Jennie Nash introduces a Write Big episode of the #amwriting podcast focused on prioritizing people, drawing on KJ’s reminder that “people are a good use of time.” She explains a sudden decision to attend the Craft and Commerce conference in Boise despite costs in time, money, and energy, noting travel is difficult for her as an introvert with migraine-trigger food sensitivities. She chose to go primarily because her business mentor, Claire Pelletreau, would be there, making the chance to meet in person after two years of working together online worth the investment; she also has family in Boise.
Nash reflects that writers should view themselves as entrepreneurs who invest in growth and connections, since getting work read depends on connecting with readers and other people, and she encourages seeking meaningful collaboration and networking without a transactional mindset.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, a quick reminder. The Blueprint Summer Challenge begins July 10th and it’s not too late to join us. If you’ve been thinking about writing a new book, getting unstuck in a draft, or tackling a revision, I’d love to have you jump in. For just $19, you’ll get the new blueprint course, including the full text of my blueprint book, 14 video lessons, and real coaching examples.
Throughout the summer, paid podcast subscribers will also have access to live coaching sessions with me and Author Accelerator coaches that are focused on specific blueprint steps and writing challenges. And because I want this to be as hands-on as possible, everyone who enrolls in the course for the summer challenge will be entered to win a blueprint revision with me and a live hot coaching session that we’ll record for the podcast.
We’ll award one of these for every 100 enrollments. If you’re ready to spend six weeks making your book stronger, you’ll find details in the show notes[00:01:00]
Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a Write Big episode where I bring you short conversations about the mindset shifts that shape the work, and today I’m talking about the importance of prioritizing people.
KJ has something that she often says, which is that people are a good use of time. Maybe actually what she says is people are a good investment of time No, I think it’s use. People are a good use of time. I should have checked with KJ before I quoted her, but it’s a thing that she often says whenever things might get hard with friends or family or colleagues or travel or anything, that when you’re doing something in service of being with people, it’s usually a good use of time, and I just love that.
It-- I hang [00:02:00] onto that. It’s a great reminder, and I thought of that for this episode today because I recently made a rather sudden decision to take a trip to Boise, Idaho, to go to a conference, and this decision came with a lot of costs. Some of those costs are related to time. I’ve been traveling a lot lately for my family and for friends’, children’s weddings and for college reunions and all kinds of things, and travel is really hard for me.
I’m an introvert. I love to work. I love to be at home. I love my routines, and travel is hard for me because of food-related things related to migraine triggers. So it’s not easy for me to be out in the world and traveling, and I’ve been doing it a lot. So the decision to go to Boise was the decision to shoehorn another trip into a really busy summer.
So that was one thing, the cost of time. There was also, of course, the cost of money. I had to buy a ticket to the [00:03:00] conference. I had to buy a plane ticket, and those things add up, so you know, it was a decision to spend that money. Then there was the cost of just the energy itself, of being in a room with people and in a crowd and with people I largely don’t know and all the things.
So there were a lot of costs to making this decision, but I wanna talk about the reason that I made it, because that goes to this idea of people are a good use of time. So I made this decision for two primary reasons, and the first is that my business mentor, Claire Pelletreau, said that she was going to be at the Craft and Commerce conference in Boise, Idaho, and that people should go to be there with her in person and meet her and go to the conference with her.
Now, I’ve been to this conference before. It’s run by Kit, which used to be ConvertKit, which is the email service provider, and it is wholly focused on small business people. So it’s entrepreneurs and small [00:04:00] business owners, and that can be book coaches. It certainly is me and the business I run at Author Accelerator.
And it’s a great conference. It’s where I actually first heard Rachel Rodgers speak, who just blew me away. If you don’t know Rachel Rodgers’ work, she’s at hello7.com, and her book is We Should All Be Millionaires. It is a fantastic book about empowerment and intellectual property and owning your voice and many things that are great for anybody who is making anything, whether it’s a book or a business or any sort of thing that you’re creating.
I love, love her work, and that’s where I first heard her. And so I was excited to attend the conference for the sake of the conference itself. I also happened to peek at the roster of speakers, and I saw that James Clear was going to be the keynote speaker. He’s the guy who wrote Atomic Habits, and I thought, “Ooh, I’d love to hear s- him speak and see how he performs and see what he has to say these days.”[00:05:00]
I know he’s working on a new book, and he has a really interesting writing process that he shared before that involves giant spreadsheets that he has ideas on that he tests with his giant audience. And I thought, “Okay, cool. I wanna go hear him.” So there was the conference itself, but mostly it was Claire saying, “I’m gonna be there.
Come be with me.” And I thought, “Yeah, I’m gonna spend this time, this effort, this energy, this money just to go meet my business mentor.” She lives all the way across the country from me. I’m in Santa Barbara, California. She’s in Philadelphia. I’ve been in her mastermind for two years. I’ve learned so much from her.
I have so much gratitude for the energy she’s put into me and my business and my brain, and just to go and even have a lunch with her, I don’t quite know when I’m recording this what we’re gonna do, but for sure I’ll see her. I’ll do something, maybe breakfast or a walk or something, but just the chance to do that, totally worth the investment And then also my sister lives in Boise, and [00:06:00] my niece, and my grand-niece.
Is that what you call it? My sister’s child’s child. But, um, I have family there and so fantastic. So many reasons to go. All the people-y reasons to go. And I wanted to go through that thought process that I had because investing in ourselves and investing in ourselves as business people is something that we don’t normally think about.
Writers don’t normally think about themselves as entrepreneurs or people who should make investments in their growth or their learning or their understanding, and I think it’s just so important to have that mindset about what we’re doing because the thing that writers want is for their work to be read, and that means that they want to connect with readers, and that means that they want to connect with people.
We’re all in the business of people. It’s all about connecting with other people. Yes, we sit alone in our rooms, and we do our work, and we have all [00:07:00] kinds of things happening in our heads, the stories that we spin and the plans that we make and th- the content that we create and all of those things. Right now I’m sitting alone in a room talking to you, so I get it.
We spend a lot of time doing that, but also we have to get out in the world, and we have to connect with people. And so that concept that KJ talks about that people are a good use of time is something to keep in mind, and it’s something to look out for in your own career. And what I mean by that is where can you find people?
Where can you connect with them? Where can you make friends with them and network with them? So many of these connections start online. They get nurtured online, and that’s exactly what happened with me and with Claire. She’s a person that I followed for years. I listened to her podcast. I went to her free trainings.
I did all the things. Then I joined her low-level program. Then I joined her high-level program. Then I stayed in her [00:08:00] high-level program. You know, so I’ve been investing a lot of time into her teachings and into her, but I’ve never met her. I’ve only ever seen her on a Zoom, and so this is a chance to kind of close that loop.
So I would just encourage you to think about the people that mean something to you in your career, not in the way of how can I use these people or how can they help me or how can I leverage them? Not that sort of use, but how can you use them and connect with them and, and collaborate with them and be in cahoots with them and all the things?
Because as KJ reminds me all the time, people are a good use of time. I’ll certainly report when I get back from Boise about how it went and what I learned and all the things, but I wanted to capture that thought before I go and to share it with all of you I think that it’s a really big part of playing big and writing big and being big in our own careers and our own authority.
When we invest in ourselves [00:09:00] and in what we’re doing, we lift ourselves up, and we give ourselves a better shot, and we take ourselves more seriously, and that’s what I’m trying to do here and what I’m trying to inspire you to do too
The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:10:00] work.
