Andrea Hardaway Testimonial

Full video transcript

Hey Andrea. Hello. How are you doing?

I have been doing very well. I have been extremely busy — I got a couple of new clients, so they are bogging me down, but I’m blessed, I have no complaints. The book is still coming along. I had to stop and do quite a bit of research at the end, but I’m still in a very good place. I’m actually almost ready to send it to editing, probably next week. I’ll be able to do that with a goal of — yeah, I still want to launch it in November. Black Friday, that’s my target.

Well, it’s great — yeah, Black Friday launch, prepping up for that.

Yeah, so I would say for me the challenge was absolutely worth it. Everything changed for me. I mean, I’m a business owner, I’m an investor, and I’ve got several clients, and I’m pretty busy, and I really didn’t think I would be able to block off a whole week to do this. And then I thought, well, if I do, I’m not going to make that much progress. But just being in the challenge and having a cohort of people who were — some were very similar to me, some were very different, but we all had common challenges, we all had common goals, and we encouraged one another. It was truly life-changing. And what I mean by that — I actually don’t say that lightly, because there are experiences you have in life that motivate you for a moment, they make you feel a little bit of joy, and then they go away. And then there are things that you go through that actually truly do change how you see the world. And for me, honestly, the challenge changed how I see the world. It took something that felt impossible and brought it into the realm of possibility for me. I absolutely know that my goal of publishing five books over five years is totally doable. I felt like I had a good process, starting with the outline and really understanding how to take the reader through an experience, which was eye-opening for me, and there’s so much that I have to give — I know I’m not gonna stop.

Yeah, it’s so cool to see the progression and everyone’s stories throughout the course of the week, and I think just the introspection that is required to think through a subject that you already know so well, right, like on a cellular level — being an expert doing it for so long — what was maybe like an aha moment that you had, whether it’s one of the tools that we used in particular, or a story, or a process that we shared, that helped shift your perspective in a way that was really valuable that you can think back to?

So I think the aha moment for me was really the learning to speak from the perspective of my reader, so actually thinking about what it is that they need and me coming to the table answering that for them right away. So the way I ended up writing my book — I mean, you want them to go through the whole book, but we talked about the statistics around people who actually end up reading the whole book from beginning to end. So for me that meant that not just every single chapter or every single paragraph, but every single word needs to earn its way on the page, because I need to capture my reader and provide value. I don’t just need to do word vomit and just talk or share things because I can — I need to be solution-minded, and I need to be solution-minded in a way that lets me know even if they read ten percent of my book, it’s going to change their perspective, they’re going to find value out of it, they’re going to remember something they learned and share it with someone else. So that was a big aha for me — understanding how to write with the expectation that they may not get through the whole thing, or that they may start in the middle or jump to a chapter, or just jump to the end to try to find the answer. And I learned how to provide value throughout the whole entire book, no matter where they drop in and no matter where they stop.

What do you see the next three months looking like in terms of launching, in the next few weeks, going into 2022 — where do you see this book taking you and your business?

That’s a really great question, and I can tell you that I was pretty aggressive in creating my advanced readers list. I’ve got about 100 people on my advanced readers list, and I’ve actually engaged about 60 of them so far, and these are people who have come to me in the past just to pick my brain or get information, or maybe they’ve used my services in the past, but that was for that season and now we’ve moved on. But being able to go back to them and say, hey, I’m taking what’s in my head and putting it in a book, I’m really surprised at how little selling I have to do. So my actual plan was to give a few people the book — just totally free, give them an electronic version totally free — and the response that I’m getting overwhelmingly is, okay, that’s fine, but I’m still going to pay you something. I’m going to pay you something, I want to pay for it, how can I get on the list, I already know it’s going to be good. And for me — I had a little bit of imposter syndrome, right? I feel that I know what I know, however when I’m tasked with cementing it in a book, it’s like, wait a minute, it’s going to be out there for the world to see. But I realized in creating my MVP it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be me. So I think that’s going to help a lot, just having something to have people go to.

I had someone reach out to me — well, she actually reached out to my business manager. She met me at a conference about six years ago, and I honestly don’t really remember meeting her, although her name sounded familiar, and she talked to my business manager about how impressed she was with me and she really wanted to get my time and she didn’t know if she could afford it, and she just wanted an hour. So when we told her about the book, she was just all too excited and she said, I just can’t wait, I just want to be a part of this. And for me, it’s not so much about who I am and that I’m so great, but it is that it allows me another avenue to spread my reach and to do the things I’m passionate about in a way that reaches more people. So I’ve got people from the United States all the way to Australia in my network who now want to read this and see if it can help their business. So I think when I look at my business — because as I shared a little bit, I have gone from having these really large high-dollar corporate contracts to now, especially during the pandemic, being focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses really pivot and turn and make it through, and helping business owners not get burnt out in that process. The book is the perfect avenue for me to do that and reach more of my target audience without having to land the one high-dollar contract. So I can do one corporate high-dollar contract and that might tie me up for a year, maybe two. But with the book I can reach thousands in a very short period of time, and that’s what really matters to me.

Are you noticing maybe more of a trend with some of the people that are coming back into your circle?

I am, and one of the reasons is because of my process. I actually took a sabbatical, and I completely disengaged while writing this book. I planned on going to a beachfront resort, and that ended up not working, but I still took a local sabbatical. I totally turned my phone off, I totally turned my email off, I went off of social media except to get into the Facebook group with the rest of the cohort. But I do find that just by me disconnecting, people noticed that I was gone, and they started reaching out wondering what was going on, and of course I had my auto-responders or my team saying, you know, she’s on a sabbatical, she’s doing this, she’s doing that. So I found that not only are people interested in reading what I have to say, but they also want to understand the journey and how I was able to pull back for a week — because as a business owner, when you don’t get a guaranteed paycheck, right, I’m going to make sure my team is taken care of before I’m taken care of, and I don’t get paid every two weeks, I get paid when it’s time to take a distribution. So a lot of times business owners have a difficult time stepping away, but I was able to do that, and it’s one of the things I’m teaching other people how to do in my book — how to be able to get more from your business by giving less of yourself and less of your time. So I’m finding that other business owners who I thought honestly may have even forgotten that I existed are coming to me asking, well, how were you able to take a sabbatical, how were you able to step away — some on social media that I’ve never met in person, and some that I have met in person. And when I’m sharing my story and telling them how I’m going to share some of that in the book, they are just very excited.

And one more thing I want to share — it’s a little bit off topic, but it does relate. One of the things I learned through this journey is that every single person has a story, and we always know that, but sometimes as individuals we don’t feel that our story really matters, or wonder how it might impact others. And I think if you have a story, if you have breath in your body and you have a story, then I think you have a story worth sharing, and it’s worth putting pen to paper, if only to create something that will outlive you. So I really hope more people will take advantage of this challenge, because for me it’s what I needed to help me get what was inside of me out into a consumable form that will ultimately help others. I mean, I would say if anyone’s on the fence about it and wondering if the investment is worth it, I think it’s absolutely worth it. You can’t necessarily put a dollar on self-care or investing in yourself, but this journey actually felt like self-care and it felt like something I needed to do. You could easily be charging two or three more times what you’re charging for this — easily you could do that. So the fact that you have it priced at the rate that you do now, and you are allowing people in, and just the amount of coaching that’s provided from everything — from how do I write my story to how do I use the AI tools and what sort of research do I need to do — I was just really impressed with the amount of expertise that you all have brought together. And I’m also impressed by you personally, because you provided a lot of support to me just offline, and me sending emails before even before the challenge, and you responded really quickly and it made me feel like I was part of something bigger than me. So if anyone’s on the fence and they’re just wondering if it’s for them — it’s for you. If there’s breath in your body and you’ve had a single thought about whether or not you should do it, you should do it.

Awesome, I think the message is loud and clear — write your book. That’s it, that’s it.

All right, awesome.