I’m Writing a Book!
If you have been following me, then you know that I’m trying to grow out 18 sources of income. I’ve been slowly growing and scaling a few sources over the last few months, but now that I am 100% dependent on these income streams, it is time to enable more streams of income.
Current Income Streams
I first started with freelancing. This business is doing well and is helping me stay afloat. Next, the podcast is growing every day and I have a few ideas for growing in that space that I’m excited to start implementing. Writing is my third and probably my lowest paying effort here, but with enough practice, I am going to start becoming more aggressive with my efforts to earn money with writing. The biggest thing holding me back right now is my lack of confidence in my writing skills, but that is changing every day. As a fourth stream, I also started selling things which I wrote a post on just recently. Feel free to check it out if you want to read about how that is going. Four out of eighteen sources are up and running. Sure, there are some opportunities for growth, but now it is time to fold in the fifth income stream.
My Book
I’m happy to announce that I am writing a book on how to be an effective Technical Program Manager with Jira. I have a lot of experience in managing teams with Jira and have learned different techniques that I believe could do well in a book. I’m beyond excited to start writing my book and share it with my community. I have already completed an outline and recently had it reviewed by a trusted mentor. With the outline in hand, now it’s time to do the scary part. It is time to start actually writing the book. In theory, all I have to do is start filling in the blanks. But like everything else in life, this is easier said than done.
I think the book is going to do well. I am writing about a niche that frankly, there isn’t a lot of content out there on. Not only am I focusing on Technical Program Management, which doesn’t have a lot of public information on, but I am doing it from a software and hardware perspective. Many individuals that have the role of a Technical Program Manager are usually trained to be Project Management Professionals or Certified Scrum Masters. While these are valuable skills, neither really teach you how to work with hardware and software. I’ve been working on integrating software and hardware for the last six years and have seen how not to do it. I’ve developed my own technique for actually delivering on this type of project and I want to share it with the world.
Additionally, there is a lot of documentation on how to use Jira. This documentation is great and very well written, but the documentation is more theory than actual implementation. My book is going to specifically show you how to organize your team and how to effectively use Jira to manage the team and all the work that goes into delivering a world class hardware product. Managing software such as Netflix or Dropbox is completely different than managing a project that needs to integrate software with hardware. There are so many more unknowns and communication is key to the overall success of the project. Jira documentation really only shows you how to accomplish specific tasks or how to get the most out of the features built into Jira. But I haven’t seen a definitive guide on how to actually work with a team, all using Jira, to deliver products together as an organization.
The Process
With my style and techniques, I am putting together a playbook, a guidebook to help anyone out there currently managing a complex software project that requires integration with hardware. The tricky part is going to be figuring out how to sell this book. But, I think I can overcome this by sharing my process of building out my book over the next few weeks with my community. One of my former managers has already agreed to read through the first draft and provide some feedback. I am also participating in the Gumroad writing challenge which is also helping me not only stay on track, but also guiding me in the process of writing a book.
I have a few more books planned that I’ll be writing over the next couple months. I’ve never written a book before, but I do see technical writing as a key skill that I want to acquire as part of this entrepreneur journey that I have embarked on. If you want to follow along, make sure you follow me here on Medium and also on Twitter. If you want to help me or be involved with my book writing efforts, please feel free to reach out to me personally and I would love to chat with you. I’ve seen many teams struggle managing these complex software and hardware project and having a guidebook that they can reference will have a huge impact on their lives.
That’s it for today. This is going to be a fun process and I cannot wait to share it with all of you. Maybe the book does well or maybe it doesn’t. In either case, I am going to be learning a lot and I really do see a good future for myself and my business as an author. I’ll primarily be distributing the book via Gumroad, but might explore different options depending on how the experience goes. Have you written a book before? I’d love to hear about your process and maybe you can share some of your lessons learned with me and my community.
