannon 5:41
I think though, beyond using our tools and tactics, there is this element of discipline. And I think just like in any creative field, no matter how many systems and processes, you see you have, there is this element of creativity, right and of talent. And that's this kind of special piece of the equation that makes what we do kind of special, right? But then this discipline part of it, I think that that's where you really have to get over the hump. And after you've broken down a project into the little pieces that are manageable, that you can tackle, then it's the discipline of doing the thing, and I kind of have this feeling that if you want to do the thing, you will do it. And if you're not doing the thing, I don't know, I can't help but feel like maybe you don't actually want to do it. How do you feel about that? It's not controversial,
Emily Thompson 6:24
or that it wasn't meant to be done, at least not by you, someone else will do it. I mean, no, I don't think I think No, I don't think it's controversial. I think if you are offended by that, that's on you, not Kathleen? For sure. Because something like if you're meant to do it, you're going to do it, period. And discipline is part of that. I mean, and I think part of discipline is getting like showing up and doing the thing, even before it's the thing you're supposed to be doing. Like, right. So for us the book right now is the thing is the thing that we were here to make and do. But it took us working for ourselves for the past 789 10 years, in order to get to a place of discipline and showing up and doing the work and having everything it was that we had to say. It took all of that to get us to the point of writing the book, like that discipline came far beyond the creativity.
Kathleen Shannon 7:27
And further some discipline that went into like literally sitting down and writing the book like there weren't, we didn't always feel like puppies and rainbows doing it. But I think that we were really disciplined in showing up every single week to record the podcast leading up to it. And so we're practicing discipline. I also think that the discipline in the book, we talk a lot about your values and staying aligned to your values and holding true to your boundaries. And those are things that we had to be really disciplined about whenever it came to writing the book is holding true to our values, and holding true to our boundaries so that we can literally make the time.
Emily Thompson 8:03
Yeah. And again, it was showing up year after year after year, day after day, week after week. that got us to a place where writing the book was as easy and as fun as it was.
Kathleen Shannon 8:15
Alright, let's go ahead and share a clip from Caroline's podcast. Alright, and you can hear more of this episode at the secret library podcast, you can find that wherever you find your podcasts, I can't recommend this show more. It is so good. If you are a writer or want to be a writer, you got to listen to this.
Caroline Donahue 8:45
So in the midst of this, and you're having these tough conversations you're writing, you're getting a book written in three months, and you also are still doing the podcast. You're still moms, you're still in relationships, and you still have online businesses that you're running. So I'm I'm wondering how when you say like we got it done, we got it done on time. Like do you have any thoughts about how you made that happen? For someone who may be like quietly puking in the corner with like, Oh my god, how would I how would I do that?
Kathleen Shannon 9:15
You know what we just get more done than most people like I used to have a really eloquent answer for this. Like we're time blocking and we have really solid habits and routines and boundaries. But the truth is, I just think that we get more done than most people sorry and
Emily Thompson 9:33
but like it's all it's come from years of showing up like this again, in the beginning maybe not showing up quite like this like it is it has been a growing process. So we definitely we show up for everything as if it's the most important thing we're doing at the moment because it is because we're showing up for it. And like Finally we the book we wrote is called being boss and it lays out the foundations of what it takes to build like work and life. that you love and is productive and all of these things. So we very basically employed all of our own tactics throughout the entire process.
Caroline Donahue 10:08
Don't start writing a book unless you're willing to make temporary sacrifices to make it happen. And if this the idea of staying up late or looking at the book on the beach, or skipping a play date, sounds awful, then maybe reevaluate whether or not this is the book you want to write.
Emily Thompson 10:25
Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that the bright the actual process of writing the book made us do was to get us to get really sort of quiet and in tune with what works and what doesn't work for like us individually. So there was a whole lot of like getting really real, with ourselves, and with our family around what it is that we needed to create this and the timeframe, that was that was required it end up working out really great, it took us a couple of weeks to get into that flow to really figure it out. I can only imagine how difficult that would have been if we hadn't taken the time to do that. I think that was a really important part of the process to was really getting to know ourselves and our process and also each other, and each other's process to make it happen. I
Kathleen Shannon 11:07
think also though, acknowledging that this is still a job, like it was our job to sit down and write a book. It's not, you know, we're not artists, I mean, we are, but you know what I mean, it's not this, we couldn't always go to the place of inspiration and being well fed and being motivated. At some point, you just have to sit down and do your job. And so that's what it means to be boss is to sit down and do the work whenever we were asking people, right before we wrote the book, like what is the number one piece of advice that you've gotten from the podcast that has really helped you be a better boss, be a better creative entrepreneur, be a better small business owner, a freelancer, a side, hustler, passion project, or whatever it is. And everyone said, your advice to just sit down and do the work, or maybe not sit down to do the work, whatever that looks like for you. has been huge. And it's the simplest thing we say. And so the whole book is framed up around doing the work and what all that entails. And I think that actually writing the book itself, like Emily was saying earlier was us doing the work and really employing our best strategies whenever it comes to mindset and habits and routines and all the things boundaries, even if we were breaking some of those rules along the way to really make it happen.
Kathleen Shannon 12:33
I also wanted to mention that we are on Tasha and Kate's podcast called lady books. And we're pairing this with this episode from the secret library podcast because it was very similar in that we're talking about the systems and processes and what it's like to write a book together. But a little different, because we had a couple of glasses of wine. So honestly, I can't even remember our entire conversation. I just remember laughing a lot, which I always do with Tasha and Kate and Emily in the same room together. So this is truly like listening in on your friends talking about writing books, and everything involved with that. Here's a clip here for you to listen to you.
Kate Newburg 13:17
Well, first off how was let's talk about the writing process because y'all wrote it together. First off, is this your first attempt either of you to write a book? And how was just how was that process coming to the decision to write a book together? I mean, I feel like it was kind of obvious because you do have a podcast. And it is it lends itself well to creating a book. But how was that writing process to together?
Emily Thompson 13:39
It was the coolest shit we've ever done. hands down the most fun we've ever had. For sure. By far, forever and ever. Amen. Even more fun than the vacations like you're maybe not. I need to put this in realistic parameters. Okay, right, like, okay, so the vacations are a blast. But Kathleen and I also have to be on and we're also responsible for everyone having a good time. Like, that's a very different kind of fun and definitely fun in its own right, for sure. But writing this book, one.
Kathleen Shannon 14:12
I mean, whenever we get together, this is something always surprises me, I shouldn't. But Emily, and I laugh a lot. Whenever we're together in person and writing the book was no different. And just getting that much facetiming. I mean, we see each other a lot. But writing the book really gave the time that we had together a lot of structure. We were on the same team the whole time. So whenever it came to actually writing the book, you all will nerd out about all of the process, I'm sure so we wrote it over Google Docs so that we could be in the same document at the same time.
Emily Thompson 14:45
He hates Google Docs. I love Google Docs. No, I do. I hate Google Docs as well. And that was actually like one of those very early like, like hurdles we had to jump was how are we going to write this? We're going to have to use Google Docs but oh my God, I hate Google Docs. Like something About how Google Drive is organized. And the way Google Docs were like, my brain doesn't process information in that way, I don't know what it is. But it had the functionality that we required to get the job done that like live editing, and being able to watch where each other was in the dock and be able to type in the other one see it in real time, like, all of that was absolutely imperative for the process that we ended up creating. And we don't know of any other tools that allow you to do that there isn't really Google Docs is probably the easiest and most accessible way to do it. And it's free. So we use Google Docs and we would schedule out a couple of hours a week, we learned that we couldn't type type write see each other for more than an hour and a half at a time for shit just started going downhill. So we would block off these like one and a half, two hour blocks. And we'd get on with gab about stuff. And then we would get to writing and we would, we had done a very solid outline of the book. And we would divide up sections, we'd type even like, while we were just sitting there quietly, like working together, and we would reread or we would read our sections aloud to the other one. And hangouts to like, yeah, yeah, we
Kathleen Shannon 16:17
were like, in real time, we could see each other right, we could ask questions, we would say like, Hey, I'm gonna go eat something and tackle this for 30 minutes by myself. I'll meet you back on here in 30 minutes, that kind of thing? Yeah. Paul, oh, yeah. It's like having a study. But it really felt that way.
Emily Thompson 16:33
It did. And so we did that. We would even have moments where like, if we're like reviewing something, and editing something that didn't sound quite right, and like the typing wasn't working, we'd be like, Alright, what I really want to say is this, this and this. And while we were saying it, the other one would sit there and transcribe it. And we were able to like, sort of capture each other's thoughts and words and edit in real time. And it was just such a fun process. Like it took us a little while to really get into that creative group to find out what process was really going to support our creativity, I guess. But once we found it, we would get into these, like really fantastic flows of just getting it done, we would have such a good time. There were several times I would leave my like office, my home office, and my partner, David would be like, you guys didn't get any work done today, did you? Because we didn't, we were laughing the entire time. And I was like, shit, we just finished like a chapter and a half or whatever. We were just having such a good time doing it and really writing it together in real time for pretty much the entire book.
Kate Newburg 17:39
That makes sense. Because like, especially one writing should be fun. Yeah, it shouldn't be painful. And then too, I feel like if you're working together, you kind of one you're committing to the time and you don't want to waste it. But then it's also not like I won't write this week, you're not putting it off because you haven't scheduled in your day.
Tasha L. Harrison 17:56
But I also think that works better because you guys already know your your work ethic. Like we kind of have the same work ethic. So scheduling time, it wouldn't be like, man, I don't feel like doing this or you just getting on and dicking around like we know when we're gonna get on and take around. Do we say dick? This is the real man. You're getting it. I just feel like I drink too good. We just finished your drinks.
Kathleen Shannon 18:27
And be sure to listen to Lady books. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, check out the episode with me and Emily and try not to judge us too hard because, yeah, a wine, a glass of wine or two, it'll do the trick. Especially going over your tolerance is as low as ours is now we don't really imbibe that much, you all Alright, everyone, have a great day. And we'll see you next time.
Emily Thompson 18:57
All right, excuse me while I pause this here and let you in on the exciting news. The being boss book is about to hit the shelves of a bookstore near you, Kathleen and I have taken years of conversations between ourselves and those we've had with experts and industry leaders here on the beam boss podcast, and have distilled them down into what we've found makes you boss into a book that you can read, hold in your hands and
Kathleen Shannon 19:22
share with a friend. And we'd be lying if we didn't admit that we have a big dream with this book. We wanted to be a best seller. We want every creative in the world to cultivate the confidence it takes to take control of their work and make money doing what they love so they can live life on their own terms. That's what our book is here to do. And we need your help to make it happen.
Emily Thompson 19:42
If you want to dive into the core of what it means to be boss and support us while you do it. It's time for you to preorder the book. And once you do that, let us know you bought it and we'll send you some goodies. Just go to Bing boss club slash book for links to purchase and for more information on how to claim your swag that's been involved clubs slash book. Now let's get back at it.
Kathleen Shannon 20:07
This minisode was brought to you by twenty20. Check them out at twenty20.com/beingboss that's t w e n t y 20 as in the number.com slash being boss.
Emily Thompson 20:21
Did you like this minisode Be sure to check us out on our website at beingboss.club. There you can find more from being boss including our full episodes minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing list so that you can get access to behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself to help you be more boss in your work and life. Do the work be boss
